Other Infrastructure Study

377 items available

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https://hdl.handle.net/10986/2204

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Azerbaijan Rural Digital Needs Assessment
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-17) World Bank
This report identifies the unique technological challenges and opportunities faced by various Azerbaijani communities when using digital tools and services, particularly in rural areas. The findings will support the Government of Azerbaijan in its design of the interventions necessary to create a more equitable digital landscape for all and to bridge the gap between the urban and rural areas. The assessment is comprehensive, and the threefold data collection included (a) a survey of household and village needs, (b) focus group discussions (FGD), and (c) semi-structured interviews. To comprehend the current existing digital landscape, the survey established the current digital skills and needs of village households; the FGDs included a diverse population segment that provided qualitative insight into community digital access and usage; and the interviews were held with local stakeholders (i.e., Internet service providers (ISP), small businesses, and local government officials). These three approaches helped identify the various challenges relating to rural and urban communities and the opportunities available to them, thus informing the strategies to establish Azerbaijan’s digital future more inclusively. The assessment was conducted under the Azerbaijan Rapid Technical Assistance Facility (AZTAF), financed by the European Union (EU) and implemented by the World Bank.
Digital Public Infrastructure and Development: A World Bank Group Approach
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-11) Clark, J.; Marin, G.; Ardic Alper, O.P.; Galicia Rabadan, G.A.
DPI is an approach to digitalization focused on creating “foundational, digital building blocks designed for the public benefit.” By providing essential digital functions at society scale that can be reused across sectors, DPIs enable public and private service providers to build on these systems, innovate, and roll out new services more quickly and efficiently. Common systems built as DPIs include digital identity and electronic signatures, digital payments, and data sharing. However, to provide DPI functionality, these systems must embed principles such as inclusion, openness, modularity, inclusivity, user-centricity, privacy-by-design, and strong governance. This paper provides a common framework and primer on DPI for policymakers, practitioners, WBG staff, and the broader development community, including: • DPI Concepts and Theory of Change: This includes a working definition of DPI and its core characteristics, including the role of the private sector, how DPI differs from past approaches to digitalization, and the relationship between core DPI systems, sector-specific systems, other digital technologies, and broader ecosystem enablers and safeguards. The paper also articulates the potential benefits of DPI across a range of public and private sector services, as well as risks and challenges for implementation and adoption. • Considerations for Implementation: Drawing on the experiences of a diverse set of countries across different regions, income levels, and DPI approaches, the paper identifies common trends for building, scaling, and using DPIs that are safe and inclusive. This includes identifying what we know (and do not yet know) around different DPI design choices and models, implementation strategies, procurement, issues around use case integration and sequencing of DPI, and more. • Principles and Practical Lessons: Finally, it summarizes key lessons from countries’ experiences with DPI to date, highlighting critical success factors and risk mitigation strategies for policymakers, practitioners, and development partners. A separate volume provides examples of DPI from countries around the globe. By leveraging the opportunities presented by DPI, countries can accelerate their digital transformation journeys and achieve more inclusive and sustainable development. The World Bank Group is committed to supporting this crucial endeavor. The WBG’s new Global DPI Program will address key knowledge gaps and support countries in building safe, inclusive, and transformative DPI.
Resilient Telecommunications Infrastructure - A Practitioner's Guide
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-18) World Bank
Connectivity drives economic development and underpins critical services in the aftermath of disastrous weather events or earthquakes. However, nearly all types of climate and natural hazards can cause damage to telecommunications (telecom) networks and threaten service delivery. For countries that experience multiple types of climate hazards, building telecom infrastructure is a challenge for public practitioners and telecom operators. This guide provides recommendations for practitioners in designing, preparing, and implementing resilient telecom infrastructure projects. For instance, resilience-building measures, such as risk analysis, redundancy, backup power, customization, and disaster planning, are important for strengthening the resilience of telecom infrastructure deployments. While no single intervention will make telecom infrastructure fully resilient, investment in a range of coordinated actions can reduce the probability of failure and enable operators to maintain acceptable service in the face of increasing climate hazards.
Digital Sustainability Framework: Experiences from KSA’s Digital Government Transformation
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-17) World Bank
In the near term, achieving sustainability is one of humanity’s most vital objectives. For sustainability to become a mindset and not merely a goal, it needs to encompass all fields, including digital. This white paper elaborates on the Saudi Government's steps toward digital sustainability. The paper will first present the concept and mechanisms of digital sustainability and then, in-depth, the digital sustainability framework and the Saudi Government’s implementation process to move toward digital sustainability. Cognizant that the path toward digital sustainability is complex, the Saudi Government wishes to engage with the global community through knowledge exchange and research jointly with the World Bank, one of its valued knowledge partners. The report acknowledges that integrating a digital transformation agenda and a digital sustainability agenda at the level of an entire country is a significant undertaking. KSA is moving in this direction and has started collecting experiences while dealing with legacy business ways rooted in culture, structure, and traditions. Therefore, these experiences represent the beginning of the process, not the result. By sharing these experiences and collecting new ones from other countries, the hope is to enable a stable integration of sustainable goals in the digital development agenda across the globe to the benefit of people and society.
The Cloud Imperative: Strategies and Practices from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-17) World Bank
This white paper also discusses the challenges ahead, such as closing the digital skills gap, navigating data localization requirements, and addressing the energy efficiency of data centers. An essential note for developing countries is that overcoming these challenges can be done with the right competencies and skills within a government's normal operations and budget. In conclusion, this white paper emphasizes that, if implemented thoughtfully, cloud solutions can be a catalytic force to build 21st-century governments that are more agile, data-driven, and responsive to citizens. To realize the potential of the cloud, developing country governments will need to adjust the KSA experiences to fit the context of their local cloud ecosystem and local governance. This paper is a part of a larger body of research created and distributed by the World Bank Group regarding the cloud agenda as a key element of public digital infrastructure (PDI). Ongoing research encompasses the enabling ecosystem required to facilitate cloud solutions, the economic implications of cloud migration, the sustainability of cloud solutions and data centers, and the legal and regulatory considerations that play a crucial role in determining the most suitable cloud service options.
Benchmarking Infrastructure Development: PPP Regulatory Landscape - Assessing Quality and Exploring Reform
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-09) World Bank
Despite its intrinsic relevance and policy makers’ efforts to address the infrastructure gap, progress has been limited. A confluence of challenges from macroeconomic shocks and political instability to weak institutional capacity has hindered the capacity of countries to develop infrastructure that meets demand. Increasing efficiencies in delivering infrastructure services is at the core of addressing the gap. Numerous countries have turned to private sector participation in infrastructure development to achieve these efficiencies and catalyze private capital investments. Although there are different modalities to procure infrastructure, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been extensively used by many countries to deliver successful programs. This report examines one of the key elements of an overall sound PPP ecosystem, the crucial role that the quality of PPP regulatory frameworks plays in fostering a conducive ecosystem for successful PPP programs while acknowledging that it is just one of several critical factors. This report incorporates new empirical analysis from primary data collected through Benchmarking Infrastructure Development 2023 (BID 2023). It also uses country case studies to illustrate and draw lessons from how countries have created robust PPP ecosystems and strengthened PPP regulatory frameworks over time. This report is aligned with the Knowledge Compact Agenda’s focus on evidence-based decision-making by providing evidence-based knowledge that can inform development strategies and PPP operations. Additionally, it focuses on fostering the PPP ecosystem that is conducive to private sector investment, thereby contributing to the Private Capital Enabling (PCE) objectives that will ultimately support Private Capital Mobilization (PCM), two critical corporate objectives of the World Bank Group to help to close the infrastructure gap.
Leveraging Private Sector Investment in Digital Communications Infrastructure in Eastern Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-02) World Bank; CEPA
This study provides guidance on World Bank involvement in Digital Communications Infrastructure (DCI) projects in which finance has been extended to support build-out. In particular, the study provides guidance to inform World Bank projects in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Somalia and South Sudan where more than US$1 billoin has been committed by the World Bank for improving digital infrastructure, services and skills. Through competitive procurement processes that engage private sector network operators, it is possible to amplify the funds available to countries by leveraging funds from network operators to ensure sustainable network deployment. The report looks at mechanisms such as reverse auctions, anchor tenant models, public-private partnerships and invstment guarantees to assess which work best in different marekt environments.
Project Development Funds (PDFs): Supporting Project Preparation to Structure Successful Public-private Partnerships (PPPs) - A Primer
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-03) World Bank Group
Project development funds (PDFs) are dedicated vehicles that governments establish to systematically support the preparation of public-private partnerships (PPPs). The lack of adequate and consolidated resources to appropriately evaluate and prepare potential PPP projects is a key constraint faced by many PPP programs, and inhibits the ability of PPP projects to raise private investment. PDFs are generally established to address this challenge, by providing dedicated and centralized funding for PPP project preparation that is not subject to the constraints of typical government budgeting processes. PDFs have contributed to the successful implementation of PPP projects, which can serve to support the increased private investment that will be critical if the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are to be achieved. This primer on project development funds seeks to capture and distill lessons for public sector and other PPP practitioners related to how and why PDFs are established, and how best to enable them to contribute to the success of PPP programs. Through its review of PDF and other relevant experience, this Primer seeks to identify lessons learned and success factors that influence the design and operationalization of PDFs. It aims to paint a clear picture of how and why PDFs can support the development of PPP programs to assist policy makers in understanding whether a PDF can help to address their particular PPP program challenges. Where practitioners are developing a PDF, this Primer provides detailed information on PDF design features to assist them in establishing a PDF that will deliver on its objectives.
Regulating the Digital Economy in Africa: Managing Old and New Risks to Economic Governance for Inclusive Opportunities
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-29) Begazo, Tania; Stinshoff, Clara; Niesten, Hannelore; Pop, Georgiana; Chen, Rong; Coelho, Gonçalo
While digital technologies offer enormous benefits to the economy and society, they also expose citizens, firms, and markets to risks. This report focuses on understanding these risks to economic governance of the digital economy in African countries and proposes actions to mitigate them, enhancing the possibility of a virtuous cycle enabled by digital technologies. This report emphasizes risks of unfair and unbalanced market outcomes and misuse of personal and commercial data, complementing the World Bank report Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs, which focuses on closing the digital divide for households and enterprises. It analyzes the current context of digital market players and government actors along the digital value chain, including characteristics that could limit the development of inclusive, efficient, and competitive markets. The report distinguishes traditional and new risks to robust governance of the digital sector in Africa. Traditional risks affect a fundamental pillar of the digital economy: digital infrastructure that provides connectivity to access digital services. These traditional risks are related to the regulatory governance of digital infrastructure and channels through which the state obtains direct revenues from the sector: taxation and parafiscal fees on digital infrastructure and state-owned and state-linked enterprises. New risks are related to data and data-driven digital services that are essential to digital services applications that can expand the benefits of the digital economy. These new risks are related to unfair market outcomes because of weak competition and misuse of data. Finally, the report presents a framework to assess the level of risks to good economic governance in a country and recommendations to mitigate them.
Digital Economy for Latin America and the Caribbean - Country Diagnostic: Ecuador
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-02-12) World Bank
Ecuador has made significant progress on the adoption of digital technologies over the past decade. Despite these advances, millions of Ecuadorians, particularly those in rural areas, continue to be excluded from the digital economy because of affordability constraints, uneven infrastructure, and gaps in digital skills. Accelerating the adoption of digital technologies and addressing inequities in digital access can help Ecuador achieve its development goals. This report provides recommendations to support the effective implementation of Ecuador’s Digital Transformation Agenda 2022–2025. Universal internet access and digital transformation can help the country promote productivity and competitiveness in the non-extractive sectors, foster sustainable growth, create better jobs, and bridge inequalities, particularly the urban-rural divide as concerns the indigenous populations. The government’s commitment to digital transformation to address its development challenges is evident in the newly passed agenda, which includes digital infrastructure as axis number one. This report provides Ecuadorian authorities with recommendations for implementing the agenda across six pillars: digital infrastructure, digital public platforms, digital financial services, digital businesses, digital skills, and the trust environment. Key recommendations include legal and regulatory reforms to address affordability barriers to internet access, foster fintech and e-commerce ecosystems, and enhance cybersecurity. Ecuador’s digital transformation will also require investments in fixed and mobile infrastructure and international bandwidth, as well as in digital public platforms, to improve user experience and interoperability. Guiding student progress in digital skills from primary to higher education and digitizing government payments are also key reform areas.