Diane Coyle, David Eaves, and Beatriz Vasconcellos – Digital Infrastructure:

A government wouldn’t build a dozen roads connecting the same two places. But this happens often with digital services. Countries allocate billions to IT spending without realizing the need to treat these systems as shared infrastructure. This siloed approach fragments systems, making it harder to share or leverage data among public agencies and with the private sector.

What if we treated a set of core digital systems—such as digital IDs, payments, data exchange platforms, credentials, and other shared services that drive core functions across government and the economy—the same way we treat roads or power grids? As essential, long-term, shared systems designed for repeated use.