The design of a public bank is a political process with important choices to be made at every step. Banking, finance, and policymaking are intentionally obscure and technocratic terrains. Ensuring the new public banks are designed to address these crises requires ongoing popular education and engagement.

COVID-19 has made the case for reimagining the ownership and governance of our economies on both sides of the Atlantic more urgent than ever. To meet the needs of the moment, an agenda to extend democratic public ownership is essential.

Digital platforms have proven indispensable to how we live, work, and play. The challenge is to set principles and implement policies that liberate the democratic and enlivening potential of the platform from the logic of concentrated corporate ownership and profit maximization.

We need to embed principles of democratic ownership and control to the fields of intellectual property and research and development, so that these crucial economic pillars become drivers of equity, sustainability and the common good rather than wealth inequality and concentration.

We need to build a digital landscape that provides world-class connection to all and is sustainable, privacy-enhancing, rights-preserving, innovative, and democratic by design. This report makes the case for democratic public ownership of the foundational digital infrastructures of the 21st century.