Governments are being asked to digitise faster, with tighter budgets and higher expectations. Yet the work is often funded in fragments, pulled in different directions by emerging agendas like AI, and split across ministries that rarely share timetables or incentives. The result is familiar: strategies proliferate; delivery stalls. Digital public infrastructure (DPI) allows countries to accelerate their development agenda—but only if countries can create the political will and turn broad principles into a sequenced plan that multiple institutions will follow. That is the job of a DPI Roadmap.

In June 2025, five organisations published a beta version of a DPI Roadmap Playbook. Earlier work in the DPI field had made the case for what DPI is and why it matters. The Roadmap Playbook focuses on how: how governments can set priorities, align institutions and sequence core building blocks in political and bureaucratic reality. Nine months later, we are releasing an updated version reflecting what early users have taught us, to better inform new initiatives this year.

The central insight remains the same. DPI is cross-government by design: it spans ministries, regulators and delivery agencies, and it creates reusable digital rails that support many services. Without a shared roadmap, the default outcome is not elegance but duplication—incompatible systems, overlapping mandates and slow implementation. These cause governments and citizens to waste time and money; and may even result in frustration which undermines the DPI initiative.

A DPI Roadmap is a particular kind of digital plan. It embeds DPI principles, but it is neither a technology shopping list or a glossy “vision”. It sets a sequence, clarifies who decides what, and links milestones to priority use-cases. It will not replace political leadership or delivery capability. But it can make both more effective—by turning a general ambition into a shared set of decisions and next steps that hold over time.

For development funders, DPI Roadmaps offer more than technical guidance. They provide a shared reference point for aligning investments, sequencing support and reducing fragmentation across projects and institutions. A clear roadmap can make pooled financing less risky, link technical assistance to nationally owned priorities and support more sustainable, cross-government outcomes.

The beta Playbook was launched during South Africa’s G20 presidency, as the country was finalising a national Digital Transformation Roadmap grounded in DPI principles. That nine-month, multi-institution process helped make the roadmapping approach concrete: it showed what it takes to align priorities across government—and what tends to slow that down.

Since then, more governments have signalled that they are embedding DPI concepts as they refresh national strategies. Several African countries—including Nigeria, Ethiopia and Rwanda—have announced new digital strategies or frameworks informed by DPI thinking. South Africa has moved into early implementation, and has begun sharing lessons publicly, including through parliamentary briefings and at the 2025 DPI Summit. Beyond Africa, the British government has issued a new digital roadmap for 2026–2030, drawing on a longer history of iterative planning.

The refreshed Playbook reflects this widening group of experiences. Rather than presenting a single “right” model, it draws out patterns that recur across contexts: how countries set priorities, manage trade-offs and keep a roadmap useful once implementation begins.

Creating a DPI Roadmap is the start of the work, not the finish. Even with strong political backing, countries run into predictable obstacles: skills shortages, institutional inertia, vendor lock-in, siloed funding and shifting policy priorities.

What we see growing, however, is demand for peer learning among governments navigating these constraints. The updated Playbook is meant to make that easier: it gives practitioners a common way to describe problems, compare choices and build a more practical body of knowledge about what works when digital transformation meets day-to-day government reality.

Plus, the refreshed Playbook now offers a stronger selection of curated resources that reflect a fast-expanding body of credible work published over the past year. In a field that moves quickly, a short list of what is worth reading saves scarce time, and reduces the chance that countries repeat avoidable mistakes.

In recent years, many countries—and regional bodies such as the African Union—have launched artificial intelligence (AI) strategies and data-governance frameworks. Too often they are developed in parallel, with limited coordination. That can produce overlapping rules, competing institutions and heavy demands on already scarce capacity.

The refreshed Playbook treats DPI in context alongside data governance and AI. It does not pretend to settle hard AI policy questions but rather offers something more practical: it shows how policies on data governance and AI should inform DPI design—and how DPI, in turn, is what makes governance principles workable in the real world. Put simply: governance choices shape how DPI is built; DPI determines whether those choices can be applied consistently across services.

Consider digital identity. Robust identity systems can make consent-based data sharing more feasible in secure, privacy-preserving ways. Conversely, well-designed DPI can enable controlled access to high-quality national datasets, supporting future AI development aligned with public goals. These domains are interdependent. DPI Roadmaps need to reflect that, rather than treating “AI”, “data” and “digital infrastructure” as separate tracks.

Ultimately, a DPI Roadmap should be judged not by its publication, but by its use. The Playbook proposes indicators that go beyond launch: whether stakeholders still refer to the roadmap months later, whether progress is tracked and reported, and whether the roadmap evolves as implementation unfolds. The refreshed Playbook provides guidance which makes it more likely that these indicators will be achieved. The result will be more inclusive, resilient and safe DPI.

Meanwhile, the number of countries which have committed to DPI adoption grows steadily. The Playbook can serve as a platform for sharing peer experience around how to prepare for a successful DPI journey. As the consortium of agencies which developed the Playbook, we stand ready to encourage, support and learn from countries which are on the way. If you want to understand better how a DPI Roadmap can help that process in your country, reach out to one of us.