We're pleased that Element has been recognised as a Digital Public Good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA), a multi-stakeholder initiative endorsed by the United Nations.
To qualify as a Digital Public Good (DPG) a solution must meet a rigorous set of criteria. In particular open licensing, clear ownership, platform independence, strong documentation, privacy compliance and adherence to open standards.
The DPGA promotes the discovery, development and use of open source software, data and content to advance the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Joining the registry puts Element alongside projects like Wikipedia and Wikidata, and we think that says something important about what our digitally sovereign communications infrastructure has become.
The DPGA reviews each submission against nine separate indicators. For communications platforms, the key question is whether a solution genuinely enables the organisations using it to own and control their infrastructure. Element (and the Matrix open protocol) was built to support exactly that ambition.
Sustainable Development Goals
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the United Nation's framework for global development. It covers everything from health and education to climate and economic growth. Of most relevance to Element is SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, and specifically:
Target 9.1 focuses on resilient infrastructure. Element enables end-user organisations to build communications infrastructure they own and control. Unlike centralised and proprietary platforms, the Matrix decentralised infrastructure that Element is built on means communications can continue even during outages, jurisdictional restrictions or vendor disruptions.
Target 9.5 addresses research and technological innovation. Matrix is an open standard that any organisation can build on, contribute to and extend. By building on and actively contributing to Matrix, Element is investing in a shared communications commons that any government, institution or developer can use.
Target 9.b concerns domestic technology development. Vendor lock-in is a sovereignty risk. Governments that depend on closed, proprietary platforms are one contract renegotiation - or one geopolitical decision - away from losing access to their own communications. Element gives organisations the ability to deploy, modify and extend their communications infrastructure without dependency on any single vendor. And by supporting Matrix, Element encourages a competitive ecosystem of vendors that helps boost domestic technical capability and supports genuine digital independence.
Open source, open standard, open governance
Matrix is a decentralised open standard for sovereign, interoperable and secure communications.
Element plays a key role in developing and sustaining Matrix, having contributed to more than 90% of Synapse (the core Matrix homeserver), the Rust SDK and a substantial proportion of the wider Matrix client ecosystem. While the DPGA doesn't certify open standards or protocols directly, this recognition clearly reflects the broader Matrix ecosystem and its contribution to digital public infrastructure. Element Web, Element X iOS and Android, Synapse and Element Server Suite (our free server-side community distribution) form the basis of the DPGA recognition.
Element Pro and Element Server Suite Pro build on this foundation, providing the additional capabilities that large-scale government deployments require - and crucially, helps Element, as an upstream vendor, fund the continued development of Matrix itself.
European governments are leading the way
European governments and public institutions are leading the way on digital sovereignty. For communications in particular, they recognise that critical communications infrastructure should be open, interoperable and under their control - and of course extremely resilient. Element was built to support exactly that ambition.
More than 25 European governments have already deployed Matrix-based communications systems, and the list keeps growing. The European Commission, NATO, UNICC, and public sector organisations across the US, Australia, and beyond are also running Matrix-based sovereign communications infrastructure today.
All these separate Matrix-based deployments, supported by a competitive ecosystem of vendors and providers, can federate with each other because they embrace the same open standard.
That's the vision this recognition helps articulate to a wider audience. Sovereign communications doesn't mean an on-premise system from a vendor-locked software company. It means communications the end-user organisation controls, with a set of vendors it can choose from, and the ability to connect with other organisations without having to worry about who is using which vendor. Not a patchwork of proprietary silos, but a network of networks.
Supporting the ecosystem, not just using it
We hope this recognition encourages more governments to actively support and invest in the technology they depend on, either by working with Element or by supporting The Matrix.org Foundation. Recognising Element as a digital public good is meaningful, but recognition alone doesn't sustain open source software. The open source project doesn't maintain itself; it relies on funding, active contribution and collaboration.
A government that builds on open source software without investing back into it is, over time, sawing off the branch it's sitting on.
Working with commercial upstream vendors is not at odds with digital sovereignty. It is precisely what sustains it. ZenDiS’ openDesk in Germany, Sweden's SAFOS initiative, the European Commission's own Element deployment, and many others have shown what responsible adoption looks like in practice: embracing open standards while supporting the vendors and communities that keep those standards alive.
As one of our European government customers put it: "It's not about FOSS vs paying for subscriptions. It's not buy vs build. It should be a hybrid approach that works for all parties." That balance, open standards with professional products and support, is exactly what Element is designed to provide.
We're grateful to the DPGA for the thorough review process, and to the many governments and public sector organisations whose real-world deployments made the case for Element's global reach and relevance. This recognition is a signal to procurement teams, governments and development organisations everywhere; open, sovereign, federated communications infrastructure is not a niche concern. It's a public good.
