A Tipping Point for Digital Transformation: Lessons for the Data Sector
By Alyson Marks
Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash
Digital transformation – particularly the role of and the expansion of digital public goods – has become an increasingly central part of the discussion on how we tackle the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and what experts are calling the “most consequential geopolitical and geo-economic moment of the past three decades.” And these conversations are ripe throughout the global development space, particularly at the supra-national level. The World Bank’s Spring meetings featured a key event highlighting recent innovative digital transformations across countries, ‘the digital future’ was among the top takeaway themes at last month’s World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings in Davos, Switzerland, and the upcoming G7 Summit taking place later this month in Germany is certain to focus significantly on digital transformation, with Germany recently embarking on large-scale digital reform of its public services.
The Rapid Shift to Digital Within Government
For years the private sector’s digital transition has outpaced the public sector by leaps and bounds. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a clear tipping point for governments to hasten their digital transformation for better public service delivery. A year after the onset of the pandemic, Deloitte surveyed 800 government officials globally, and nearly 75% of respondents indicated that COVID had accelerated their digital transformation. And since, there has been a steady flow of COVID-19-led digital investments around the world – albeit primarily in high-income countries. For instance, France earmarked nearly 8.5 billion USD for investments in digital transformation, infrastructure, and startup investment; Spain introduced its ‘Digital Spain Plan 2025’ with several structural reforms to enhance the country’s digital transformation process; and South Korea launched its Korean New Digital Deal, dedicating more than 58 trillion Won to upgrading public infrastructure and expediting the adoption of data and AI throughout the economy. Meanwhile, countries, including New Zealand, Australia, and Saudi Arabia began investing in upgrades to their broadband connectivity and fiber-optic cable connections to reach individuals in rural and remote areas.
And while many low-income countries, particularly in Africa, were still lagging far behind on their digital transformation even before COVID due to a host of obstacles, including low levels of internet access and digital literacy, weak digital skills among the population, a persistent lack of nationwide ICT infrastructure and competitive data pricing between mobile operators, among other challenges, the pandemic did help to expedite digital transformations in some of these countries. For instance, the World Bank found that globally, about 60 developing countries leveraged digital payments for the delivery of social assistance programs. And the government of Togo provides a clear use case for this.
In a matter of days from the start of the pandemic, its government built and launched Novissi, a fully digital cash transfer program using voter identification, allowing for seamless remote registration. Notably, the program has helped to improve women’s digital financial inclusion in Togo, paying out more funds to women than men (women make up the majority of informal workers, impacted most drastically by COVID-19), and it has disbursed more than 21 million USD. Another example is in Mozambique, where the country rapidly added global product definitions to its existing open digital supply chain system to immediately track PPE, diagnostic, and vaccine delivery supplies for a more efficient COVID-19 response.
Expanding Digital Public Goods and Infrastructure
It’s clear that all countries, particularly African nations, stand to benefit significantly from the expansion of digital public goods and infrastructure to improve public service delivery and build resilience against future crises. Moreover, the UN Secretary-General argues that a “global effort to create digital public goods [and] building a more effective architecture for digital cooperation [are] key to achieving the SDGs.” Fortunately, these efforts are beginning to take shape, with a growing international multi-stakeholder movement working to develop, use, and invest in digital public goods to achieve the SDGs.
Earlier this month, in an event convened by the Digital Public Goods Alliance, the Governments of Norway and Sierra Leone, and the UN Development Programme, global leaders from across the globe jointly committed to advancing the use of digital public goods. This included a pledge to implement and fund digital public infrastructure through the development of a newly established Digital Public Goods Charter (DPG), which serves as a framework to increase international cooperation on this agenda and mobilize high-level stakeholder investments and actions. The Charter framework will be shared during the upcoming UN General Assembly, detailing key digital public goods and priorities based on consultations with public and private sector entities. And on a similar front, the U.N.’s Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology is building a Global Digital Compact, a multi-stakeholder understanding between member states, the private sector, and civil society on how to achieve better digital cooperation.
Additionally, advancing digital public goods are at the heart of the G7 Partnership for Women’s Digital Financial Inclusion in Africa, launched in 2019 under French Leadership. The multi-stakeholder initiative, in which TReNDS works as an independent convening entity, brings together a myriad of implementation partners, including The World Bank’s ID4D Initiative (ID4D), The African Development Bank’s Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI), The United Nations Capital Development Fund’s (UNCDF) Africa Policy Accelerator (APA), The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) and high-level champions, to support African governments, banks, and financial institutions to build more gender-inclusive, sustainable, and responsible digital financial systems. And a fundamental component of this work includes advocacy for the expansion of digital public infrastructure and goods.
Lessons for the Data Community
The above examples underscore the growing momentum toward a new digital agenda for governments and reveal some important lessons for consideration within the data for development community.
Similar to digital infrastructure, data needs significantly more and ongoing investment to ensure its benefits for all. Fortunately, the digital agenda has garnered the attention of and cooperation among key stakeholders across sectors, particularly large-scale foundations and private philanthropists. I would argue that this is because the centrality of digital transformation and its importance and impact on all sectors and industries have been widely communicated, understood, and recognized by multi-stakeholder groups and its benefits have been clearly documented. To galvanize the same type of recognition and support for the data agenda, we should work towards developing more use cases on the ROI of investing in data for development and continue to demonstrate the widespread impact better (or poor) data plays across all facets of society.
Secondly, the pandemic highlighted the importance of developing robust, foundational digital systems to ensure governments’ resiliency against crises and future epidemics - countries that had strong digital infrastructure already in place were able to better withstand the severe socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic, distribute emergency payments more rapidly through digital financial services (DFS) platforms, and cover more beneficiaries. And the same remains true for data systems, particularly civil registration and vital health systems. While it’s often tempting to focus our attention on the next innovative technological solution, supporting and investing in foundational data systems remains critical.
Thirdly, in addition to learning from the digital agenda processes, in parallel, the data community should work toward further integrating and aligning itself within the collective digital effort. Fortunately, enacting legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks to safeguard individuals’ data is already a key component of the DPG, and the community should continue to ensure that data is prominent within forthcoming discussions.
And lastly, increasing supra-national-level support and developing more straightforward ways in which donors can support the data agenda, as in the case of the Digital Public Goods Charter for the digital agenda, would likely have similar benefits for the data community. The Bern Data Compact, announced during last year’s UN World Data Forum, is a promising step in this direction, and I look forward to seeing how the group materializes over the coming year leading up to the next Forum in Hangzhou.