Call for Applications: Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Safeguards Accelerator Programme (grants of up to USD 70,000 awarded)

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Closing Date: 30 July 2026

Call for Applications: Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Safeguards Accelerator Programme (grants of up to USD 70,000 awarded)

The Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Safeguards Accelerator Programme is now accepting applications for its first cohort. Countries around the world are already leveraging Digital Public Infrastructure, such as digital identity, payment, and data exchange systems to deliver services at scale. As these efforts move forward, safeguards matter. They help ensure DPI is more trusted, more inclusive, and better placed to support adoption, innovation, and long-term public value.

Part of the DPI Safeguards initiative stewarded by United Nations Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies and UNDP, in collaboration with 50-in-5, Co-Develop and Open Government Partnership, this programme supports an early, practical action to identify risks, bring stakeholders and civil society into the process, and shape practical roadmaps, including advancing specific safeguard measures.

Applications are open through two pathways, one for UN entities and one for NGOs or civil society organisations, in both cases working with a government on an active DPI effort. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis across three waves; early submission is encouraged.

The Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Safeguards Accelerator programme will select a first cohort of country efforts, each receiving up to US$ 70,000 in catalytic funding over a 6 to 9 month period of safeguards work.

Safeguards: Why Now?

More than 100 countries are advancing some form of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), from national identity systems to payment and data exchange platforms. These large-scale systems offer major benefits, but they can also pose risks for billions of people.

For DPI to deliver meaningful and equitable economic change, it must be built with strong safeguards and designed intentionally to include everyone. Safeguards are not static compliance checklists; they are active operational practices that mitigate safety, inclusion and sustainability/institutional risks. They ensure that technology empowers rather than excludes, by breaking down barriers of language, literacy and access; building people’s trust to drive adoption at scale; minimizing systemic friction; and aligning diverse stakeholders around localized innovation.

As foundational DPI layers mature, they evolve into sectoral use cases (such as digital health services and social protection registries), cross-border interoperability systems, or AI-enabled public and private service interfaces. Well-governed DPI enables institutions to detect structural errors early, clarify legal accountability, and respond promptly when automated or agentic AI systems affect human lives. When DPI lacks effective safeguards, it can increase exclusion, reduce transparency, and weaken accountability, with consequences for millions of people.

The Need for the Safeguards Accelerator

While the Universal DPI Safeguards Framework defines what safe and inclusive digital infrastructure looks like, the Accelerator is the engine that drives local execution. It bridges the gap between global framework on safeguards and country-level realities by providing the practical tools, targeted expertise, and catalytic resources needed to embed safeguards directly into live national DPI deployments.

‍The 2026–2028 Crucial Window: As the DPI Safeguards Initiative’s two-year programmatic recap brief highlights, country momentum has shifted from treating safeguards as an afterthought to recognizing them as a non-negotiable structural requirement. With implementations transitioning from pilots to population-scale rollouts, partners must embed practical safeguards into live code, design, deployment, governance, operations, and national policy now, or risk legacy institutional failure as these systems scale. This 24-month window is critical to future-proof current implementations, safely support downstream or AI applications and act as a guide to future countries who are implementing or scaling DPI.

The DPI Safeguards Accelerator is a cohort-based programme arm of the DPI Safeguards Initiative a global multi-stakeholder effort dedicated to building, maintaining, and evolving the universal framework while supporting countries to adopt these practices through an ecosystem-led delivery model. The Accelerator is being launched in collaboration with 50-in-5, Open Government Partnership (OGP), and Co-Develop.

DPI Safeguards Accelerator: Catalyzing Implementation with Institutional Pathways

Meeting this crucial window for action requires moving beyond high-level advocacy, normative framing, and early pilot countries. The focus shifts to actively shaping country-level execution and delivering impact. This requires catalyzing local capacity, supporting multistakeholder coalitions and advancing practical safeguard measures within DPI deployments (DPI).

Where a country is rolling out or advancing an identity system, payments, data exchange layer, or sectoral DPI system, safeguards often need steady support across institutions, technical teams, civil society, and affected communities, including as government stakeholders and implementation priorities change. The Accelerator is designed to help build this local capacity and sustain safeguards action over time.

To operationalize this shift on the ground, the DPI Safeguards Accelerator anchors its delivery model around two distinct, intersecting application pathways: one for United Nations entities and one for civil society or non-governmental organizations. These two pathways were intentionally selected because they represent the multistakeholder collaboration required to successfully translate safeguards from abstract design principles into localized operational practices with strong commitments:
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•The Non-governmental Organization Pathway: Designed for local and international non-profit organizations, civil society actors, and community champions. They can help advance public accountability, bringing the grassroots technical insights, lived experiences, and community trust required to protect populations frequently marginalized by rapid, population-scale digitization.

•The UN Entities Pathway: Tailored for UN entities and country offices uniquely positioned as trusted, neutral partners to host governments, often representing voices of the people and the practices from the global developmental community. In many country contexts, UN entities possess the institutional mandate to convene cross-ministerial leadership, coordinate international development partners, and align safeguards with national budget cycles or Multilateral Development Bank (MDB) financing frameworks.

Meaningful multi-stakeholder collaboration requires moving beyond high-level, one-off consultations towards active and institutionalised partnerships. By bringing together the institutional and trusted partner role of UN entities and the community-facing role of CSOs, the Accelerator helps create the coordination, participation, and accountability needed to design, apply, and monitor safeguards as DPI systems scale.

Note: As the Accelerator programme matures, subsequent cohorts may expand to include dedicated tracks for private sector actors, tech vendors, and social innovation organizations and startups to institutionalize “Safeguards-by-Design” across commercial delivery models.

What DPI is looking for

The Accelerator seeks high-impact, operationally viable proposals from eligible partners who are positioned to deliver concrete, system-level and/or issue-specific safeguards within an active national DPI rollout. DPI is looking for applications that clearly demonstrate three core attributes:

Strong Government Alignment: A working relationship with the government entity leading the DPI implementation that is on a clear path to secure formal endorsement from the implementing agency during the selection process.

Meaningful Civil Society Integration: Proposals that move beyond one-off public consultations. DPI looks for applications that give local civil society organizations (CSOs), community champions, or affected user groups an active, defined role in co-designing, validating, or monitoring the safeguards. Relevant private sector participation and ecosystem consultations are also welcome.

Measurable, Tangible Outputs: A clear commitment to translate proposals into concrete actions and operational assets within the 6–9 month cohort cycle.

Depending on the maturity and immediate needs of your country context, your application should target definite deliverables under one of two entry points:

System-Level Safeguards Work: This refers to broader work that looks across a DPI system, sector, or country-level DPI effort to identify risks, priorities, and practical next steps. The focus is not only to assess issues, but to help governments and partners decide what safeguards should be advanced, by whom, and in what sequence.

Examples may include:

Assessing safeguards risks and gaps in a digital ID, payments, data exchange, or sectoral DPI system.
Developing a time-bound DPI safeguards action plan or roadmap.
Supporting the development of a national DPI safeguards framework.
Setting up or strengthening a multistakeholder safeguards coalition.
Developing recommendations, roles, and follow-up actions for government and ecosystem partners.

Issue-Specific Safeguards Work: This refers to focused work to advance one or two specific safeguard measures within an ongoing DPI effort. The focus is on making progress on a clearly identified issue that affects how people access, use, trust, or challenge a DPI system.

Examples may include:

Setting up or improving a grievance redress or user recourse process.
Enabling offline access or verification for people with limited connectivity.
Improving inclusion of excluded or underserved communities.
Strengthening gender equity or disability accessibility in a DPI system.
Developing responsible data use, consent management, or data-sharing.

Why Apply? Cohort Benefits

The DPI Safeguards Accelerator provides a collaborative, cohort-based model built around four integrated pillars of support. This framework is designed to help participants translate high-level principles into live operational tools, workflows, institutional roles, and multi-stakeholder coordination mechanisms through:

Selected participants will receive:

• Practical Resources: Access to ready-to-use tools, risk-mapping methodologies, and 300+ practices within the Universal DPI Safeguards Framework. This includes dedicated advisory hours to support in adapting them directly into national workflows, institutional roles, and technical roadmaps.

• Ecosystem Expertise: Target-driven technical sprints, specialized capacity-building curricula, and connections with global digital public infrastructure experts.

• Access to Community: Structured peer-to-peer knowledge streams, office hours, cohort learning sessions, and access to an international network of digital governance practitioners.

• Financial Support: Catalytic implementation grants of up to USD 70,000 to support and accelerate safeguards mobilization within active deployments.