Incubating Sustainability: Learnings from the Digital Infrastructure Incubator at Code for Science & Society

From 2021-2023, the Digital Infrastructure Incubator (DII) at Code for Science & Society (CS&S) was a capacity-building program for digital public infrastructure project leaders. Our work in this program moved to advance the sustainability of open source technologies by offering resources and support to open technologists as they iterated around the conceptualization and design of their sociotechnical infrastructure. Participants in the DII displayed a set of patterns indicative of how technologists approach social structures and cultural change in their projects. It is crucial that funders and other capacity builders understand these patterns and proclivities in order to build meaningful professional pipelines, leadership resources, and DEIBA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, Accessibility) support across the ecosystem.  

Our findings reveal an acute need for cohort-based, synchronous, and well-facilitated training and group-based learning for public digital infrastructure projects around program design and project governance. There is a real need for capacity-building groups, funders, and intermediaries to foment the social conditions in which innovation and risk-taking around the development and sustainability of social infrastructure can take place. By cultivating risk-taking, vulnerability, and innovation in the building of project governance, community outreach and innovation, and localization we may really make an impact in terms of how public interest tech is designed and for whom.