From Promise to Progress: Celebrating the Inaugural 50-in-5 Awards – Collaboration
Welcome to From Promise to Progress: Celebrating the Inaugural 50-in-5 Awards, a three-part blog series highlighting the countries and individuals driving transformative digital public infrastructure around the world.
What can countries achieve when they use digital public infrastructure to build stronger economies and more resilient communities? In 2023, the 50-in-5 campaign was launched to help bring countries together to implement safe, inclusive and interoperable digital public infrastructure (DPI). The goal of the campaign is to enable 50 countries to design, implement, and scale at least one component of their DPI by 2028.
Today, 41 countries are part of the growing 50-in-5 community, drawing from one another’s experiences, sharing knowledge and technology, building on what works and learning together from what doesn’t. Over the past three years, participating countries have come together through workshops, roundtables, ministerial meetings, and peer learning exchanges to share lessons and best practices in DPI. In 2026 alone, countries participated in 24 virtual and in-person events, including learning programs on evolving DPI safeguards and the integration of AI into DPI implementation. These exchanges are helping bring the vision of 50-in-5 to life, creating a space for governments and partners to accelerate implementation, reduce costs, and sustain the momentum of their digital transformation efforts.
At the halfway point of the campaign, the inaugural 50-in-5 Awards recognise the countries and people delivering real-world progress through DPI. Across the categories of Impact, Collaboration, and Leadership, the Awards highlight the individuals, partnerships, and innovations behind DPI implementations that are helping build stronger economies and improve the well-being of people.
“Keep people and real-world impact at the center of your DPI implementations, remembering that it is an enabler, not the goal in itself. Share what you’re learning so others can benefit, and invest in the people and solutions—including digital public goods—needed to sustain this work. Through 50-in-5, we can work together to accelerate safe, inclusive, and interoperable DPI around the world,” shared Jon Lloyd, Director of Advocacy and 50-in-5, DPGA Secretariat.
This year’s honorees exemplify what effective DPI looks like in practice and why cooperation matters, particularly at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and rapid technological change. Let us meet the people and countries behind these achievements.
Collaboration | Unlocking Regional Power Across Borders
Collaboration Award: QRIS Cross-Border | Bank Indonesia, Republic of Indonesia
Working together helps countries strengthen DPI implementation without starting from scratch. The Collaboration Award recognises efforts that tackle shared challenges, often across borders. Through the 50-in-5 community, governments and partners connect, learn from one another, and build on existing DPI knowledge, technology, and networks for better outcomes.
This year’s winner, Indonesia, demonstrates why cooperation is important through the QRIS Cross-Border initiative. Developed alongside Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, and China, the initiative connects payment systems across countries, allowing people to make payments abroad using the mobile banking and e-wallet applications they already use at home. This required alignment across different technologies, regulations, and currencies, as no country could provide seamless cross-border payments alone.
The initiative now reaches more than 45.3 million businesses, of which 96 percent are micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Easier cross-border transactions are helping these businesses serve more customers and participate more actively in a connected regional economy.
Just as importantly, the initiative shows how cooperation and sovereignty can go hand in hand. Indonesia’s experience demonstrates how countries maintain control over their own regulations and policies while benefiting from stronger regional partnerships on DPI implementation.
“When we talk about QRIS Cross-Border, it’s not just about connecting payment systems. It’s about using the payment system to promote financial and economic inclusion. The QRIS Cross-Border, has at least two impacts: the first is accessibility, and the second is inclusivity. Accessibility means making cross-border payments more efficient, accessible, easier, and more transparent. And the second one, for inclusivity, opens new opportunities for small businesses, particularly micro, small, and medium enterprises,” shared Filianingsih Hendarta, Deputy Governor, Bank Indonesia.
Collaboration Runner-Up: Cross-Border Digital ID (Brazil-Uruguay) | AGESIC, Uruguay
Agencia de Gobierno Electrónico y Sociedad de la Información y del Conocimiento (AGESIC) and the Government of Uruguay were named runner-up for the Brazil–Uruguay Cross-Border Digital ID initiative, which advances interoperability between the two countries’ digital identity systems.
What’s Next
Across the globe, we are seeing champions of digital public goods turn the promise of DPI into real outcomes. From expanding access to services in Benin, to strengthening regional cooperation in Indonesia, to advancing people-centered leadership in Brazil, these stories show that the vision behind 50-in-5 is no longer an aspiration. It is already becoming a reality, improving lives and creating opportunities for millions of people.
As the inaugural 50-in-5 Awards showed, sustaining this momentum will take continued commitment. Countries must keep people’s experiences at the centre of DPI, share practical lessons, explore reusing technology, and invest in the people and digital public goods behind lasting progress. Measuring real-world outcomes will help countries build on what works and address the challenges that remain.
As the campaign reaches its halfway point, this year’s honorees offer examples of what is possible, along with helpful takeaways for countries at every stage of their DPI journeys. We look forward to seeing what they achieve next—and to celebrating more of that progress at the 2027 50-in-5 Awards.