DPI High-Level Session

World Summit on the Information Society Explores the Role of Digital Public Infrastructure in Equitable Digital Transformation

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) hosted a session that brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to discuss the transformative impact of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) on achieving equitable digital transformation. The session featured a range of speakers, including government officials, representatives from international organizations, and industry experts, who shared insights and experiences from their respective countries and initiatives.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez opened the session by welcoming participants and finalists of the WSIS Digital Service Design Special Prize, emphasizing the importance of DPI in driving digital transformation. Noemie Burkl from Germany discussed the country’s strategy for international digital policy, focusing on leveraging digital technologies to solve global challenges and achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She highlighted the GovStack initiative’s contribution to democratizing digital services and improving social well-being, emphasizing inclusivity and digital sovereignty.

Nele Leosk from Estonia shared her country’s pioneering experience in DPI, stressing that universal solutions to common digitalization problems exist. She mentioned the GovStack initiative, which is based on the common ground of digitalization needs across countries, and the importance of scalability and replicability of digital solutions, such as Estonia’s digital identity and X-Road platform.

Khaled El Attar from Egypt discussed the country’s vision for DPI in enhancing digital governance and economic growth, announcing the first DPI Summit in Egypt. He emphasized the importance of standardizing data structures and promoting private sector participation in DPI.

Rashad Khaligov from Azerbaijan shared his country’s approach to digitalization, focusing on digital infrastructure, human capacity, legal reforms, and international collaboration. He highlighted the development of national platforms for data and document exchange and the adoption of biometric e-signatures.

Sushil Pal from India provided insights into the country’s lessons learned from implementing large-scale digital services. He emphasized the importance of foundational DPI elements such as digital ID, payment systems, and data exchange frameworks. Pal also stressed the need for proper governance structures, committed financing, and stakeholder consultation.

The session celebrated the WSIS Digital Service Design Special Prize, with UGPath from Uganda being announced as the winner for its innovative approach to electronic signing and sealing, demonstrating DPI’s transformative power in service delivery.

The session concluded with the announcement of an open wallet forum, a collaboration between ITU and the Linux Foundation, aimed at developing coordinated policies and standards for digital wallets. Jim Zemlin from the Linux Foundation and Sameer Chauhan from UNICC expressed their commitment to supporting the initiative and ensuring its equitable and open adoption.

Throughout the session, speakers underscored the importance of global partnerships, interoperability standards, and the scaling of digital solutions. The discussion reflected a consensus on the need for collaborative efforts to overcome challenges and harness the full potential of DPI for societal benefit. The session served as a call to action for stakeholders to engage with the initiatives discussed and to participate in upcoming events such as the DPI Summit in Egypt.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
heat for those at ITU, and I would like to welcome you, WSIS multistakeholders, DPI ecosystem, and open source community here today, in person and remotely. It’s such a pleasure to be with you all. Also, let me extend a warm welcome to this year’s participants and finalists of the WSIS Digital Service Design Special Prize. We have been handed one of the most exciting topics at WSIS, as we talk about the impact of digital public infrastructure for a more equitable digital transformation. We have listened to the different sessions of the day, the importance to build capacity in public and private sector, and I would like to kick off this conversation with the story of 139 women from 59 countries that participated in the first cohort of the GovStack Women in GovTech Challenge. During eight weeks, women that you see on the screen work in multidisciplinary teams to design a government service based on user needs, on live events. Using GovStack Toolkit, 14 functional prototypes of digital services were created. More importantly, a global community of practitioners living digital worldwide are now using DPI in an Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen. You can see these projects being showcased on Thursday during the launch of the GovStack e-Learning Hub. Successful implementation of digital public infrastructure in countries like the ones present today has shown that DPI demands sustainable financing models, developing an appropriate legal and institutional framework, overcoming resistance to change, and maintaining the quality and reliability of services. We have an ambitious program ahead of us, so let’s get started. I will introduce each panel participant as they take the floor. We have with us Noemie Burkl. She is the Head of Unit for Digitalization at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany. Noemi, in February, Germany launched its first strategy for international digital policy, which aims to use digital technologies to solve challenges. How can VMC support partners in the Global South in leveraging DPI?

Noemie Burkl:
Thank you for having me with you today and for this important question. First and foremost, we are very pleased that Germany’s first strategy for international digital policy recognizes the need to leverage digital technologies to solve global challenges. Digital transformation offers great opportunities for economic development and the achievement of SDGs, which is why we are discussing this today. This is true for DPI in particular. Just last year, DPI was recognized as one of the 12 groundbreaking UN initiatives for achieving the Agenda 2030 at the SDG Summit. I guess you’re going to discuss this, Rob, later. Our initiative, GovStack, significantly contributes to this. It leverages digital public infrastructure to democratize digital services and improve social well-being. The vision of the initiative is that citizens around the globe have access to sometimes life-saving services, such as digital health services, education and social benefits. And this I cannot stress enough. We sometimes forget how life-saving even digital technologies can really be. A focus of the initiative lies in the spirit of inclusivity and digital sovereignty. A good example is GovStack’s support for the Ukrainian digital citizen portal DIA. Even in times of war, the DIA app allows Ukrainians to access essential identification documents. We support countries in the provision of key digital infrastructure. These digital highways are as important as physical ones these days. Presently, the GovStack approach is adopted by Kenya, Djibouti, Rwanda and Egypt, amongst others. I’m happy to sit here next to you. A robust digital public infrastructure is the basis for innovative digital services. Instead of creating individual digital solutions that only solve one problem, GovStack helps to create structures that can accelerate change across all sectors. So, DPI can function as a highway for a country’s digitalization journey. By using these tools, governments reach their destination faster and with less bumps along the way. So, I’m happy to hear what you have to say about this later on. Thank you.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
Thank you, Noemie. And moving forward to another GovStack founding partner, it’s my pleasure to introduce to all of you Nele Leosk, Ambassador-at-Large for Digital in Estonia. Nele, your country has been a pioneer in digital public infrastructure. How did you get involved? does it leverage its expertise to DPI to support GovStack global objectives?

Nele Leosk:
Thank you. I believe in a way Estonia leverage everything it does into global level or at least has within some of its essential components and I think the reason is that now that we are I would say 20-30 years into digitalization we have seen a lot of progress but at the same time I believe we can all say that we have not seen as much progress as we actually would have liked to see and and we have also come to realize why this is so. So there are some crucial components of digitalization that we have missed or we have not managed to put in place like data, data governance, data interoperability, digital identity and this has become the core of digital public infrastructure. So in a way we can say that we have come to a common ground where we all realize that we have similar problems and these solutions can also be similar. So I don’t really want to compare digital governance into a headache but the same way we know what we need to do when we have a headache we I don’t know, less stress, less work, maybe paratheter more, the same means to digitalization. So it used to be said that okay it’s an Estonian model that you have a digital identity or you have interoperability. I believe we can now say that there is no such thing as Estonian model or Indian model or Bangladesh model or Egypt model. Some things are universal and I am really glad that for this reason we have also established GovStack initiative together with some of the partners that are also here in the panel and the GovStack initiative actually is based on this common ground. It puts together certain pieces we all need in digitalization that can be actually in a way scaled or replicated. Let’s look at digital identity right. Estonia gave virtual identity to every citizen 20 plus years ago. Now it is scaled to countries like India for example or our X road in famous platform. It was used in Estonia in a small country but it is very successfully implemented also in Ukraine Colombia and in many other places. So I believe that we have to make the DPI work and we can then excel to other levels. Thank you.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
Thank you. By the way Nele was part of the mentors of the Women in GovTech Challenge so thank you Nele. And I will now turn to Egypt. We have today Khaled El Attar, Vice Minister for Administrative Development, Digital Transformation and Automation. at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Khaled, how does Egypt envision the future of DPI in enhancing digital governance and economic growth, both domestically but also in collaboration with other countries?

Khaled El Attar:
Yeah, but before I answer your question, I would like to announce the first DPI Summit in Egypt, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of October. You are all welcome to the country of civilization, where civilization starts. So we start actually our building blocks and the DPI there. So everybody is welcome to really come to this historical place. Let me talk about DPI. Why do we need DPI? Why do we need GovStack? And then why do we need DPI? Basically, governments in different places, they talk different languages. Even within the same country, they talk different language if we go from one jurisdiction to another. So the GovStack and then the DPI actually give us the language of communication whereby we can build components, we can build digital assets that can be reused. At the same time, we put the foundation for any digital transformation, for any digital economy that comes after. But I think DPI, if you look at the DPI, the DPI will emerge to more and more standardizing our data. So when we talk about, for instance, social equity, when we talk about the management of business, when we talk about the management of labor, when we talk about, I would say, judicial cases, all we really need to exchange those data globally. So I think with the concept of standardizing the data structures, standardizing our components and assets, and using much common components when it comes to digital identity, then we are actually talking. Now we move to an era where we can really connect the world. Digital promises connectivity, but it doesn’t connect just a couple of persons, it doesn’t connect a few organizations. Actually, it connects the world. So we have to be ready for something like this. So that’s number one. Number two, we have to make sure within our DPI, and this is the discussion, on how to really promote the private sector to be part of it. And if you give, for instance, if we talk about digital services, if we give these digital services to a single company, it will not work, because you have many services, you have many events in the life of the citizen that she or he needs to really interact with the government and other societal services. So basically, what is coming into the DPI is a framework whereby many companies would add to the services, and we go really, truly agile, and we move this platform to more and more dynamic, to be more and more dynamic, more and more organic, serving the citizens. Because what you can serve the citizen today will be different tomorrow. So we have to be ready for that. We are pro-standardization in general, we are pro-exchanging of data and governing data, and also to build digital assets that can span over different countries. Thank you.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
Thank you so much. And I’m very proactive in terms of concrete call to action, so we hope to see all of you in the DPI Summit. We’re very eager to know more about different approaches and high-impact use cases. So thank you. for hosting us today and for hosting us in October. Now I would like to give the floor to our colleagues of UNDP. With us is Robert Ok, he’s the Chief Digital Officer for UNDP. And aside to you, UNDP collaborate on a high impact initiative for digital public infrastructure. Will you please elaborate on these partnerships, the strategic objectives and extended outcomes also to the amazing work in the ground that UNDP does?

Robert Opp:
Thank you. Thank you, Yolanda. And I apologize for walking in late. Few of us were chatting right outside the door waiting to be called and then, yeah, we were late. Well, you’re right to mention, and Noemi mentioned it as well, the high impact initiative. And last year at the Sustainable Development Goals Summit, there were 12 high impact initiatives that were chosen that were things that would contribute to acceleration in achieving the SDGs. And ITU and UNDP had the privilege of co-leading on the one that was around digital public infrastructure. And this really comes as a conviction of ours that digital public infrastructure, which is a new term for the combination of usage of technologies that are being talked about here, combined with the idea of community, the interoperability aspect, all of these together represent a significant opportunity for countries to accelerate their digital transformation and the achievement of the SDGs. And so we were very excited to pick up in this high impact initiative, a few of the kind of strands of the future that we’re particularly looking at when it comes to the DPI space. One of them is around the governance, ensuring that as you put technology in place, that you are putting the right policies, laws, other kinds of governance mechanisms in place to protect individuals, protect the data and these kinds of safeguards. And so together with the technology envoy, of the UN, we are implementing a global project on digital public infrastructure safeguards. And that’s coming up with a framework that can be used and deployed by countries as they move toward implementing their DPI. We also looked at initiatives around sustainability. How do we ensure that the use of digital public infrastructure is done in a sustainable way? In other words, we’re watching things like carbon emissions and so on, but also how it can be leveraged for climate action that needs to be done by countries worldwide. And then crucially, one of the areas of exploration in the High Impact Initiative is around affordability. And affordability is where we come into the space that we’re talking about now. Initiatives like GovStack, like Open Wallet Forum, that are really looking for ways to reuse technologies that have been developed in one place and applied to another, as Nelly was saying. And that’s an exciting space, because until now, governments really have been either forced to build or buy the technology pieces. But if we can make available the reusable components, then that should help with the affordability prospect. And so that’s not all of it, but I’ll leave it there, Yolanda. And we’re very pleased to be part of this global movement, because it’s not just about this one High Impact Initiative. It’s about the whole ecosystem that’s coming together to really explore and push the boundaries on this for the purpose of supporting people at the center.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
Thank you. Thank you, Robert. And I would like now recapping on the importance of global partnerships, the relevance of interoperability standards so we can communicate with each other, the relevance of a scale. And for that, I would like to give the floor to Sushil Pal. He’s a joint secretary, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology of India. And for those new in the DPI ecosystem, India has made a very significant investment. development in developing its DPI, including initiatives like DigiLocker, UPI, and on that note, what lessons has India learned from implementing these large-scale digital services?

Sushil Pal:
Thank you, Yolanda, for inviting me for this high-level panel discussion. As you said, India has been a leader in implementation of DPI, and actually, as regards to learning, whatever we have learned, we have all got that learning incorporated into the DPI, into the Digital Economy Minister’s Meeting Declaration, or the Leader’s Declaration, which for the first time, 20 countries have agreed to a framework which includes all the principles on which a DPI needs to be built, which includes the complete framework, which includes including the government community, as well as the private sector. So, however, most difficult of DPI, to implement a DPI, has been a digital ID, and once you do that, I think the rest of the DPI has become far much easier. That becomes like a cakewalk. So during our – and one big message, you know, which I have for other countries, as to which DPIs to begin with, if you really want to economize on your money, I think if you really want the value of the money, begin with the digital ID, the payment, and the data exchange. Those are the fundamental DPIs. We try to get this conversation into the declaration as well, of a foundational DPI. I mean, we used to call them foundational DPI, but given the challenges of the multilateral negotiations, I think that wordings could not go through, but they do find mention at the important DPI. So one big learning is, go with the foundational DPI. I think then you get everything right, and you get the right value of the money. The other big lesson is that you must have a proper governance structure in place, which is fully and completely accountable to that particular solution, DPI solution. and also provide a definite and a committed level of financing to ensure that you know those solutions are implemented without any resource constraints. Another I think learning is the rule of the government in the governance. Over the time we have most of the DPI which we have implemented and which have been successful. Government plays the role of the regulator and has been largely managing the core while the peripheries have been completely managed by the private sector left to the private sector. So although it is a cliche but as we call it that we have laid down the guardrails and we allow the private sectors to innovate within those guardrails. So that is the essence of it however I would not go into the each model. Another thing which is important is that you must have a data governance for each sector. That’s very important right. For example for agriculture as you know in government departments most of the government departments are big and we have a every entrepreneur or officer in their own sphere of work starts picking up digital or IT solutions and devising IT solutions. For example in agriculture that one can begin from soil testing and soil mapping. The other can start picking up a solution on the marketing that produced. The third one can start you know dividing a systems of IT systems for the fertilizers and the pesticides. But if you don’t have a right data structures and meta data structures in place I think you’re going to play a huge problem face huge problem in integrating those and interoperability would be challenged. So before you even think of dividing our systems I think I can take a few minutes extra because you know I have I see a lot of savings from the earlier speakers right. So in the second time she had been raising a yellow flag for me. So thank you. So so so data structures. as you call it data governance framework, that’s the most important part. You may decide to build APIs later on, but first thing, define the data governance framework for all the sectors. That’s the most important thing. Another important thing is the stakeholder consultation. I mean, if you’re doing it, we have implemented a few DPI, but we have been engaging with the stakeholders going on because to begin with, you’re not even sure as to which are your stakeholders are, right? But as much stakeholder consultation you do, it becomes far more easier for you to implement those DPI. Others are, others are, I think, investing in capacities in the government officials on the digital skills. That’s important. And also focusing more on the open source solutions because there lies the keys to the inclusion and the interoperability. Thank you so much.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
Thank you. And I think you covered very important elements and I wanted to just remind everyone that this is just a kickstarted on this conversation. So really take the time during WSIS and AI4Good to reach out to each of the panelists, to us as well as GovStack team, to get to know more about the initiative, about this lesson learned. So thank you so much. And I will allow now to turn into Senegal. And we have with us Fatou Binatou, Secretary General of the Ministry of Communication, Telecommunications and Digital Economy. Fatou, how is Senegal leveraging the implementation of digital public infrastructure? Can you share with us how you are evaluating different solutions and what the biggest challenges have been during this process?

Fatou Binetou Ndiaye:
Thank you very much, Madam Moderator. Apologies, I will be. speaking in French so that it can be understood in an optimal way. Thank you very much for this very relevant question. I just wanted to raise the fact that public digital infrastructure is an essential element for development and growth of any country. In this regard, Senegal is very aware of this, and the government of Senegal has set out clear guidelines with the new government which focuses on the digital sector and information services. We have been engaging in protecting data and are trying to enhance affordability and security for infrastructure. We also must say that Senegal has invested a lot in our infrastructure. We have 15,000 kilometers of fiber optics with five submarine cables. We have three chair-type devices with a supercalculator, and this has allowed us to offer a great number of services to our citizens and to our administration, which is undergoing digitalization. We have an e-service for taxes and for customs, and we have an online platform on which all public services of the government can be found online. This has allowed us to develop all online government services. We have over 500 digitalized services with 22 procedures involved. In our country, we have great digital diversity to transform the human capital. We have also engaged in… in legislative reform, which has allowed us to update our own regulation with what is done on a global level. We have a new legislation that is being implemented under the auspices of the presidents. We have a law on data security and also on information society. All of these elements have allowed us to discuss infrastructure, but what about the challenges? We have a number of them, including on the digital transformation of all services in Senegal. This is still ongoing. And as I said, it is up to the administration to become more optimized, and we need to change use practices. This requires financing. And our aim is to have affordable and accessible ICT services. For this, we need to have a full coverage to ensure equality, especially for rural areas that are still unconnected. Geographically, we have a 70% coverage rate. These are all the challenges that the government of Senegal wishes to tackle. We also have a number of priority projects to address these issues, including for cloud computing and other challenges. But again, for this issue, we have financing issues. These are the points that I wanted to exchange with you, and I hope that our discussion continues. Thank you very much.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
Thank you. And I think you provided a very good framework in the terms of how relevant it is affordability. And with that, I would like now to give the floor to our colleague, Tim Wood, Chief Partnership Officer of Codevelop Fund. Tim, as organizations focus on promoting digital public goods, what strategies do the Digital Public Goods Alliance and Codevelop prioritize to ensure the development of a robust digital public infrastructure with limited access to digital resources and technological expertise?

Tim Wood:
Thank you, Yolanda. It’s really nice to be here and to share the stage with so many partners that Codevelop has been working with. But I imagine that there are many of you who do not know about Codevelop. Codevelop is a relatively young organization. We’ve been around. for about three years and are a resource mobilization and grant-making organization focused on digital public infrastructure with the goal of seeing 50 countries in the next five years deploy safe and inclusive DPI at scale. And one of our guiding principles is to operate where there is clear country demand for digital public infrastructure. And it’s great to have so many colleagues on the stage representing countries where you see such clear demand for that DPI. You asked the question about the strategy that Codevelop embraces. And we have four areas of funding that we approach. One is to support the broad DPI ecosystem. And many countries, when they start to think about starting their DPI journey, do not know what the next step would be from a technical design perspective. So for example, we made a grant to create the Center for DPI, which provides free technical consultation to countries to help them create their digital public infrastructure designs. We’ve also supported UNDP. Rob mentioned the DPI Safeguards Initiative so that countries can have a template for creating safe and inclusive DPI that takes into account the safeguards that you want to protect individual privacy and other key elements. Another thing that Codevelop does is supports the growth of local technical capacity. We have countries that have indicated that they are interested in deploying DPI. And we have worked with them to support those efforts. So for example, Nelly talked about XROAD. We supported Bangladesh’s deployment of XROAD. We also quite recently did some work with Caribbean nations, where we provided $1 million US in funding to four different Caribbean nations who said that they wanted to implement specific DPI use cases. And we will be supporting those efforts. Another area that Codevelop is actively engaged in is supporting digital public goods. The interpreters would like to politely inform you that interpretation has now come to an end for today. Thank you for your understanding. By building on these open source tools, countries are able to take advantage of investments that have been made across the globe in software and to reuse the learnings of other countries and to have tools that can represent well the use cases that they want to execute against and also to bring in some private sector partnerships. And lastly, Codevelop is very interested in building the case for digital public infrastructure and to help countries understand the impact that it can have and the importance of deploying DPI at scale to provide economic benefits to one’s countries. And so with that, we have supported the 50 in 5 initiative in partnership with the Digital Public Goods World Bank and others. That can be found at 50in5.net. And there are already 15 countries that have made overt public commitments to invest in DPI and probably another 20 or so that are in the wings waiting to come on board. And we’re also very pleased to be organizing the Global DPI Summit hosted by Egypt in partnership with ITU and UNDP this October. So hope to see many of you there.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
Thank you. So as you can see, different topics have been addressed, but also a lot of initiatives. around making implementation possible. I would like now to give the floor to Rasha Kaligov. He’s the Deputy Chairman of Innovation and Digital Development Agency from the Republic of Azerbaijan. Rasha‚d, how does Azerbaijan envision the future of DPI in enhancing digital governance and economic growth?

Rashad Khaligov:
Thank you very much, Yolanda, for the invitation. And I would like to share our experience. Actually, as a country, we have started the digitalization journey in 2011, and we had a second phase in 2019. So in 2022, we had a new approach on digitalization. We have defined several pillars for the public or the digitalization of the public services that we should focus. The first pillars that we have started to deploy was the digital infrastructure. So we have defined several key products and technologies that we need to be able to provide public services in digital format. That’s why we formed our national platforms for the data and document exchange. Actually, in 2011, we have started to use the XRoad, which is a technology from Estonia. And then we saw that we must develop our national bridge based on our needs. So two or three years ago, we had developed as a country new type of e-signature, which is a very crucial and important part of the digitalization of public services, because from our experience, we saw that the usage of the e-signature in our country was not satisfied. We had several reasons, and we have analyzed that the accessibility to e-signature was difficult in our country. So now in our country, we have a biometric e-signature, which is very easy downloadable from the mobile application format. So now more than 1 million citizens, they are starting to use this new type of e-signatures. So as we, the digitalization of public services digital maturity level of the different government bodies are completely different. So as a government, we need to provide them the good infrastructure level. So we have developed in our country, the government G-Cloud, which will now offer to different government bodies to easily to adapt to implement new digital services. And another infrastructure projects that we have in our country that we call Online Azerbaijan, where till the end of this year, we are aiming to cover all territory of our country with a high-speed broadband internet. Actually, we have solved a major part of this project in this year. So the second pillars that I would like to talk about, because I think that this is very important part of the digitalization also, it’s about the human capacity, I mean, the resistance from the government bodies. To be honest, in our country also, we saw that one of the big challenges that we have faced was the resistance of the digital governments. So their maturity was different. So we have started Digital Academy Project to improve the skills, to improve the approach of our government bodies to a digitalization. The next pillars that we have focused was also about the legal part. For example, I would like to share several examples that to be able to have the legal stocks of the digital identity in our country, we have changed more than 200 legal documents. So finally, I believe, we strongly believe that to be able to provide good digital services, the international collaboration is very important. So we are working with different international organizations this year.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
Thank you. And also to highlight that Central Asia Caucasus countries collaborate in regional cooperation. And a lot of the practices and example that were mentioned are going to be documented to be shared with the global community. To conclude this initial panel conversation, I would like now to give the floor to Zunaid Hamid Palak. He is the Minister for Post Telecommunications and Information Technology of Bangladesh, which has been very proactive in the DPI agenda, as others have acknowledged. On that note, could you please elaborate and share with the global community what have been the priorities and where Bangladesh is heading forward?

Zunaid Palak:
Thank you. Thank you very much for having me here and giving me the opportunity to share some of our success stories under Digital Bangladesh Vision. Also, I would love to share about the Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s vision for building Smart Bangladesh by 2041. Based on the vision of Digital Bangladesh over the last period of 15 years, Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina shared her vision to develop four important pillars to achieve the Digital Bangladesh Vision. Based on human resource development, providing affordable, reliable internet connectivity to all the 170 million people, taking fiber optical cables to the village level, setting up digital service delivery centers, digitizing paperless government services, take all the services to the fingertips of the citizens, and also promoting the ICT industry. For developing the digital public infrastructures, why we consider in Bangladesh under the Post-Telecom and ICT Division that we need to develop digital verifiable ID first, then digital payment transaction system, and we should have digital national architecture and interoperability framework. So, these are the basic four pillars for developing DPIs. And I would like to also share that after having 130 million internet users, 120 million digital verifiable IDs, digitized driving licenses, digitized our certificates of the students and also digitizing our tax identification system and also digitizing e-government procurement systems. We have actually developed the foundations for moving forward to smart Bangladesh, which is smart citizens, which is providing smart government services, smart economy and smart inclusive society. Let me highlight about the pilot project we have taken in partnership with our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and based on the GOBSTAC program. So, like this applications initiative promises substantial benefits for both of the applicants and for the government agencies. For applicants, it’s going to be very efficient and convenient because every year one million applicants are applying for different kind of visas. So after introducing this GOBSTAC digital certificate programs, every student approximately 30 to 50 dollars they could reduce and save the money. So you can understand that every year we’d be able to save at least 30 to 50 million dollars from this initiatives. And also for the government agencies, the streamlined process, digital verification will cut down the processing times by at least 50%. So we are handling one million students, applicants, but after introducing this system, we’ll be able to provide more 500 applicants applications. And also we are complying with W3C and ISC standards and also Bangladesh. aims to be part of the top 10 countries’ leading digital credential adoption by 2025. So with this, in conclusion, the implementation of digital education certificates through the GOPSTEC pilot is a significant step forward for Bangladesh. It will enhance service delivery, improve security, and have intentional, collaborational, and international cooperation positioning Bangladesh as a leader in digital innovation and governance. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
Thank you. And thank you for giving us the opportunity to collaborate with you. And key works, partnerships, sharing, doing the business case for the benefits, making citizens happy. I’m sure these million students are going to be very happy for the time saved. And with this, a final reminder, DPI and making equitable digital transformation a reality is an ecosystem duty, and all of us are part of this global movement. I invite all of you to stay tuned, reach out to the best practices that shared with us today, a few examples. Join us in October event. Join us in Thursday launch of the GOPSTEC e-learning hub. We’re going to have a specialized training on GOPSTEC architects. And with that, I would like to request our kind panelists to join me aside, and I would like to call to the floor the jury members of the WSIS Digital Service Design Special Prize. So I want everyone to stay aside, and come to the floor, Hanni Eskandar, head of Digital Services Division at ITU, Nele Leos, which is already here. here, Digital Ambassador for Estonia, Vladimir Stanagdi, Program Officers of the WSIS team, Andrea Donat, Program Lead of the GovStack at GIC. And to deliver the award, I would like to ask to the floor our Deputy Secretary General of ITU, Tomas Lamanouskas. Tomas, the floor is yours.

Tomas Lamanauskas:
I hope you can see me, I hope this microphone is here. Well, perfect. So thank you very, very much, colleagues, and I think, I don’t think, I don’t think you need to be standing here while I’m speaking, you know? Yeah, exactly. So I think we’re now changing to the, Yolanda, what you said, we’re changing to the jury members. So thank you very much, everyone. You know, really great contributions. I’m sorry for this confusion. Thank you very much. Yes, so now we have, I think, jury members from the countries now, so please. Thank you very much, Minister. So really, indeed, so esteemed colleagues, it was so great to hear how countries around the world are harnessing the power of digital public infrastructure, both for themselves and supporting others here. Effective, safe DPI catalyzes transformative changes and levels a whole social economic playing field. ITU is committed to supporting our members globally in developing their DPIs. We do so through programs like GovStack that we heard about today, aimed at accelerating the digital transformation in government services by providing a standardized and interoperable set of digital building blocks. This year, we are organizing, as already was mentioned, the DPI Summit on the 1st and 3rd of October in Cairo, Egypt, together with the UNDP and Cote d’Ivoire. We’re doing this under the High Impact Initiative we launched together with UNDP last September at our joint SDG event. It promises to be an opportunity to learn from successful DPI in various countries. Sorry, I’m calling, you know, I’m just closing, I’m looking at my notes here. So it has to be. It promised me to be an opportunity to learn from successful DPI in various countries and boost DPI in development everywhere. So now it’s time to indeed to come to the Design Prize, Yolanda. So indeed, ladies and gentlemen, now is the time to recognize the commendable efforts of government digital teams that have leveraged DPI components to design services for users, based on user needs, journeys, and life events. ITU, together with GovStack partners, introduced a new award last year, the WSIS Digital Service Design Prize. This year, we received 50 applications from around the world, from which 10 finalists pitched innovative digital service designs to the prize jury, with a GovStack representative integrated alongside our WSIS team, and I thank the jury here on the stage indeed. First of all, I would like to congratulate this year’s finalists who come from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Tanzania, and Uganda. Join me in congratulating this amazing team. And I think now I would like, this is the time now, to announce this year’s winner. I mean, we have a dramatic reason. We have to announce the winner, you have to announce the winner. All right, so we’re announcing the winner, which is UGPath Uganda. What this team has done, provides a shining example of the transformative power of DPI. So maybe let’s first, I’ll pass, I’ll pass.

Video:
And we have a video about the best practice. This is the client side, I think, of UGPath. EGPAS, you need to onboard through the mobile application. Once you have the mobile application open, you need to also open it with, you need to secure it with either your fingerprint or your mobile passcode. Once open, you’ll have all the information through the EGPAS app. To sign with EGPAS, you need to continue with EGPAS through the client portal, or what we call the sign-in portal. Enter your email address. For the two-factor authentication, go through the EGPAS application and enter the number that corresponds with the one on the sign-in portal. At this point, you’ll enter your authentication in. You can either proceed as an individual with the proceed with self option, or if you are part of one organization, you can select the organization that you belong to and continue with that. For this scenario, we shall continue with the organization. Once logged in, you can either sign a document on your own or send it to other signatories. For this case, you’ll sign the document also. Select the document. We shall also require the ETH as well as the QR code. At this point, in the top right-hand corner, you should see the signature, the ETH and QR code options. Drag and drop the signature, the ETH, as well as the QR code in the locations of your preferred choice. Once you have the ETL within a document, you are required to also provide your authentication pin to sign. Once you click the one sign, you are going to receive a notification through the mobile application. In this case, enter your authentication pin, as well as your signing pin.

Dr. Yolanda Martinez:
I would like to thank our colleagues in the production for presenting a bit of the best practice that won this year’s prize. And deep recognition to the winner, we’re going to have a set of a year round of showcasing all 10 finalists and applicants as part of the knowledge hub of GovStack. And I would like now to give the floor back to our Deputy Secretary General.

Tomas Lamanauskas:
Thank you very much, and I’ll give the floor to Ambassador please for a few remarks.

Mohammadou Kah:
As Assistant Secretary General, Mr. Thomas, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it is with immense pride that I accept the prestigious World Summit for Information Society Digital Service Design Special Prize 2024 on behalf of the UGPAS team of the National Information Technology Authority, Uganda. This award is a validation of the innovative approach taken to electronic signing and sealing in Uganda. We thank the World Summit for Information Society Committee for the award. We are incredibly grateful for the recognition it brings. This award strengthens our commitment to the continued development and support of UGPAS, a digital authentication and electronic signature solution. The government is committed to ensuring that this platform empowers Ugandans and fosters a secure and efficient digital ecosystem in our nation. Furthermore, the government is committed to continuous improvement and expansion, ensuring UGPAS remains a valuable tool for us to come. Thank you.

Tomas Lamanauskas:
So thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. I think we still have one more section in this, but I think we’ll have another change of the stage. So thank you very much, colleagues. Yeah, so thank you. Good, good, good. So now the last piece, so thank you very much. Thank you. So the last piece of this session, you know, is also looking into the future. So Secretary General mentioned this morning that we are using intention to launch an open wallet forum that we’ll be launching together with Linux Foundation. So our aim with this forum is to initiate a multistakeholder cooperation at the global level to integrate wide-ranging private and public sector requirements into coordinated policies and standards for digital wallets. And of course, going forward, we’d like you to be in touch with us whoever is interested in this progress and this initiative. And I also wish to really thank wholeheartedly the Swiss Federation and Linux Foundation on their great support in that. And on that note, on here with me, I would like to have on the stage, Mr. Jim Zemlin from the Linux Foundation. So thank you very much. And as well as Amit Shahan, the director of UNICC, United Nations International Computing Center, will be providing also technical support for this. So without to think, if we can have a microphone, colleagues I think you’ll both have a couple of minutes to the remarks. Please, Jim first.

Jim Zemlin:
All right, you may have noticed me on stage earlier, a little bit of a timing issue, but I had the best seat in the house for the last session as well. My name is Jim Zemlin. I’m the executive director of the Linux Foundation. Many of you may not know our organization. We’re a nonprofit company that is home to the largest shared technology investment in the world. Linux represents 90% of the world’s computers. It’s running these screens right here. It’s on 80% of the world’s mobile devices, 100% of the cloud computing systems in the world, 100% of supercomputers. systems in the world, 95% of high-performance computing systems in the world. It is a ubiquitous building block of technology. The Linux Foundation isn’t just home to Linux. We’re home to Kubernetes, which runs all major cloud service providers. We’re home to RISC-V, the largest free semiconductor technology in the world that’s used in embedded systems and IoT devices that are fueling the future. It may surprise you that most big, capable technology companies do not write most of the software that they use to run all of the products and services that they provide to society. Over 20 years, the Linux Foundation has honed a methodology using open-source code to build sustainable ecosystems amongst competitors and consortiums. And one of the things that we have proven is that just open-sourcing the software, just having the code available, is not enough. It is only the first step on building a well-trained, sustainable, standards-based, accessible economy around that shared technology. We also care a lot about digital public infrastructure at the Linux Foundation, which is why 15 months ago, we started the OpenWallet Foundation. OpenWallet technology isn’t just a part of DPI. It’s an enabler of a lot of other forms of digital public infrastructure, whether it’s identity, access to financial services, or other government services. It’s a critical enabler. And we had the fortune this year to work with ITU after 15 months of working with over 60 organizations creating a reference architecture to bring in a government forum, a government council. And who would be better to partner with than the ITU, than the United Nations, to convene and gather governments to give input on the requirements for such a critical component of shared technology? It’s like chocolate and peanut butter. You are great at bringing governments together and helping to understand the unique requirements for all of the people on earth and our expertise is building great shared technology ecosystems. And so I look forward to partnering with ITU on the Open Wallet Forum. We will be hosting the Open Wallet Project as well as providing a fork of that project hosted by the ITU as well. And we really feel very optimistic about a substantive initiative here with all of you.

Sameer Chauhan:
Thank you, and that’s Amir. Thank you so much. And I just wanted to add to that, that as a partnership, UNICC is a partnership within the UN ecosystem. This is yet another way in which we can contribute to the global partnership. We are strong believers in the whole vision that the UN is painting right now of DPIs. And we are seen within the UN ecosystem as the organization providing secure digital foundations for everybody. And this becomes yet another instance where we can support both the GovStack team at ITU with running their GovStack sandboxes in a secure shared manner and offer it to the world. But now with Open Wallet, what we are offering is in partnership with ITU and all the rest of the UN system to offer a get mirror of all the code base that is being offered today by the Linux Foundation. And what we hope it does is makes it more equitable, makes it more open. And as you mentioned, it’s not sufficient to just make the code available. How do you enable it and how do you allow people to come and utilize it? There’s lots of open source code out there, but how do you make sure that people actually use it? And we’ll be focusing in partnership with ITU, in partnership with the Linux Foundation on enabling reuse of that code so it actually does get adopted. So looking forward to this collaboration. Thank you.

Tomas Lamanauskas:
Thank you very much. Applause. Thank you very much. I think someone will take over for me now.