The Seven Layer Model Blog

Insight is a writing series on Digital Public Infrastructure and the legal architecture required for Digital Public Functions to remain lawful, attributable, and contestable as Digital Public Services scale. Topics include institutional mandate, canonical registries, service orchestration, execution and fulfilment, public interfaces and rights, and oversight and remedy.

Wallet ecosystems shift fee collection from paper attestations to priced trust transactions across DPI, DPF, and DPS, governed through attributable, auditable, reversible outcomes

Wallet ecosystems as a funding and governance pivot: governing fee migration into priced trust transactions

Paper-era fees do not disappear. They migrate into priced trust transactions that fund consent and attestation lifecycles, identification, authentication, and signatures. Governments can keep DPI solvent and innovative by standardising transaction classes in procurement and statutory fee schedules, and charging only where outcomes are attributable, auditable, and reversible.

Ott Sarv

Feb 67 min read

Editorial photo of seven translucent layers with one layer shifted out of alignment, symbolising governance drift in Digital Public Infrastructure.

The DPI trap: when governance guidance becomes a platform launch

Digital Public Infrastructure keeps working even when legality, evidence, and remedy are missing. That is the trap. This essay explains governance drift and boundary drift, then sets out sequencing gates that keep DPI distinct from digital public services and digital public goods, using the Seven Layer Model as a practical test.

Ott Sarv

Sep 29, 20256 min read