Connecting Human, Animal, and Farm: A Case for Investing in Animal ID for DPI

Researchers from the University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose define Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as ‘shared digital systems that support service delivery, foster innovation, and enable social and economic development.’ Building on this foundation, the 2025 Global DPI Summit marked a shift from theory to practical implementation, raising pressing questions about how DPI adoption and scale could be expanded. Successful DPI implementation will depend not only on the speed of deployment but, more importantly, on user adoption and the development of connected services that enable social and economic outcomes. Looking ahead, such implementation will require deeper integration of DPI into key sectors and precise alignment with core user needs and services.

DPI can enable agriculture investments to achieve scale, breaking down siloes and reducing the fragmentation that often prevents digital opportunities from having a widespread impact.  The transformative potential of DPI implementation in agriculture is widely recognized – for example, farmers that register land, livestock, and crops using a government ID can unlock access to critical services that transform their productivity. Farmers can similarly use registered cattle as collateral to expand their access to markets; they can also use livestock data to speed up disease tracing and quickly identify and contain public threats during emergencies.

This policy brief explores animal identification (Animal ID) – a largely under-explored and under-integrated component of DPI for agriculture frameworks. It outlines what effective DPI for animals can look like and highlights the benefits of investing in it.