UN Open Source Week 2025, Part V. Recap: Trust, Sovereignty, and the Future of DPI

We spent a week in the rooms, chat threads, and side panels of UN Open Source Week 2025, watching a community wrestle with what it really takes to build technology in the public interest.

If you’ve been following our series, you know we’ve covered hackathons, open source program offices, the push for digital public infrastructure, and the quiet work of community-led collaboration. This final post brings it all together, surfacing the moments that stuck with us, the tensions that defined the week, and the questions that still need answering.

Ahead of the Global DPI Summit in Cape Town, let’s take a clear-eyed look at what it means to design trustworthy, inclusive systems; and what it will take to make them real.

A quick look back: Parts I–IV

Part I: Hackathons, Labor Shifts, and AI in the Public Interest

We explored how hackathons are evolving from showcases to grounded problem-solving spaces for governments and civic groups, testing what “public interest technology” looks like in practice. The conversations revealed a tension between urgency and doing the work right: a reminder that speed can’t replace trust when designing systems meant to serve everyone.

Part II: OSPOs for Good

This part traced the journey of open source program offices inside public institutions, capturing hopes and frictions in building cultures of transparency and collaboration. It was here that Alice Bibaud’s insight resonated: open source isn’t just about releasing code; it requires ongoing maintenance and community trust to thrive as a governance model.

Part III: DPI Day

We stepped into the heart of Digital Public Infrastructure debates, where digital ID systems, payment rails, and data exchanges are being positioned as public goods. Nigerian and South African leaders shared hard truths about balancing sovereignty and interoperability, showing how digital infrastructure choices can either deepen dependency or build durable capacity. As Sigmund Freund put it during one panel, “DPI is a test of our values.”

Part IV: Community-led Collaboration and Governance

Closing the week, community-driven sessions highlighted the need for funding sustainability and lifecycle ownership if open source is to remain truly open. Conversations turned to safeguards (not as blockers, but as enablers of trust in systems meant to last). The call to move from principles to practice echoed across sessions, reinforcing the idea that DPI should consider going further from just technical architecture, and embed a social contract shaped by communities, values, and care. As Vilas Dhar reminded us, “Peace is a design choice.”

Where do we go from here?

UN Open Source Week showed us that open source and DPI aren’t just technical conversations; they’re choices about trust, participation, and whose voices shape the systems we rely on. The next milestone on this journey will be the Global DPI Summit in Cape Town, where governments, technologists, and communities will gather to chart practical paths for building digital public infrastructure that respects rights while enabling scale.

The hard questions will remain:
– How do we design safeguards that protect people while enabling innovation?
– How do we fund open source sustainably without compromising independence?
– How do we ensure Global South leadership in DPI efforts, not just participation?
– How do we translate principles into practice in environments with tight resources?

What became clear during UNOSW is that building trustworthy, inclusive digital systems is a collective process. It requires humility, commitment, and a willingness to revisit decisions when communities raise concerns. These conversations will continue in Cape Town, and so will our reflections on what it takes to design public interest technology that earns trust over time.

TWC Insight

Building digital public infrastructure isn’t just about rolling out systems that work. These systems need to have a purpose, consent and (most importantly) they have to build trust over time or be trusted from the get-go. If communities aren’t part of shaping and safeguarding these systems, the technology will fail, even if it functions on the engineering side perfectly (or as close as it could perfectly be).

Takeaway

Trustworthy, inclusive digital infrastructure is possible, but only if we treat it as a shared responsibility, and not just as a technical project.

Refreshed FAQs

1. What is UN Open Source Week?

A week-long series of discussions, panels, and workshops hosted by the UN exploring how open source and digital public infrastructure can serve the public interest.

2. So…What is DPI?

Digital Public Infrastructure includes systems like digital ID, payment rails, and data exchanges that support public services, ideally designed with openness, rights safeguards, and community accountability.

3. Why does open source matter for DPI?

Open source enables transparency, collective security review, and adaptability, ensuring that critical systems remain accountable and can be improved by those who use them.

4. What’s next after UNOSW?

The Global DPI Summit in Cape Town will be the next gathering point for advancing practical, rights-respecting approaches to building digital public infrastructure at scale.