The UK should own and mandate the common standards and digital infrastructure on which a competitive private market can grow. At present, it doesn’t. 

The UK’s digital foundations are fragmented, with critical data and infrastructure scattered across hundreds of systems and providers. In too many areas, the state acts more like a tenant than an owner: renting access to data from private firms, rather than setting the rules itself. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. India’s digital public infrastructure built a public layer for the digital economy - digital ID, payments, data-sharing - rather than leaving the private sector to build it. This forced competition - the result was not less innovation, but a vibrant market where private firms and public bodies compete. 

There is also a homegrown example. Open Banking, launched in 2018 when regulators required major banks to widen access through common technical standards, now serves 15 million people a month. Open Banking now lets individuals budget, switch mortgages, share data with their accountant, or make payments - all without going through a card network. A £4 billion ecosystem of new providers has grown up, all meeting a common British standard. The banks were not nationalised, the citizen holds the consent, and the rest of the world has been copying it ever since. 

What if we extended this logic, building shared digital 'rails' on which public services and private innovation can run?

Imagine Olivia, born in 2030. Her first interaction with the state links her to digital public infrastructure: developmental milestones are recorded once in a digital red book, instead of manually in a paper book. As she grows up, critical moments are seamless. Leaving school, entering work, renting a flat, buying a home, getting married or retiring no longer require navigating dozens of disconnected systems or repeatedly proving her identity. 

But she benefits in other ways too. The shared infrastructure she grows up with creates entirely new opportunities for innovation. In her 20s, she launches a company helping families care for elderly relatives. With consent, her service can securely access information from health services, local authorities, benefit systems and care providers through common national standards. Families can manage appointments, entitlements and support in one place. Rather than spend years negotiating access to dozens of incompatible systems, Amelia is able to focus on building a better service. Public infrastructure has made private innovation easier. 

This is what quality makes digital public infrastructure truly distinct from other policy interventions. It enables the transformation of all sectors and services. Planning reform, the energy transition, and healthcare innovation all depend on data moving freely between systems. With the digital foundations established, progress elsewhere becomes much easier. 

Digital public infrastructure is the key to a generational reboot of public services and economic growth. It would give the government control over the systems that essential services depend on, while driving stronger market competition and innovation in the wider economy. AI makes the case for change even more urgent - the powerful AI needed for future services cannot work without robust data infrastructure.

The political mood in Britain is increasingly shaped by a desire to take back control of the systems that matter most. Years of outsourcing, fragmentation, and piecemeal reform have left many citizens feeling that the government does not have control. Yet the debate about public control is too often focused on last century’s ownership models for last century’s technologies. 

Digital public infrastructure offers a different answer. It is not about the state doing everything, but about the state owning and governing the foundations: setting standards, mandating interoperability and ensuring infrastructure serves the public interest. 

Control comes not from operating every service, but from owning the rails on which services run.