Building digital infrastructure is no longer the challenge, ensuring its meaningful use is. In the age of digital transformation, the true test of digital public services lies not in their technical deployment, but in their societal adoption. This paper investigates India’s DigiLocker, an ambitious data exchange Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) that allows citizens to access, store, and share verified documents seamlessly. Despite its robust architecture, DigiLocker’s potential hinges on public trust, behavioural intent to use, and actual usage. To decode these adoption dynamics, this study introduces an adapted assessment framework inspired by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), reimagined for data exchange platforms. Through a survey-based analysis of key stakeholders, the research evaluates the influence of factors like social norms, performance expectations, privacy concerns, and voluntariness on user behaviour. Findings reveal that while ease of use and institutional mandates support adoption, voluntary engagement and user confidence remain limited. Issuers, meanwhile, report technical and administrative constraints that hinder proactive participation. By applying the UTAUT model to both user and institutional perspectives, this research offers a holistic understanding of adoption barriers and enablers in the context of DigiLocker. The research contributes to the growing discourse on inclusive digital transformation and provides a framework for evaluating DPI adoption in emerging and advanced digital societies alike.