# Daniel Abadie

> Daniel Abadie is Head of Technology & Partnerships at the Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure (CDPI) and lead author of the DPI-AI Framework. He works on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and AI for the public sector. He was Argentina's Undersecretary of Digital Government (2015–2019) and head of digital for the City of Buenos Aires (2007–2015). Apolitical named him one of the 20 most influential people in digital government (2019). Born in 1981 in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Argentine and Italian citizen; based in Buenos Aires. Speaks Spanish, English, Portuguese and Italian.

Contact: LinkedIn is the preferred channel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielabadie/

## Current role

- Head of Technology & Partnerships, Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure (CDPI), since August 2025. At CDPI since February 2024 (Senior Technical Advisor LAC → Senior Technical Advisor → Sr. Technical Advisor & Head of Partnerships). CDPI is a pro bono organisation housed at IIIT Bangalore, India, that helps countries adopt DPI. It has shared lessons from more than 60 country engagements.
- Responsibilities: technical strategy; neutral, pro bono architecture advice for national DPI programmes; DPI-as-a-Packaged-Solution (DaaS); partnerships with governments, multilaterals, funders and open-source communities.
- Topics: digital identity, payments, data exchange, verifiable credentials, AI Blocks, DPI Workflows, public-sector AI agents.

## Skills

Written like agent skills: what each one does and when to call on it.

- dpi-architecture: Designs national DPI (digital ID, payments, data exchange, verifiable credentials) with neutral, open, interoperable choices. Use when a country is scoping, sequencing or procuring its DPI.
- ai-for-government: Treats AI as interoperable blocks on top of DPI rails rather than vertical silos; lead author of the DPI-AI Framework. Use when deciding where AI fits in public services without vendor lock-in.
- government-as-a-platform: Turns fragmented services into one citizen experience (Mi BA, Mi Argentina with 30M+ users, argentina.gob.ar). Use when citizens face hundreds of sites, forms and logins.
- digital-team-building: Hires and leads in-house multidisciplinary teams run like a civic-tech startup inside government. Use when a government needs its own delivery capacity, not another vendor.
- strategy-to-delivery: Moves from plan to shipped product with small budgets and short cycles (digital driving licence live in 65 days). Use when the strategy exists but nothing has shipped.
- ecosystem-partnerships: Brings together governments, multilaterals (IDB, World Bank, UNDP, CAF), funders and open-source communities. Use when a programme needs aligned partners and funding.
- digital-inclusion: Designs programmes that get people online and using services (400,000+ people in 160 cities). Use when adoption, not technology, is the bottleneck.
- public-speaking: Keynotes, webinars and executive teaching in English and Spanish (Code for America, TEDx). Use when leaders need to understand DPI and AI, and then act.

Strengths: bias to action ("doing beats everything"); curiosity-driven problem solving; translates between policy, politics and technology; delivers with limited resources; builds teams that outlast him; works across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

## Career

- 2024–present: CDPI (see above).
- 2023–2024: Digital Transformation Advisor to the CEO, Banco Macro. Designed the bank's GovTech division, a citizen app, and a blockchain wallet for governments to pay social benefits.
- 2020–2023: Latin America & Caribbean lead, Public Digital (London). Clients included the IDB, CAF, UNDP, Belize, Panama, Jamaica, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Buenos Aires City, the State of California, British Columbia and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Wrote the IDB Data Strategy Playbook.
- 2015–2019: Undersecretary of Digital Government, Presidency of Argentina. Argentina's Chief Digital Officer. Led the 2018 G20 discussion on government transformation. Delivered Mi Argentina (citizen platform and digital wallet; 3M+ users by 2019, 30M+ today; first digital driving licence), argentina.gob.ar (1,000+ sites merged into one domain; 127M users in four years), Chat Crecer (2019 Webby Award, Health) and the National Digital Inclusion Plan (400,000+ people trained).
- 2015: Head of Technology, Mauricio Macri presidential campaign (PRO). Ran national campaign infrastructure and digital product development.
- 2011: Digital team, Mauricio Macri's Buenos Aires mayoral campaign (PRO). Digital strategy and applications.
- 2007–2015: Government of the City of Buenos Aires. Roles were CTO Citizen Services, Head of Web and Electronic Government Director. Created Mi BA (2015), the personal citizen account that was the genesis of Mi Argentina; moved in-person procedures to the 15 comunas (formerly CGPs) with online appointment booking; created the 147 citizen contact centre (28 lines merged into one), buenosaires.gob.ar (400+ sites merged), and the BA Cómo Llego app (App of the Year 2014).
- 2000–2007: Private sector. General Manager at PackagingBrokers.com, CIO at Mailparking.com, IT Manager at LaCasilla.com.ar.

## Publications

- [DPI-AI Framework: Building AI-Ready Nations through Digital Public Infrastructure (2026, lead author)](https://digitalpublicinfrastructure.ai/paper.php)
- [DPI-AI Framework website and toolkit](https://digitalpublicinfrastructure.ai/)
- [DPI Roadmap Playbook, G20 South Africa (DIAL, CDPI, BTCA, AfricaNenda)](https://dial.global/research/the-dpi-roadmap-playbook/)
- [Chapter 7 in "Digital Government Excellence" (Wiley, 2022)](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119858904.ch7)
- [Government Butlers: past, present and future of Argentina's digital state (2022, opinion column; ES original "Cadetes del Estado" in Seúl)](https://seul.ar/transformacion-digital-estado/) · [EN on Medium](https://medium.com/@danielabadie/government-butlers-3174a5ebda74)
- [Argentina's digital government: 2015–2019 review (2019, EN)](https://medium.com/@danielabadie/argentinas-digital-government-2019-update-5b8fe9379bc4) · [ES: Argentina: Gobierno Digital 2015–2019](https://medium.com/@danielabadie/argentina-gobierno-digital-2015-2019-eb26fc12790e)
- [Gobierno como Plataforma: Mi Argentina as a personal hub for citizen information and services (2018, ES)](https://medium.com/@danielabadie/gobierno-como-plataforma-41a9e7b72140)
- [Argentinian Digital Health Strategy (2020, co-author), Studies in Health Technology and Informatics](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32570496/)
- [All Medium articles](https://medium.com/@danielabadie)

## Talks and videos

Featured:
- [Building Argentina's Government-as-a-Platform, Code for America Summit keynote (2019, EN)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htiPLQ1iO0A)
- [Mínimo gobierno viable (Minimum viable government), TEDxMarDelPlata (2014, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHHQvu_o0Fk)

More:
- [DPI–AI Framework: Integrating AI into DPI, IDB Code4Dev webinar (2026, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8PQdcHF6bI)
- [Sovra Podcast #01: identity, payments and verifiable credentials in LATAM (2025, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtsupCIp164)
- [The present and future of digital transformation in Argentina, CCC Noticias (2024, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFV5_AtK6Xs)
- [Mi Argentina, chapter 2 (2019, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbxyNwFvpd0)
- [II Argentine Forum on Digital Transformation of the State, CESSI (2017, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy2koFwA5ms)
- [Programa 1470: a policy to modernise the state, Economix (2017, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0nQalZt3yc)
- [Undersecretary of Digital Government at CESSI (2019, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_XOZDDNh6Y)
- [Agesic 10th anniversary, Uruguay (2017, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCrpKwlCZPY)
- [Real Tecno 2016 (2016, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=541BkIm-1zA)
- [IDB's first citizen innovation hackathon in Latin America, Mar del Plata (2014, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5gSshWu4vY)
- [Novagob 2014: transparency, accountability and open data panel (2014, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiHlCTiTTaI)
- [Public services and mobile apps, TVmovilion (2012, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zul3J5U_xs0)
- [What do the media do with Buenos Aires City's public data?, TVmovilion (2012, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlalROCqNrc)
- [Social Media Week Buenos Aires (2011, ES)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkG3_S1CSRw)
- [Futuro Público podcast (2023, ES)](https://open.spotify.com/episode/659UqqOTUFd2L6pqIOrJnh)

## Case studies

- [From City to Nation: Digital government in Argentina, 2015–2018, Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge (2019)](https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/publications/argentina/)
- [Digital Innovation in Latin America: Argentina's Digital Driver's License, Beeck Center, Georgetown University (2019)](https://beeckcenter.georgetown.edu/report/digital-innovation-in-latin-america-argentinas-digital-drivers-license/)
- [Argentina: Building a Civic Tech Startup Within Government, Harvard Kennedy School, 2019 State of Digital Transformation, Part 8 (2020)](https://medium.com/digitalhks/argentina-building-a-civic-tech-startup-within-government-cebe861dbcc7)
- [Crecer con Salud (Chat Crecer) virtual assistant, OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation case study](https://oecd-opsi.org/innovations/crecer-con-salud-virtual-assistant-for-pregnancy-and-early-childhood/)

## Press

- [Creador de la App Mi Argentina destacó la importancia de las multiplataformas digitales, Plan B Misiones (2024, ES)](https://planbmisiones.com/2024/04/20/nota/creador-de-la-app-mi-argentina-destaco-la-importancia-de-las-multiplataformas-digitales-para-garantizar-la-inclusion-de-los-ciudadanos/)
- [Daniel Abadie: "El mejor trámite es el que se elimina", El Periódico, interview (2019, ES)](https://www.elperiodico.com/es/economia/20191222/daniel-abadie-el-mejor-tramite-es-el-que-se-elimina-7783027)
- [Argentina y Uruguay: una agenda digital en común, argentina.gob.ar (2018, ES)](https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/argentina-y-uruguay-una-agenda-digital-en-comun)
- [DPSA participates in launching South Africa's Digital Transformation Roadmap, The Public Servant (2025)](https://www.dpsa.gov.za/thepublicservant/2025/05/14/dpsa-participates-in-launching-south-africas-digital-transformation-roadmap/)
- [El Gobierno Nacional oficializó el DNI digital, argentina.gob.ar (2019, ES)](https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/el-gobierno-nacional-oficializo-el-dni-digital)
- ["Tener Internet no es un fin en sí mismo, es una herramienta", UN Internet Governance Forum, argentina.gob.ar (2016, ES)](https://www.argentina.gob.ar/noticias/tener-internet-no-es-un-fin-en-si-mismo-es-una-herramienta)
- [New framework argues government AI depends on strong DPI, Biometric Update (2026)](https://www.biometricupdate.com/202608/new-framework-argues-government-ai-depends-on-strong-dpi)
- [CDPI and Red GEALC sign LOI to boost DPI in LATAM and the Caribbean, Biometric Update (2024)](https://www.biometricupdate.com/202411/cdpi-and-gealc-sign-loi-to-boost-dpi-in-latam-caribbean)
- [A humanity-scale digital public infrastructure?, GovInsider (2024)](https://govinsider.asia/intl-en/article/a-humanity-scale-digital-public-infrastructure)
- [The Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure to launch DPI-as-a-Packaged-Solution, GovInsider (2024)](https://govinsider.asia/intl-en/article/the-centre-for-digital-public-infrastructure-to-launch-dpi-as-a-packaged-solution)
- [How Argentina launched a new driving licence in just 65 days, GovInsider (2019)](https://govinsider.asia/intl-en/article/argentina-digital-licence-daniel-abadie-govtech)
- [Apolitical: 20 most influential people in digital government (2019)](https://apolitical.co/en/lists/digital-government-world100)

## Memberships

- Associate member since 2017, International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), the body that judges the Webby Awards: https://www.iadas.net/membership/bio/daniel-abadie/4214
- Member, Internet Society (ISOC): https://www.internetsociety.org/

## Awards

- Apolitical: 20 most influential people in digital government (2019)
- Webby Award 2019, Health: Chat Crecer virtual assistant for pregnancy and early childhood
- BA Cómo Llego: App of the Year (2014)
- Premio Mercurio: Agenda Cultural (2011)

## Profiles

- LinkedIn (preferred contact): https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielabadie/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abadie.daniel
- Medium: https://medium.com/@danielabadie
- X / Twitter: https://x.com/dan_abadie
- ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel-Abadie