CAPE TOWN – November 2025 – The UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) strengthened its global leadership on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) this month with the release of new research, teaching materials, and applied learning frameworks, showcased at the 2025 Global DPI Summit in Cape Town. Across panels, workshops, and bilateral sessions, IIPP’s DPI team shared cutting-edge findings on how governments can build and govern digital systems that deliver public value, strengthen state capacity, and support climate resilience.
At the centre of this work was the launch of the 2025 State of DPI Report, co-authored by Policy Fellow Jordyn Fetter, Research Fellow Krisstina Rao and Co-Deputy Director and Associate Professor David Eaves. Two years after DPI emerged as a formal global priority, the report provides the first comprehensive analysis of how these systems are evolving, what functions they serve, and where measurement still falls short of offering a true picture on the ‘prevalence’ of DPI.
The report builds on the IIPP DPI Map, which established a global baseline of digital ID, digital payments, and data exchange systems across 210 countries. The 2025 edition identifies an increasingly shared understanding of DPI around three core societal functions and six attributes, while also offering the most up-to-date picture of global prevalence: at least 64 countries now have DPI-like digital ID systems, 97 operate DPI-like digital payment systems, and 103 have DPI-like data exchange layers.
Beyond mapping prevalence, the report reveals distinct regional patterns, with maturity clusters often shaped by income levels and institutional capacity. Interoperability and adoption frequently advance together, underscoring the interplay between design decisions and real-world uptake. Yet significant measurement gaps persist. Many global assessments rely heavily on technical specifications or the existence of legal frameworks as proxies for functionality, which provide limited insight into governance quality or practical performance. The report calls for a next generation of measurement tools that reflect lived implementation, enforcement, and institutional capability.
“Governments have moved past the stage of looking at how an India or an Estonia or a Brazil are building DPI and trying to deplicate it piece by piece. They are instead asking how they can uniquely build public sector capabilities for the digital-era, and how these emergent systems can maximise value to the public. Measurement is the first step to get there. We’ve begun the work with a comprehensive measurement of prevalence through the DPI Map, and are now helping governments think through the fiscal and economic impact of these systems through the Economics of DPI framework”. – David Eaves
New teaching and applied learning resources
Alongside the flagship report, IIPP and partners released new materials for policymakers, practitioners, and students.
David Eaves and Ritul Gaur (Digital Impact Alliance) published a new teaching case study on India’s DigiLocker, one of the world’s most widely adopted digital document ecosystems. The case traces DigiLocker’s development from early design decisions to nationwide rollout, examining critical trade-offs such as whether to build tools in-house or procure externally, how to scale adoption without mandates, and how digital wallets can improve access to essential services. The resource will support training programmes and applied learning initiatives across governments.
IIPP also launched A Bottom-Up Approach to Building a Climate Resilience Stack, authored by David Eaves, Beatriz Vasconcellos, Richard Gevers, and Liam Orme. The report proposes a practical framework for building shared digital capabilities that enable societies to sense, respond, and adapt to accelerating climate risks. Rejecting a one-size-fits-all model, the framework outlines essential functions and selection criteria that can help governments shape context-specific climate resilience stacks rooted in existing tools and emerging standards.
The report argues that climate resilience stacks must be demand-driven, evolving from real stakeholder needs and feedback loops rather than supply-driven digital solutions. It identifies clear roles for product leads, governments, implementers, and funders—from maximising interoperability and open standards to incentivising procurement strategies that avoid unnecessary bespoke systems.
Insights from these reports and other case studies are a part of the Applied Learning Program at IIPP, where our course on the Governance of Digital Public Infrastructure offers learners a structured pedagogy to explore the core dimensions of DPI governance, key risks across exclusion, regulatory gaps and institutional coordination, global case studies, and frameworks for better institutional
