Open Future joins the Digital Public Goods Alliance

Today, Open Future joined the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) as a new member. The mission of the Alliance, as a global steward of digital public goods, is closely aligned with our goals of cultivating Digital Commons and building Digital Public Space.

The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative with a mission to accelerate the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in low and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of and investment in digital public goods. Digital public goods are open source software, open data, open AI models, and open content collections that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A list of recognized DPGs can be found on the DPG Registry.

Current DPGA members include government ministries and agencies from Germany, Estonia, and India; United Nation (UN) entities such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU); philanthropic foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, and non-profits and think tanks supporting openness and the digital commons, such as Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation and OpenForum Europe.

“Open Future over the last years has been advocating for policies that support Digital Commons initiatives, which collectively maintain digital public goods. We believe that sharing of digital resources, combined with care for the commons, can serve public interest and help fight concentrations of power online. As a European think tank for the Digital Commons, we want to partner with other organizations championing digital public goods. We are keen to build bridges with other regions of the world, to share European experiences and to develop shared perspectives and global standards. There is a need to build a global movement that cultivates and protects the digital commons.” – Alek Tarkowski, co-director of Open Future

Our various activities align in many ways with the work of the DPGA, as it stewards the DPG Standard, with a particular focus on data and artificial intelligence technologies. We will contribute to the DPGA’s Annual Roadmap for 2025 with following activities:

1. Advocating for long term funding and support for DPGs in the European Union. As part of the NGI Commons project, we are developing a proposal for a long-term European strategy to support the digital and internet commons. The project is built on top of the NGI initiative, which is a globally relevant example of large-scale public investment in digital public goods and related open assets. Open Future’s role in the project is to develop a strategic agenda for Digital Commons policies, with a focus on financial frameworks. Our aim is also to increase awareness of Digital Commons initiatives, which steward digital public goods through collective or communal governance.
2. Research on a definition of public AI systems compatible with the DPG standard. Public AI is a term that covers various policy proposals that support the development of AI systems in the public interest. In 2025, we will be working on defining pathways to developing public AI systems. This includes exploring ways to support the open provision of AI training datasets and AI models that meet the DPG standard. As part of this activity, we will engage in the final stages of developing an updated DPG standard for AI systems.
3. Enabling Open Data DPGs through advocacy and research on data commons. Over the last years, Open Future has been conducting work on data commons: approaches to data governance based on the principles of the commons, including open data. We aim to build on this work, with the goal of furthering the development of datasets shared as digital public goods. In 2025, we aim to apply the data commons approach to practical cases of training datasets and open source AI development. We will also continue our work on opt-out and preference signalling frameworks, and will be building a registry of Public Domain works.

To learn more about DPGA, visit the Alliance’s website or email hello@digitalpublicgoods.net.