Working the Seams in Digital Public Infrastructure
Infrastructure moves slowly. People don't. I build systems that close that gap.
Digital identity, health, and civil registration systems fail where slow-moving institutional infrastructure meets the fast-changing realities of people's lives: names, genders, disability status, legal status. I'm a software engineer with a PhD in Digital Public Infrastructure, building systems designed for that gap. For ministries, NGOs, INGOs, and institutions aligned with the DPG Alliance.
PhD Digital Public Infrastructures, University of Oslo
DHIS2 Contributor (Python, React)
Research Affiliate, University of Edinburgh
Best Paper Award, Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems, 2025
The Three Seams
Identity and health information systems rarely fail at the centre. They fail at the seams, between systems that were never built to talk to each other, between a well-designed platform and the institution that has to govern and fund it, and between a record made once and a person whose life doesn't stay still. My work sits at all three seams, with a PhD in digital public infrastructure and a decade of hands-on engineering.
Technical
DHIS2, MOSIP, OpenEMIS, Civil Registration: Patient IDs, civil registration, and national identity platforms rarely speak to each other cleanly. Without deliberate linkage design, systems like these end up duplicating records instead of connecting them.
Institutional
Procurement, Government-fit: Even a well-designed system will fail if it doesn't fit an institution's procurement rules, governance capacity, or organisational culture. Identity systems have to be designed for the bureaucracy they live inside.
Human
Records that can absorb change: Names change. Gender markers change. Disability status changes. Households change. People move, age, and lose or gain legal status. Infrastructure moves slowly, by design: procurement cycles, legacy schemas, institutional caution. People don't. A system built for a life that holds still will quietly exclude the person it was meant to serve.
Digital infrastructure has a slow temporality: legacy schemas, technical debt, procurement cycles. Institutions have a medium temporality: policy cycles, budget cycles, leadership turnover. People have a fast temporality: names change, genders change, disability status changes, lives change. My work sits in that gap: building socio-technical systems robust enough to hold all three.
Services
Linkage and Interoperability Design
Design and review of patient ID systems, civil registration, and vital statistics (CRVS) integration, and deduplication strategy across DHIS2, OpenEMIS, and national identity platforms such as MOSIP.
Architecture Review and Selection
Independent, vendor-neutral advice on whether DHIS2, OpenEMIS, or a hybrid approach fits an institution's needs, technical capacity, and governance structure.
Governance and Readiness Advisory
Support navigating procurement, data governance policy, and institutional change, for ministries and global institutions, and equally for local authorities and public bodies.
Hands-on Implementation
Beyond advisory: Production-level engineering in Python, Java Spring Boot, React, and PHP, including direct contributions to the DHIS2 codebase. I can take an architecture decision through to a working system, not just a recommendation.
Who It's For
Ministries · Global Health Funders · Implementing Partners · DPG Alliance Members
Global Institutions
Ministries, global health funders (Gavi, Global Fund, WHO, UNICEF), INGOs, and implementing partners working on identity, health, or civil registration systems, including DPG Alliance members and organisations building toward DPG Standard alignment.
Local and Public Sector
Local authorities, NHS Scotland, and Scottish public bodies working through identity and health data challenges.
Systems Deployed Across Borders
Edinburgh is home base. Click a marker to see the related work.
Click a marker above to see details about the work there.
Map data: Al MacDonald / Fritz Lekschas, CC BY-SA 3.0
Case Studies
The work below spans public sector, health, humanitarian, and education systems, the same interoperability, data quality, and system-linkage problems that come up across DPG Alliance-aligned infrastructure, applied in the field.
SMRU - Data Quality
Data quality across a fragmented, multi-site health system.
SMRU outcome
OpenEMIS - Digital Transformation
Implementation of an open-source education information system across a public sector rollout.
OpenEMIS outcome
M-FUND - Data Pipeline
Connecting health insurance data across systems in two countries.
MFUND outcome
Melody College - Gamified Digital Platform and CRM
Commercial platform build.
Melody College outcome
What Collaborators Say
I worked together with Katherine when we were both living and working in a very rural area in Thailand. Katherine has amazing skills as engineer but also has the ability to make very complex aspects of this understandable for everyone. She talks professional but understandable which is a rare gift. She has a creative and growth mindset and anybody would be lucky to have her in their team.
About
I'm Katherine Wyers, a software engineer (Python, Java Spring Boot, React, PHP) with a PhD in Digital Public Infrastructure from the University of Oslo, and now an affiliated researcher at the University of Edinburgh.
My PhD examined how large-scale government identity systems can exclude the populations they're meant to serve, looking closely at the recategorisation of gender in Indian government information systems following the 2014 NALSA judgement. That research shapes how I approach engineering. Identity infrastructure isn't neutral, and getting it right means understanding both the technical architecture and the people it's built to serve.
I work hands-on with DHIS2, OpenEMIS, and national identity platforms like MOSIP, with recent production contributions to the DHIS2 codebase. I combine identity research, public sector understanding, and technical fluency to design systems at all three of those seams.
I'm currently based in Edinburgh, United Kingdom, working globally, and open to both consulting engagements and full-time roles in digital public infrastructure, open-source health systems, and humanitarian data platforms.
Publications and Speaking
My PhD research examined how identity infrastructure can exclude the populations it's meant to serve, the foundation for how I approach systems design today.
Selected Publications
- Making Personal Data Personal: The Emergence of Enactive Data in Organizations, Book Chapter in “Technology, Management, and Design for Social Justice”, Springer Books, 2026.
- Information Infrastructural Violence: A critical, intersectional study of gender recategorization in government information infrastructures, PhD Thesis, University of Oslo, 2025.
- Identity Categories as Boundary Objects: Conflict and Resistance in Collaboration, Best Paper Award, Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems, 2025.
- Torqued by an Identity Recategorization: The twisting consequences of rewriting identity categories in information infrastructure. Work in progress.
- Managing Discretion at the Street Level of Information Systems Use, AIS SIG Global Development, 2024.
- Health ICTs and Transgender Health Equity: A Research Agenda, Information Technology for Development Journal, 2024.
- Identity Platforms and Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation: Implications for Safeguarding Personal Data, Joint IFIP Conference, 2023.
- Leaving No-one Behind? A Research Agenda for Queer Issues in ICT4D, IFIP Conference, 2022.
Speaking
- Mar 11th 2026: Digital Public Infrastructures and the State Recategorization of Human Identity Categories: Association of Information Systems UK.
- Jan 27th 2026: Driving Organizational Performance using an LGBTQ+ Inclusive HR Strategy: Global Diversity and Equality Management, Human Resources Management Masters Course, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
- Nov 21st 2025: Trans Lives and the Slow Violence of Digital Infrastructure: Trans Research Association Ireland Annual Symposium, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
- Nov 18th 2025: Information Infrastructural Violence: Public Defence of Doctoral Thesis, University of Oslo, Norway.
- Oct 7th 2025: Are Your Digital Records Erasing Identities? Rethinking Gender Categories in Electronic Health Records: Digital Health, Masters-level course, University of Oslo, Norway.
- Sept 23rd 2025: Digital Infrastructures and Trans* Equity: Challenges and Pathways: ICT and Global Inequalities Masters-level course, University of Oslo, Norway.
Contact
Currently accepting new consulting engagements, advisory work, and implementation roles