Recognising both the risk and the opportunity that digital technology presents for development, individuals, development organisations and donors began exploring how best to surface and spread best practice in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) tools. These discussions culminated in the Principles for Digital Development, a common set of ground rules that aim to institutionalise the many hard lessons learned in the use of information and communication technologies in development (ICT4D) projects. The nine principles can be adopted by anyone using digital as a means of delivering development outcomes and are intended to serve as guidance rather than edict. They are meant to be updated and refined over time.
The nine principles are as follows:
- Design with the user
- Understand the existing ecosystem
- Design for scale
- Build for sustainability
- Be data driven
- Use open standards, open data, open source and open innovation
- Reuse and improve
- Address privacy and security
- Be collaborative