This article relates to Goal 17: Partnerships for the goals, one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Goal icon by the United Nations. Emberoot is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the UN.
Partnerships run on shared information. When donors, governments, companies and charities cannot see the same numbers, money is duplicated, gaps go unnoticed and trust erodes. That is why technology and data sit inside SDG 17 itself: targets 17.6 to 17.8 cover science, technology and innovation, and targets 17.18 and 17.19 cover statistics. This article looks at where SDG 17 technology has made a measurable difference, with named examples, and where it has not.
Open data that makes aid traceable
The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) was launched in Accra in September 2008. It is an open data standard: donors, development banks and NGOs publish what they plan to spend and what they spent, in a common format that anyone can download. By October 2022 it had passed 1,500 publishers. In September 2025 the Digital Public Goods Alliance recognised IATI data as a digital public good, linked to SDG 17.
The value is practical. A health ministry can see which donors are funding which districts. A journalist can check whether a promise turned into a payment. With aid falling by a record 23.1% in 2025, knowing where the remaining money goes matters more, not less.
Open-source platforms countries control
Two examples show how shared software can serve many countries at once.
- DHIS2 is a health information platform coordinated by the HISP Centre at the University of Oslo and released under the BSD 3-clause licence. It is used by more than 80 low- and middle-income countries as their national system for health data, and in over 100 countries once NGO programmes are counted.
- MOSIP, the Modular Open Source Identity Platform, was built at IIIT-Bangalore in India with Gates Foundation funding. By August 2023 the Philippines, Ethiopia and Morocco had national deployments, with more than 90 million people registered.
Both follow the logic of target 17.6: knowledge shared on agreed terms, so that a country does not have to buy or build everything alone and can keep control of its own system.
Digital public infrastructure campaigns
In November 2023, eleven “first-mover” countries, including Bangladesh, Estonia, Ethiopia, Senegal, Singapore and Togo, launched the 50-in-5 campaign. The goal is for 50 countries to design, launch and scale at least one piece of digital public infrastructure, such as digital ID, payments or data exchange, by the end of 2028. UNDP, the Digital Public Goods Alliance and the Gates Foundation are among the partners. It is a Goal 17 partnership in its plainest form: countries sharing designs and lessons rather than starting from zero.
Better statistics, better decisions
The UN reports that the average Open Data Inventory score passed 50 out of 100 for the first time, and that 163 countries had statistical laws meeting the UN’s principles in 2025 (UN Goal 17 progress). Tools for census processing, survey collection on tablets and open data portals help. So does AI for tasks such as classifying survey answers or spotting errors, though it needs careful checking against ground truth.
The limits of SDG 17 technology
Technology does not fix the main gaps in Goal 17. A few limits are worth stating plainly.
- Access is uneven. ITU estimates that 2.2 billion people were offline in 2025, and only 23% of people in low-income countries use the internet.
- Software needs people. Platforms like DHIS2 depend on trained local teams and steady funding, which aid cuts put at risk.
- Data needs rules. ID and health systems hold sensitive personal data, so privacy law, consent and oversight have to come first.
- Code cannot restructure debt or change trade rules. Those are political choices.
Before building new software for a development partner, check the Digital Public Goods Alliance registry. An open tool may already do most of the job.
What this means for businesses building tools
If you build software for NGOs, governments or development partners, design for open standards, low bandwidth and data portability, and plan who maintains the system after launch. Our web app and SaaS work and technology advice both start with a written scope and end with the client owning the code. For more on the goal, see the Goal 17 page and the Global Goals hub.
Frequently asked questions
How does technology support SDG 17?
SDG 17 includes targets on science, technology, innovation and data. Technology helps by making information shared and comparable: open data standards such as IATI show where aid goes, open-source platforms such as DHIS2 and MOSIP let countries run health and ID systems they control, and better statistical tools improve national data. It supports partnerships but cannot replace funding or policy.
What is a digital public good?
A digital public good is open-source software, open data, an open AI model, an open standard or open content that follows privacy and good-practice rules and helps achieve the SDGs. The Digital Public Goods Alliance runs a registry of recognised examples. IATI data was recognised in September 2025, and it lists SDG 17 as its main link.
What are the risks of digital tools in development?
The main risks are exclusion, since 2.2 billion people were offline in 2025; misuse of personal data in ID or health systems; and systems that stop working when funding or skilled staff run out. Good projects plan for privacy law, consent, local ownership and long-term maintenance from the start, and keep offline options for people who need them.