Building Trust in Digital Public Goods

#DPI : Digital Public Infrastructure can drive a sustainable increase in #revenue collection and build trust in government. -India's adoption of digital public infrastructure has helped reduce the country's income tax return processing time. Trust in government and government effectiveness have a reciprocal relationship. Trust is enhanced when political institutions are strong and governments implement policies and initiatives that are aligned with the public interest and improve people’s daily lives. And governments can be effective only when their citizens trust them enough to comply with laws, thereby creating the space for reforms. Of course, trust in government needs more than just robust digital platforms. But the building of India’s digital platform infrastructure has laid some of the foundations for increasing trust by creating an inclusive platform for citizens to transact digitally and empowering users to have more control over their data. Good digital infrastructure can create trust between any two counterpart actors by introducing tamperproof components for identity, #payments, and #security , which allows citizens and businesses to be certain of the #identity of their counterpart and of the legitimacy of the transaction. This allows the reduction in explicit and implicit costs to citizens when they interact with their government, and for businesses in their transactions with individuals, other businesses, and the government. -Kamya Chandra, Tanushka Vaid, and Pramod Varma's article in  International Monetary Fund 's September 2024 F&D (Finance & Development) Edition

Is the UK getting an Aadhaar-like digital ID for its citizens? When the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom meets Nandan Nilekani to understand how India built Aadhaar, it is not just a political visit. It is a global acknowledgment of a system that quietly transformed how 1.4 billion people prove who they are, access services, and participate in the digital economy. For decades, the world looked to the West for technological inspiration. But today, one of the world’s oldest democracies is studying a solution born in a developing nation built not in Silicon Valley, but in Bengaluru. That shift tells us something very powerful about the world we are entering. Here are some key takeaways and questions we should all think about deeply: 🔹 Innovation does not belong to geography. India’s digital public infrastructure, Aadhaar, UPI, and DigiLocker, have shown that innovation driven by scale, purpose, and inclusion can shape global models. The UK learning from India is a reminder that real innovation comes from necessity, not luxury. 🔹 Technology succeeds when it solves the problem of the last person. Aadhaar was not built for convenience. It was built for access. It gave an identity to those who had none, simplified governance, and plugged leakages worth billions. Any digital ID system in the world will only work if it remembers who it is meant for the citizen, not the system. 🔹 Data is power, but trust is the foundation. Every digital identity creates a question: who owns the data? The UK’s hesitation to adopt biometric-based systems shows that data protection and public trust are the real challenges of our digital future. The world can learn from India’s continuous evolution in privacy norms and legal frameworks. 🔹 Inclusion is not about connectivity alone. It is about confidence. When a farmer, a student, or an entrepreneur uses Aadhaar or UPI, they are not just accessing technology; they are trusting a system that treats them as visible, valuable participants of a digital economy. That emotional confidence is what builds a truly inclusive nation. 🔹 Every country must design technology for its own culture. What worked for India may not work exactly for the UK. But the spirit of the model, accessibility, scale, and simplicity, can inspire countries to build systems that empower, not control. The purpose must always be to make lives easier, not to add another layer of governance. 🔹 This is a moment of global humility. When the world’s largest economies come to learn from India’s innovation, it shows that leadership is not about GDP. It is about the courage to solve hard problems with limited resources and strong intent. India’s journey with Aadhaar was not perfect, but it was pioneering. If other nations learn the right lessons about trust, access, and inclusivity, the world will move towards a fairer and more connected future. The UK looking to India for digital inspiration marks the beginning of a new era of global innovation.

The cost of neglecting cybersecurity and privacy in public digital infrastructure? Over 6 billion BRL in fraud. Brazil has long been a global reference in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), from PIX (our instant payment system) to one of the world’s most advanced e-government platforms (Gov.br), electronic voting, and mobile-based benefit distribution at national scale. A recent major fraud scheme of pension fraud targeting retirees has exposed major weaknesses in how Brazil’s public data systems are protected. At the center of it is Dataprev, a public tech company responsible for safeguarding the data of millions, including employment histories and identifiers used to access social security (INSS). The scale of the damage is enormous: over 6 billion BRL (more than 1 billion USD) lost to fraud schemes exploiting unauthorized data access, digital impersonation, and misleading financial offers, often targeting those with low digital literacy. I did a technical analysis suggesting solutions that would not only be more affordable than the current financial and reputational losses, but also help rebuild public trust. Privacy technologies can play a role in preventing both fraud and corruption. If governamental systems are designed in ways that allow data leaks, impersonation, and indiscriminate access, they aren’t just vulnerable: they actively enable fraud. Back in 2019, a legislative change removed safeguards that had protected this data from being shared with private companies. What was supposed to prevent fraud ended up doing the opposite. This is a wake-up call. Governments around the world are now building their own DPIs, inspired by examples like Brazil. They would be wise to not only study what worked — but also take careful notes on what must not go wrong. DPIs are amazing tools for development and economic growth, increasing access, productivity and opportunities, but… Privacy must be at the center of any DPI strategy. Not only because it protects citizens, but because it protects the trust people have in the State itself. Public institutions like Dataprev must go beyond traditional compliance and embrace modern privacy and security engineering practices,!including strong authentication (like passkeys), role-based access, data minimization, and transparency by design. Brazil’s digital leadership should include leadership in protecting the people behind the data. The post is in Portuguese, but nothing a translator can’t solve :-) https://lnkd.in/dyByupwu

The hardest part of building a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) isn’t the tech — it’s the political economy, the trust framework, and the pro-people safeguards that prevent elite capture. When I returned to NADRA for my second tenure, I thought I’d simply continue the work I began years earlier. But the terrain had shifted. The tech was faster, the ambitions bigger — and the political economy even more complex. In my new paper with the Center for Global Development (CGD) — Digital ID for Development and Smart Governance: Policy Lessons — I reflect on lessons from both my tenures: • Why governance and trust matter more than algorithms and hardware • How to embed pro-people safeguards that keep systems from being hijacked • How resilience in design ensures reforms outlast political cycles • Why true digital transformation is people-first, not tech-first • And crucially, policy lessons on how digital ID systems can advance inclusive development, poverty relief, financial inclusion, electoral integrity, and more • Sometimes, leadership means stepping aside rather than compromising the very values a system was built to protect This is not just a Pakistan story — it’s a global lesson for anyone building DPI: technology alone cannot deliver inclusion or trust. It’s the values, institutions, and safeguards we build around it that decide whether it empowers or controls. Many thanks to Alan Gelb for writing fantastic Preface, conducting peer review, and Emily Schabacker for editing it. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/g7uv--EJ #DigitalID #SmartGovernance #DPI #PoliticalEconomy #GovTech #Inclusion #DigitalTransformation #CGD #Leadership #Integrity #privacy

Trust in governments is at historic lows. According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, 60% of countries surveyed show more distrust than trust in their public institutions. That creates a fundamental challenge: how can governments deliver services citizens believe in? Across Europe, Latin America, and Brazil, a different answer is emerging: don’t just ask citizens to trust — engineer trust into the infrastructure itself. We’ve just published a new case study showing how three major initiatives are doing exactly that: - European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) – the EU’s cross-border verification platform - LACChain Ecosystem – Latin America’s regional blockchain ecosystem - Rede Blockchain Brasil (RBB) BNDES– Brazil’s national transparency initiative All three chose to build on Ethereum-compatible infrastructure (Besu) — and that choice was not accidental. Why Ethereum? - Proven and familiar. Millions of developers already know Solidity and the EVM. Governments can build on infrastructure that has been tested by real-world, high-value applications since 2015. - Flexible for public + permissioned use. Besu allows unique governance models (e.g., Proof of Authority, on-chain permissioning) that meet public sector needs while still interoperating with global Ethereum ecosystems. - Open source + vendor neutral. Under the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust, Besu is developed in the open, avoiding lock-in and ensuring code can be audited by anyone. - Globally aligned. Ethereum standards (ERCs, identity protocols) and its forward roadmap (Layer-2s, zkEVMs) keep governments in step with the broader financial and digital economy. - Trust by design. Transparency, immutability, and distributed governance are engineered into the architecture This isn’t about chasing hype or adopting the newest buzzword. It’s about making smart choices that combine global innovation with public accountability. 👉 Read the full case study here: https://lnkd.in/gBadJuZX A big thank you to Jose Manuel Panizo Plaza, Ilan Melendez, Gladstone Arantes Jr, DSc, and others on their teams for their support and contributions. And huge thank you to the teams across LF Decentralized Trust and our LFDT Members who made this work possible. It’s a powerful example of how open source collaboration is shaping the future of government services worldwide. #BuildingBetterTogether