Building on the urgent global conversations around platform power and digital governance, DCS 2025 interrogates the responsibilities of platforms, institutions, communities, and individuals in shaping accountable, inclusive, and participatory digital ecosystems. It invites reflection on how power operates within and through digital infrastructures,  and how collective responsibility, grounded in justice, participation, and rights, can help reclaim the internet as a public good.

The Summit will feature multi-stakeholder dialogues, strategy huddles, workshops, and community-led showcases across thematic tracks including:

Track 1: Digital Citizen Summit

Focuses on interrogating platform power, digital governance, and the politics of accountability in the Global South. Explores how communities, platforms, governments, and institutions co-create and contest digital spaces. Calls for reclaiming digital infrastructures as public goods rooted in justice, rights, and participatory governance.

Track 2: Community Network Xchange

Centres on meaningful digital access beyond mere connectivity, placing communities at the heart of their digital futures. Showcases locally owned, managed, and sustainable digital infrastructures and hyperlocal tech solutions. Highlights how marginalised communities build data empowerment, digital literacy, and advocate for inclusive digital policies.

Track 3: Digital Artisans of India

a) Celebrates India’s artisan communities leveraging digital tools to preserve craft traditions and expand livelihoods.
b) Spotlights success stories of e-commerce, AI, storytelling, and digital marketing driving artisan empowerment.
c) Aims to sustain cultural heritage through inclusive, tech-enabled, and economically viable craft ecosystems.

Track 4: Just AI – Data & Algorithms for Communities

a) Recognises AI innovations that prioritize justice, inclusion, and the public good over unchecked automation.
b) Highlights ethical, socially impactful AI solutions addressing real-world challenges in the Asia-Pacific.
c) Advocates for AI systems accountable to people, respecting rights and empowering communities instead of marginalising them.

This edition also deepens conversations seeded by ARISE (Accountability and Responsibility in South’s Ecosystems), a transregional network with 50+ organisations, advocating for platform accountability and ethical digital governance in Southern contexts. DEF, as ARISE’s Secretariat, actively contributes to this community’s efforts to challenge unaccountable technology power and foster citizen-centric digital infrastructures.

Track 5: Museum of Digital Society

The Museum of Digital Society serves as a testament to the two-decade journey of digital development for poverty alleviation. Through an extensive historical archive, the museum chronicles DEF’s transformative models of digital inclusion and empowerment, highlighting the role of frugal technologies built for last-mile communities. This repository of knowledge, shared through books, publications, and case studies, tells the story of how digital interventions can bring social change.