As the 21st century progresses, cities have become the stage upon which the drama of development, (in)equality, climate change and innovation unfolds. The term “smart city” symbolises a utopian vision of urban life—resilient, efficient and inclusive, with ease and quality of life at its core.
But behind the gleam of autonomous vehicles and AI-enabled surveillance systems lies a fundamental truth: truly smart cities are not tech or infra showcases but governance ecosystems for the public good, and what better system to power them than DPI?
This is where we must reframe the conversation. The global discourse often emphasizes technology procurement, shiny dashboards, multimodal system integrations, smart poles, etc. Yet the fundamental enabler of urban transformation is not the tech or infra stack; it is how governments build, regulate and orchestrate infrastructure for public good. While the physical side of smart infrastructure has long dominated the spotlight, it is time to shift focus to the digital foundations that quietly determine whether these cities succeed or stall.
DPI: The invisible architecture of smart governance
DPI refers to the foundational digital systems that enable essential functions—identity, payments, data exchange, trust frameworks and governance platforms—built in an open, secure and interoperable manner.
Just as physical infrastructure—roads, water, power—enabled the urban boom of the 20th century, DPI is the underlying grid for 21st-century urbanism. Denmark’s NemKonto (G2P Payments), Brazil’s Cadastro Único (registries to support low-income households), Sweden’s funding model for DPI and Africa’s DPG Charter are not just e-governance initiatives; they are enablers of urban resilience, economic inclusion and responsive governance.
For smart cities, DPI allows governments to move beyond pilot projects and create the institutional capacity to deliver services at scale, in real time and across agencies. While DPI has often been deployed to solve specific sectoral challenges – be it finance, health or education – cities thrive at the intersection of these sectors.
Urban life is not experienced in silos, and smart cities cannot be built in them either. By design, DPI must enable the coexistence, interaction and interoperability of diverse systems. This creates a digitally coordinated city where health, transport, housing and climate systems work in sync because the plumbing underneath is interoperable and citizen centric.
The governance layer is the differentiator
Most smart city efforts falter not due to a lack of technology but due to fragmented governance. Multiple agencies work in silos, data resides in proprietary systems and decision-making lacks transparency. DPI addresses this by providing a governance stack—where consent, accountability and interoperability are built into digital systems by design.
For instance, a DPI-enabled urban governance model allows city administrators to create a unified citizen interface where residents can access birth certificates, pay property taxes and report potholes. This is not a technological fantasy but a governance reality enabled by DPI.
Trusted data pipelines and anonymised and consent-based analytics can guide zoning decisions, disaster response and infrastructure investments. Instead of governing through intuition or legacy systems, cities can govern through insights.
From vertical silos to horizontal networks
Digital systems have historically evolved in vertical silos—health databases here and transport platforms there. Conversely, DPI emphasizes horizontal interoperability. It allows private innovators, civil society and governments to plug into a shared digital fabric.
This has profound implications for how we build smart cities. A smart parking system should not be a standalone project but integrated into the payment DPI. Start-ups building air quality solutions should have access to real-time pollution data through open APIs. A single sign-on should allow citizens to access services, not just municipal ones. Unlike physical infrastructure, which is costly and difficult to retrofit, DPI offers the flexibility to start small and scale fast. There is no wrong time to begin but now is the right time.
Public-private collaboration with guardrails
The private sector is vital in deploying IoT sensors, cloud platforms and analytics engines. However, without DPI, these efforts can lead to data monopolies, vendor lock-in and exclusionary practices. The answer is not to exclude private innovation but to govern it.
Governments can ensure that private solutions align with public interest by creating open standards, data fiduciary models and trust frameworks. The true power of DPI emerges when multiple infrastructures interconnect – similar to how a digital ID can authenticate a mobility pass, which is then paid for using a public payments interface, all while consented data is shared securely through a data exchange layer.
This convergence turns standalone efficiencies into systemic impact where 1+1 becomes far greater than 2. India’s health and mobility stacks are examples of how public-private partnerships can flourish within the guardrails of DPI.
Rethinking the smart city narrative: From technology to trust
The dominant narrative around smart cities has often been techno-solutionist—fix traffic with sensors, fix crime with CCTV. But these are surface-level fixes. At its core, a smart city builds trust—between government and citizens, between agencies, between governments and businesses and between data and decisions.
A call to action: Cities as stewards of DPI
It is time for urban leaders to claim their seat at the table of DPI conversations. Historically, DPI has been driven at national levels, but the urban context demands localisation. Municipalities should be empowered to adapt, extend and co-create it.
This means instantiating local data exchanges from existing frameworks, developing urban-specific consent models and embedding digital infrastructure into master planning processes. It also means investing in institutional capacity.
The future of smart cities is not about automating city services but reimagining them through a citizen-centric, DPI-enabled governance lens. If we get the foundations right, innovation will follow. If we get governance right, trust will endure.
