Digital Public Infrastructure: The Law Before the Code

Layers from The Seven Layer Model

The False Choice Between Speed and Law

The café opens at seven. The owner has her inspectors’ forms in a folder and a permit number on her phone. She paid the fee, passed the checklist, and watched a green tick appear. Three weeks later a complaint lands in court and the number means nothing. The platform issued it, but the law never did. The interface delivered speed. It did not deliver authority.

I designed the Seven-Layer Model so that Digital Public Infrastructure begins in public law, not in configuration. A digital act acquires public meaning only when legal authority creates it, a competent institution owns it, and people can challenge it. The legal architecture of the model states the governing rule with clarity. Legal sequence precedes code execution, and deployment must begin with law, not with software.

Why Digital Public Infrastructure Begins in Law

Digital Public Infrastructure is not a technical artefact. It is a legal institution whose legitimacy arises from statutory authority, institutional mandate, and procedural accountability. Each layer corresponds to a legal source, to a named custodian, and to an enforceable function. No layer may substitute for another, which prevents premature deployment and blocks shortcuts that would bypass statutory obligations.

When programmes invert this order, transactions occur without governance. Code begins to govern first and law arrives too late, so compliance statements cannot restore legitimacy to logic that was defined before the state assigned the function. A legal act that cannot show its authorising law, its responsible institution, and its route to reversal is not an act of governance. It is automation without law.

Tracing a Decision: The Full Circuit from Law to Remedy

A lawful licensing decision begins when the legislature defines purpose and scope. The mandate then assigns the function to a named public institution that accepts liability and sits within a supervisory chain. Eligibility is verified against canonical records designated in law. Only then does automation mirror the enacted procedure, with an auditable lineage from rules to legal texts. The competent authority issues a decision that is attributable and appealable. The public interface preserves legal effect, records receipt, and allows objection. Independent bodies can review a case and reverse it when necessary. This is the full circuit from legal origin to remedy.  

This sequence is not a performance ideal. It is a jurisdictional requirement. A system may not execute a service unless its purpose is defined in law, its custodian is appointed, and its data dependencies are registered. Sequencing protects rights and ensures that institutional control does not drift into platform defaults.  

The public interface carries legal meaning only when it preserves access to rights. Delivery channels must keep the legal effect of the issued decision intact and must allow contestation, objection, and appeal. A user-friendly system is not lawful unless it also upholds enforceable access.  

What Fails When the Sequence Is Skipped

When configuration stands in for law, power shifts from public institutions to software logic and interface defaults. The result is not efficiency. It is a simulation of governance that erases the legal context determining who may act, under what authority, and with what consequences. The Seven-Layer Model answers this by insisting that legitimacy arises only when legal delegation, institutional mandate, and procedural remedy are present and operational.  

The point of fulfilment occurs only when a recognised authority issues a decision with binding force. Outputs that simulate decision points without fulfilling legal prerequisites collapse the legitimacy of governance. Interfaces then cannot rescue the situation because delivery without admissibility does not activate rights.  

A New Mandate for Donors: Proving Jurisdiction Before Funding

Acceleration is not capacity if it bypasses jurisdiction. Donor-driven deployments that introduce identity, consent, or eligibility before law and mandate displace public authorship with platform logic. Projects may appear efficient, but authority no longer rests with the state. The model requires proof of legal origin, proof of institutional control, and proof of contestability before funds activate, so that flexibility serves law rather than replaces it.  

The principle is simple to verify. Infrastructure must operate in alignment with the legal sequence that defines institutional authority. That means the function is authorised in law, the custodian is appointed, registries are designated, orchestration follows authorised acts, decisions are attributable, delivery preserves entitlements, and remedy is available.  

A Short Story of Reversal

Return to the café owner. The dispute is resolved not because the system shows a green tick, but because the decision can be traced back to a law, to an institution with authority, to canonical records, to a lawful procedure, and to a public interface that preserved legal effect. When an error appears, a supervisor or a court can reverse it. That capacity to reverse is the signature of sovereignty in Digital Public Infrastructure.

The Control Structure for Lawful DPI

Legal sequence precedes code execution. That sentence is not rhetoric. It is the control structure that keeps Digital Public Infrastructure inside the public legal order. A system becomes lawful not because it performs a task, but because it performs that task under authorised conditions. Where the chain is complete, people remain rights holders, institutions remain accountable, and technology serves constitutional authority.