Common Horizons: The Role of Digital Public Infrastructure in Finance, Identity and Climate Justice

In 2024, Data Privacy Brasil plunged into the topic of Digital Public Infrastructures (DPIs) as one of its institutional priorities. Both in terms of research and national and international advocacy, we have brought the issue to the agenda of digital rights and public policies, from the perspective of data justice. This means that among the proposals for governance, we are looking for a holistic one in which the asymmetries of power and information are reduced, and whose processes involve the public interest through democratic participation.

One of our most important jobs this year was leading the Inclusive Digital Transformation task force of T20 Brazil, the G20 think tank engagement group. The theme of “digital government” was one of the priorities of the Brazilian presidency and also the subject of the work of the T20, which received dozens of policy briefs exploring this topic. Among the final recommendations of our task force, we put forward that the G20 countries should develop a common set of nonbinding principles, especially for data justice, interoperability and openness, supported by a permanent research fund to evaluate the implementation of G20 policy recommendations. This would guarantee effective participatory governance, ensuring accountability, sustainability and inclusive digital development.

Data Privacy Brasil’s activities in T20 are based on other activities developed in the areas of research and advocacy in recent years. In this regard, it is worth highlighting the project “Citizen Architectures in Digital Identity” supported by Ripple. This exploratory project aims to relate the themes of DPIs and digital identity to the promotion of fundamental rights, such as the protection of personal data, in an integrated way with the implementation of digital structures and choices of information architectures, ultimately aiming to create a public arena for debates on digital identity as a component of a digital public infrastructure, with a view to broadening civic participation in the design of this important information ecosystem.

During its implementation in 2024, Data Privacy Brasil published the booklet “The Infrastructure of Identity: The Influences of a Digital Identity as an Application of DPI”, aimed at helping public and private agents working in the identity ecosystem. This booklet deals with various topics related to the DPI debate, including the definition of a digital public infrastructure, its applications, functions and purposes. In 2024, Data also started the project “Digital public infrastructure and digital public goods in environmental policies”, with the support of the Digital Public Goods Alliance.

The research sought to articulate the concept of DPI with that of digital public goods (DPGs), focusing on DPIs and DPGs that help combat climate change, bringing examples from Brazil, such as the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), and initiatives around the world that show how data processing can bring more informed environmental policies. The project resulted in the publication of the report “Digital public infrastructures and digital public goods to combat climate change: Cases from Brazil”. We also raised the issue at an international level in our contributions to the UN Global Digital Compact, an annex to the Pact for the Future. In our contributions, we pointed out how DPIs and the vision of data as public goods are essential for fulfilling the agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as contributing to maintaining the multistakeholderism that has historically been present in the governance of the Internet and emerging technologies. The agenda was given a dedicated section in the final text of the Pact, within the first of the document’s five major objectives, relating to accele rating progress on the SDGs.

Finally, Data Privacy Brasil also took part in the discussions on DPIs during the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-24), the main event of the stan dardization sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T). The topic of Digital Public Infrastructures applied to the telecommunications sector and information and communication technologies is gaining more and more ground within the ITU, which has led to the approval by the Union’s standardization sector of a new resolution on improving standardization in digital public infrastructures (Resolution 103).

In the wake of these activities, we organized the event “Common Horizons: the role of digital public infrastructure in finance, identity and climate justice” in July at Da taprev’s headquarters in Brasilia. The event was held as a parallel activity to T20 and was supported by three international organizations – the Digital Public Goods Alliance, the ODI and Ripple. Divided between exhibition panels on the concept of DPI and workshops on the three thematic tracks chosen, the event brought together national and international experts from various sectors, serving as a catalyst for the debate on DPI, one of the pillars of Brazil’s inclusive digital transformation.