Connecting Digital Public Infrastructures
Software engineer with a PhD in Digital Public Infrastructure working at the seams between identity, health, and civil registration systems. For DPG Alliance members and the institutions delivering DPI
PhD Digital Public Infrastructures, University of Oslo
DHIS2 Contributor (Python, React)
Research Affiliate, University of Edinburgh
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 DHIS2, MOSIP, OpenEMIS, and civil registration systems 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. Households change. People move, age, and lose or gain legal status. A system with no way to absorb that change can quietly exclude the person it was meant to serve.
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 intitution’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
DPG Alliance members, Ministries, Global Health Funders, Implementing Partners
Global Institutions
DPG Alliance members, ministries of health, global health funders (Gavi, Global Fund, WHO, UNICEF), and implementing partners delivering DHIS2, OpenEMIS, and MOSIP-based identity projects.
Local and Public Sector
Local authorities, NHS Scotland, and Scottist public bodies working through identity and health data challenges.
Case Studies
SMRU - Data Quality
Consultant at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (2018-2019), a medical research centre on the Thailand-Myanmar border operating three regional clinies. Improving data quality across their systems.
OpenEMIS - Digital Transformation
Technical consultant on the 2021 implementation of OpenEMIS, an open-source education management information system, in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa
M-FUND - Data Pipeline
Built a data pipeline for M-FUND (2019-2021), a Thailand/Myanmar-based social enterprise providing univeral health insurance coverage.
Melody College - Gamified Digital Platform and CRM
Founded and ran Melody College (2013-2017), a live online music school. Built the digital learning platform and CRM behind its blended-learning model, connecting students and teachers via video.
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 do design systems at all three seams, where technologies fail to connect, where institutions fail to sustain what they’ve adopted, and where systems fail to keep up with the people they’re meant to serve.
Based in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Working globally.
Publications and Speaking
Selected Publications
- Torqued by an Identity Recategorization: The twisting consequences of rewriting identity categories in information infrastructure: Work in progress
- 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
- 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
- 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