Banner caption: Paul N. Wagner, Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Digital Service, and Liv Marte Nordhaug, Chief Executive Officer of the Digital Public Goods Alliance, formalize Canada’s membership in the DPGA.
Strengthening Canada’s commitment to delivering modern, equitable, and reusable digital services for people across the country and around the world.
The Government of Canada (GC), represented by the Canadian Digital Service (CDS), is pleased to announce its membership in the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), a multi-stakeholder United Nations (UN) endorsed initiative that facilitates the discovery and deployment of Digital Public Goods (DPGs). DPGs are open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards, and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices, do no harm, and help attain the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Membership with the DPGA facilitates the sharing of digital solutions between countries and public institutions, reduces development costs by pooling resources, and enables faster adoption of technological tools across different sectors.
Enhancing Canada’s Digital Public Goods (DPGs)
The DPGA Secretariat maintains a global DPG Registry, a catalogue of DPGs that are open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable international and domestic laws, standards and best practices and do no harm.
CDS Platform products (GC Notify, GC Forms, and the GC Design System) like many of the ones from international counterparts, are created to function as DPGs and components of the broader Canadian public infrastructure. They are open-source and readily available for re-use across jurisdictions and sectors. CDS products are also interoperable and are underpinned by strong safeguards enabling broad access and incremental collaborative improvement. These will soon be submitted to the DPG Registry.
“As the Government of Canada continues to modernize and adapt its service delivery to leverage digital technologies, we are very pleased to join the Digital Public Goods Alliance. International peers have shown how open digital systems, for example Singapore’s FormSG and Estonia’s X-Road, can transform service delivery across sectors. Canada’s membership builds on these examples while offering our own proven solutions to partners facing similar challenge.”
— Paul N. Wagner, Chief Executive Officer of CDS
“Canada joining the DPGA serves as a reminder of who we are as an alliance. The country has demonstrated international leadership over several years through its active reuse and sharing of open-source products, exemplified by the CDS Platform products that will now be shared as DPGs. Canada’s emphasis on the virtuous cycle of both benefiting from and contributing back to the open-source community sets a great example for other countries.”
— Liv Marte Nordhaug, Chief Executive Officer of the DPGA
Facilitating international collaboration on DPGs
Membership and access to the DPGA’s collection of DPGs will enable a plurality of trusted, hands on interactions between Canada at the federal level, and member countries whose software has already been vetted technically as ready for adoption (e.g., free of proprietary dependencies or with open alternatives). This leads to a more efficient pathway to identifying, adopting, and scaling digital solutions for the benefit of people in Canada.
Canada’s Commitment to the DPGA
CDS’s work aligns with that of the DPGA in many ways, including these three initiatives that will be included as part of the DPGA’s Annual Roadmap for 2026:
- Advancing and maintaining DPGs developed by the Government of Canada: Share and grow the GC’s impactful open-source products so they can be discovered, reused, and adapted globally to support digital transformation efforts.
- Demonstrating sustained Government of Canada commitment to DPGs: Publicly document and share the GC’s ongoing work around DPGs, as well as alignment between how the GC works and the DPG Standard using blog posts and other channels to create momentum and transparency.
- Sharing Government of Canada DPGs with other jurisdictions: Build on previous initiatives that deployed products such as GC Notify in Canadian provinces more broadly across Canada. In 2026 and beyond, CDS will continue to explore what sharing and successfully deploying solutions from the Government of Canada to other Canadian jurisdictions might look like. .
- Co-developing and validating DPG maturity models: Refine, validate, and co-design maturity models that assess the readiness, sustainability, and scalability of DPGs, contributing domain expertise and supporting the integration of specific lenses (e.g., equity, interoperability, governance) into various models.
Looking ahead
CDS looks forward to continuing to collaborate with the DPGA and its members on work that has positive societal impacts not only domestically but also across the globe. In parallel, CDS will continue to facilitate cross-jurisdictional partnerships and adoption to drive national impact and enable shared service pathways and common standards, building on prior pilots and existing partnership agreements. This will empower the government to build and sustain critical components common to most digital services once, reducing duplication in departments and ultimately boosting Canada’s economic resilience and productivity.
Federal Canadian public servants that are aware of additional open-source GC digital solutions that may meet the DPG Standard are encouraged to get in touch with CDS to explore further collaboration.
Learn more about the DPGA on their website, follow their blog, and subscribe to the DPGA mailing list.