Eaves, David; Coyle, Diane; Vasconcellos, Beatriz; Deshmukh, Sumedha; (2025) The Economics of Shared Digital Infrastructures: A framework for assessing societal value. (UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) Policy Report 2025/02 ). UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP): London, UK.

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Abstract

Digital technologies are now the backbone of modern societies, underpinning everything from service delivery to financial transactions. Yet in most countries, many of these critical services remain fragmented, duplicative, and designed in silos — tied to individual programs or agencies rather than treated as infrastructure. This fragmentation leads to costly inefficiencies, missed opportunities for cross-sector innovation, and barriers to inclusion. These costs are not only technical. They are social, economic, and political. Governments continue to invest in multiple digital systems without capturing economies of scale or the spillovers and externalities digital infrastructure can generate. One reason this problem persists is that we lack the tools to think horizontally — to see digital not just as service delivery or technology, but as a foundational layer that enables interactions across government, markets, and society. Some recent efforts have attempted to think this way — including the India Stack, the Eurostack and Digital Public Infrastructure. However, traditional investment and evaluation tools, such as cost-benefit analysis or value-for-money metrics, are poorly suited to measuring the long-term, indirect, and systemic effects of infrastructure — digital or otherwise.

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