Arguments against deploying DPI don’t really hold up

livemint.com:

Last year saw tremendous enthusiasm around the concept of digital public infrastructure (DPI) during the G20 and after. What I didn’t realize at the time was that lurking just beneath the surface were strong undercurrents of disapproval. The arguments against DPI range from the semantic (that the term DPI flatters to deceive) to the techo-solutionist (not everything can be solved by throwing technology at it).

These arguments have, in recent times, been raised with greater stridency. Before this narrative gains any further traction, I thought it best to address it head-on. Most economists start with semantic concerns—the fact that what we call DPI is neither non-rivalrous nor non-excludable in the way that public goods ought to be.

This, they argue is evidence of “green-washing"—i.e., an attempt to leverage the lustre of digital public goods (DPGs) even though DPI has none of its features. That a given DPI is excludable is often a matter of choice. Many countries believe that it remains their sole prerogative (and sovereign right) to offer these services.

And that no other person should be allowed to deploy DPI in their country. It is to address these concerns that the term DPI was coined in the first place. This is not an attempt to make DPI look more like DPGs, but an attempt to distinguish these solutions from them.

As a matter of fact, most DPI solutions are also available in open-source modes, making them both non-rivalrous and non-excludable. MOSIP, an open-source digital identity system, is one such system currently being used by 17 countries and has already registered over 100 million people. Then there is the argument that governments ought not be building technology solutions.