Digital public infrastructure.

Identity, payments and data as public rails: what the World Bank, the IDB, the OECD and CDPI propose, and where signatures fit.

October 20267 min read

Roads, power grids and ports have something in common: the State builds or regulates them, anyone can use them, and an enormous amount of private activity rests on them. In recent years, international organizations and governments have begun talking about the same thing in the digital world. They call it digital public infrastructure (DPI), and electronic signatures sit at the center of that conversation.

What digital public infrastructure is

In August 2023, the G20 digital economy ministers, meeting in Bengaluru under India's presidency, welcomed a common framework for these systems. They describe them as shared, secure and interoperable digital systems, built on open standards, that enable equitable access to public or private services at societal scale. Three layers are mentioned most often.

Identity. Every person can prove who they are, online and offline.
Payments. Money can move quickly, cheaply and interoperably.
Data exchange. Information flows between institutions with consent and security.

The World Bank, in its approach published in 2025, explicitly names digital identity and electronic signatures as one of those foundational building blocks. The reason is simple: without a reliable way to express consent and prove who approved what, neither payments nor data exchange can scale securely.

The signature is the layer that turns identity into intent: not just who someone is, but what they decided.

Who proposes what

Organization	Main contribution
World Bank	Its Identification for Development initiative, ID4D, created in 2014, championed ten Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development, published in 2017 and now endorsed by more than thirty organizations: inclusion, robust design, and governance that protects people.
IDB	Supports countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with tools such as a maturity model for assessing identification systems, published in 2024, and with regional initiatives for recognizing identities.
OECD	Adopted a Recommendation on the Governance of Digital Identity in 2023, focused on the user, security, privacy and cooperation between countries.
United Nations	The Office of the UN Secretary General's Envoy on Technology and UNDP published a universal safeguards framework in 2024 to make these infrastructures safe and inclusive.
CDPI	The Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure provides free advice, neutral with respect to vendors, to countries that want to design and implement these infrastructures, with an open approach led by each country.

Recurring ideas

Building blocks, not applications. The State builds or regulates reusable basic components; the public and private sectors build services on top of them.
Open standards. So that no one is locked into a single vendor and systems can connect with each other.
Inclusion by design. Alternatives for those without a phone, connectivity or digital skills.
Safeguards. Privacy, data minimization, oversight and channels for complaints.
Verifiable trust. Every transaction must be provable, and that is where signatures and organization seals are indispensable.

Where signatures fit

A payment that needs authorization, a data exchange that requires consent, a procedure that ends in an official decision: all are moments when a person or an institution expresses its will. A digital public infrastructure that offers identity but no standard way to sign and apply an organization seal leaves that moment to scattered solutions that are hard to verify against one another.

Key points

Digital public infrastructure treats identity, payments and data exchange as shared goods, built on open standards and with safeguards. The World Bank, the IDB, the OECD, the United Nations and the CDPI agree on its principles. Electronic signatures are part of that foundation, because they are how intent is proven in every transaction.

Sources

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