Digital public goods have these characteristics:

  • they are goods with benefits that potentially extend to all countries, people, and generations;
  • they are public in the traditional economic sense as opposed to private; and global as opposed to national;
  • they are non rivalrous (the marginal cost of providing the good is 0 or nearly so );
  • they are non excludable.

They could be software, standards, data and content, including creative works with licensing and design making it possible to scale widely, in different contexts, and to be adapted for contextual needs.


Further reading