Digital Cooperation Fund 

Objectives

Fund scope

In an era of rapid technological change, associated benefits need to be safely spread to ensure an open and free digital future for all. This includes strategic, multistakeholder collective action across borders where governance and human rights are aligned on digital public infrastructure and artificial intelligence issues. Moreover, it involves pooling capacities and data to develop better algorithms that address societal challenges by augmenting the frequency and intensity of learning across borders to enhance human capacities and turbocharge digital transformation.

Inspired by the Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, as well as the Common Agenda, Digital Cooperation Fund stakeholders strive to strengthen digital cooperation for the global common good. This is done primarily through cross-agency joint programming and improved cooperation on artificial intelligence, digital public goods, protection of human rights in the digital era, digital trust and security, and a stronger architecture for digital cooperation. The Fund incubates multi-disciplinary initiatives that contribute accelerating SDGs 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 13, in particular.

Moreover, the Digital Cooperation Fund makes concentrated investments in targeted action areas of the Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation. Collaborators focus on areas that remain under-addressed, require international, cross-border and global multi-stakeholder collective action, and move beyond national-level digital transformation to adopt international pooled expertise, data, algorithms, and alignment with digital governance with human rights across jurisdictions.

Strategic action and theory of change

The Digital Cooperation Fund complements the geographic and thematic foci of Joint SDG Fund country-level activities on digital transformation. Across pillars, Digital Cooperation Fund partners uphold human dignity, agency and rights in the digital age in tandem with accelerating progress on the SDGs. This is achieved by:

• Promoting collaboration across borders and groups to set common frames of reference.
• Building global consensus on risks and opportunities of digital technologies and promoting international learning on governance gaps and responses.
• Showcasing how data and AI collaboration can drive SDG progress, address talent and infrastructure challenges, and improve data interoperability across borders and sectors.
• Promoting ecosystem driven (rather than solution-led) approaches founded on digital public infrastructure (DPIs) and data.
• Reinforcing DPI governance and data to enhance trust in technology for users and innovators that protects human rights.
• Focusing on public sector capacity building and a whole-of-government/whole-of-society approach to digital transformation.

Stakeholders use a multi-pronged approach to ignite and sustain digital cooperation at tactical levels. This helps galvanise international collective action on key issues at critical times to shape global digital cooperation in support of the fund mission, vision and SDG achievement. Fund outcomes or pillars (digital cooperation on AI governance, digital cooperation for safe and inclusive DPI, global digital cooperation) align with Roadmap action areas and are strategically timed for stakeholder engagement and impact. Initial pillars target critical policy windows around a Global Digital Compact while additional pillars support new policy areas and donor interest in the Secretary-General’s Roadmap on Digital Cooperation.

The Digital Cooperation Fund takes strategic and coordinated approaches to selecting and executing projects that ensure complementarity with existing and emerging initiatives across geographic and thematic areas.

Governance

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Steering Committee
The decision-making body of the Fund, members provide high-level strategic direction for management and operational oversight. Responsibilities include approving allocations of all contributions across and within pillars, reviewing criteria for the spread of available resources, reviewing and updating the fund management strategy and project-level risks, and overseeing the fund resource mobilization and external partnership and public relation strategies.

Secretariat
The Secretariat is responsible for fund operational function, providing technical and administrative support to the Steering Committee. Members also follow up on all aspects of financial allocation and fund project cycles.

Technical Committees
The Fund Secretariat also functions as the Technical Committee of the Fund. It reaches out to experts to advise the Secretariat on priorities for allocations, and review proposals submitted for funding, ensuring conformity, as well as periodic progress reports submitted by Participating Organizations.

Participating Organizations
Participating United Nations Organizations develop project/programme proposals, and report on implementation and financial performance to the Steering Committee through the Secretariat and Administrative Agent. Organizations establish mechanisms to implement activities through national authorities and other national, regional, and international organizations and local NGOs.

Administrative Agent
Recipient Organizations receive funds through the Administrative Agent, the MPTF Office. The Administrative Agent is responsible for the receipt, administration and management of contributions from donors, disbursement of funds to Recipient Organizations, and consolidation and dissemination of progress reports to donors. 

Projects

Digital Cooperation Fund

Digital Cooperation Fund is currently supporting count_projects ongoing projectscount_globalInterregional and count_countries country-specific. This table shows the most recently approved ongoing projects.

All project financial information can be found in the Financials section, including delivery analysis by organization, theme and project; project financial status by country and by theme.

Digital Cooperation Fund

ContactsPoints of contact