Page 22 - Building digital public infrastructure for cities and communities

transformation – grounded in human rights and transparency – is essential to build residents’ trust
in smart city initiatives.

The premise is that Digital Public Goods (DPGs) harness huge amounts of data that, if governed safely
and used effectively, can help cities to accelerate their development and advance the achievement
of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To enable public and private institutions to
pool resources and draw upon public data, DPI for cities must be open, inclusive, secure and
interoperable. Most importantly, DPI for cities must pool-in resources from national/federal level
implementations and integrate – wherever possible – national/federal level implementations at the
city/local level. This is important to optimize resources, remove silos and ensure coherence from
a security and efficiency points of views.

Consequently, the capacities of public administrations (at the national/federal and city/local
community levels) to manage and provide an interoperable, open, secured and scalable digital
ICT infrastructure, must be built as a matter of urgency.

2 The global digital compact: an international compass

On 22 September 2024, world leaders adopted at the Summit of the Future, the Pact for the Future
and its annexes: the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and Declaration on Future Generations (DFG).
The Summit of the Future produced an inter-governmentally negotiated, action-oriented Pact for
the Future (United Nations General Assembly, 2024a).

This Pact covers a broad agenda including peace, climate, sustainable development and, crucially,
digital cooperation. A key element of the Pact is an annex known as the GDC, envisioned as a roadmap
toward a “responsible and sustainable digital future”. The GDC represents the first comprehensive
global framework for digital governance and cooperation, outlining shared principles for an “open,
free, secure, and human-centred digital future”. This global compact seeks to guide national and
local policies in harnessing technology for good while safeguarding rights, enshrined in the UN
Charter and the doctrine of international law. DPI for cities provides a roadmap for effectively
integrating the GDC’s principles and the Pact’s vision into smart city frameworks, ensuring that
future cities are not only “smart” but also inclusive, accountable and aligned with global standards.

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