The expensive decisions are made before anyone writes code.
Which identity model. Which legal basis. Whether to build, buy or partner. What it costs to run in year seven. DNH helps governments get those decisions right — and will tell you when the honest answer is “not yet”.
A firm that both advises and delivers has to be deliberate about the line between them. Ours is drawn in three places, and you can hold us to all of them.
Advisory is contracted independently.
You never buy a delivery phase to get the advice, and the advice is complete on its own terms.
Commercial interests are declared in the document.
Where we recommend a product or platform in which DNH has an interest, that is written into the recommendation itself, not mentioned afterwards.
We step out where we'd be marking our own work.
If you want an independent assurance opinion on a programme we could bid for, we'll take the assurance role and withdraw from the bid.
Policy, legal and regulatory design
The legal basis for an identity scheme, data-protection framing, consent models, cross-border recognition, and the secondary legislation that has to exist before a system can be trusted.
Feasibility and business case
Cost to build, cost to run, benefit realisation, funding models including donor and PPP structures, and a sensitivity analysis that survives contact with a finance ministry.
Target operating model
Who enrols, who verifies, who adjudicates exceptions, who answers the phone at 9pm. The organisational design that makes the technology work.
Procurement and vendor selection
Requirements that describe outcomes rather than a specific vendor's datasheet. Evaluation frameworks, RFP authoring, bid scoring, and negotiation support.
Independent programme assurance
Health checks, gate reviews and recovery assessments on programmes in trouble. Plain findings, in a document you can circulate.
Capability building
Standing up an internal identity or digital-services team: role design, hiring profiles, curriculum, and mentoring through the first delivery.
Working session
Duration: 1 day
A facilitated session with your team and a written summary of options and trade-offs. The lowest-friction way in — no procurement, no budget line, no commitment.
Diagnostic
3–4 weeks
Current-state assessment, risk register, prioritised recommendations, indicative costs.
Full advisory
8–16 weeks
Business case, target operating model, architecture, procurement pack, implementation roadmap.
Embedded advisor
Ongoing
A named DNH specialist inside your programme team, part-time or full-time.
On foundational vs functional ID
Build the foundational layer once, properly, and let health, education, payments and tax consume it as functional identities. Every ministry building its own registry is how a country ends up with nine incompatible ID numbers per citizen.
On biometrics
Biometrics are excellent for deduplication at enrolment and poor as a sole authenticator for daily use. Enrol biometrically; authenticate with something revocable.
On mandatory adoption
Mandates create coverage and resentment in roughly equal measure. Value creates adoption. If the ID makes one high-frequency service dramatically faster, uptake takes care of itself.
On the fifteen-year view
The card in a citizen's pocket will outlive the government that issued it and probably the vendor that made it. Design for the reissue cycle, the chip's end-of-life and the algorithm you'll have to migrate off.
These are genuine positions, not hedges. You should be able to disagree with at least one — that is the point. Advice nobody could object to isn't advice.
Not slides. Documents that can be circulated, defended in a committee and used in procurement: options papers with costed alternatives, target operating models, reference architectures, conformance matrices, risk registers, benefits models, and RFP-ready requirement sets.
Do you work with donors and development banks as well as governments?
Yes. Donor-funded programmes carry different evaluation, procurement and reporting requirements from domestically funded ones, and the business case has to be written for both audiences.
Can you review a programme another vendor is delivering?
Yes. That's a large part of the assurance practice — see our position on independence above for when we'll step out of a related bid.
What languages do you work in?
English, French and Portuguese, with local-language support arranged per country.
Do you charge for the first conversation?
No. The one-day working session is usually free, and it's genuinely useful whether or not it leads anywhere.
How quickly can you start?
A working session, usually within two weeks of asking. A diagnostic normally begins three to four weeks from signature, once the team and documents are in place.
No procurement, no commitment. Bring the problem and the three people who own it.