USAID General Publications From Principle to Practice: Implementing the Principle for Digital Development

For over a decade the international development community has been exploring how the use of digital technologies, including tools like the mobile phone, can extend the reach of development. At the same time, development organizations have grappled with how to use these technologies to make their own work more participatory, sustainable, and efective.

The results have been mixed. Some projects have succeeded, enabling improved and sustained access to information and services that previously were out of reach for marginalized populations. Other projects have failed, often due to preventable reasons, resulting in hundreds, if not thousands of projects being unable to scale.

In the late 2000s, several donors and multilateral organizations began talking about failure in using digital tools to support development. Soon, sets of principles, lessons, and best practices started emerging, beginning with the UNICEF Innovation Principles in 2009. One year later, a group of mHealth implementers and donors independently developed a diferent set of principles known as the Greentree Principles. The Principles for Digital Development (Principles) were created through the integration and refnement of these two previous sets of principles.