Reflections from the 2025 Annual Members Meeting in Brasília
Author: Lucy Harris, Chief Operating Officer, and Carol Matos, Senior Communications and Marketing Coordinator, DPGA Secretariat
Last week, the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) concluded its fourth Annual Members Meeting (AMM)— its first ever in South America—with three energising days of collaboration, shared learning, and collective momentum. Taking place in Brasília and held in partnership with the Government of Brazil, represented by the Controladoria-Geral da União (CGU), the Ministério da Gestão e da Inovação em Serviços Públicos, and DATAPREV, this year’s AMM served as a capstone to 2025’s steady global progress and growing interest in digital public goods.
Over the course of this year’s Annual Members Meeting, more than a hundred representatives from DPGA member organisations - including country governments, in addition to digital public good (DPG) product owners, explored how DPGs can help countries and development partners, including multilateral development banks and UN-agencies, navigate geopolitical and technological shifts while delivering real benefits for people’s lives and for the planet. It also served as an opportunity to welcome Co-Develop, co-coordinator of the 50-in-5 campaign, as the newest member of the DPGA.
This year’s AMM reflected how far the DPGA has come, and the role it is increasingly poised to play amid rapid advances in technology and significant geopolitical change.
The gathering opened with reflections on key achievements from the past year, including:
- Growth and maturity across the DPG ecosystem, seen through continued expansion of the DPG Registry—now with well over 200 verified digital public goods—and increased collaboration among DPGs themselves, demonstrating how open, interoperable digital solutions can drive scale and impact.
- Strengthened global alignment, with DPGs front and centre at major convenings including COP30, UN Open Source Week, the Internet Governance Forum in Norway, and the annual 50-in-5 Milestone Event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
- Continued advances in understanding how DPGs can be used for DPI implementation, including the launch of the DPG4DPI Collection, which is already helping countries more easily identify DPGs that enable safe, inclusive, and interoperable DPI.
- Significant progress on climate, marked by a new framework to identify DPGs for climate action and Brazil’s announcement of a newly shared open-source module derived from its Rural Environmental Registry (RER).
- Strengthening efforts to sustain DPGs, with growing alignment on the need for upstream maintenance, flexible financing, and stronger contribution pathways to ensure that governments and partners can adopt, adapt, and maintain DPGs over time.
Together, these achievements created a strong foundation for workshops and roundtable discussions that unfolded in Brasília.
“We believe that open technologies and global digital governance contribute to better governments, but also to stronger democracies and enhanced sovereignty. These joint activities and collective sharing really embody that spirit. Let us all work together in that direction to promote inclusive and sustainable development, powered by open technology strategies.” - Cristina Kiomi Mori - Vice Minister of Management and Innovation in Public Services, Government of Brazil
A Week of Collaboration, Curiosity, and Shared Purpose
The AMM highlighted what makes the DPGA community unique: genuine openness, practical collaboration, and a shared commitment to tackling complex challenges together. Throughout the week, there was a clear sense that the ecosystem is shifting—from isolated efforts to a more connected movement shaping global digital cooperation.
Beyond the formal sessions, the week offered several opportunities to deepen those connections. The DPG Fair brought together more than 25 digital public goods, giving participants the chance to meet product teams, explore solutions up close, and identify practical ways to work together. Regional lunches allowed attendees from different parts of the world to compare experiences and approaches, while the social and cultural gatherings created a relaxed setting to build relationships and strengthen the sense of community that makes the DPGA unique. Following three jam packed days, a clear theme emerged: DPGs are becoming essential not only to the delivery of services, but also to safeguarding trust, resilience, and equitable access in an increasingly complex digital era.
Many participants also took to social media throughout the week to share further insights, reflections, and highlights from the AMM—another sign of the community’s growing energy and desire for close collaboration.
Through workshops and roundtable discussions, several key themes for 2026 took shape:
- Deepening DPG sustainability, ensuring countries can adopt, adapt, contribute to, and maintain DPGs for the long term, especially those that contribute to digital public infrastructure implementation.
- Accelerating climate action through DPGs, including the forthcoming Climate DPG Collection.
- Advancing public-interest AI, both by qualifying AI systems as DPGs and by supporting DPGs that make it easier to identify, prepare, and share high-quality open training data.
- Exploring public-interest alternatives to today’s social media platforms, in order to foster safety and trust online.
A sincere thank you to the Government of Brazil for co-hosting this year’s AMM, and to all members and product owners who travelled to be with us in Brasília. The DPGA Secretariat is deeply appreciative of such an engaged and committed community, and looks forward to carrying the lessons, insights, and connections from this week into a strong and purposeful year ahead. Together, we are well-positioned to shape the path forward for 2026.
