A Conversation with Keyzom Ngodup Massally, UNDP's Head of Digital and AI Programs
Edition #90 The UNDP's Head of Digital and AI Programs talks exponential equalizers, AI safeguards, and responsible DPI...
In this interview, first published in GovInsider, interweave sits down with Keyzom Ngodup Massally, UNDP’s Head of Digital and AI Programs. Having interviewed Gayan Peiris, the agency’s Head of Data and Technology, a couple of months ago, Massally shows us the other side of digital at UNDP - a development tool capable (with the right safeguards) of acting as an exponential equalizer.
A couple of months ago, I sat down with Gayan Peiris, Head of Data and Technology at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to discuss the digital transformation of the organization, what he called the “change of direction of a massive tanker” to become one of the “first UN agencies to have a digital office ”, capable of supporting countries from a development perspective in the 170+ countries in which the agency operates.
When it comes to UNDP’s digital capabilities, however, that would only be telling half the story. For UNDP, digital transformation is not just an internal priority, but also a development tool in and of itself, what the agency’s Head of Digital and AI Programs Keyzom Ngodup Massally calls “an exponential equalizer”.
Nowhere is this more true than in the contexts of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), interoperable digital systems that enable countries to safely and efficiently provide economic opportunities and effectively deliver social services.
Massally’s remit is broad – covering anything from co-designing the AI Hub for Sustainable Development to steering digital development programs on a global scale. But our conversation zooms in on DPI as a critical enabler of digital transformation.
Keyzom Ngodup Massally (Source)
UNDP’s contributions as a global convener and thought leader on DPI are by now several years old, coinciding with Massally’s tenure as Head of Digital and AI Programs. “Three years ago,” she tells me, “we saw examples from leaders like Estonia, Brazil and India – where the time to reach 80% financial inclusion decreased from 40 years to 5 years with the help of Digital Public Infrastructure”.
Digital Public Infrastructure as an “exponential equalizer”
These forerunners helped to identify the opportunities of DPI for development, as well as challenges and how to address them through collective action. Today, DPI is a priority across the UN – one needs only look at ITU’s GovStack programme, or the DPI Safeguards initiative that UNDP is stewarding with the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology (OSET).
I ask Massally why it is that there has been such a buy-in across countries, and so quickly, for DPI. It is a question of scale, she says. Through DPI, there is an opportunity to “create an entire ecosystem to deliver better and more services that can help a farmer improve his or her livelihood, or help a woman access cash transfers much more easily”.
In the context of development, which has been “local and linear throughout history”, there is a chance for “DPI to be an exponential equalizer if it is designed and implemented right”. As she put it in another interview: “DPI goes beyond technology, it’s an approach”.
Exponential equalizers, and the idea of doing things right, are two themes that come up a couple of times early in our conversation. When I ask what this means concretely, Massally mentions three things: being multi-stakeholder; building commonality; and safeguarding against the risks associated with DPI.
The first two are very much two sides of the same coin. A recent UNDP report on DPI notes that “like roads and bridges, DPI is made of digital building blocks that allow governments to provide safe and inclusive services to people at scale”. Key to linking these building blocks – says Massally - is “talking in a common language about safeguards” and design, “includ[ing] civil society organizations, not just for consultation but also in specific cases of implementation”.
Common platforms and regulations, and taking a multistakeholder approach, allows governments to leverage the breadth of DPI, putting “people at the center of these systems” in fully realizing the case studies that it can support.
The UNDP’s role in delivering responsible DPI
UNDP has been playing a critical role in enabling this exponential equalizer. “As I joined the UNDP team and began programming our safe and inclusive DPI efforts to reach everyone, including those at the last mile” she notes, “I realized there is no other agency with the deep presence and relationships in countries to advocate for meaningful change and […] drive sustainable development and cooperation”.
She asserts that “focusing on your value proposition and your mandate is extremely important, especially in the growing DPI ecosystem, where everyone doing everything might not prove helpful”.
This mandate in the UNDP context involves thinking coherently and responsibly about safeguarding against the risks of DPI, a necessary reality behind the promise of Aadhaar or GovStack. Given their interoperable nature, mitigating risks associated with DPI is not without challenges: “data is exchanged between systems that have their own rules and norms, meaning there are questions around where accountability sits when something goes wrong”.
To help countries navigate these challenges, UNDP along with OSET have been stewarding the DPI Safeguards initiative. This is a multistakeholder process working “to bring together diverse voices to develop a universal safeguards framework to guide DPI design and implementation around the world”. The programme aims to leverage the UNDP’s position as a neutral arbiter to build a risk framework – the first iteration of which is expected to be made public at the Summit of the Future in September 2024.
The initiative involves several working groups that have already produced an interim report. Massally notes: “The big question surrounding DPI in the working groups and in understanding realities on the ground is: how do we safeguard something that is definitionally broad and contextually diverse?”
The aim is not for the framework to be a compliance mechanism; it is intended to “shift behaviors, incentives and collective understanding of inclusion, safety practices and processes […] thereby building safeguards into the DNA of DPI not as compliance but as value additions”.
Safeguarding DPI against inequalities and exclusion by design
Massally and the report both talk about the chief risk of DPI as “amplifying existing inequalities, of making services easier to access for those who already have it, as opposed to focusing on the population that really needs more agency and support”.
As government technology advances and becomes more interconnected, those excluded by design – often the elderly, rural communities or minorities – may become even more disadvantaged, increasing the digital divide. Other identified risks include privacy concerns and market distortions – closed ecosystems would mean that the advantages of DPI would end up concentrated in the hands of just a few.
As a form of mitigation, the report emphasizes working on the basis of trust and equity. This means involving civil society partners throughout the design and implementation process of DPI, and approaching DPI “from a lifecycle perspective so that it is plug and play […] so that governments can contribute and use it based on whatever lifecycle is applicable to their country”.
A flexible approach to DPI prevents lock-in in favor of incremental maturity, meaning countries can learn lessons from others that they may not have considered in their initial design stages.
The report itself, and the framework that will accompany it, is definition agnostic. It is “designed to be a common starting point for considering risk mitigation in any digital public infrastructure”. “It’s meant to be a living framework” Massally tells me, “and it’s meant to be very practical”.
The lessons presented by the DPI Safeguards initiative will become only more pronounced as emerging technologies develop. If done right, emerging technologies will “lower the adoption curve, making DPI even more powerful […] because it’s going to come with compute at a greater speed, and it’s going to create better and inclusive access to services that are being delivered through DPI”.
But these technologies are not without their own risks. Today “we are seeing that many AI use cases across developing countries are not scaling. This is because we have not really looked at how to equalize developing countries’ infrastructure around data, access and affordability of compute, together with human talent and broader trust and safety issues”.
For any digital policymaker, that laundry list of potential concerns is a lot to be getting on with. But as the UN looks towards 2030, with technologies set to support delivery of 80%+ of the targets relating to the SDGs, the Universal DPI Safeguards framework may be set to pave the way not just from a DPI perspective, but in thinking more broadly about digital development too.