Principles and Practices for Governing Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as Commons

Digital Public Infrastructures (DPIs) are becoming essential to the delivery of public goods and economic prosperity. How DPIs are governed will determine whether that prosperity is shared or captured by a few. At present, the integration of open technologies into DPIs, such as open source software, open data and open AI models, is gaining traction. Non-discriminatory access is crucial in ensuring wide downstream economic benefits from DPIs. But in addition to openness of resources, we argue for commons-based governance. A narrow focus on open licensing or open APIs does not, by itself, ensure democratic DPIs.

We first articulate three meta benefits of commons-based governance of DPIs - decentralisation of expertise and decision-making and the role of the state, sustainability of both resources and communities, and global cooperation. In order to support our claims, we provide case-studies of commons-based DPIs from France, India, South Africa and Brazil.

Based on conceptual literature and our case-studies, we articulate 10 normative principles for commons-based governance of DPIs, with a focus on minimising value extraction and improving sustainability, which can guide policymakers, funders and builders of DPIs. We argue that these 10 governance principles ensure collaboration between government or public entities and improving relations between public actors and the communities that DPIs serve. Effective commons governance also upholds the human rights of participants (including digital rights and online decision), requiring that digital public infrastructure is open to enable population-wide entrepreneurship, not only democratising access to public services, but catalysing active economic and social participation.