18/11/2025 –, Main Room
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) will become essential to the delivery of public goods and economic prosperity. How DPI is governed will determine whether that prosperity is shared; DPI should be governed as a commons.
Commons-based governance principles for DPIs are crucial to ensure collaboration between government or public entities and improving relations between public actors and the communities that DPIs serve. Governing DPIs as commons enables community co-ownership, collective control, and co-creation. 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.
In our paper, we will draw from empirical evidence of digital commons initiatives that provision infrastructure from our respective geographies (France, India, South Africa, Guatemala). We will provide an actionable framework to guide commons-based governance of DPIs, while also illustrating the social as well as economic benefits of commons-governed DPIs.
We will elaborate on 6 commons governance principles for DPIs:
1. Open systems: DPIs must be constituted by open technologies including open source software, open APIs, open models and weights in the case of AI models;
2. Community data sovereignty, to ensure data protection while also respecting evolving community preferences for data, information and knowledge sharing;
3. Interoperability and respect of technical open standards;
4. Transparent and accountable procurement processes for public infrastructure and public-private partnerships;
5. Regular and transparent audits and assessments for data governance as well as environmental sustainability; and
6. Participative design and implementation processes.
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) will become essential to the delivery of public goods and economic prosperity. How DPI is governed will determine whether that prosperity is shared; DPI should be governed as a commons. In this view, commons-based governance principles for DPIs are crucial to ensure collaboration between government or public entities and to improve relations between public actors and the communities that DPIs serve. Governing DPIs as commons enables community co-ownership, collective control, and co-creation. Effective commons governance also upholds the human rights of participants (including digital rights and online decisions), 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. This paper draws from empirical evidence of digital commons initiatives that provision infrastructure from our respective geographies (France, India, South Africa, Guatemala). It provides an actionable framework to guide commons-based governance of DPIs, while also illustrating the social as well as economic benefits of commons-governed DPIs.
Legal Researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society, CNRS, working on legal strategies for open data and data commons.