With the advent of accessible digital technology more than a decade ago, international development organizations began seeking new ways of including digital tools in their programming for improved outcomes. These efforts were initially quite successful; significant advancements occurred in various sectors such as health and agriculture, more communities around the globe were connected, and underserved populations were reached in a way that had not been possible before. However, some digitally-enabled programs failed – and quite often that failure was for reasons that were both predictable and preventable.

The Principles are not meant to be stagnant, nor compulsory. They are a set of living guidance intended to help practitioners succeed in applying digital technologies to development programs. Over time, the Digital Principles may change as they are updated and modified to fit specific contexts and environments. The Digital Principles community plays a key role in ensuring the Principles are still relevant and useful.

The nine principles are:

• Design with the user
• Understand the existing ecosystem
• Design scalable (Design for scale)
• Consider sustainability from the very beginning (Build for sustainability)
• Be data driven
• Use open standards, open data, open source software and open innovation
• Reuse and improve things
• Observe data protection and (data) security (Address privacy and security)
• Handle cooperative (Be collaborative)