Capacity Building for Digital Public Infrastructure

iLIT launches a new learning program for civil society organizations and judicial actors to ensure rights-based, safe, and inclusive DPI.

Building an ecosystem to ensure human rights-based, safe, and inclusive DPI

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) projects, including digital ID systems, digital payment systems, and data exchanges, are ambitious initiatives that seek to transform government and society. However, while these projects often promise to deliver numerous positive development and rights outcomes, they can also raise pressing questions about inequality, human rights violations, accountable institutions and the rule of law. 

Building truly rights-based DPI requires the mobilization of an ecosystem of public interest actors to complement and counterbalance the powerful government and private sector interests that often shape the initial conceptualization, design, and implementation of DPI. 

Two necessary public interest stakeholder groups: civil society and the judiciary

One of the groups best placed to provide this necessary complement is civil society organizations (CSOs). National and grassroots CSOs are able to represent the interests of marginalized communities, to advocate for necessary policy, regulatory and technical changes, and to monitor implementation, supporting access and assessing both positive and negative impacts. In some contexts, CSOs are also empowered to seek redress and remedy for violations of human rights. 

Another critical public interest actor is the judiciary, with the potential to provide much needed checks on both government and the private sector to ensure that their actions align with laws and regulations. Through fact-finding, dispute resolution and judicial review powers, judiciaries can ensure that DPI systems are designed and implemented lawfully — and sometimes, call a halt to unjust systems that disproportionately harm.

Persistent barriers to DPI governance remain

Despite the critical role that they can play, there are many barriers that prevent these groups from fully engaging with the issues, processes, and institutions that govern DPI. After all, DPI is an emerging field, where simple questions (including “what exactly is DPI”?) remain unanswered and jargon abounds. It can be difficult to find reliable, unbiased sources of information about technical design, and key decisions are often taken by technical providers and government agencies with little consultation. Moreover, the speed with which DPI systems are rolled out can make it more difficult to build the necessary knowledge and expertise quickly enough to respond to time-sensitive opportunities and issues.

The result is that critical actors such as civil society organizations and judicial actors may lack the knowledge, skills, resources, or opportunities to engage fully in the highly technical and opaque processes for governing DPI. While efforts are underway to open up spaces for consultation and multistakeholder governance, these processes will remain ineffective and superficial as long as necessary participants lack the knowledge, skills, and fluency to navigate the DPI landscape and meaningfully contribute their expertise. 

iLIT develops an action oriented learning program for CSOs and judicial actors

In order to address this gap, iLIT is developing a tailored set of modular, open educational resources on effective advocacy and judicial oversight for DPI. These resources will initially be piloted through in-person, practical training, where we will gather participant feedback, track the impact of our work, and develop more effective ways to share these resources with larger audiences in different contexts.

Advocacy and DPI for National Civil Society Organizations

iLIT is designing a short, participatory training course for national civil society organizations to build their knowledge and skills around DPI advocacy. The course uses active learning methods, which enable participants to acquire and demonstrate knowledge through application to their own context and work.  

The first 3-day training was delivered in collaboration with the Initiative for Social & Economic Rights in Uganda in September 2026. The course brought together representatives from over 20 civil society organizations in Uganda, alongside a team of transnational facilitators who drew on their own experiences advocating for more rights-based DPI in different contexts. The course utilized role play, interactive mapping, and guided discussion to develop participants’ knowledge and skills. 

Participants in our CSO training program will learn to:

  • Accurately describe in their own terms the meaning of DPI at a policy and introductory (lay person) technical level, in relation to their organizational mission and goals.
  • Identify key human rights risks associated with DPI systems (e.g., exclusion, discrimination), and describe appropriate safeguards and accountability mechanisms using both local and international frameworks.
  • Draw informed, research-based conclusions about the implications of a specific DPI project for their organization’s mission.
  • Confidently formulate and implement an advocacy strategy to advance mission-aligned goals about a DPI project.
  • Design and implement context-appropriate activities to effectively engage communities on DPI.

INTRODUCTORY Judicial Training MODULES

iLIT is developing a flexible training program judicial actors, for which the intended audience includes judges, magistrates, and staff such as researchers and law clerks. The course builds knowledge and skills for these judicial actors to navigate technical questions, to familiarize themselves with new governance approaches to DPI, and to recognize and analyze legal questions related to DPI. 

In partnership with Katiba Institute and the Kenya Judiciary Academy, we delivered the first training to magistrate judges from across Kenya in November 2025. This training provided an overview of DPI technical concepts and definitions, as well as emerging governance and enforcement mechanisms to deal with issues such as privacy and data protection. It also drew on judicial decisions related to digital ID in jurisdictions such as India, Jamaica, Kenya, and Uganda to help demonstrate the types of legal and technical questions that have been presented for judicial review, as well as the methods of review that have been used to assess legality, necessity, and proportionality. 

Participants in our judicial training program will learn to:

  • Explain the basic meaning of DPI and key related legal issues.
  • Identify legal questions arising in their context from digital transformation.
  • Draw informed conclusions about the legal effects of DPI projects.
  • Recognize the roles and interests of key DPI stakeholders.
  • Develop confidence to learn, question, and apply DPI knowledge.
  • Use reliable sources to analyze and resolve DPI legal questions.

Coming Soon!  

As we continue to develop these training programs, we hope to find new ways to reach larger groups of civil society organizations and judicial actors around the globe. 

Please check back on this page for future updates and if you are interested in learning more, please reach out to us (ilit@temple.edu).

This work is supported by Co-Develop

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