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Summary

This discussion centered on the official launch of the Global Internet Standards Testing Community (GISTC) at the Internet Governance Forum, aimed at promoting secure internet environments through collaborative testing and knowledge sharing. Wouter Van Den Bosch, Community Manager International of Internet.nl, explained that after the 2013 launch of their open-source testing tool, various organizations worldwide began using it independently, but lacked broader interaction and coordination. The new community seeks to address this gap by creating a cooperative body where organizations can share experiences, develop next steps together, and raise awareness about security-related internet standards deployment.

Walter Kobes demonstrated Internet.nl as a testing tool that allows users to easily assess website and email domain security, providing not only results but concrete improvement recommendations. The tool processes over 5 million scans annually in the Dutch version alone and has been adopted by countries including Brazil, Denmark, Germany, and France. Alena Murawska from RIPE NCC emphasized the critical importance of internet standards for global connectivity, highlighting how policy makers increasingly recognize their role in economic development and national security, particularly with regulations like NIS2 making certain standards mandatory.

International speakers shared their experiences: Gilberto Zorello described Brazil’s successful implementation called “STOP” with Portuguese interface and integration into their Safer Internet Program, while Daishi Kondo from University of Tokyo discussed email security research and the need for policy frameworks to drive adoption. The community welcomes all interested organizations, from government agencies to academic institutions, and plans to coordinate future development of testing standards including potential post-quantum cryptography support.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Launch of Global Internet Standards Testing Community (GISTC)**: The primary focus was officially launching an international community around Internet.nl, an open-source testing tool that helps organizations assess their compliance with internet security standards like IPv6, DNSSEC, and email security protocols.

– **Internet.nl Tool Capabilities and Global Adoption**: Detailed explanation of how the testing tool works, showing real-time examples of website security assessments, and highlighting its successful implementation in multiple countries including Brazil (called “STOP”), with emerging adoption in Germany, France, and research use in Portugal and by the European Commission.

– **Policy and Regulatory Drivers for Internet Standards**: Discussion of how government policies, particularly the EU’s NIS2 regulation, are making internet security standards increasingly mandatory, with examples of successful “comply or explain” approaches in the Netherlands and the European Commission’s multi-stakeholder forum on internet standards deployment.

– **International Experiences and Benefits of Collaboration**: Presentations from Brazil, Japan, and the Netherlands showcasing different approaches to internet standards testing, emphasizing how international cooperation can help bridge policy gaps, share best practices, and accelerate adoption of security measures across different cultural and regulatory contexts.

– **Community Building and Future Development**: Focus on creating an open community where governments, academia, and technical organizations can collaborate, share experiences, learn from each other’s challenges, and coordinate future developments including potential additions like post-quantum cryptography testing.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to officially launch the Global Internet Standards Testing Community, bringing together international stakeholders to promote the adoption of internet security standards through collaborative testing, knowledge sharing, and coordinated policy approaches.

## Overall Tone:

The tone was consistently professional, collaborative, and optimistic throughout the session. It maintained a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere, emphasizing partnership and mutual benefit rather than competition. The speakers demonstrated enthusiasm for international cooperation and showed genuine interest in expanding the community, ending on a celebratory note with the official launch and invitation for continued engagement.

Speakers

– **Wouter Van Den Bosch**: Community Manager International of Internet.nl, a testing tool for internet security standards

– **Walter Kobes**: Colleague at Internet.nl, technical expert who explains the Internet.nl testing tool functionality

– **Alena Muravska**: Representative of RIPE NCC (Regional Internet Registry), responsible for IP address allocation and registration, expert in internet standards and protocols

– **Gilberto Zorello**: Project Manager from Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br), implements decisions and projects for Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br)

– **Daishi Kondo**: University of Tokyo, researcher specializing in email security

– **Doreen Booghaart**: Online moderator for the event

– **Nico Caballero**: GAC Chair (Governmental Advisory Committee) within ICANN

**Additional speakers:**

– **Annemieke Toersen**: Platform Internet Standards in the Netherlands (mentioned as being present but did not speak in the transcript)

– **Flavio Anais**: Systems development manager at NIC.br (mentioned by Gilberto as being present)

– **Santosh Pandit**: Online participant who asked a question about post-quantum cryptography

– **Peter**: Reporter in the Netherlands (mentioned in closing remarks)

# Global Internet Standards Testing Community Launch: Discussion Report

## Executive Summary

The Internet Governance Forum witnessed the official launch of the Global Internet Standards Testing Community (GISTC), marking a significant milestone in international cooperation for internet security standards deployment. This session brought together representatives from the Netherlands, Brazil, Japan, and various international organisations to establish a collaborative framework for testing and promoting internet security standards globally.

The discussion centered on the evolution of Internet.nl from a Dutch national testing tool to an international open-source platform, with the new community structure designed to facilitate knowledge sharing and coordinate development efforts across different jurisdictions.

## Background and Community Formation

### Origins of the Initiative

Wouter Van Den Bosch, Community Manager International of Internet.nl, explained the genesis of the global community initiative. Following the 2013 launch of Internet.nl as a Dutch national tool, the platform became open source to enable international adoption. However, while various organisations worldwide began implementing their own versions independently, there was a lack of broader interaction and coordination between these implementations.

The catalyst for formalising this community came through a meeting in March, where representatives from different countries recognised the need to create a cooperative body. This gathering highlighted the potential benefits of sharing experiences, developing coordinated next steps, and raising awareness about security-related internet standards deployment through collaborative efforts.

Van Den Bosch emphasised that the active use of testing tools provides organisations with crucial insights into their country’s security status, enabling more informed policymaking responses.

### Community Structure and Objectives

The newly launched community operates on principles of openness and inclusivity, welcoming participation from governments, academic institutions, and technical organisations interested in standards testing. The primary objectives include facilitating knowledge sharing between international implementations, coordinating future development of testing standards, and creating mechanisms for addressing emerging security challenges such as post-quantum cryptography integration.

## Technical Capabilities and Global Adoption

### Internet.nl Tool Functionality

Walter demonstrated the testing tool’s capabilities during the session, despite some initial microphone difficulties. The platform serves as both an individual testing service and a comprehensive dashboard system, processing over 5 million scans annually in the Dutch version alone. The tool evaluates websites and email domains across multiple security standards, including IPv6 implementation, DNSSEC deployment, RPKI, DNS security, and email security protocols.

Crucially, Internet.nl goes beyond merely identifying security issues by providing concrete improvement recommendations. The tool’s interface presents results in an accessible format, enabling both technical specialists and policy makers to understand security postures and necessary improvements.

The technical architecture supports localisation and customisation, allowing different countries to adapt the interface and testing parameters to their specific needs while maintaining core functionality.

### International Implementation Experiences

The global adoption of Internet.nl has yielded diverse implementation approaches. Brazil’s implementation, branded as “STOP” (which stands for “Test Standards” in English), represents one of the most comprehensive adaptations. Gilberto Zorello, Project Manager from Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br), detailed how the Portuguese-language interface became integral to the Safer Internet Program.

Brazil is currently running version 1.7 and testing version 1.9 of the tool. The Brazilian approach extends beyond simple testing to include comprehensive support mechanisms: technical training programmes, ISP guidance meetings, and recognition awards for companies following security recommendations. NIC.br created an award for best operational practices and conducts ICT enterprise surveys every two years through CETIC.br.

Denmark, Germany, and France have also adopted the platform, while Portugal and the European Commission utilise it for research purposes. Walter noted that international users have been instrumental in identifying improvements and suggesting enhancements, creating a collaborative development cycle that benefits all implementations.

## Policy and Regulatory Context

### European Regulatory Framework

Alena Muravska, representing RIPE NCC, provided context on the evolving regulatory landscape, specifically mentioning the NIS2 regulation and its impact on internet standards deployment. She emphasised that while governments play an increasingly important role in promoting these standards, their efforts must complement rather than replace the open collaborative processes that have maintained internet innovation and accessibility.

### Successful Policy Integration Models

The Netherlands’ “comply or explain” approach was highlighted as a successful model for government-led standards promotion. This framework requires organisations to either implement recommended security standards or provide explanations for non-compliance, creating accountability without mandating specific technical solutions.

Van Den Bosch also suggested that economic buying power from customers demanding secure services could be a significant driver for standards deployment, positioning testing tools as enablers of informed customer choice.

## International Perspectives

### Japanese Experience

Daishi Kondo from the University of Tokyo provided comparative analysis based on email security research. His findings demonstrate that adoption of email security measures is significantly influenced by policy frameworks and security culture, with the Netherlands achieving high adoption rates through initiatives like the Comply or Explain List and Internet.nl.

In contrast, Japan lacks similar policy mechanisms or counterpart tools to Internet.nl, creating adoption challenges for email security measures. Kondo emphasised that international cooperation is essential to bridge policy and cultural gaps affecting security standards adoption.

### Brazilian Integration Success

Gilberto highlighted the importance of language localisation, noting that the Portuguese interface was crucial for adoption in Brazil where English proficiency is limited. The Brazilian approach demonstrates how testing tools can be successfully integrated into comprehensive national cybersecurity programmes.

## Future Development and Emerging Challenges

### Post-Quantum Cryptography Integration

Online participant Santosh Pandit asked about the community’s approach to post-quantum cryptography support. Walter confirmed that post-quantum cryptography capabilities will be added to the Internet.nl testing suite when relevant standards are established and widely accepted, ensuring quantum-proof ciphers for web and email servers.

### Community Coordination and Next Steps

The community will hold a prioritisation meeting in October in the Buskerud room in the hotel to establish priorities for the first year of operation. Nico Caballero, GAC Chair within ICANN, expressed interest in government cooperation mechanisms, particularly for countries interested in implementing DNSSEC, cryptography, and other standards.

Additionally, the Internet Standards Security Coalition report presentation was scheduled for Friday morning at 9 o’clock in Room 1.

## Participation and Engagement

The session included both in-person and online participants, with Doreen Booghaart serving as online moderator. Annemieke Toersen from platform Internet Standards Netherlands was introduced but did not speak during the session. The community encourages participation through various channels, including a QR code signup process mentioned during the presentation.

## Conclusion

The launch of the Global Internet Standards Testing Community represents a significant step towards coordinated international cooperation in internet security standards deployment. The strong foundation of successful national implementations, combined with diverse international experiences, provides a solid basis for community development.

The session concluded on a celebratory note with cake, marking the formal launch of this collaborative initiative. The community’s success will depend on its ability to balance technical excellence with policy effectiveness, local adaptation with global coordination, and current needs with future challenges in internet security standards deployment.

Wouter Van Den Bosch: Good morning. Welcome to this launch event with the name Empower the Global Internet Standards Testing Community. My name is Wouter Natus van den Borch and I’m the Community Manager International of Internet.nl, a testing tool that my colleague Wouter Kobes will tell you more about in a minute. Why an international community? After its launch in 2013, the community behind Internet.nl made the decision that the software behind it would be open source and available for anyone to use. Also, a testing environment was created that more and more people started to use. Some organizations decided to use the existing toolkit, other organizations built their own, but more or less with the same goal, testing how secure their and their country’s internet environments are. Contact remained between organizations one-on-one between the interested parties and Internet.nl itself. There was no broader interaction. And the people behind Internet.nl aspired to change this. After a few months in preparations, in March this year, representatives from different countries and organizations met for the first time. They decided that there’s merit in creating a cooperative body in which they can work together, share experiences, and agree on and or develop next steps. The next meeting is scheduled in somewhere in October and will be defined for prioritizing in the first year. As a global internet standards testing community is open to all with an interest to start working with this tool, we decided to do an official launch here at the Internet Governance Forum. As an internet standards deployment and the spreading of the knowledge why this is crucially important for a more secure and safer environment, it is important to work with governance. By working together, it becomes easier to raise awareness around and raise the deployment of security-related internet standards. And by creating a community, the profile of the work and its outcomes is raised considerably. Additionally, all involved can learn from each other’s experiences, from their outcomes and how they can be used, from challenges and how they were overcome, from the arguments used to convince superiors to partnerships making cooperation possible, et cetera, et cetera. And this may go for more experienced organizations as much as those with a first interest. Other forms of added value may lay in more enhanced cooperation in the future and perhaps coordination on future steps. Formulation of common ambitions or outreach programs all adhere to and perhaps even the creation of a more formal organization. But why should I join or you join this community, you might ask. For starters, because the active use of this tool provides you and your organization the insight how secure or insecure organizations in your country are and allows you for knowledge and insight for responses and policymaking. But let me as an introduction stop here and introduce the people around me. I’m here with Walter Kobus of Internet.nl. I’m with Elena Murawska of RIPE NCC. Online are Gilberto Zorelli of NIC.pr and Daishi Kondo of the University of Tokyo. Also with me is Annemieke Toersen of the platform Internet Standards in the Netherlands and Doreen Booghaartwho is our online moderator. So first I’m going to ask Walter to explain to you what Internet.nl is and what it does. So Walter, the floor is yours.

Walter Kobes: Yes, thank you very much, Wout. And let me go to the next slide. Yeah, so I will shortly explain to you the Internet.nl testing tool and what you can… Is my sound working? Yeah, it is. I think it’s your problem. So you can… I will shortly explain to you where Internet.nl can be used for and how it works. So basically it is a testing tool in which you can easily test either your website or email domain name. Showing right now is the results of the IGF 2025 website which, as you can see in our vision, there are still some improvements available and basically this reporting does not only tell you what is good and what is wrong but also gives you concrete steps how to improve them. And luckily if you look to other parts of the Norwegian government, you will see that they perform better. So for instance, this is the Norwegian digital gateway that actually has only very minor improvements still recommended by us. So this is the individual testing in which, well, basically everyone can test their own domain names right now if you go to Internet.nl. However, for organizations it’s mostly required to scan a lot of domain names and on a regular basis. For this we have also a dashboard available. This allows for creation of reports, scheduled scanning, trend monitoring over time and basically in total we have seen that just for the Dutch version of this code base we see over 5 million scans annually both on the individual test and the dashboard testing happening right now. As was mentioned by Wout, this source code is open source available and it has throughout the years already been picked up by other countries. So these are a few examples of the use of Internet.nl around the world in Brazil, Denmark and we see new instances starting in Germany, France, etc. And also the project is used in various measuring projects in Portugal, European Commission, in which they do not present the website themselves but they use it to generate reports for their research. And over the years many of these international people have worked with Internet.nl but also gave us feedback and helped us improve the product more and more which is of course also why we’re trying to create this community to make this code base even more widely known but also get something back from the community to make

Wouter Van Den Bosch: the product even better. So that’s in real short the introduction on Internet. Thank you very much Wouter and as you can see that if you go to Internet.nl you can type in the name of your own organization and immediately see how secure or insecure your organization is but also you get the advice on the steps that you could take to make yourself more secure. So it’s something you can do here or later at home and show to the people responsible for ICT what they can do. Let me go to the next speaker and Alena Murawska is going to tell you about how important Internet standards are and why we are having this discussion and why RIPE NCC supports the Internet.nl initiatives already for quite some years. Alena the floor is yours. Thank you Wouter. Good morning

Alena Muravska: colleagues here in the room but also colleagues online and I’m very grateful for this opportunity to be a part of this important launching event. It’s an important milestone for the global technical Internet standard testing community. So I’m Alena Murawska and I represent the RIPE NCC here. We are a regional Internet registry and in this function we are responsible for the allocation and registration of IP address and autonomous system numbers. Why I am mentioning this? So we have two core principles of the Internet and the registration is one of them and the registration ensures that the resources are globally unique and traceable. That makes the Internet global actually. But the second principle of the Internet is actually the protocol standardization. It’s a development and the adoption of open standards that define how devices communicate over the Internet. So and together registration and standardization have enabled the Internet to function as a global and permissionless platform for innovation. Internet standards are agreed upon technical specifications that underpin the infrastructure of the Internet. Many of you in the room are familiar with all of this so bear with me. Actually my explanation is more referred to the people who are less technical in the room. So the Internet open standards are the building blocks that enable interoperability, comparability and consistency across the thousands of networks. Open standards also enable Internet scalability, security and resilience. At the same time they support the innovation and grow because they allow people and organizations to create new services that make them available worldwide without needing permission. So open Internet standards are publicly available and deployed through the process that are transparent and open to broad participation and organizations as Internet Engineering Task Force, IETF, many of you are very familiar with it, plays a central role in this process. Other policy makers are placing a growing emphasis on Internet standards and they recognize their critical importance for the economic development and and National Security in this changing world. While the governments play a key role in promoting and supporting these standards, their efforts must complement, not replace, the open and collaborative process that have ensured that the Internet remains innovative and accessible for the past few decades. So we have seen various approaches when it comes to implementation of Internet standards because implementation is also a key to success. Successful examples include governments that have developed, for example, national IPv6 roadmaps in close cooperation with the technical community, ensuring that these roadmaps are grounded in the technical reality in their countries. On the other hand, more politically driven roadmaps without sufficient input from technical experts often failed to meet the expectations. So I would like to mention a good example of a successful governmental approach to RPKI. It’s a policy implemented by the Dutch Standardization Forum. They developed an apply or explain approach that made RPKI mandatory for governmental entities and public institutions. And in this case, monitoring RPKI metrics and close collaboration with technical community experts, they are the key factor to success. So we’ve also seen that your approach to Internet standards has gradually evolved over the years. And since 2019, so already six years ago, the European Commission has launched a series of initiatives to strengthen the role of the European Union in standardization processes and promote its vision for the Internet. And NIS2, as we all know, puts the deployment of key Internet standards in this spotlight even more. So the NIS2 implementing regulation adopted in 2024 requires operators to take appropriate technical and organizational measures, including the adoption of transition plans to modern network protocols, so think about IPv6 here, best practices for Internet routing security, such as RPKI, and measures for DNS and ML security. So these requirements are framed in technology-neutral and flexible manner, yet they reflect the growing governmental interest in driving the deployment of the standards. So the last activity that we’ve seen in this area is the European Commission’s established multi-stakeholder forum on the deployment of Internet standards, supported by NISA and national authorities. So this forum aims to identify the best practices, standards, and deployment techniques in the four areas which I already mentioned, so that’s network layer protocols, email security, DNS security, and routing security. So this initiative is welcome as long as leadership and decision-making stay anchored in the technical community. And why all this story? Because we believe that the testing community could play a key role in monitoring and deployment of adoption of the standards. Because of all the dimensions, testing ensures that standards are not only implemented, but also correctly and consistently deployed. So it helps prevent fragmentation, enforces interoperability, and raises the overall quality of the Internet infrastructure. So tools like Internet.nl are excellent examples in this process. So they help public and private institutions access their compliance, this established Internet standard, so Vaud already mentioned that as well. And on organizational level, testing contributes to more efficient processes and helps integrate security improvements into daily workflows. So on a broader scale, also testing fosters cooperation and collaborative learning, and it creates mechanisms for implementing standards and aligning the efforts of public administrators, service providers, and the technical community. Thank you.

Wouter Van Den Bosch: Thank you, Alena. I think that you showed from the technical community side how important it is to start deploying these standards, and also that it’s going to become more or less mandatory within the European Union within a year or two. The next speaker that is coming from Brazil is online, Gilberto Zorello. Please answer the question, how can you join and benefit from the global Internet standard testing community, as it’s now provisionally called? So what are your experiences in the past with running Internet.nl in the Brazilian way?

Gilberto Zorello: Good morning. We have a very good experience with Internet.nl here in Brazil. I’ll bring a short presentation about our experience. I would like to thank Internet.nl for the opportunity to participate in this event, this presentation about our experience with Internet.nl in Brazil. This is our agenda. I’m Gilberto Zorello, project manager from Brazilian Network Information Center, NIC.br, that implements the decisions and projects designed by Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, CGI.br, which is responsible for the coordination and integration of all Internet service initiatives in the country. Flavio Anais is here with me, too. He is the systems development manager at NIC.br. This presentation is about our experience with Internet.nl. We call the tool here in Brazil STOP. In English it’s Test Standards. STOP is part of a bigger program that we have, the Safer Internet Program, which aims to help Internet operators and service providers to reduce security incidents caused by vulnerabilities and configuration errors. We are interested in Internet.nl. Internet.nl is very important, because its recommendations are fully aligned with the objectives of the Safer Internet Program. STOP has a web interface in Portuguese, very important in Brazil, because people here don’t speak any English. We need a web interface in Portuguese. Its operation starts on December 21st. We are currently running the version 1.7 and testing 1.9. We intend to release the dashboard 2. The project is an initiative funded by NIC.br. The tool is disseminated in different cities across the country, through lectures at NIC.br technical events and ISP association fairs. NIC.br offers technical training on specific topics recommended. For instance, configuration of recursive and authoritative DNS service, RPKI and IPv6. The Safer Internet Program holds meetings with Internet service providers to provide guidance on how to implement the best security practice in the networks and how to use the top testing tool.

Wouter Van Den Bosch: We have new activities planned to promote the dissemination of good operational practice. NIC.br created the pickup best operation practice NIC.br award, which rewards institutions that implement continuous improvement in their networks. This year, the annual competition, this year’s competition, companies that configure their websites following top recommendations will be awarded. Gilberto, sorry, I can give you 30 seconds. Okay, finishing. The second activity, the Regional Center for Studies on Development of Information Society, CETIC.br, monitors the adoption of information and communication technologies, ICTs, in Brazil. The CETIC.br conducts ICT enterprise survey that measures the adoption of ICT small, medium, and large enterprises. The survey is conducted every two years. Next survey will check the readiness to meet the best security practices for websites of these companies used on top. Okay, that’s my presentation. I’m ready for questions if you need. Thank you very much, Gilberto, and it shows that it really works in Brazil, so thank you for showing that to us. We’re going to move to the totally other side of the world. We’re going to Japan, and we have a few questions for you. So, Gilberto, we have a few questions for you. We have Daishi Kondo with us, who is now with the University of Tokyo, and he is going to answer the following question. Daishi, what is your experience with the email security research so far, and how do you expect to benefit from international cooperation in the internet of the international community?

Daishi Kondo: Okay. Hello. Good morning, I should say. I’m Daishi Kondo from the University of Tokyo, and one of my research interests is email security. And these days, actually two weeks ago, I presented the email security work in Denmark in the conference, which is called TMA. And we stored several statistics about email security implementations. And from my experience in my email security research, I have realized that the adoption of email security measures is greatly influenced by the policy frameworks and the security culture. For example, the Netherlands has initiatives such as Comply or Explain List and Internet.nl, which have contributed to a high adoption rate of email security measures. On the other hand, Japan lacks similar policy mechanisms or counterpart to Internet.nl. In order to promote the better adoption, it is essential to bridge the needs, policy, and cultural gaps. I believe that the first step in international cooperation is to understand the nature of the differences through collaboration. Thank you very much.

Wouter Van Den Bosch: Thank you, Daishi. What it shows is that we already have a lot of people from around the world joining the community, and that we’re going to ask more people to join. First, I’m going to ask Doreen if there’s any comments made online that she would like to read out.

Doreen Booghaart: Yes, thank you. We have one comment online from Santosh Pandit. In case you were taking questions, he asked, will the community support a journey towards post-quantum cryptography and its use at Internet.nl?

Wouter Van Den Bosch: That is a very good question. What I can say is that we’re going to have a report, but that’s by the Internet Standards Security Coalition of the IGF. It will be presented on Friday morning at 9 o’clock in Room 1. Where this community is concerned, I can imagine, but I’m looking at Walter, that this is an issue that will come up in the near future as one of the potential testing points. But is it being considered already, or is it something that is future, Walter?

Walter Kobes: Yes, most definitely that will be added to the Internet.nl testing suite in due time. And of course, once that’s relevant, you want to be sure that the ciphers used by your web and email server are indeed quantum proof. But that’s something to be added in the future.

Wouter Van Den Bosch: I can imagine that it will, but what the time is, that is harder to set at this moment, because we need the standards to be in place and accepted in a broad way. I’ve got time for one question before we go to the official launch. Is there a question in the room? Then we have a microphone that will go around, so please put up your hand so we can have one question. Yes, the gentleman there. Does this microphone work? Please introduce yourself first.

Nico Caballero: Well, thank you. Can you hear me? Because I can’t hear myself, but anyways, this is weird. So I just wanted to know.

Wouter Van Den Bosch: Please introduce yourself.

Nico Caballero: My name is Nico Caballero. I’m the GAG Chair, Governmental Advisory Committee within ICANN. And I wanted to know if there’s any way to cooperate with governments, with at least certain governments who are very interested in implementing not only DNSSEC, but also symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. Sorry, too early in the morning. Need more coffee. And some other standards. My question is would there be any kind of, let’s say, task force or group or somebody we can contact, I mean specific governments who might be interested in implementing the standards and some way forward?

Wouter Van Den Bosch: I’ll take it first, and then I give it to Walter. I think that the idea behind the community that we are launching in the moment is that everybody with an interest in – I will start again because you didn’t have your phone on. The idea behind the community is that all organizations with an interest in testing the situational standards in their country can participate. So that could be from a governmental angle. It could be from a research angle, academia. It could be from a technical community who also advises members. So all different sort of parties can join and have already joined. So if you would like to promote this in the GAG, then we would be more than welcome to do so. There is a set of standards at this moment that is in the program, but the idea is to develop the program further in the future. And that is something that we hope to also be able to coordinate on between all the different parties so we can set the next steps together. So that’s the idea behind starting this international community. So let’s talk a little bit after the session and we can see how we can promote this further. And would you like to add, Walter?

Walter Kobes: I fully agree and I think the added value of the tool is not to show what standards are implemented and what not, but also to give you the means to implement these standards that are not yet supported. So that is the goal of the program and I think we should get in touch.

Wouter Van Den Bosch: So thank you very much for the question. And we only have half an hour, so I’m already seeing people waving there that we should stop in time. But I want to thank you very much for coming and showing your interest in the launch of this international community. You heard what Internet.nl is, what it does, and why deployment of Internet standards is crucial. And you have heard the experience of the people already working with the tool from the Netherlands, but also in Brazil and in Japan. We could have staged some others, but we have only 30 minutes. Now it’s time to officially launch the international community in which we are going to cooperate to make everyone understand why not deploying the new generation security-related Internet standards and ICT best practices for that matter should no longer be an option for anyone manufacturing devices or offering digital services, etc. Just like it should no longer be an option to not procure ICTs secure by design as an organization. I can’t think of a bigger driver towards deployment than economic buying power, personally. You have a legislation, but if your customer doesn’t want you anymore because you’re not delivering, then you’re out of business. To get there, all concerned need to become more aware of the current situation and feel the pressure shown by this testing tool. How can you join our community? In a moment, Wouter will show you a QR code and you can sign up on a form and you will receive information for the future meeting, probably in October. I’d say, Wouter, let’s launch the Global Internet Standards Testing Community, the GISTC, but not before I welcome you to a bilateral meeting that you can ask questions if you like. It’s on Thursday morning, 10.30 in the Buskerud room in the hotel. If you’d like to have questions and answers, please come to that meeting and we will be there answering your questions. Thank you for joining. Wouter, please launch our… I’m not seeing this slide anymore, but we have some cake to celebrate this launch. Here’s the slide, so let’s go. We’re launching. We’re launching. Thank you very much for joining. Thank you very much for joining. Thank you, presenters, Wouter, Alena, Gilberto, Daishi. Thank you, Doreen, for the online moderation. Peter for reporting, he’s in the Netherlands, and for the scribes and the technical people for really perfect preparation that we’ve had with you. So, thank you very much and I hope to meet you in the community room on Thursday. Thank you. Workshop 2 workshop 2. Workshop 2. Workshop 2. Workshop 2. Workshop 2. Workshop 2. Workshop 2.

Agreement points

Open source approach and international collaboration are essential for Internet standards testing

Speakers

– Wouter Van Den Bosch
– Walter Kobes
– Gilberto Zorello

Arguments

Internet.nl became open source after 2013 launch to enable global use, but lacked broader interaction between organizations until now

The open source code has been adopted by multiple countries including Brazil, Denmark, Germany, and France

Brazil successfully implemented Internet.nl as “STOP” with Portuguese interface as part of their Safer Internet Program

Summary

All speakers agree that making Internet.nl open source has enabled global adoption and that international collaboration through a community structure will enhance the tool’s effectiveness and reach

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Testing tools must provide actionable guidance beyond just identifying problems

Speakers

– Walter Kobes
– Alena Muravska

Arguments

Internet.nl is a testing tool that evaluates websites and email domains, providing concrete improvement steps beyond just identifying problems

Testing communities play a key role in monitoring standards deployment and ensuring correct implementation

Summary

Both speakers emphasize that effective testing tools must not only identify security issues but also provide concrete steps for improvement and ensure proper implementation

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Government and policy support are crucial for standards adoption

Speakers

– Alena Muravska
– Daishi Kondo
– Nico Caballero

Arguments

Governments are placing growing emphasis on internet standards for economic development and national security

Japan lacks policy mechanisms similar to Netherlands’ initiatives, creating adoption challenges for email security measures

Government cooperation through advisory committees like ICANN’s GAC could help promote standards implementation

Summary

All three speakers recognize that government policy frameworks and support mechanisms are essential drivers for successful internet standards adoption

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the value of creating a structured international community for knowledge sharing and collaborative improvement of Internet standards testing tools

Speakers

– Wouter Van Den Bosch
– Walter Kobes

Arguments

Representatives from different countries met in March to create a cooperative body for sharing experiences and developing next steps

International users have provided valuable feedback that has helped improve the product over time

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Both speakers advocate for comprehensive approaches that combine regulatory requirements with practical support mechanisms like training and incentives to drive standards adoption

Speakers

– Alena Muravska
– Gilberto Zorello

Arguments

NIS2 regulation requires operators to adopt modern network protocols, routing security practices, and DNS/email security measures

The Brazilian implementation includes technical training, ISP guidance meetings, and awards for companies following security recommendations

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Cybersecurity | Infrastructure

Both speakers recognize that testing tools serve broader policy purposes beyond technical assessment, helping inform national security strategies and cross-cultural cooperation

Speakers

– Wouter Van Den Bosch
– Daishi Kondo

Arguments

Active use of testing tools provides organizations insight into their country’s security status for policymaking responses

International cooperation is essential to bridge policy and cultural gaps affecting security standards adoption

Topics

Cybersecurity | Legal and regulatory

Unexpected consensus

Economic market pressure as a primary driver for security standards adoption

Speakers

– Wouter Van Den Bosch

Arguments

Economic buying power from customers demanding secure services could be a major driver for standards deployment

Explanation

While most speakers focused on technical and regulatory approaches, Van Den Bosch uniquely emphasized market-driven adoption through customer demand, suggesting economic incentives may be more powerful than regulatory compliance

Topics

Economic | Cybersecurity

Future technology integration planning

Speakers

– Walter Kobes
– Doreen Booghaart

Arguments

Post-quantum cryptography support will be added to Internet.nl testing suite when relevant standards are established

The community provides a platform for bilateral meetings and ongoing collaboration opportunities

Explanation

There was unexpected consensus on the need to plan for emerging technologies like post-quantum cryptography, showing forward-thinking approach beyond current standards

Topics

Cybersecurity | Infrastructure

Overall assessment

Summary

Strong consensus exists on the value of international collaboration for Internet standards testing, the need for actionable testing tools, and the importance of government policy support. All speakers agreed on the open source approach and community-building efforts.

Consensus level

High level of consensus with complementary perspectives rather than disagreements. The speakers represented different geographical regions and organizational types but shared common goals for improving Internet security through standards deployment. This consensus suggests strong potential for successful international cooperation and community development.

Different viewpoints

Role of government vs. technical community in standards implementation

Speakers

– Alena Muravska
– Nico Caballero

Arguments

While governments play a key role in promoting these standards, their efforts must complement rather than replace the open collaborative processes that have kept the internet innovative and accessible

Government cooperation through advisory committees like ICANN’s GAC could help promote standards implementation

Summary

Muravska emphasizes that government efforts must complement, not replace, open collaborative processes and warns against politically driven approaches without technical input. Caballero focuses on expanding government cooperation through advisory committees, representing a more government-centric approach to standards promotion.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Unexpected differences

Primary drivers for standards adoption

Speakers

– Wouter Van Den Bosch
– Alena Muravska

Arguments

Economic buying power from customers demanding secure services could be a major driver for standards deployment

NIS2 regulation requires operators to adopt modern network protocols, routing security practices, and DNS/email security measures

Explanation

This represents an unexpected philosophical difference in a collaborative launch event. Van Den Bosch emphasizes market-driven adoption through customer demand as potentially more effective than legislation, while Muravska focuses on the importance of regulatory frameworks like NIS2. This disagreement on whether market forces or regulatory compliance should be the primary driver for standards adoption was not anticipated in what appeared to be a unified community launch.

Topics

Economic | Legal and regulatory | Cybersecurity

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion shows minimal direct disagreement, with most tension arising from different emphasis on approaches rather than fundamental opposition. The main areas of subtle disagreement involve the balance between government/regulatory approaches versus market-driven and technical community-led approaches to standards implementation.

Disagreement level

Low level of disagreement with significant implications for community direction. While speakers generally align on the importance of internet standards and testing tools, their different emphases on regulatory compliance versus market forces, and government involvement versus technical community leadership, could influence how the community develops its strategies and priorities. These philosophical differences may become more pronounced as the community moves from launch to implementation phases.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the value of creating a structured international community for knowledge sharing and collaborative improvement of Internet standards testing tools

Speakers

– Wouter Van Den Bosch
– Walter Kobes

Arguments

Representatives from different countries met in March to create a cooperative body for sharing experiences and developing next steps

International users have provided valuable feedback that has helped improve the product over time

Topics

Infrastructure | Cybersecurity

Both speakers advocate for comprehensive approaches that combine regulatory requirements with practical support mechanisms like training and incentives to drive standards adoption

Speakers

– Alena Muravska
– Gilberto Zorello

Arguments

NIS2 regulation requires operators to adopt modern network protocols, routing security practices, and DNS/email security measures

The Brazilian implementation includes technical training, ISP guidance meetings, and awards for companies following security recommendations

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Cybersecurity | Infrastructure

Both speakers recognize that testing tools serve broader policy purposes beyond technical assessment, helping inform national security strategies and cross-cultural cooperation

Speakers

– Wouter Van Den Bosch
– Daishi Kondo

Arguments

Active use of testing tools provides organizations insight into their country’s security status for policymaking responses

International cooperation is essential to bridge policy and cultural gaps affecting security standards adoption

Topics

Cybersecurity | Legal and regulatory

Key takeaways

The Global Internet Standards Testing Community (GISTC) was officially launched to facilitate international cooperation in testing and deploying security-related internet standards

Internet.nl has proven successful as an open-source testing tool with over 5 million annual scans and adoption across multiple countries including Brazil, Denmark, Germany, and France

Government policy frameworks and security culture significantly influence the adoption rates of internet security standards, with the Netherlands showing high success through ‘comply or explain’ approaches

NIS2 regulation will make deployment of modern network protocols, routing security, and DNS/email security measures mandatory for EU operators

Testing communities play a crucial role in ensuring standards are not only implemented but correctly and consistently deployed to prevent fragmentation

International collaboration is essential to bridge policy and cultural gaps that affect security standards adoption across different countries

Economic pressure from customers demanding secure services could be a major driver for standards deployment, potentially more effective than legislation alone

Resolutions and action items

Community members can join by signing up through a QR code form to receive information about future meetings

Next community meeting scheduled for October to prioritize activities for the first year

Bilateral meeting scheduled for Thursday morning at 10:30 in the Buskerud room for questions and answers

Post-quantum cryptography support will be added to Internet.nl testing suite when relevant standards are established

Follow-up discussion planned between organizers and ICANN GAC Chair to explore government cooperation opportunities

Continued promotion of the community through various channels including government advisory committees

Unresolved issues

Specific timeline for implementing post-quantum cryptography testing remains undefined, pending establishment of accepted standards

Formal organizational structure for the community has not been finalized – currently described as ‘provisionally called’ GISTC

Concrete mechanisms for government cooperation and task force formation need further development

How to effectively bridge policy and cultural gaps between countries with different security adoption rates

Specific coordination methods for future standards development and community input processes

Suggested compromises

Technology-neutral and flexible approach to NIS2 requirements while maintaining technical community leadership in decision-making

Multi-stakeholder forum approach that includes government, technical community, and private sector participation

Gradual expansion of testing standards based on community feedback and technical readiness rather than rigid timelines

Successful examples include governments that have developed, for example, national IPv6 roadmaps in close cooperation with the technical community, ensuring that these roadmaps are grounded in the technical reality in their countries. On the other hand, more politically driven roadmaps without sufficient input from technical experts often failed to meet the expectations.

Speaker

Alena Muravska

Reason

This comment provides a crucial insight into why some government initiatives succeed while others fail, highlighting the critical importance of technical community involvement versus purely political approaches. It introduces a nuanced understanding of governance effectiveness.

Impact

This comment shifted the discussion from simply promoting standards to examining the quality and approach of implementation. It established a framework for understanding successful versus unsuccessful deployment strategies, which influenced how subsequent speakers framed their national experiences.

STOP has a web interface in Portuguese, very important in Brazil, because people here don’t speak any English. We need a web interface in Portuguese.

Speaker

Gilberto Zorello

Reason

This seemingly simple observation reveals a profound barrier to global technology adoption – language accessibility. It challenges the often English-centric approach to technical tools and highlights how localization is not just helpful but essential for meaningful adoption.

Impact

This comment introduced the practical reality of global deployment challenges beyond technical considerations. It demonstrated that successful international expansion requires cultural and linguistic adaptation, not just technical replication, adding depth to the community’s understanding of what ‘global’ really means.

From my experience in my email security research, I have realized that the adoption of email security measures is greatly influenced by the policy frameworks and the security culture. For example, the Netherlands has initiatives such as Comply or Explain List and Internet.nl, which have contributed to a high adoption rate of email security measures. On the other hand, Japan lacks similar policy mechanisms or counterpart to Internet.nl.

Speaker

Daishi Kondo

Reason

This comment provides empirical evidence of how policy frameworks directly impact technical adoption rates, offering a comparative analysis between countries. It moves beyond theoretical discussion to concrete evidence of what works and what doesn’t.

Impact

This observation reinforced Alena’s earlier point about successful government approaches while providing specific comparative data. It helped establish the value proposition for the community by showing measurable differences in adoption rates based on policy support, strengthening the argument for coordinated international efforts.

I can’t think of a bigger driver towards deployment than economic buying power, personally. You have a legislation, but if your customer doesn’t want you anymore because you’re not delivering, then you’re out of business.

Speaker

Wouter Van Den Bosch

Reason

This comment introduces market forces as potentially more powerful than regulatory compliance in driving standards adoption. It challenges the assumption that legislation is the primary driver and suggests that consumer/customer demand might be more effective.

Impact

This insight reframed the entire discussion about deployment strategies, suggesting that creating market pressure through awareness and testing might be more effective than relying solely on regulatory mandates. It positioned the testing community as a market-enabling force rather than just a compliance tool.

Will the community support a journey towards post-quantum cryptography and its use at Internet.nl?

Speaker

Santosh Pandit (online participant)

Reason

This question demonstrates forward-thinking about emerging security challenges and tests the community’s adaptability to future standards. It shows engagement with cutting-edge security concerns and challenges the community to consider its evolution.

Impact

This question pushed the discussion beyond current standards to future challenges, demonstrating that the community needs to be adaptive and forward-looking. It showed that participants are thinking strategically about the community’s long-term relevance and technical evolution.

Overall assessment

These key comments transformed what could have been a simple product launch into a sophisticated discussion about the complex interplay between technology, policy, culture, and economics in global standards deployment. The comments collectively established that successful standards adoption requires: technical excellence, policy support, cultural adaptation, market incentives, and forward-thinking evolution. They shifted the conversation from ‘what we do’ to ‘how and why it works differently across contexts,’ creating a more nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the global internet standards testing community. The discussion evolved from promotional to analytical, with each insight building on previous ones to create a comprehensive framework for understanding global technology deployment challenges.

Will the community support a journey towards post-quantum cryptography and its use at Internet.nl?

Speaker

Santosh Pandit (online participant)

Explanation

This is important as organizations need to prepare for quantum-resistant security measures, and testing tools like Internet.nl will need to incorporate post-quantum cryptography standards once they are established and widely accepted.

How can governments cooperate with the community, particularly those interested in implementing DNSSEC, cryptography, and other standards? Is there a task force or contact point for governments?

Speaker

Nico Caballero (GAG Chair, ICANN)

Explanation

This addresses the need for structured government engagement in Internet standards deployment, which is crucial given the regulatory requirements like NIS2 and the role of policy frameworks in driving adoption.

How to bridge policy and cultural gaps between countries to promote better adoption of email security measures?

Speaker

Daishi Kondo (University of Tokyo)

Explanation

This is important because adoption rates vary significantly between countries due to different policy frameworks and security cultures, and understanding these differences is essential for effective international cooperation.

What will be the specific priorities and focus areas for the community’s first year of operation?

Speaker

Wouter Van Den Bosch

Explanation

This needs to be determined at the October meeting and is crucial for establishing the community’s direction and concrete objectives.

How can the community coordinate on future development of standards and testing capabilities beyond the current set?

Speaker

General discussion context

Explanation

This is important for ensuring the community remains relevant and can adapt to evolving Internet security standards and requirements.

Summary

This discussion focused on measuring internet use in the United States, featuring presentations from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the U.S. Census Bureau. The session began with a historical video from the 1990s showing early efforts to address the “digital divide” between Americans with and without access to information technology. NTIA officials presented their Internet Use Survey, which has been the longest-running federal data collection on computer and internet use since 1994, conducted as a supplement to the Current Population Survey with tens of thousands of households interviewed monthly.

The Census Bureau representatives discussed the American Community Survey (ACS), which measures computer and internet access among 3.5 million households annually and provides geographically granular data down to neighborhood levels. Both agencies acknowledged limitations in their current data collection methods, particularly the challenge of obtaining reliable estimates for smaller geographic areas and keeping pace with rapidly changing technology. To address these gaps, NTIA and the Census Bureau introduced Project LEIA (Local Estimates of Internet Adoption), which uses advanced statistical modeling techniques called small area estimation to produce more detailed local internet adoption data.

Project LEIA combines direct survey data with auxiliary information like income levels and broadband infrastructure availability to generate reliable single-year estimates for all U.S. counties, rather than just the quarter of counties with sufficient population for traditional survey methods. During the interactive discussion, international participants raised questions about sustainability measurements, data quality assessment, capacity building opportunities, and how collected data influences policy decisions. The session concluded with participants sharing experiences from different countries and expressing interest in continued collaboration on internet measurement methodologies.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Historical Evolution of Digital Divide Measurement**: The discussion began with historical context from the 1990s, showing how the “digital divide” between technology “haves and have-nots” became recognized as a critical economic and civil rights issue, leading to the establishment of long-running federal data collection efforts.

– **Two Primary Survey Methods for Internet Use Data**: Presenters detailed NTIA’s Internet Use Survey (running since 1994, supplementing the Current Population Survey) and the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey questions (added in 2013), explaining how these capture different aspects of internet adoption, device usage, and online activities.

– **Project LEIA – Advanced Local Estimation Techniques**: A significant focus on the new “Local Estimates of Internet Adoption” initiative using small area estimation and machine learning to provide more granular, single-year county-level internet adoption data, addressing gaps in geographic coverage of traditional surveys.

– **Data Limitations and Methodological Challenges**: Discussion of survey limitations including declining response rates, difficulty measuring rapidly changing technologies, inability to capture internet quality/infrastructure readiness, and challenges in providing estimates for smaller geographic areas.

– **International Collaboration and Capacity Building**: Questions from international participants about training opportunities, data sharing, and how measurement data translates into targeted policy interventions for digitally excluded populations.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to present current U.S. federal approaches to measuring internet use and adoption, introduce new statistical modeling techniques for more granular local estimates, and foster international dialogue about best practices, methodological improvements, and collaborative opportunities in internet measurement.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a consistently professional, collaborative, and educational tone throughout. It began as a formal presentation but became increasingly interactive and engaging during the Q&A portion. The tone was optimistic about technological advances in data collection methods while acknowledging ongoing challenges. International participants brought a global perspective that enriched the conversation, and the overall atmosphere was one of knowledge-sharing and mutual learning rather than debate or criticism.

Speakers

**Speakers from the provided list:**

– **Video**: Historical testimony from the Honorable Larry Irving presenting findings from “Falling Through the Net, Defining the Digital Divide” study released by the Commerce Department in 1999

– **Jaisha Wray**: Associate Administrator for the Office of International Affairs and Acting Associate Administrator of the Office of Policy Analysis and Development at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)

– **Susan Chalmers**: Internet Governance Team Lead in the Office of International Affairs at NTIA

– **Luis Zambrano Ramos**: Senior Policy Advisor in NTIA’s Office of Policy Analysis and Development

– **Andrew Flavin**: Leads the Digital Policy Team in NTIA’s Office of International Affairs

– **Rafi Goldberg**: NTIA policy expert with 14 years of experience at the agency

– **Leslie Davis**: Census Bureau’s Subject Matter Expert on Computer and Internet Use as measured by their surveys

– **Heather Keene**: Works in the same division as Leslie at the Census Bureau, brings modeling expertise to internet and computer use measurement

– **Audience**: Multiple audience members asking questions during the open forum discussion

**Additional speakers:**

– **Michael Lewis**: Mentioned as someone who would discuss the NTIA Internet Use Survey and its history, but did not appear to speak in the transcript

– **Nenad Dorlich**: Audience member who asked questions about sustainability data collection and comparison with commercial service providers

– **Robert**: Online participant from Uganda working for Youth in Technology and Development Uganda, asked about capacity building training

– **Joshua**: Audience member from Uganda ISOC chapter who asked about disaggregation of internet measurement in schools and institutions

# Measuring Internet Use in the United States: Federal Data Collection Approaches and International Collaboration

## Executive Summary

This forum examined federal approaches to measuring internet use and adoption in the United States, featuring presentations from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the U.S. Census Bureau. The session began with historical context from the 1990s digital divide research, followed by detailed presentations on current survey methodologies and the innovative Project LEIA small area estimation initiative. The discussion included questions from international participants about capacity building, data comparability, and policy implementation.

## Historical Context: The Digital Divide Foundation

The session opened with a video clip from the 1990s featuring Larry Irving discussing the Commerce Department’s “Falling Through the Net, Defining the Digital Divide” study. This historical footage provided context for understanding how the digital divide between technology “haves and have-nots” was first identified as a critical policy issue affecting American access to technology.

## NTIA Internet Use Survey

Luis Zambrano Ramos, Senior Policy Advisor in NTIA’s Office of Policy Analysis and Development, presented the NTIA Internet Use Survey, which represents the longest-running federal data collection effort on computer and internet use, operating continuously since 1994. The survey operates as a supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS), interviewing tens of thousands of households monthly.

The survey captures comprehensive data on device usage, online activities, and internet access technologies, measuring not merely access but the sophistication and variety of internet usage patterns across demographic groups. The survey methodology undergoes continuous refinement through a public comment process that ensures stakeholder input in data collection design.

Zambrano Ramos highlighted the public availability of raw data through GitHub repositories and explorer tools designed for researchers and policymakers, demonstrating the agency’s commitment to data transparency and accessibility.

## American Community Survey (ACS)

Leslie Davis, the Census Bureau’s Subject Matter Expert on Computer and Internet Use, explained how computer and internet questions were added to the ACS in 2013 following Congressional directive through the Broadband Data Improvement Act. The ACS provides nationally representative data on internet adoption and computer ownership for 3.5 million households annually.

The ACS underwent significant methodology improvements in 2016 to address question clarity and response reliability issues. Davis emphasized that the ACS enables analysis of broadband adoption disparities at sub-state geographic levels, though with important limitations: one-year data is limited to counties and places with populations exceeding 65,000, while five-year data can reach census tract level but sacrifices timeliness for geographic coverage.

Davis detailed the interactive mapping tools and pre-tabulated products available through data.census.gov, making statistical information accessible to diverse user communities.

## Project LEIA: Local Estimates of Internet Adoption

### Technical Approach

Rafi Goldberg, NTIA policy expert, and Heather Keene, Census Bureau modelling expert, presented Project LEIA as an innovative solution addressing geographic limitations in traditional survey methods. Announced last fall, the project employs small area estimation techniques that combine direct survey data with auxiliary predictors such as income levels and broadband infrastructure availability.

The statistical approach blends direct ACS estimates with indirect regression estimates, weighted by relative precision for each county. This methodology enables production of reliable single-year estimates for all U.S. counties, rather than just the quarter of counties with sufficient population for traditional survey methods.

### Results and Applications

Project LEIA produces the first-ever experimental single-year estimates of household internet adoption for every U.S. county. This advancement in geographic granularity enables state broadband offices to utilize survey data for designing targeted programs. Goldberg provided specific examples, noting that while Los Angeles County has sufficient sample size for direct estimates, smaller counties in Texas do not, making the modeled estimates particularly valuable.

### Future Development

The research team outlined plans for expanding Project LEIA’s capabilities, including refining the county-level model to produce official data products, exploring census tract-level estimates, and applying machine learning techniques to bring detailed internet use data from NTIA surveys to ACS datasets. Keene mentioned plans to incorporate additional predictors including urban/rural measures and STEM occupation concentrations.

## International Engagement and Questions

The session included participation from international attendees, with Jaisha Wray, Associate Administrator for NTIA’s Office of International Affairs, and Susan Chalmers, Internet Governance Team Lead, facilitating discussion.

### Key Questions Raised

**Capacity Building**: Robert from Youth in Technology and Development Uganda requested training on internet measurement methodologies. Speakers suggested working through existing institutions like the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute.

**Environmental Sustainability**: Nenad Dorlich asked whether agencies collect data on electricity consumption or CO2 emissions related to internet usage. Speakers acknowledged this data is not currently collected.

**Data Disaggregation**: Joshua from Uganda ISOC chapter asked about measuring internet access in schools and institutions beyond household-level data. Speakers noted that while other agencies collect some institutional data, comprehensive integration remains limited.

**Infrastructure Quality**: A RIPE NCC representative questioned measuring internet infrastructure readiness for next-generation applications like AI and AR, highlighting that access doesn’t necessarily indicate capability for advanced applications.

**Policy Implementation**: An international think tank representative asked how data collection translates into targeted initiatives for digitally excluded populations, emphasizing the gap between measurement and effective intervention.

## Technical Challenges

Speakers acknowledged several ongoing challenges:

– Declining survey response rates affecting data reliability

– Sample size constraints limiting geographic granularity

– The need to balance technological currency with time series comparability

– Integration challenges across multiple data collection efforts

## Data Accessibility and Tools

Both agencies emphasized their commitment to open data access. NTIA provides raw data through GitHub repositories and specialized explorer tools, while the Census Bureau offers interactive mapping tools and pre-tabulated products through data.census.gov. This approach enables independent analysis and supports evidence-based policy development across government levels.

## Conclusion

The forum demonstrated significant progress in federal internet measurement capabilities, from the foundational digital divide research of the 1990s to today’s sophisticated statistical modeling approaches like Project LEIA. While current methodologies provide valuable insights into internet adoption patterns, the discussion revealed ongoing challenges in areas such as environmental impact measurement, infrastructure quality assessment, and translating data into effective policy interventions.

The international interest in U.S. methodologies suggests opportunities for knowledge sharing and capacity building, while the technical innovations presented indicate continued evolution in measurement approaches to address the changing digital landscape.

Video: and so at this time we’d like to ask the Honorable Larry Irving to present testimony. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to thank you and the members of the subcommittee for this opportunity to testify today on the findings of Falling Through the Net, Defining the Digital Divide, the study released by the Commerce Department earlier this month. President Clinton and Secretary Daley released Falling Through the Net on July 8th, 1999 in Los Angeles during the President’s New Markets Tour. And during the tour, the President and Secretary Daley discussed the fact that even though information technology underlies much of our nation’s economic growth, far too many Americans are left out of the digital economy. And as a result, the digital divide, that is the divide between the haves and have-nots in information technology, has become a critical economics and civil rights issue. Access to new technologies such as the computer and the Internet will be keys to the future economic success of any American business, community, or individual. And increasingly, Americans use the net to find jobs, contact colleagues, locate public information, or take courses online. Electronic commerce is helping small companies compete and entrepreneurs in rural, remote, and traditionally underserved areas reach out to the rest of the world. Familiarity with new technologies will also prepare more Americans for the high-tech workplace of the 21st century. Because of the increasingly important role of these new technologies, Secretary Daley concluded that ensuring access to the fundamental tools of digital economy is one of the most significant investments our nation can make. And as we enter the 21st century, it will become even more essential to ensure that all Americans, rich or poor, urban or rural, black or white, Hispanic or Native American, can reap the benefits of these new technologies. Falling through the net provides a starting point in bridging the gap between the nation’s information rich and poor. This is our third report examining census data, looking at the digital divide. And we anticipate that it will serve as an important diagnostic tool to assist policymakers in the private sector in formulating methods to provide greater access for more Americans. And today I’d like to provide for the subcommittee several slides showing some of our key findings. These slides illustrate that overall Americans are far more connected than they have been in years past. On the other hand, we have also found that there are alarming disparities based chiefly on income, education, race, and geographic location in which group of Americans have computers, and who is online. Hmm, it’s gonna be interesting as I read my testimony. Equally disturbing, many of these disparities are growing. And let me turn to the first slide. This shows… And everyone will be in the dark if we don’t get online.

Jaisha Wray: Great, thank you all for joining us today. My name is Jaycia Ray and I am the Associate Administrator for the Office of International Affairs and the Acting Associate Administrator of the Office of Policy Analysis and Development in the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA, in the United States. What you just saw is a video from NTIA in the 1990s discussing the early days of measuring Internet use in the United States. As you will hear, this issue continues to be of high importance and the work continues on to this day as well. Today we have a distinguished set of speakers from NTIA and the U.S. Census Bureau who will discuss the past, present, and future of measuring Internet use in the United States. Located within the U.S. Department of Commerce, NTIA is the executive branch agency principally responsible by law for advising the President on telecommunications and information policy issues. NTIA’s programs and policymaking focus largely on expanding broadband Internet access and adoption in America, expanding the use of spectrum by all users, and ensuring that the Internet remains an engine for innovation and economic growth. Also located within the Department of Commerce, the United States Census Bureau is the nation’s largest federal statistical agency with the mission to serve as the leading provider of quality data about the nation’s people and economy. The Census Bureau provides high quality, timely, and relevant data products that determine how legislative seats are distributed across the nation. It also supports evidence building in government and policymaking, planning decisions about community services, and the annual distribution of federal funds to local, state, and tribal governments. Together, subject matter experts from these agencies will share details about how they measure Internet use, highlighting promising new initiatives and issues that require further examination in this ongoing effort. Following their overview, we want to open the floor for robust interactive discussion with people both in the room and online. We want to hear how other countries are measuring Internet use and what we can learn from those experiences. In particular, what are the missing pieces in measuring Internet use, and how can the international community collaborate in this space? We hope that this open forum will serve as an opportunity to bring experts from around the world together to advance the state of knowledge for one of the most important aspects of digital connectivity, understanding how people use the Internet. So to kick things off, I will ask my colleagues to briefly introduce themselves.

Susan Chalmers: Good afternoon. My name is Susan Chalmers, and I am the Internet Governance Team Lead in the Office of International Affairs at NTIA.

Luis Zambrano Ramos: And I’m Luis Zambrano Ramos. I’m a Senior Policy Advisor in NTIA’s Office of Policy Analysis and Development.

Andrew Flavin: Hi, I’m Andrew Flavin. I lead the Digital Policy Team in NTIA’s

Luis Zambrano Ramos: Office of International Affairs. Rafi, are you online?

Rafi Goldberg: Good afternoon. My name is Rafi Goldberg, and I’ve been working on policy at NTIA for the past 14 years. And I will pass it on to our Census Bureau friends.

Leslie Davis: Great. Thank you, Rafi. My name is Leslie Davis, and I’m the Census Bureau’s Subject Matter Expert on Computer and Internet Use as measured by our surveys.

Heather Keene: Hi, good afternoon. I’m Heather Keene. It’s morning for us. I work in the same division with Leslie, and you’ll meet Mike after me. They’re the Subject Matter Experts on Internet and Computer Use, and I bring modeling expertise to the table. I’m going to pass it to you, Mike.

Jaisha Wray: All right. So in terms of our run of show today, first we will hand it over to Michael Lewis, who will discuss the NTIA Internet Use Survey and its history. Following that, Leslie will talk about the U.S. Census Bureau’s decades-long work in the American Community Survey. After Leslie, Rafi will highlight the latest project to produce local estimates of Internet adoption. Heather will then dive deeper into the technical details of this project. And following the presentation, Susan and our other Subject Matter Experts will help steward the open forum discussion. So with no further ado, we’ll get started, and over to Luis.

Luis Zambrano Ramos: Great. So thank you so much, Jaisha Wray. So I am going to focus on one of NTIA’s most important contributions to the field, the NTIA Internet Use Survey. This survey is a supplement to the current population survey, which is a survey that’s sponsored jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is a monthly survey, which is primarily known as the source of some of our official labor statistics. Agencies such as NTIA have the opportunity to sponsor supplemental questions during particular months. Tens of thousands of households are interviewed for the CPS every month, providing a large, nationally representative sample of American households. We have worked for over 30 years with our partners at the Census Bureau on this survey. In fact, the Internet Use Survey is the longest-running federal data collection on computer and Internet use in the United States. We have sponsored a grand total of 17 surveys in the field since 1994, and we’re planning to get our next survey out in November of this year. So here you can see a timeline of our collections. Over time, we have transitioned from print publications of our findings to a more web-centered approach to present the results. We have blog posts and other analyses of the data, and we also have a nifty, publicly available explorer tool that I will showcase in a bit. One very important component of the NTIA Internet Use Survey is the ability to obtain input from the public on the survey instrument itself. We include a draft version of the survey instrument and seek comment from the public before we issue the survey. This forum actually is particularly timely, given that last week, on June 17th, we published a notice and request for comment for our upcoming survey later this year in 2025. So with all this said, what can we learn from the survey? So in addition to learning just about Internet use generally, we can also learn things like devices and Internet access technologies, details about how people use the Internet, including locations and certain online activities. We also have other questions, such as questions about how people use the Internet. This is a slide that you can get using our explorer tool, which I will show in a bit. This slide breaks down device usage, perhaps not surprisingly for example, we have noticed that smartphone use has gone up since 2011, while desktop computer use has decreased. And here are a few online activities that we have measured and how they have trended over time, things like social media use, telework, and the like. So as I mentioned, we have a publicly available explorer tool that we call the NTIA Dead Explorer that allows us to play with this data. For example, if I am searching for device use, specifically laptop use, you can look at that information throughout the years. You can look at the total number in millions and percentages over the years. You can also get a table that gives you a result for each of the U.S. states and breaks them down along with numbers, percentages, and also things like confidence intervals. So again, here is just how the tool is being applied, and I’m sorry, I think we’re having some technical difficulties, but moving on to sort of the availability of this data, if you want to dive deeper, we make all the underlying raw data publicly available. We actually have a GitHub repository with sample code, and at the end of the presentation we’ll actually give a link to our website. And there you can see some of the publicly available data sets that we have. And before I pass it on to my Census colleagues, last year we actually celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Internet Use Survey, and we threw a little party. You just saw that slide, and we were able to put it on a cake, and unfortunately there’s no cake today, but I welcome you all to join in the celebration. And with that, I will pass it on to my colleague Leslie from Census.

Leslie Davis: Great. Thank you so much, Luis. In addition to the NTIA Internet Use Survey, the Census Bureau measures computer and Internet access on the American Community Survey, or the ACS, which is the Census’s flagship demographic survey. This is a nationally representative survey that serves as the premier source for timely, detailed population and housing information for the U.S., and it provides local and national leaders with information needed for programs, economic development, emergency management, and more. It is fielded annually to a sample of 3.5 million households nationwide, and also additional group quarters, and it asks questions on over 40 topics, including Internet access. Next slide, please. So in 2008, U.S. Congress directed federal agencies through the Broadband Data Improvement Act to improve their data collection on broadband use and subscription, and this act specifically called upon the Census Bureau to add questions to the ACS that measured, A, whether persons at households use or own computers at their address, and, B, whether persons at that address subscribe to dial-up or broadband Internet service at their address. The computer and Internet questions were added to the ACS in 2013. Next slide, please. So the initial set of questions that were asked on the ACS are shown on the left-hand side of this screen, and they were designed to capture computer ownership, Internet adoption, as we measure by a connection to the Internet, and Internet subscription type. As a result of us measuring adoption, the ACS data does not offer insights on the level of Internet use within a household or the extent of digital literacy skills of a particular respondent. Furthermore, if a respondent says that they don’t have a subscription, the ACS data does not tell us if there isn’t an Internet service provider thus not allowing for the subscription or if it’s due to another reason, such as the cost of the subscription. The ACS questions were revised in 2016, which you can see on the right-hand side of the screen, and their current versions remain as they were in 2016. These changes that we made were implemented after feedback received from survey methods experts and undergoing thorough content testing, and the changes were aimed to address potential confusion with question wording, response categories, and definitional clarity. The first question you’ll see on the screen is our changes to device ownership question, and given the focus of today’s talk, I’m going to switch to the next question, which asks about Internet access. Here we replaced the language regarding subscriptions to paying a provider or cell phone company, which helped to reframe what it means to subscribe or adopt to the Internet for our respondents. Next slide, please. As for our Internet types question, we altered the language of mobile broadband plan to cellular data plan for clarity, and this change alone improved our response reliability drastically. We also collapsed the high-speed categories of cable, fiber, and DSL to improve question clarity and also distinguish this category, which is fixed to a particular location, and compare it to the mobile broadband option. Again, here we removed language related to subscription and changed it to access to the Internet, which improved our response rates. As you can see on this question and the device type question before, we also offer the opportunity for respondents to write in a particular Internet service type or device type that they may not see on the questionnaire. Clerical coders at our headquarters can match these write-ins to our categories as best as possible and reassign those write-ins as needed. So, for example, if a respondent wrote in Comcast for their Internet service type, which is a provider of cable and fiber Internet in the United States, we can typically assign that respondent to high-speed broadband on the back end. Next slide, please. So, based on the ACS, the Census Bureau publishes one-year and five-year estimates, and the main difference between the two is the level of geographic granularity captured in the estimates. Our one-year data can go down to the county and place levels for the geographies that match our population threshold of 65,000 and over, which helps us ensure confidentiality of our respondents and ensure reliability. The five-year data, which brings together 60 months of data, can go down even smaller to the census tract and block group level, as you can see on the hierarchy on the screen. Next slide. The tables on the screen provide some context for how small these geographies are. So, for example, for the one-year data, our counties are the largest sub-state geography. They are highly variable in geographic area and population size. So, for example, Los Angeles County in California has about 10 million residents, whereas Armstrong County in Texas has about 2,000. Counties in the U.S. have some government oversight in many states. Places, on the other hand, represent a town or a settled concentration of people within a state and can often be identified by a name. They sometimes have governmental functions, and their median size is about 1,000 people. Our five-year data can go down to the tract level, which is generally represented to be neighborhoods. They have an optimum size of about 4,000 people, and even smaller than that is the block group. The block group is a group of comprised of blocks, which are statistical areas bounded by visible and non-visible boundaries, and they’re comprised of about 600 to 3,000 people. As I mentioned, the one-year data is less geographically granular, which helps us ensure the reliability of those estimates and our confidentiality of survey respondents. So, as a result, we were able to publish. 27% of counties and 2% of incorporated places in our nation for the one-year data set in 2023. Our five-year data in contrast has a greater sample size and better reliability for smaller geographies and as a result we were able to publish all estimates. Next slide please. Using the ACS computer and internet data that we collect, the Bureau publishes 14 tables on device ownership and internet adoption by select demographics and geographic breakdowns. The data is available on our data tool which is data.census.gov and data users on that tool can access pre-tabulated products and use tables to create custom maps as I did to create the map on the screen here which shows the percent of people age 65 and older with a broadband subscription and computer by state. In addition to the tables and maps, data users can use our public use microdata sample or our PUMS data to create custom tables. This PUMS data is a sample, a subsample of the ACS microdata and it goes through many disclosure processes to protect confidentiality. Next slide please. In addition to our pre-tabulated products, we also produce written reports based on the ACS data. This most recent report investigated computer and internet use trends between 2013 and 2021. It also explored disparities in broadband adoption at the county level and included a great section on the demographics of smartphone-only households in the United States. Next slide. We also author shorter blog-style publications called America Counts Stories and here I have two examples, one pertaining to tablet ownership among households with children and the other exploring broadband adoption disparities among tribal households. Next slide. So what are the strengths of the ACS data? As I mentioned, it has a large sample size which allows us to publish geographically granular data. So for example, if you were interested in studying broadband adoption at the sub-neighborhood level, our five-year data from the ACS could help you get there. Additionally, the ACS offers detailed demographic data available for sub-state geographies which helps academics, policy makers, community stakeholders, and more explore internet adoption disparities by different factors like income, education, and rurality. We also publish the data on a frequent basis on an annual basis and it undergoes rigorous verification and reliability checks prior to us publishing it and it also provides a helpful time series of data as it dates back to 2013.

Rafi Goldberg: Great. Thank you, Leslie. Hopefully, my first slide is up although I cannot see it at the moment. But the, you know, the NTIA Internet Use Survey and the ACS, thank you, have served as the basis for a ton of important research and analysis for many years now and they continue to be vital data sources for understanding internet use in the United States. But we’re also very much aware that these surveys alone are unable to answer every relevant question and recently we’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to address some of the gaps in our data and to ensure we’re fully equipped in the future to understand our progress and challenges. Next slide, please. We learn a ton from household surveys but they’re not without their limits. For example, it’s pretty common for a colleague or a member of the public to ask me what internet use is like in their particular area and unfortunately, our current ability to answer that question is limited. Even with a huge sample size of our surveys, those numbers start to get small very fast if you try to zoom in too far on the map. For less populous areas, as Leslie mentioned, we need to aggregate five consecutive years’ worth of ACS data. Now, you know, even if you can work with the three basic internet use questions that are on the ACS, five-year estimates, while, you know, very useful in a lot of cases, are not ideal when you’re trying to understand the impacts of relatively fast changes like the introduction of a new program. I’m excited to say that NCIA and the Census Bureau are working to fill this gap, which will be the focus of the rest of our presentation, but just want to note that we also have some other challenges in this field. For example, while our surveys have fairly high response rates, they have been falling over time, and there’s a lot of work going on to try to address that. Internet use is also very much a field where the technologies and even the words that we use to describe those technologies are changing all the time, so it’s always a balancing act between keeping up with those changes in our surveys and being careful not to break good time series comparisons. Finally, while we have data on online activities from the NCIA Internet Use Survey, we are limited in our ability to measure important workforce and other skills. Next slide, please. So, I want to focus now on the problem of getting more granular internet use estimates, and I’m excited to report that last fall NCIA and the Census Bureau announced a new initiative called Local Estimates of Internet Adoption, or Project LEIA for short. With Project LEIA, we’re working to develop more granular single-year estimates using statistical techniques that are so advanced you might just think that they came from a galaxy far, far away. Next slide, please. So, what exactly is Project LEIA? The Census Bureau team is using something called small area estimation to make it possible for us to learn about internet use at the local level. The first product of this effort was released back in September in the form of the first ever experimental single-year estimates of household internet adoption for every county in the United States. For comparison, only about a quarter of U.S. counties have a large enough population to get to internet adoption estimates using the single-year ACS product. And again, the five-year estimates are also able to do this, and they’re very useful, but they’re not ideal in a lot of situations. Next slide, please. The basic idea behind small area estimation is that you take what you already know from survey data and feed that into a model alongside other data points that are known to be linked with the outcome of interest. In this case, we know from previous studies that factors like income and the availability of broadband infrastructure are predictors of internet adoption rates, so we can work with those as auxiliary data sources. Heather will go into more detail about this in a moment, but by incorporating these outside data points alongside the direct survey estimates, you get estimates with smaller margins of error compared with the survey estimates alone, and you also reduce the risk that individual respondents in less populous areas could be re-identified by the publication of new estimates. That makes it feasible to publish reliable estimates for places with smaller populations, all without having to interview any more households or putting anyone’s privacy at risk. Next slide, please. For our first experiment with, you know, with this, the Census Bureau team was able to estimate the proportion of households in every U.S. county that had a wired internet subscription in 2022. We were really excited to be able to share these first results with the world last fall, and we put together an interactive map on NTIA’s website to show off these new estimates. As you can see, there’s quite a lot of variation in adoption rates among U.S. counties, and these estimates enable you to zoom in on a particular area of interest. Next slide, please. While this is a promising start, we think there’s a lot more that can be done with Project LEIA, and NTIA and the Census Bureau are working together on the next steps. At the same time that we released the feasibility study and experimental estimates, NTIA put out an RFC asking for feedback and ideas for future directions. We’ve got some great suggestions that we’ve incorporated into our work moving forward. Right now, we have three tasks that we’re working on as part of this. initiative. First, the Census Bureau team is looking at ways to refine the model for the current set of estimates to get to the point where we all feel ready to shed the experimental label. Second, they are exploring the feasibility of producing even more granular estimates at the census tract level. And as mentioned before, census tracts in the United States are basically neighborhoods in a lot of places, and they generally contain between 1,000 and 8,000 people. And finally, they are working to apply machine learning to bring some of the more detailed computer and internet use data from the NTIA Internet Use Survey to the ACS dataset, opening up new research opportunities and setting the stage for the potential for small area estimates of those more detailed variables in the future. We’re very excited about the potential for project layout to help improve our understanding of internet use in the United States. And I’m pleased to turn next to Heather, who will get into some more of the technical details of how the Census Bureau is making this all possible.

Heather Keene: Thanks, Rafi. I’m happy to continue our 30-year partnership with NTIA, with Project LEIA. And I’m going to reiterate a lot what Rafi said. So Project LEIA is filling in the gap to obtain one-year estimates of internet adoption for all counties, because we need to measure time more quickly than what the five-year ACS estimates can tell us. So the nearest alternative, we could publish the survey estimate from one year from the ACS. But as Rafi and Leslie talked about earlier, you would only get about a quarter of all counties. And so Project LEIA, using small area modeling techniques, allows us to blend that survey with other sources, like Rafi pointed out, to publish internet adoption rates for every single county in the United States. That’s 3,144, I think it was at last count. Okay, so next slide. And so the small area modeling technique that we use, this is a very high-level view of what that looks like. The layout model estimates are really the combination of two separate estimates of internet adoption. And so on the left-hand side of the slide, you see that one component is the AC estimate. This is just from the survey by itself, the proportion of county households that have adopted internet. And on the right-hand side is what we call the indirect estimate. And this is the mechanism that we use to bring in the other related data sources and other factors that are related to internet adoption. So this is a regression model where the outcome is internet adoption at the county level. And the predictors are median household income for the county, the proportion of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher, and the proportion of county households that have access to broadband infrastructure, which is taken from an administrative source that measures broadband internet infrastructure from another agency. We can talk more about that if you’d like. And so taking these two separate estimates of internet adoption, we blend them together where the contribution of each is determined by the relative precision compared to one another. Next slide, please. So here’s another look at that same visual where we see what happens in larger counties like L.A. County where we have a population of around 10 million people. The ACS direct estimate on proportion of households with internet adoption would be pretty reliable because we would sample a lot of households from this county. Because it’s a very large county, we would send out a lot of questionnaires, and we would get very good data from this county because of its size. And so the final model data estimate, we would expect a higher contribution from this high-quality direct survey estimate where we ask the households directly, do you have access to an internet broadband subscription? And so the LAYA model would draw more information from the ACS compared to the regression model defined in the indirect estimate. Next slide. And so you can imagine for smaller counties like the one in Texas Leslie talked about earlier, we would expect more contribution from the indirect estimate because the ACS estimate for that county, we wouldn’t have a lot of cases to derive an estimate from. And so the resulting estimate of proportion of households would be rather noisy. This would be reflected in the weight that combines the two estimates, the direct estimate from the ACS and the indirect estimate that brings in the additional data. Here, the indirect estimate we would expect to contribute more to the final estimate for that particular county. Okay, so that’s in a nutshell how Project LAYA works. And so the next slide is, this is the same map that Rafi showed you. This is just a screenshot from our feasibility report. Exact same data, but if you want to interact with the data, you’ll go to the NTIA website to look at different views and zoom in and zoom out. So on the right is just kind of a reminder of what exactly are we modeling here. And this is from the actual questionnaire in ACS. So we’re modeling the proportion of all households in each county that subscribe to high speed broadband, internet service, that’s cable, fiber optic, or DSL, just as a reminder. And so this map is a gradient. So darker blue counties are going to be those that have higher proportions of households that have adopted internet with that particular technology type. Next slide. Okay, and so this is just kind of a typical QC that’s done in small area modeling. What we’re looking at here is a scatter plot that compares the proportion of county households that adopt internet compared to that derived from our modeled layer estimate. ACS proportion is on the x-axis or the horizontal, and the layer proportion is on the vertical or y-axis. And so each one of these circles represents the county. And so whenever the layer proportion is exactly the same as the ACS survey proportion, the county or the circle will fall exactly on that diagonal line. So we don’t expect all counties to fall exactly along this line, but generally we want them to follow the general trend. You see some outliers, some counties, some circles that are not very closely aligned to the line. This means that the ACS data doesn’t have a lot of impact here. The model is drawing more from the indirect estimate here. And these are probably going to be very small counties. So this kind of some handful of scatter of points away from a line is completely expected, but we see in general the two estimates agree, and this is as desired. Okay, so overall the layer model progression proportion agrees at a high level with ACS. Okay, next slide. So this is a kind of repeating what Rafi was talking about and what we’re looking to continue Project LEIA. We’re going to fine-tune this county model for all counties for internet adoption and look at some other useful predictors that we didn’t use before that we got from our request for comments from the public. And mainly we’re going to look at measures of urban versus rural. We tried some of those before, but they didn’t work out. So there are other ways that you can measure that. So we’re going to continue exploring that. We’re going to look at measures of economic growth and concentration of the type of jobs or occupations in the county, namely science, technology, engineering, mathematics, or STEM occupations. And so we want to finalize that model, remove the experimental data product label, and have an official data product that measures internet adoption. And what we also want to look at the feasibility of going even further granularity and look at below the county level census tracts Rafi and Leslie described. These are subdivision or neighborhoods of counties around 4,000 people, but these are statistical entities that the Census Bureau creates at the start.

Luis Zambrano Ramos: Thank you so much, Heather, and that concludes our presentation. I’ve put up our website as well as our contact information, and I’m going to pass it over to Susan and Andrew to help us further the discussion.

Susan Chalmers: Thank you so much, Luis. And thank you to everybody for joining us for our open forum today. During this session, we have learned from colleagues at NTIA as well as colleagues from the U.S. Census Bureau on two different surveys. I mean, first we had NTIA’s Internet Use Survey, and then second we heard from the Census Bureau on the American Community Survey. I’d just like to pause to see if anybody has any questions they would like to put forward to our colleagues in person and in Washington, D.C. Sir, please. I believe you may have to use a microphone. You’re welcome to…

Audience: Hi. Do you hear me? Yes. Great. My name is Nenad Dorlich, and I would like to ask, does Census Bureau or NTIA collect any data in regards to sustainability, Internet and sustainability, like electricity consumption from the end user to data centers or CO2 equivalent emissions and such? And the second, I have a second question too, is do you compare your statistic or use data from commercial service provider, FCC, or any other source that may have this information also? Do you use them or compare your findings with them? Thank you.

Susan Chalmers: I’ll just pause to see if colleagues were able to capture the question. Rafi?

Heather Keene: Yeah, I guess for the Census Bureau, yeah, we have lots of different sources that we could potentially use that are collected by other agencies, not specifically the consumption from data centers per se, but we have used in other modeled products data from the Department of Energy, which collects data on energy consumption and detailed. We use that for a project to estimate what proportion of households use air conditioning, which is not asked in the AC. So we brought in that particular data. So the Department of Energy would, we could probably have a look to see what kind of detailed sources about energy consumption are available. And, yes, we do have third-party sources, just depending on the subject matter. The other administrative data that I was talking about that’s used in the LEIA model is data collected from the Federal Communications Commission FCC that measures broadband Internet availability for each county down to the block group level based on speeds that are advertised and the type of technology. So we have a lot of sources that we could potentially draw from. And, yes, we have from other agencies and from commercial sources. Rafi, do you want to add anything to that? Rafi, were you aware of any energy consumption sources that specifically look at data center consumption?

Rafi Goldberg: I am not. I think we would love to get our hands on this data if they were available somewhere. Yeah, I was just going to speak a little bit to the second part of the question. Right. And, you know, and just to add that, you know, in this session we’ve been talking about Internet adoption and usage data, whereas the FCC, as Heather mentioned, is the entity that collects data on where broadband infrastructure is actually available. So we do have that, you know, a whole other data source. And as Heather mentioned, that is actually one of the inputs into the experimental model for Project LEIA.

Audience: Thank you so much. Thank you for the question and thank you for the responses, colleagues. We have a question from an online participant. We’ll go to him next and then, sir, we’ll take your question after the online participant. So, Robert, please, the floor is yours. Yeah, thank you, the presenters. My question is I’m based here in Uganda and I work for a small organization called Youth in Technology and Development Uganda. Yes, I’ve been listening and down here we have a challenge of measuring Internet. I was wondering, do you offer capacity building training now to measure Internet for a small organization like mine, if interested in such?

Jaisha Wray: So I will briefly chime in that that is a very excellent point that we can take back to our colleagues in Washington to consider. We do think that there are great benefits to capacity building on this topic, so more to come. But we work closely with the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute, and so it’s something to consider for the future. I don’t know if my colleagues online have anything to add.

Susan Chalmers: No, and Robert, we also have provided email addresses on one of those slides, so please let us know if you do not have those email addresses and we can find a way to provide them to you. Thank you for the question. Sir, please.

Audience: Thank you. I’m from RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry that also operates the largest network of Internet measurement devices, so-called RIPE Atlas props and RIPE Atlas itself. So the question is about, well, when do we talk about the access to the broadband infrastructure? Do we also consider measuring the quality of this infrastructure? Because the access to it is not always the readiness of this infrastructure for the next level of digital economy, for the AI, for all the segmented reality, for this metaverse, et cetera. Do you also measure how do users use this Internet? So is it used only for primary functions or is it used for the access to AI or metaverse applications and activities? Do you think that there should be some measurement done to ensure, and efforts based on that, that should ensure the readiness of Internet infrastructure for the next level of Internet development and digital development? Thank you.

Luis Zambrano Ramos: So I’ll take the first part of the question and then pass it on to my colleagues. So at least for us, the NTIA Internet Use Survey does measure some online activities like social network usage, telework, and the like. We don’t, I think, get to the whole wide range of activities that people can do online, but we’re always looking to improve and iterate upon the survey instrument so that we can actually focus on the way that people are using the Internet today. And, Rafi, I don’t know if you have anything else to add to that.

Rafi Goldberg: Yeah, no, that is exactly right. And, you know, I would just add that in terms of the sort of direct network measurement, you know, there have been efforts at the FCC as well as in the private sector with firms like Ookla and Microsoft. and others to measure actual speeds and latency and other metrics related to the quality of the internet connection the folks actually experience, which I agree is another very important piece of the puzzle. So it’s not one of our programs, but I think another important area for us, certainly.

Audience: Thank you. We’re ready to share our sources as well and our knowledge for that. Thank you.

Susan Chalmers: Wonderful. Let’s let’s exchange information and we can we can be in touch after the session. Are there any other questions? Oh, yes, sir, please.

Audience: Thank you. I am I audible? All right. This is Joshua from Uganda, ISOC chapter. I have a question on the disaggregation. Do you do any disaggregation to maybe like internet in schools? Because I think you seem to focus on households. What about maybe in schools and in other institutions? Is that something you also measure? And how, if you do so? Thank you.

Susan Chalmers: Thank you. Excellent question made turn to our our colleagues in Washington.

Rafi Goldberg: Sure, I can start. So these are household surveys, which is which is why, you know, I think you’ve been hearing a lot about households. We do in the NTIA Internet use survey ask a range of questions about different locations of Internet use. And one of those is Internet use at school. So we do capture some information about that through this survey. I understand that there are other agencies throughout the government that also direct surveys towards the schools themselves. And through that, right. If you’re interested in learning more about how the school itself is using the Internet, those those would probably be the, you know, places to go for that information. But we do ask about Internet use at school, as well as using the Internet for online courses or training is one of the many activities that we ask about as well.

Susan Chalmers: Excellent, thank you. Anything to add from us on the census side?

Leslie Davis: Yes, hi. So, yeah, Rafi is exactly right on the ACS side. I think we’re a little bit restricted in terms of how the questions are mandated. And as a result, the questions are at the highest household level. But there are other sources, I believe, within the census as well on other surveys that get more at the school level or how trainings are done at the school level.

Luis Zambrano Ramos: And actually, one thing I want to plug in is one of, I believe, Leslie or Heather’s slides, it’s data.census.gov for access to various census data products.

Susan Chalmers: Thank you, just checking if we have any questions.

Andrew Flavin: Nothing more online.

Susan Chalmers: OK, any any questions from the room? Please.

Audience: So a quick one from international think tank perspective. When we speak to member states, the trouble is not just data collection, but actually using it for targeted initiatives for those who are not yet included or using the Internet. So how does your data collection feed in to the decision-making process at county or state or central federal government level to really make initiatives that target those geographical segments and those household and user segments that are not yet got the access, got the skills, or not yet using the Internet for various functions, anything from, you know, participating in public discourse, using government services online, shopping online, banking online. How is your data collection feeding into that to really ensure that we get those who are excluded online and included? Thanks.

Susan Chalmers: Thank you for the question. May I turn to Rafi, would you be able to offer a response to the question?

Rafi Goldberg: Yeah, you know, I think, you know, I have heard from many state broadband offices in particular that, you know, they like to make use of our data when, you know, they’re designing programs to, you know, serve their their constituents. So certainly, you know, at the federal level, we don’t have a monopoly on how we use these data, you know, certainly state and local governments and nonprofits and the private sector make use of these data all the time for their own work. You know, and, you know, it is not uncommon for us here at NCIA and elsewhere in the government to cite some of our data, for example, in an FCC filing or you know, in another venue where, you know, we are, you know, analyzing various policy issues. So, you know, so that I think is, you know, part of how this is helpful. But, you know, we certainly don’t think that we have a monopoly on, you know, how to best make use of the data. One very important feature of these data sets is they’re all available for public use and researchers and advocates on the outside do a lot of great things using our data.

Susan Chalmers: Thank you so much, Rafi. We just have a few minutes left. I would just like to invite the audience to share any of their experiences on measuring Internet use. Please feel free. We did flag these questions towards the top of the session, but we still do have some time if anybody would like to contribute.

Audience: Well, I can share a bit about our experience not about sharing Internet or measuring Internet use, but with the initiative that is called Internet Measurement Day that we do together with ICANN and we do it in different countries going there and just trying to show the country how to use the Internet measurement instruments to see what is their counter position on routing security, what is their counter position on the interconnection with other countries, what is their counter condition about the peering inside the country? So I guess we should have similar activities so we can have more understanding how we can improve the situation to have these networks ready because we talk a lot about these digital services, but there should be also the understanding that to ensure these digital services, to ensure this next level to digital development, we should have an appropriate level of Internet development in the country, appropriate level of critical resilient infrastructures in the country, route servers, IXPs, all the stuff that is connected and that is equivalent to the needs of digital economy and society of the future. Of now, because now is the future.

Susan Chalmers: Thank you, thank you so much. We are wrapping up and our time is concluding, so I just want to thank everybody for their contributions to this discussion and Jayshia, may I turn it to you to conclude?

Jaisha Wray: Sure. Again, thank you for participating. We really appreciated the active discussion. It’s clear there is a lot of interest in this topic. Our goal today was to introduce it and then to continue the discussion. So please feel free to reach out to us. Our virtual doors are open and we look forward to hearing from all of you and continuing to exchange lessons learned in this area and moving forward and exploring areas for cooperation as well. So again, thank you and we’ll see you next time. Take care. Thank you.

Agreement points

Need for comprehensive Internet measurement data to inform policy decisions

Speakers

– Luis Zambrano Ramos
– Leslie Davis
– Rafi Goldberg
– Heather Keene

Arguments

NTIA Internet Use Survey as longest-running federal data collection on computer and Internet use since 1994

ACS provides nationally representative data on Internet adoption and computer ownership for 3.5 million households annually

State broadband offices utilize survey data for designing targeted programs to serve constituents

Small area estimation technique combines survey data with auxiliary predictors like income and broadband infrastructure availability

Summary

All speakers from NTIA and Census Bureau agree that robust data collection is essential for understanding Internet adoption patterns and informing evidence-based policy decisions at federal, state, and local levels.

Topics

Development | Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory

Geographic granularity limitations in current survey methodologies

Speakers

– Leslie Davis
– Rafi Goldberg
– Heather Keene

Arguments

ACS one-year data limited to counties and places with 65,000+ population, while five-year data reaches census tract level

Current surveys unable to provide reliable estimates for smaller geographic areas due to sample size constraints

Project LEIA produces first-ever experimental single-year estimates of household Internet adoption for every U.S. county

Summary

Speakers acknowledge that traditional survey methods face limitations in providing reliable estimates for smaller geographic areas, necessitating innovative approaches like Project LEIA to fill these gaps.

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Importance of data accessibility and transparency for research and policy development

Speakers

– Luis Zambrano Ramos
– Leslie Davis
– Rafi Goldberg

Arguments

Public availability of raw data through GitHub repository and explorer tools for researchers and policymakers

ACS data enables analysis of broadband adoption disparities at sub-state geographic levels for policy development

State broadband offices utilize survey data for designing targeted programs to serve constituents

Summary

All speakers emphasize the critical importance of making Internet measurement data publicly available and accessible to enable research, policy analysis, and program development by various stakeholders.

Topics

Development | Legal and regulatory

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the importance of iterative improvement in survey methodology through stakeholder engagement and continuous refinement to enhance data quality and relevance.

Speakers

– Luis Zambrano Ramos
– Leslie Davis

Arguments

Public comment process for survey instrument development ensuring stakeholder input in data collection design

Survey methodology improvements in 2016 to address question clarity and response reliability issues

Topics

Development | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers advocate for advanced statistical techniques to overcome traditional survey limitations and provide more granular, timely data for local-level policy and program evaluation.

Speakers

– Rafi Goldberg
– Heather Keene

Arguments

Need for more timely local-level data to understand program impacts and community-specific Internet use patterns

Project LEIA produces first-ever experimental single-year estimates of household Internet adoption for every U.S. county

Small area estimation technique combines survey data with auxiliary predictors like income and broadband infrastructure availability

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Both speakers recognize the value of international cooperation and knowledge sharing to advance Internet measurement capabilities globally and learn from different countries’ experiences.

Speakers

– Jaisha Wray
– Susan Chalmers

Arguments

International collaboration needed to advance understanding of Internet usage measurement globally

Coordination opportunities with international measurement initiatives and infrastructure assessment programs

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Unexpected consensus

Recognition of survey methodology challenges and limitations

Speakers

– Rafi Goldberg
– Leslie Davis
– Heather Keene

Arguments

Declining survey response rates and evolving technology terminology requiring constant survey instrument updates

Survey methodology improvements in 2016 to address question clarity and response reliability issues

Current surveys unable to provide reliable estimates for smaller geographic areas due to sample size constraints

Explanation

It is somewhat unexpected that government agencies would openly acknowledge the limitations and challenges in their own data collection methods. This transparency demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement and honest assessment of methodological constraints.

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Openness to international capacity building and knowledge sharing

Speakers

– Jaisha Wray
– Susan Chalmers
– Audience

Arguments

Potential for capacity building partnerships through U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute

Request for capacity building training on Internet measurement from organizations in developing countries like Uganda

Coordination opportunities with international measurement initiatives and infrastructure assessment programs

Explanation

The willingness of U.S. government agencies to share expertise and collaborate internationally on Internet measurement, especially with developing countries, represents an unexpectedly collaborative approach that goes beyond typical domestic policy focus.

Topics

Development | Capacity development

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion reveals strong consensus among speakers on the fundamental importance of comprehensive Internet measurement data, the need for methodological innovation to address geographic limitations, and the value of data transparency and accessibility. There is also agreement on the challenges facing current survey methodologies and the potential for international collaboration.

Consensus level

High level of consensus with collaborative implications – The speakers demonstrate remarkable alignment on both the challenges and opportunities in Internet measurement. This consensus suggests strong potential for continued inter-agency cooperation, methodological advancement through projects like LEIA, and international knowledge sharing. The agreement extends beyond technical issues to include policy applications and capacity building, indicating a mature and coordinated approach to addressing digital divide measurement challenges.

Different viewpoints

Unexpected differences

Scope of Internet measurement beyond adoption statistics

Speakers

– Luis Zambrano Ramos
– Rafi Goldberg
– Audience

Arguments

NTIA Internet Use Survey measures device usage, online activities, and Internet access technologies through CPS supplement

State broadband offices utilize survey data for designing targeted programs to serve constituents

Interest in measuring Internet infrastructure quality and readiness for next-generation digital applications beyond basic access

Explanation

While NTIA representatives focused on measuring adoption, usage patterns, and basic online activities, audience members raised concerns about measuring infrastructure quality, sustainability impacts (energy consumption, CO2 emissions), and readiness for advanced applications. This revealed an unexpected gap between what government agencies currently measure versus what stakeholders believe should be measured for comprehensive Internet assessment.

Topics

Infrastructure | Development

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion revealed minimal direct disagreements among speakers, with most participants sharing common goals around improving Internet measurement capabilities. The main areas of divergence centered on measurement scope and implementation approaches rather than fundamental disagreements about objectives.

Disagreement level

Low level of disagreement with high consensus on core objectives. The implications are positive for the field, as stakeholders share common ground on the importance of Internet measurement while bringing complementary perspectives on how to enhance current capabilities. The discussion suggests opportunities for expanding measurement frameworks to address broader stakeholder needs while building on existing statistical infrastructure.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the importance of iterative improvement in survey methodology through stakeholder engagement and continuous refinement to enhance data quality and relevance.

Speakers

– Luis Zambrano Ramos
– Leslie Davis

Arguments

Public comment process for survey instrument development ensuring stakeholder input in data collection design

Survey methodology improvements in 2016 to address question clarity and response reliability issues

Topics

Development | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers advocate for advanced statistical techniques to overcome traditional survey limitations and provide more granular, timely data for local-level policy and program evaluation.

Speakers

– Rafi Goldberg
– Heather Keene

Arguments

Need for more timely local-level data to understand program impacts and community-specific Internet use patterns

Project LEIA produces first-ever experimental single-year estimates of household Internet adoption for every U.S. county

Small area estimation technique combines survey data with auxiliary predictors like income and broadband infrastructure availability

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Both speakers recognize the value of international cooperation and knowledge sharing to advance Internet measurement capabilities globally and learn from different countries’ experiences.

Speakers

– Jaisha Wray
– Susan Chalmers

Arguments

International collaboration needed to advance understanding of Internet usage measurement globally

Coordination opportunities with international measurement initiatives and infrastructure assessment programs

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Key takeaways

The digital divide remains a critical economic and civil rights issue, with NTIA and Census Bureau providing essential data through two major surveys: the NTIA Internet Use Survey (running since 1994) and the American Community Survey (ACS)

Current survey methods have significant limitations in providing granular geographic data, particularly for smaller communities and rural areas, due to sample size constraints

Project LEIA represents a breakthrough innovation using small area estimation techniques to produce single-year internet adoption estimates for every U.S. county, combining survey data with auxiliary predictors like income and infrastructure availability

There is strong international interest in capacity building for internet measurement, with developing countries seeking training and technical assistance

Data quality and infrastructure readiness are emerging concerns, with stakeholders emphasizing the need to measure not just access but the quality and capability of internet infrastructure for next-generation applications

The surveys serve as vital tools for policymakers at federal, state, and local levels to design targeted programs addressing digital inclusion gaps

Resolutions and action items

NTIA to consider capacity building training opportunities for international organizations, potentially through collaboration with the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute

Project LEIA team to continue refining the county-level model to remove the ‘experimental’ label and produce official data products

Census Bureau to explore feasibility of producing even more granular estimates at the census tract (neighborhood) level

Research team to apply machine learning techniques to bring detailed internet use data from NTIA surveys to ACS datasets

Incorporation of additional predictors into LEIA model including urban/rural measures and STEM occupation concentrations based on public feedback

Exchange of contact information and data sources between NTIA/Census Bureau and international measurement organizations like RIPE NCC

Unresolved issues

How to effectively measure internet infrastructure quality and readiness for next-generation applications like AI and metaverse beyond basic access metrics

Addressing declining survey response rates across both major data collection efforts

Balancing the need to update survey instruments for evolving technologies while maintaining time series comparability

Measuring internet sustainability impacts including electricity consumption and CO2 emissions from end users to data centers

Expanding measurement beyond households to include schools and other institutional settings more comprehensively

Developing more effective mechanisms to translate data collection into targeted policy interventions for digitally excluded populations

Suggested compromises

Using five-year ACS estimates for smaller geographic areas when single-year data is not reliable, accepting the trade-off between timeliness and geographic granularity

Leveraging multiple data sources (survey data, administrative records, commercial data) through small area estimation techniques to balance precision and coverage

Collaborating with other federal agencies (FCC, Department of Energy) and private sector entities to supplement survey data with infrastructure and quality measurements

Maintaining both detailed NTIA Internet Use Survey for comprehensive activity measurement and streamlined ACS questions for broad geographic coverage

Does Census Bureau or NTIA collect any data in regards to sustainability, Internet and sustainability, like electricity consumption from the end user to data centers or CO2 equivalent emissions and such?

Speaker

Nenad Dorlich

Reason

This comment was insightful because it introduced an entirely new dimension to internet measurement that hadn’t been considered in the presentation – the environmental impact of internet usage. It challenged the traditional focus on access and adoption by highlighting the sustainability implications of digital connectivity, which is increasingly relevant given climate concerns and the growing energy consumption of data centers.

Impact

This question shifted the discussion from purely social and economic metrics to environmental considerations. It prompted the speakers to acknowledge gaps in their current data collection and opened up a new avenue for future research. The response revealed that while they don’t currently collect this type of data, they are open to exploring it, demonstrating how external perspectives can identify blind spots in existing measurement frameworks.

Do we also consider measuring the quality of this infrastructure? Because the access to it is not always the readiness of this infrastructure for the next level of digital economy, for the AI, for all the segmented reality, for this metaverse, et cetera.

Speaker

RIPE NCC representative

Reason

This comment was particularly thought-provoking because it challenged the fundamental assumption that measuring access equals measuring readiness for digital participation. It introduced the critical distinction between having internet access and having quality internet that can support emerging technologies and advanced digital economy activities.

Impact

This comment deepened the technical discussion by highlighting the inadequacy of binary access measurements. It pushed the conversation toward more nuanced quality metrics and future-readiness assessments. The speakers acknowledged this as an important gap, referencing other organizations’ efforts to measure actual speeds and latency, which showed how this comment helped identify complementary measurement approaches.

The trouble is not just data collection, but actually using it for targeted initiatives for those who are not yet included or using the Internet… How is your data collection feeding into that to really ensure that we get those who are excluded online and included?

Speaker

International think tank representative

Reason

This comment was insightful because it shifted focus from the technical aspects of data collection to the practical application and policy impact of the data. It challenged the presenters to consider whether their sophisticated measurement systems actually translate into effective interventions for digital inclusion.

Impact

This question fundamentally changed the discussion’s trajectory from methodology to impact assessment. It forced the speakers to address the gap between data collection and policy implementation, leading to acknowledgment that while they provide data, they don’t control how it’s used for targeted interventions. This highlighted a critical weakness in the data-to-action pipeline and sparked discussion about the need for better coordination between data collectors and program implementers.

Do you do any disaggregation to maybe like internet in schools? Because I think you seem to focus on households. What about maybe in schools and in other institutions?

Speaker

Joshua from Uganda ISOC chapter

Reason

This comment was valuable because it exposed a significant limitation in the measurement approach – the heavy focus on household-level data while potentially missing institutional access points that are crucial for digital inclusion, especially in developing contexts where schools and public institutions may be primary internet access points.

Impact

This question highlighted a methodological blind spot and prompted discussion about the limitations of household-focused surveys. It led to acknowledgment that other agencies collect school-level data, revealing the fragmented nature of internet measurement across different sectors and the need for more comprehensive approaches that capture institutional access.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally transformed what began as a technical presentation about measurement methodologies into a more critical examination of the limitations and gaps in current approaches to measuring internet use. The questions from international participants were particularly impactful, as they brought perspectives from different contexts and challenged US-centric assumptions. The comments collectively pushed the discussion beyond the ‘how’ of measurement to address the ‘why’ and ‘what’s missing’ questions. They revealed that while the US has sophisticated measurement systems, there are significant gaps in environmental impact assessment, quality measurement, institutional access tracking, and most importantly, in translating data into effective policy interventions. The international perspective was crucial in highlighting these limitations and suggesting that comprehensive internet measurement requires a more holistic approach that considers sustainability, quality, diverse access points, and practical policy applications.

Does Census Bureau or NTIA collect any data regarding sustainability, Internet and sustainability, like electricity consumption from end user to data centers or CO2 equivalent emissions?

Speaker

Nenad Dorlich

Explanation

This identifies a gap in current data collection around environmental impact of internet usage, which is increasingly important for policy making

Do you offer capacity building training to measure Internet for small organizations?

Speaker

Robert (online participant from Uganda)

Explanation

This highlights the need for international capacity building and knowledge transfer on internet measurement methodologies

Do you measure the quality of broadband infrastructure and its readiness for next-level digital economy applications like AI, metaverse, etc.?

Speaker

RIPE NCC representative

Explanation

This addresses the gap between measuring access versus measuring quality and capability of internet infrastructure for emerging technologies

Do you measure how users actually use the Internet – whether for primary functions or advanced applications like AI or metaverse?

Speaker

RIPE NCC representative

Explanation

This explores the need to understand not just access but the sophistication of internet usage patterns

Do you do disaggregation for internet use in schools and other institutions beyond households?

Speaker

Joshua from Uganda ISOC chapter

Explanation

This identifies a limitation in current surveys that focus primarily on household data rather than institutional usage

How does data collection feed into decision-making processes for targeted initiatives to include those not yet online?

Speaker

International think tank representative

Explanation

This addresses the critical gap between data collection and practical policy implementation for digital inclusion

Exploration of urban versus rural measures and other predictors for the LEIA model refinement

Speaker

Heather Keene

Explanation

This is ongoing research to improve the accuracy of small area estimation models for internet adoption

Feasibility of producing census tract level estimates (neighborhood level) for internet adoption

Speaker

Rafi Goldberg/Heather Keene

Explanation

This would provide even more granular geographic data for local policy making and program targeting

Application of machine learning to bring detailed internet use data from NTIA survey to ACS dataset

Speaker

Rafi Goldberg

Explanation

This could significantly expand the types of internet usage data available at local levels for research and policy

Summary

This workshop focused on strengthening multi-stakeholder participation in technical internet governance, with particular emphasis on multilingualism and digital inclusion. The discussion was moderated by Anne Rachel Inne from Niger’s National Agency for Information Society, featuring speakers from UNESCO, ICANN, and various regional organizations.

Guilherme Canela de Souza from UNESCO highlighted how multilingualism serves as a crucial example of multi-stakeholder engagement, noting that UNESCO’s Internet Universality concept includes multi-stakeholderism as one of its five core pillars. He emphasized that meaningful participation requires going beyond traditional stakeholders to include indigenous communities and underrepresented groups, though he acknowledged the practical challenges this presents, including procurement systems not adapted for indigenous communities.

Teresa Swinehart from ICANN discussed the organization’s partnership with UNESCO on Universal Acceptance, which ensures that all valid domain names and email addresses work across internet-enabled applications in different languages. She described successful initiatives like hackathons with university students that bridge technical cooperation with practical applications.

The panelists addressed significant barriers to inclusive participation, including the need for diverse skill sets beyond pure technical knowledge, the importance of translation between technical and policy communities, and the challenge of retaining participants from underrepresented regions once they’re initially engaged. Valts Ernstreits shared experiences from Latvia’s Livonian indigenous community, demonstrating how international engagement can drive domestic policy changes.

Practical solutions discussed included creating WhatsApp groups for youth engagement, developing fellowship programs, establishing networking platforms for niche communities, and ensuring that capacity-building efforts include mentorship and empowerment opportunities. The discussion concluded with calls for continued collaboration on UNESCO’s global roadmap for multilingualism in the digital era and the upcoming ICANN top-level domain program that will provide new opportunities for community representation online.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Multilingualism and Universal Acceptance in Internet Governance**: The discussion emphasized the critical importance of ensuring all languages, including indigenous and underrepresented languages, can function properly in digital spaces. This includes making domain names, email addresses, and web applications work across different scripts and languages, with UNESCO and ICANN partnering on Universal Acceptance initiatives.

– **Multi-stakeholder Participation Challenges and Solutions**: Panelists addressed the need to move beyond “usual suspects” in internet governance discussions and actively include diverse voices – indigenous communities, youth, developing country representatives, and non-technical stakeholders. They acknowledged significant barriers including funding, procurement systems, and methodological challenges in meaningful inclusion.

– **Bridging Technical and Policy Communities**: The conversation highlighted the importance of translation between technical experts and policymakers, emphasizing that effective internet governance requires people who can communicate across these different domains and ensure policies are both technically feasible and socially beneficial.

– **Capacity Building and Retention Strategies**: Participants discussed practical approaches for engaging underrepresented groups, including fellowship programs, mentorship, hands-on training (like hackathons), and creating ongoing support networks through platforms like WhatsApp groups to maintain engagement beyond initial participation.

– **Practical Implementation and Future Actions**: The discussion concluded with concrete next steps, particularly around UNESCO’s Global Roadmap on Languages and Technologies, the International Decade of Indigenous Languages survey, and upcoming opportunities like ICANN’s next round of top-level domain applications with applicant support for underrepresented communities.

## Overall Purpose:

The workshop aimed to explore how to strengthen multi-stakeholder participation in technical internet governance, with a particular focus on ensuring meaningful inclusion of underrepresented groups, especially indigenous language communities and developing country stakeholders, in shaping the technical infrastructure and policies that govern the internet.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a collaborative and constructive tone throughout, with participants openly acknowledging challenges while sharing practical solutions and experiences. The tone was professional yet accessible, with speakers drawing from personal experiences and concrete examples. There was a sense of urgency around inclusion issues, but also optimism about existing initiatives and partnerships that could drive progress. The conversation remained solution-oriented, ending with specific actionable commitments and next steps.

Speakers

– **Anne Rachel Inne** – Director General of the National Agency for Information Society in Niger, West Africa (Moderator)

– **Guilherme Canela De Souza** – Director of UNESCO’s Division for Digital Inclusion and Policies and Digital Transformation on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register; Secretary of UNESCO’s Information for All program

– **Theresa Swinehart** – Senior Vice President, Global Domains and Strategy at ICANN

– **Valts Ernstreits** – Director and representative of Latvia and University of Latvia Livonian Institute; comes from Latvian indigenous people Livonian community; part of International Decade of Indigenous Languages global task force; co-chairing ad-hoc group on digital equalities and domains

– **Elizabeth Bacon** – Senior Director of Policy and Privacy at Public Internet Registry (PIR)

– **Amrita Choudhury** – Works for CCUI on tech policy; represents end-user communities, especially from developing countries; MAG member; from Asia-Pacific, India

– **Edmon Chung** – From DotAsia

– **Dominique Hazael Massieux** – Works for the World Wide Web Consortium; involved in Internationalization Program

**Additional speakers:**

– **Tawfiq Jalassi** – UNESCO’s Assistant Director General for Communication and Information (mentioned but could not attend)

– **Christy** – Managing online participants and questions (mentioned but did not speak extensively)

# Strengthening Multi-stakeholder Participation in Technical Internet Governance: Workshop Report

## Executive Summary

This workshop, moderated by An-Rochelle Iné, Director General of Niger’s National Agency for Information Society, brought together representatives from UNESCO, ICANN, the World Wide Web Consortium, and various regional organizations to discuss strengthening multi-stakeholder participation in technical internet governance. The discussion focused on multilingualism and digital inclusion as key examples of how diverse stakeholder engagement can improve internet governance structures.

Participants shared practical experiences and challenges in engaging underrepresented communities, particularly indigenous groups, in technical internet governance processes. The conversation highlighted both successful initiatives and significant barriers that prevent meaningful participation, while identifying concrete opportunities for improvement.

## Key Themes and Analysis

### Multilingualism as a Foundation for Inclusive Internet Governance

Guilherme Canela De Souza from UNESCO positioned multilingualism within UNESCO’s Internet Universality concept, explaining that it serves as one of five core pillars alongside multi-stakeholderism. He noted that UNESCO’s approach to multilingualism inherently requires multi-stakeholder engagement, involving technical communities, linguistic experts, policy makers, and affected communities working together. UNESCO has developed a World Atlas of Languages tool and is currently consulting on a global roadmap for multilingualism in the digital era.

Teresa Swinehart from ICANN discussed Universal Acceptance, a technical initiative ensuring that all valid domain names and email addresses function properly across internet-enabled applications regardless of language or script. She described successful collaborative efforts, including hackathons with university students that create websites capable of handling internationalized domain names and responding in multiple languages like English and Arabic. ICANN recently published a Universal Acceptance report and observes Universal Acceptance Day on March 28th.

Valts Ernstreits, representing the Livonian indigenous community and working with the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, shared how international engagement in technical governance can drive domestic policy changes. He described how participation in global forums led to increased recognition of Livonian language rights within Latvia’s national institutions, illustrating his metaphor that sometimes going “one floor up” is easier by going “all the way to the roof and then come back down again.”

An-Rochelle Iné, drawing on her background as a former interpreter and translator, reinforced the importance of multilingualism from an African perspective, noting that Universal Acceptance is gaining momentum in Africa, where most of the world’s languages exist and where rural populations often do not speak colonial languages.

### Current Limitations and Barriers to Participation

Workshop participants acknowledged significant shortcomings in existing multi-stakeholder models. Guilherme Canela De Souza noted that while the importance of including underrepresented groups is widely acknowledged, current systems are “far from guaranteeing it” due to practical, financial, and institutional barriers.

He provided a specific example of how administrative requirements can exclude communities: paying per diems to indigenous communities requires bank accounts, which many lack due to their different organizational structures. This seemingly neutral administrative requirement effectively excludes entire communities from participation.

Elizabeth Bacon from Public Internet Registry emphasized that technical internet governance requires diversity of views and skill sets beyond pure technical knowledge. She shared examples from her work with US government technical experts who would request implementations that would achieve “absolutely the opposite” of their intended policy goals because “that’s not how the internet works.” This highlighted the need for people who can translate between technical and policy communities.

Amrita Choudhury, representing end-user communities from developing countries, highlighted the retention challenge in multi-stakeholder participation. She noted that while bringing diverse participants through fellowship programs is important, the greater challenge lies in maintaining their engagement over time. Her observation that “you have to interact with young people in the way they want, not the way we want it” emphasized the need to adapt institutional practices to meet participants where they are.

### Technical Infrastructure Challenges and Solutions

Edmon Chung from DotAsia explained the complexity of developing Label Generation Rules (LGR) for different languages in domain name systems, which requires collaboration between local linguistic experts and technologists to create appropriate policies for each language’s unique characteristics.

Dominique Hazael Massieux from the World Wide Web Consortium highlighted ongoing challenges in accessing sufficient language expertise across the world’s diverse linguistic landscape. He noted that while the W3C’s Internationalization Program aims to make web pages work across as many languages and cultures as possible, they currently lack adequate contact with deep language experts for many languages.

Teresa Swinehart discussed upcoming opportunities through ICANN’s next round of top-level domain applications, beginning in early next year in April, which will include applicant support programs specifically designed to assist underrepresented communities in obtaining community-based domains.

### Innovative Engagement Approaches

Several speakers shared successful strategies for improving participation. Teresa Swinehart described ICANN’s use of hackathons and practical educational programs that engage youth through hands-on problem-solving rather than traditional academic approaches.

Valts Ernstreits shared insights from awareness-building work with indigenous language communities. He recounted how an expedition initially found institutions claiming to have no Livonian heritage materials, but after local media attention, the same institutions acknowledged having “plenty” of such resources, illustrating how visibility can transform institutional behavior.

Amrita Choudhury discussed practical retention strategies, including creating WhatsApp groups for ongoing engagement and establishing subcommittees that provide meaningful roles for diverse participants. Her approach emphasizes “hand-holding and empowerment” rather than one-off training sessions, recognizing that sustained engagement requires ongoing support.

### Bridging Technical and Policy Communities

A recurring theme was the critical importance of translation between different domains of expertise. Amrita Choudhury noted that domain name abuse, for instance, has technical, content-related, and social dimensions that require different types of stakeholder involvement. No single community has all the necessary expertise to address such multifaceted challenges effectively.

Elizabeth Bacon argued that existing newcomer programs need to be more robust and focused on bringing diverse perspectives rather than simply increasing participation numbers. She emphasized that the goal should be empowerment and meaningful contribution rather than tokenistic representation.

## Concrete Action Items and Future Directions

The workshop identified several specific opportunities for progress:

– Participants agreed to engage with UNESCO’s global roadmap on multilingualism in the digital era, currently open for public consultation

– Valts Ernstreits committed to following up on the International Decade of Indigenous Languages survey that was distributed in March, which serves both data collection and community awareness-building purposes

– ICANN’s applicant support program for underrepresented communities in the next top-level domain application round represents a concrete mechanism for enabling community representation in internet infrastructure

– Dominique Hazael Massieux expressed interest in establishing connections between the W3C and UNESCO’s language expert networks to improve internationalization support

## Conclusion

This workshop demonstrated both the complexity of achieving meaningful multi-stakeholder participation in technical internet governance and the potential for progress through coordinated efforts. The focus on multilingualism provided a valuable lens for examining broader inclusion challenges, showing how technical decisions have profound social and cultural implications.

Participants identified practical barriers ranging from administrative requirements to capacity-building challenges, while sharing successful approaches including innovative engagement methods and cross-community collaboration. The concrete action items and ongoing initiatives discussed provide multiple pathways for continued progress, while highlighting areas requiring sustained attention and innovation.

The discussion revealed that strengthening multi-stakeholder participation requires both addressing systemic barriers and developing innovative engagement strategies that meet diverse communities where they are, rather than expecting them to adapt to existing institutional structures.

Anne Rachel Inne: Good morning and welcome everybody. My name is An-Rochelle Iné, and I’m the Director General of the National Agency for Information Society in Niger, West Africa. Today’s workshop, first one here, is about strengthening multi-stakeholder participation in technical internet governance. So welcome, and thanks for being with us. We’re going to start with two speakers, Teresa Swinehart and Guilherme Canela de Sousa Godot, who is the Director of UNESCO’s Division for Digital Inclusion and Policies and Digital Transformation on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Teresa is a Senior Vice President, Global Domains and Strategy at ICANN. And then we will have a panel where Valls and Streitz, who is the Director and a representative of Latvia and University of Latvia Livonian Institute, will be our first speaker. And then we will have Elizabeth Bacon, Senior Director of Policy and Privacy at Public Internet Registry. And then Amrita Choudhury, who is the Director of Credit Consultant Association of India. So thanks for being with us, and everybody who is online, also welcome. Christy, who is sitting on the side, will be looking at our online. participants and if you have questions we’ll be telling us what to do. So this is how the discussion is going to go but before we start as I said we’re going to have introductory remarks from Guilherme who is also representing today Mr. Tawfiq Jalassi, UNESCO’s Assistant Director General for Communication and Information who could not join us this morning. Guilherme, the floor is yours.

Guilherme Canela De Souza: Good morning everyone and especially thanks for all the early birds that are here with us. So you were supposed to have a cardinal, my boss Tawfiq and you got a priest but I will try to do the best job possible on this configuration. So of course the topic of the panel is very broad and very close to UNESCO’s heart. There would be many ways to approach the idea of the multistakeholderism in the technical discussions in the internet so I decided to focus on Zooming with a particular cross-cutting example of the multilingualism aspect but I could speak about others because this is in the DNA of UNESCO although we are an intergovernmental organization from the very outset of our existence 80 years ago UNESCO was one of these UN organizations that the member states always decided to send experts, civil society, librarians, activists for building the different documents resolutions etc that were approved throughout the UNESCO’s history and if you see this landmark idea that was approved by our general conference 10 years ago during the previous WSIS review process the concept of internet universality That concept is also associated with a set of indicators where UNESCO is recommending how the development of Internet should be assessed in a particular country. You remember that that set of indicators is established and organized around five pillars that’s called ROM-X, so Rights, Openness, Accessibility, and the M is Mode Stakeholderism and the X, the cross-cutting issues, gender, and so on. So it’s just to say that from the outset the message of UNESCO is if you want to assess the level of development of Internet in a particular country Mode Stakeholderism is one of the pillars of this assessment. So this is the overall umbrella. But then let me focus very briefly on the example of multilingualism. UNESCO is the UN organization, among other things, there in our very first paragraph to promote the free flow of ideas. As you can imagine, there is no serious free flow of ideas without multilingualism. If you only can express yourself in a majority language then the free flow of ideas is not being guaranteed. So that’s why this is the philosophical principle behind the UNESCO mandate to protect and promote multilingualism everywhere including, of course, in the digital spaces. So one of our intergovernmental programs, the Information for All program that I am the secretary, since 2001 has a specific group on information for all and multilingualism and although it’s an intergovernmental program, this specific group is conformed by a mode stakeholder configuration of experts, academics, civil society and so on and obviously governments. Then, even before the Geneva Agenda of the WSIS processes in 2003, the UNESCO General Conference approved a recommendation on multilingualism in the cyberspace. And again, although it’s an intergovernmental document, the monitoring we do every four years with member states, we do ask specific questions about the integration of the different stakeholders on that. And then to finalize with four other concrete things that express this importance of the multistakeholderism on that, when we did this process that many of you know, the guidelines for the governance of digital platforms was a massive multistakeholder endeavor. We received 10,000 comments. And one of the specific pillars of that document is also about multilingualism. Then we have a tool called the World Atlas of Languages, which we invite through an ad hoc committee the participation of the multistakeholder community. And finally, two quick things. We are the Secretariat of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, that Vats here is one of the key experts. And the configuration of that, the decade, is again a multistakeholder configuration with a strong participation of the indigenous communities, which is paramount for this. Currently, we are consulting, and please participate, a global roadmap on languages and technologies, which include this conversation. And I’m sure Vats will also speak a bit for that. And finally, before I guess Teresa will also mention that, we are very proud to partner with ICANN on the idea of universal acceptance for UNESCO. And I’m sure for ICANN, one of the central aspects of this partnership is also try to be as inclusive as possible in a multistakeholder way, inviting those different actors to engage with the idea of universal acceptance and therefore implement what we are looking for on that. So I’ll stop here. As you saw, I could have chosen another example but I think the example of multilingualism is super interesting to also measure this idea of multistakeholderism in the technical space of the Internet. Thank you very much.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you, Guillaume. Theresa, you have the floor.

Theresa Swinehart: Thank you, Guillaume. And it’s really a pleasure to be here. First of all, thank you everybody for being here. I don’t know how many were at Music Night last night, but two things. A, thanks for being here, having gone. It was, I think, quite eventful and very exciting. But I was also struck there how people who play different instruments and are very versed in singing come together and create something and create an evening. A bit of an analogy to that, digital cooperation, multilingualism, the languages, bring people together. It allows each other to be heard, allows each other to engage and to cooperate. And to have that as part of a fundamental anchor in digital cooperation is essential if we want to have the Internet really reach everybody and enable them that opportunity to cooperate. communicate together. So it’s an important part of the multi-stakeholder aspect. People come from different sectors, stakeholder groups and speak different languages and it’s good to be heard and and to hear what people are saying and to be able to engage with that. So as had been mentioned we are very pleased we have a long-standing partnership with UNESCO and MOU with them also on some very specific project areas and with that the two organizations, while our mandates are quite different and our mission is quite different, share a common goal of including enhanced linguistic representation including in the domain name system to enable that full experience online as individuals in indigenous speaking populations have offline. So that’s quite important. This year we started an additional partnership with UNESCO and that is on the Universal Acceptance Day and this is an event that we have annually and this year we had a good event with UNESCO as well. It’s usually on or around the 28th of March and we’ve just two days ago published the report of all the events that were held on 28th of March or around that date to demonstrate the approach, the results of all those events that were held globally. So I would encourage everybody to take a look at that recent report. As I’ll talk about later in my other remarks, universal acceptance is the concept that all valid domain names and email addresses work in all internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. Now this might sound quite straightforward but actually on a technical level it is feasible to do. We just have to make sure that the applications and the platforms and all that can actually deliver on those results. UA Day is a chance for us to work together and to create awareness around the fact that it is possible to have to the left or the right of the dot or in your email address the ability to resolve that in legible useful representation in different tools that we’re using in this digital environment. So I’ll touch on some of those later today but in this session but in the meantime thank you very much and we look forward to the conversation.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much Teresa and I know that one of the things that I have noticed for example lately is that in the African region particularly universal acceptance is really picking up so yeah being one of the places where we have the most languages I think it is very important and it’s even more important when you have 60 to 80 percent of our populations depending on the countries that are still in rural areas and that do not speak the French and the English that we’re speaking here so great to see that happening. So we’re going to now open the panel discussion and the first question is how does participation in technical internet governance contribute to more diverse and balanced stakeholder engagement in broader multi-stakeholder internet governance? And I’m going to give the floor to Václav first.

Valts Ernstreits: Thank you, thank you for giving the floor and a little bit expanding on my background I come from Latvian indigenous people Livonian community and I have been working let’s say 35 years hands on the ground and through that for past years I’ve been also part of International Decade of Indigenous Languages. on a global task force of it and currently co-chairing also ad-hoc group on digital equalities and domains and Working hands on the ground. So one thing that I have learned throughout this time is that Sometimes unlike in real world if you want to go one One floor up it’s easier actually and faster then you go all the way to the roof and then come back down down again Let me give you an example from from our own experience in Latvia For the Livonian language has indigenous status for 34 years already So it seems like it should like locally Be quite well developed. However It’s still a problem. For example to use Livonian in state-run data systems Which basically leads to the Fact that you cannot register NGO name or business name in in Livonian language And use it in official domains. So now having for these past years This international dialogue and bringing that back home. This has Kind of launched quite initiated quite a quite big changes. So come on Throughout a couple of past years that we have been working Internationally, we see that domestically so we now have our Parliament our state institutions Look through all the technicalities and all the legislation that block using using Livonian on an official unofficial data system so this is this is like one example how how you really true true involving and And participating in the kind of global issues actually change quite a lot domestically and languages and generally like good example For involving multi-stakeholderism as Guilherme said previously, so UNESCO currently is developing global roadmap on multilingualism in digital era and that is quite a task reaching actual multilingualism because getting all languages into digital domains it’s actually a complex task because language is not just like a translation languages are everywhere in every aspect of our lives so it’s language lives in fridge in a car and so there is a need for very very big stakeholder involvement and very diverse because it requires really the participation of all of government, academia, developers, general public and language community themselves but what these documents like these and these initiatives they help to build awareness and also a dialogue bringing all the stakeholders to the table and also helping to get the message out and explaining explanations out like why this is necessary and how we can actually tackle this so linguistic diversity is what is for example special if we start catering instead of 200 top languages that technology is actually working currently so that we need to cater those other 7,000 or more languages and what is special in those cases because those cases are extremely diverse or how GDPR and open science policies for example actually limit the use of the language and digital domains or how to reach representation of languages not just in the internet but on the cloud computing and cloud programs that are gaining more and more popularity so how to do it there. so and therefore also ensure this universal acceptance. So starting from the top is relevant and especially it is it is one option how to get wide wide number of stakeholders involved especially in the world that is extremely diverse like linguistic world for example.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much both absolutely we need everybody and we need the linguists. So Beth what do you have to say about how we come together to make this happen?

Elizabeth Bacon: Every time. Thank you both. Fultz promised that he was the most awake so he volunteered to go first and I appreciate him. I’m a little bit less there. So I think the the question is about how participation in the technical internet governance can contribute to balance stakeholder engagement and broader governance and certainly within the community of technical operators you hear a lot about how the multi-stakeholder model is effective because it most closely mirrors the distributed technical nature of the internet infrastructure and that makes it then the most effective way to ensure that stakeholders are represented and involved. However if that participation doesn’t also mirror the stakeholders that the internet that internet governance and policy impacts then we aren’t really using that model to its fullest extent and really the getting the most out of it that we can. So while I think there are a few layers to participation in technical governance that can really contribute to the to the success of the model and the success of representation. So as Fultz and Teresa noted you things like UA and diversity of language representation are vitally important but also key to that is including a diversity of views and a diversity of skill sets. So for me I focus on my participation in technical technical community not as a actual technical person. So that can mean to a means to increase participation and lead to more comprehensive policies that are implementable if you not only have the diversity of languages and participation in that way, but if you have both technical and policy and legal, all of the universe of things that internet governance and the use of the internet can impact. So for, in addition to that pure technical knowledge, I do believe that the diversity of views and skill sets is vital to making sure that as you engage in the in technical internet governance in that space, that you then have that a broadens the stakeholder engagement, but it also really leads to really rich comprehensive policy. I used to work quite a lot with with the US government. And we would have technical folks come in. And they said, we want this result. And I said, Well, this is going to do absolutely the opposite, because that’s not how the internet works. And if you don’t have people bridging that gap and doing that translation, because not everyone is good at everything, then you really end up with not a quality product. So I think the the value of getting folks into participating in that technical layer is really having the translation there. So I think if we can focus, you know, the foundation is the technology. And if intergovernments has that participation, be it region, background, business type, legal policy, all those things, I think it really, it really does just result in a more comprehensive quality product that that kind of stands the test

Anne Rachel Inne: of time. Thank you very much, Beth. And I definitely identify with the translation part, I my first job in life was as an interpreter translator. So sitting in between two people who are saying, you know, things to each other, and making sure that I don’t say it the wrong way. At the risk of provoking World War was one of my jobs. So I definitely, you know, understand that

Amrita Choudhury: Thank you. To answer this question, I will start with a few examples. And just to give you a background, I work for CCUI, which is not what was mentioned there. We work on tech policy. And my involvement in ICANN, per se, is to represent the end-user communities, especially from developing countries. And I come from Asia-Pacific, India. So if you’re talking about participation, and I’m talking about even non-technical people participating in the technical internet governance, I’ll cite a few examples. All the panelists had been speaking about multilingualism, universal acceptance as to how the domain names have to be compatible to regional languages. Now, how does it translate down when you go down to the grassroots? So there have been some initiatives where volunteers have not only been building capacity of the technical community, as in the language communities, as well as technologists who actually make products or services within the, you know, in various regions everywhere, Africa, Asia, et cetera, on why is the need of, what is the importance of universal acceptance? Why is it needed? Similarly, if you want the companies to listen to you, you have to skill people. So there were volunteers who went, worked with the technical community to develop programs, which could be undertaken in technical engineering colleges, et cetera, so that the skills can be built up. And the younger generation of engineers can actually, you know, imbibe those things. When they go back to the jobs, they are at least to a certain extent equipped or aware that these are certain things you have to take care of. So that’s how, and they can come back with feedback, there is a feedback loop and tell, you know, the technical community that look, this is working, this is not working So it develops an ecosystem and it cannot be just, you know, you say this is good, it has to percolate but there has to be a system and that’s where the different stakeholders come in Similarly, the other thing is, you know, the domain name abuse is something which is being spoken about in various ways Now it has various dimensions, there are certain things which the technical community can look after There are certain dimensions which is content related and there are some dimensions which is very social or which is, you know, normal day to day interpersonal How do you break the silos or the problem and try to address it at different levels So, you know, at ICANN there is, the ESSAC has been trying to come up with certain, you know, working on how to address the domain name issue thing At large we are trying to simplify it or, for example, develop a module and it’s a small module which we are developing on phishing which we want our community members to again educate their end user communities as to what they need to really take care of, how they need to, you know, the awareness part of it so that you can at least to certain extent reduce the harms You can’t completely, you know, remove them but at least at certain levels Similarly, the domain name security which is important The technical communities impart that training to the ISPs or the telcos, whoever do it because that’s important So, if you look at it, it’s not a very simple thing that, for example, ICANN or the community in ICANN is designing something but you also need the acceptance from the community that this is working or this is not working And for this, this kind of engagement is important And the other thing which is important for developing countries is it builds skills for young people who are looking for jobs There are new avenues which comes out for them which we miss at times and there are various, you know, for example, working on internationalized domain names. There may be a lot of other avenues of work coming up rather than the cliched work, because jobs are scarce today. AI is taking away jobs. So those are certain things I think we need to take care of and I hope I’ve been able to answer with these examples something of why this is important.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much, Amrita, and I’m absolutely in agreement with you. Excuse me. One of the things that we don’t realize, I think, in general is that, so you spoke about telcos and ISPs, for example, even inside the technical community, there’s a lot more people that we need to co-op that are not like the regulars of the internet per se world. So, and those are part of the stakeholders that we absolutely need to co-opt in this world. So thanks for that. We are going to now continue with the second question and how can digital cooperation be leveraged to build awareness and the capacity for underrepresented groups to engage in technical internet governance? Beth, may I start with you?

Elizabeth Bacon: I’m sorry. I’m happy to. So I think that one of, there’s, again, there’s maybe two prongs to this. One is the existing folks that are already participating in these models, in these groups, to be much more intentional about coordination between the groups. Certain, you know, the IGF is a non-decisional space. It’s discussion. You can have big thoughts and big ideas and you can really run with it and have the conversations and do a lot of learning, ask really hard questions in a kind of a safe space because you’re not necessarily coming out the, you don’t have to agree at the end. It’s what it’s for. And I think it’s a huge value, but then, you know, you go to a space like ICANN and it’s, you know, you’re making a policy. It’s a decisional space, but there’s, we often miss the leap from things that have been really matured and thought about really well by folks here. in an IGF type space with a really diversity of views. How do we intentionally push those things into other spaces when they’re ready? And when it’s appropriate to that other spaces scope. I’m just using ICANN because that’s an easy one. We all know that one. We also know IGF because we’re here. And then I think the other item for that, for underrepresented groups is utilizing capacity building and some of the programs that exist to bring in not only youth participants, which I think is really, really important. And I’ve been, I don’t think we have any young ones in the room, sorry. You’re all very youthful, I’m very sorry. Ajit raises his hand, he’s now, he reached out. So I think that we have, some of the youth participants have been wildly impressed. They make such great contributions. There’s a lot of programs like that across the communities and groups that we work in. So if we leverage those well, if we really dedicate our time to making that value as opposed to a box check, I think that could be very helpful. And then there’s other things, especially I’m gonna again, I live in a little bit of an ICANN space, ICANN land. Fellowships for when you’re not a youth, but you’re still, you’re trying to expand your views. There’s a fellowship program, there’s newcomer programs. There’s all of these things that they exist, but can we do a better job of really making them robust and bringing, again, the diversity of views, but then also really then reminding ourselves that it’s not just about the participation, it’s about of humans, but also taking those ideas and making sure that we’re cooperating and moving those into the right space.

Anne Rachel Inne: Wonderful, thank you very much, Beth. Guillermo, may I ask you to also give a insight into this question?

Guilherme Canela De Souza: Sure, sorry. I think that we need to acknowledge how… Important it is the inclusion of underrepresented groups in the conversation, but we also need to acknowledge that we are far from guaranteeing it. Because it’s difficult, because it costs money, because we are not fully prepared to do it. But we are having, for example, discussions about multilingualism and inclusion of indigenous languages with a very minor participation of indigenous communities, unfortunately. I’m very glad that VATS is here, but should be many more. And we need to, the first step for solving a problem is acknowledging we have a problem and not put it under the carpet. So the entire technical community, internet community needs to start recognizing that the idea of multistakeholderism also implies diversity within each stakeholder group. So when we look to civil society, it can’t be the usual suspects of the digital rights communities, nothing against them, always present and always at the table. We need to find the ways to get the others that are not always around these tables. And again, I’m saying it’s easy to say, but it’s not necessarily easy to do. Before, and I finish with that, before joining UNESCO, I worked with children’s rights. And with UNICEF and Save the Children and so on, we were always trying to see the best way of including children in the conversation. And it’s super necessary, but it’s not an easy thing, because you need other methodologies, you need other ways of, I mean, I can, and I finish with that, we just did in February a language conference in UNESCO and technology. And we tried to actually bring indigenous communities. Even our procurement systems are not adapted for that. because you need to have a bank account to pay the per diem and the indigenous groups will say, no, we don’t have that bank account in that particular indigenous community. So, if we are going to be serious about that, we need to take these very high-level titles and go into the specifics of how to actually guarantee this participation. Thank you.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much. And this is really, truly resonating just because I come from a place, yesterday we were talking about several things, like how to make, you know, artificial intelligence and the work that is being done globally around that more diverse and representative of underrepresented communities. And I come from a region that is very young. So, to be able to have very young people into this conversation is definitely a challenge, though they have to be there. It’s their present and their future. Teresa, do you want to say something about that?

Theresa Swinehart: Sure. Thank you. I think, in particular, the youth or the next generation is absolutely critical to have involved because they come from an era and an opportunity where it wasn’t about the dial-up and hoping to connect, but rather it’s the assumption that the app is going to work. But it actually takes something to make that work. And we had the opportunity recently in Bahrain, actually, to do a hackathon with university students around designing a website that could take internationalized domain names and universal acceptance. And we had 60 students and they were allowed to use artificial intelligence in order to help solve the problem. But they had to create a website that could respond to questions that were posed and it could respond to questions in English or Arabic. and it had to be able to process certain information in relation to that website. So that sounds like a very simple task. In principle, you design a website, right? But there’s actually quite a bit of work that goes around it. But it was amazing to watch these students. For two days, they were dedicated and spent time trying to solve this, and they were incredibly creative and ingenious in all of their attempts. But it’s a really good example of bridging this cooperation into some very practical tools. And these students are the future engineers in other companies. So they come in with awareness to your point, you know, solving the problems. So just an example of how we can bridge in the next generation around that. But more specifically, if I have just a few seconds, in relation to other opportunities moving forward. From our perspective, there’s also further awareness and capacity and opportunities for ensuring underrepresented communities, Indigenous languages, communities that may not be online necessarily at this point in time. And that also relates to the opportunity to have your presence online in what we refer to as the next round top-level domain program. That is the choice to have what one wants to the right or the left of the dot, depending upon if one is looking for something in Arabic script or in other scripts or in Roman character sets. So with that, internationalized domain names will clearly provide an opportunity for further opportunities for different language groups and for that bridging of digital cooperation from the technical side, but also then into the policy side and potentially even political opportunities for regions and communities to be represented fully in the way that they are and that they want to do. The opportunities there are multifold, so there’s also the opportunity for community-based type-level domains and that is quite common. We have seen that in the context of different communities coming together and we hope to see that opportunity really for communities that currently may want to have also their digital presence online. We’ve seen it in the context in the past also with regards to cities or communities, you know, .amsterdam or .veen or others, you know, who have their presence. So it’s not always about the revenue or the business model, but it’s oftentimes about having one’s digital presence online and bridging that cooperation from the technical into the community and into schools and education and healthcare and all of those. A part of our program also provides applicant support for communities that qualify. I’ll do a shout out to my colleague, Christy, over here. If you have any questions, she can provide you with anything that you may want to know. And that is very much open to non-profits, indigenous groups, small businesses and NGOs that might not have the resources to participate fully in the application process, but we want to make sure that there’s opportunities afforded there. So these are some examples of very practical things that we’re undertaking right now to bridge the digital cooperation into other areas, but create awareness for anybody who wishes to be participating in any of those endeavors. And that program will start early next year in April. Wonderful. We’ll look forward to it.

Anne Rachel Inne: Vals, you want to add anything around how to bring underrepresented communities here?

Valts Ernstreits: A little bit, because I have a couple of points, but they are somehow in concordance with what already sounded. Again, many of my examples, good or bad, come from my own experience. We had an expedition which went out to one area, and there were our colleagues going to different institutions asking the same question, so do you have any Livonian heritage here? And all these institutions answered no, no, no. And then a week later what happened, a local newspaper found out and they went through the same places, asking the same question, basically. And in that one week, all these institutions started to say, well, yes, we have plenty of it. And it took a week for the situation to completely change. This is something similar with this kind of digital cooperation we have at the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. There is a survey that went out in March, a survey of indigenous languages. The primal task was to collect data so that we could make informed decisions and we could better understand the actual position of indigenous languages. And there is a big part on digital domains and digital issues, including what kind of technologies you have, what kind of technical issues you have, or how do you see them. And on one hand, this is data collection, but on the other hand it is actually an opportunity for communities to look in a mirror and maybe for the first time to consider, well, there are those things out there. Should we have it? Can we build it? And this is something that initiates process. So the first way how to leverage is being or making underrepresented groups noticed and kind of giving them idea that we can do something or there is something that we could be involved. and this kind of launches the process. So the next level of leveraging is actually the consolidation and accumulation of knowledge. And one thing that we need, and especially now talking about multilingualism, we need designated networking platforms to connect the dots like repositories or forums like this. So this is also something that is planned in the roadmap, but in a more focused way, because if we think about underrepresented groups, those subjects, these are not mainstream subjects, these are not mainstream groups, this is not mainstream knowledge. But at the same time, we are entering a new era technology wise, so the era of tailored solutions. So we need those kind of niche platforms where we can talk cross-sectorally and with multi-stakeholders, where we can talk, where we can learn, and where we can actually innovate and bring new solutions. In this sense, I think that multilingualism is kind of our testing ground, so on the road towards the customization. Because if we can do it, then we can do everything. If we can’t, then it’s actually the question of what good are we with all that we know. Because at the end of the day, and this is my personal opinion, that this technology is moving in the direction where it should be capable to serve each individual. So getting voices heard and getting those platforms, how now those are not mainstream, but also underrepresented different groups. are being heard and being learned from is actually crucial.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much, Feltz. Amrita, you as a MAG member and as someone who has participated in national, you know, IGFs, regional IGFs, I want you to maybe bring out to the community here some of the ways that this digital cooperation actually works also on a regional and kind of local level. So all of this can maybe tie together, localize.

Amrita Choudhury: Right. Thank you. And I will mix a few things and speak now. And I’ll take an APAC example because that’s where I belong from. So if you look at it, there are fellowships, which, for example, ICANN gives NextGen, which is very young, young fellows. Internet society has certain fellowships. When we have the national, regional IGFs like the Asia-Pacific regional IGF, we have fellowship. Now, we have a lot of diverse people coming in from different countries who were, as in we try to get people from places, but it’s not possible to get everyone. For example, someone from Mongolia whom we got in or Bhutan, which are pretty unrepresented at this point of time. Now, the challenge is once you bring them, how do you retain them? So what we’ve been trying to do at the Asia-Pacific regional at large organization and at APR IGF is create WhatsApp groups and have them there because you have to interact with young people in the way they want, not the way we want it. And we found it very effective. They chat there. They work there. Now, in APRILO, what we do is we have small subcommittees formed on many things like we have the continuous improvement process, which is happening. We have a subcommittee, which are young people. We have someone who’s mentoring them, they make and they work, they feel empowered. If their names are there at the end, they feel empowered. We have the newsletter where we have people working together to form something. So if you get them into the system, empower them, keep on giving them information, this is the opportunity, this is what you can do, they also can think. So many of them come from diverse backgrounds. After that, if someone, after you give them the first step, if they want to explore something else, they can. Like if they’re interested in the technical part of it, they can go there. If they’re interested more in rights perspective, they can go. You should not limit them, that has been our learning. And we also encourage them to take it back to their communities, discuss, so that they can get more people. It’s not perfect, but those are the steps which have worked. Similarly, if you can encourage them, for example, there are many people, young people, who have been funded by the MAG or they’re coming from a particular region, and they’re pretty shy. And there are many newcomers in IGF. Trying to get them together, speaking to them, getting them introduced to people, or even taking a picture with them, helps them empowering them, so that they’re motivated, because you have to keep their motivation on. They have jobs to think of, they have their careers, but you have to excite them to be there in the space, because it’s not always exciting. Thank you.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much, Amrita. I actually use one word, which is hand-holding. It’s really accompanying people into seeing and believing in how is it that they can interact with other people, because they feel empowered, as you said. They have the arguments, they actually know how to talk. Beth was earlier talking about how do we get technical people to talk to regular people, like policymakers. So they understand, you know, why some GDPR decisions may break the machine or not. So, yeah, those are really some of the issues that we’re facing. And it’s all about making sure that we communicate in the right way. Let’s make sure that nothing is being lost in translation. So thank you all. And I think we’re now going to open the floor for audience participation. If you have questions out there or maybe online. Christy? No? Okay. All right. Yeah. You have mics on both sides. Thank you very much. Please introduce yourself and go ahead.

Dominique Hazael Massieux: Hi, I’m Dominique. I work for the World Wide Web Consortium. As you may know, we have a program, the Internationalization Program, which is about making web pages work across as many languages and cultures as possible, very similar to the ICANN program for domain names. And one of the structural issues we have in that program is getting enough contact and input from the right experts across so many languages that exist out there. And we already have some networks, but I wonder if there is something that, I mean, whether it’s the original IGF, whether it’s UNESCO, whether it’s some academia network that could help in providing a source of constant expertise in this field. Because we have the basic knowledge about what is needed, but until you get to the right expert that has the deep knowledge about how the language needs to work for locators to really make use of the web to its full potential, we can’t really do the full amount of work we want to. So I’m curious if the… Panelists have any suggestions about how we can structure better this source of expertise

Anne Rachel Inne: Well, you’re at the right door because I’m pretty sure Guillerme knows how to Respond to this because UNESCO is one of the places where we have a collective of linguists that can help

Guilherme Canela De Souza: Thank you very interesting question two quick things one, please do Everyone here include you do look into this road map on languages and technology that is currently open for consultations And make your contributions to that document because what you said could be if it’s not yet there I read but I can’t remember this kind of cooperation It’s important to make sure that it’s there But on your concrete question two quick things you can come to speak with me and Vats at the end of the of the session but Organizations like the World Wide Consortium and that we spoke yesterday with ICANN similarly You can’t write to us at the Secretariat of the Decade of Indigenous Languages and make this offer Saying we are ready to cooperate with these experts For for improving that and then we can connect you with these huge communities that are under the umbrella of the decade And similarly in the World Atlas of languages We can connect you with the national focal points that are from 130 plus countries Of course, it’s obvious. We do this in an anonymous way We we sent to them your offer is for them to decide if they want to contribute or not But please feel free to contact me and we can advance on that. Thank you

Anne Rachel Inne: Wonderful and before I give you the floor, but I’m Teresa. I wanted to add a little something

Theresa Swinehart: Yeah, and Edmund may touch on this as well Likewise happy to exchange contact information To complement also what UNESCO is doing in relation to some of the very specific technical areas We we also have the what’s referred to as the LGR the label generation rule set They’re working with very specific communities on The areas around the domain name system and the rules for that So that might complement access to yet another group that could be of help or at least know where to go So happy to exchange information on that

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much, Teresa. Edmund?

Edmon Chung: Edmund Chung here from DotAsia Actually, I came up to respond to the question very similar to what Teresa said Just I guess adding a little bit of context around it the what is called the label generation rules thing is actually looking at all the languages and scripts around the world and defining policies for Defining names that can can or should be used on the on the domain name system. And therefore It it well I can in the community actually spent over the last decade and more than 10 years Developing all the policies for the different languages to deal with abuse issues and and so on that group has basically gone through all the Scripts and languages that that are are live. I guess in in terms of actively being used so you can look at the what is called the It’s called the generation panel and that doesn’t mean anything, but they are local communities local experts of linguists and they include linguists as well as technologists and and so and Engineers to look at what the policies need to be so that that group might be you know, actually It’s readily available on the the ICANN website It’s readily available on the the ICANN website You can check it out and that should give you a good sense of all the people around. Thank you

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much Edmund Christy Do we have any questions online? Okay, all right Beth wanted to chime in

Elizabeth Bacon: Just a question that I think maybe we didn’t answer your question. I think LGRs are great and that’s important for the technical aspect but I think maybe you were asking more about actual translation and and content and I and I hate to to run right by it and I don’t necessarily have an answer but I think that’s something that I mean we have certainly run into at PIR at org we have also we have several IDNs and we have we’ve engaged you know globally on different languages and it is incredibly difficult to translate appropriately as Michelle well knows. So I think that just making sure that we’re answering your question you could tell me I’m very wrong but maybe that’s something we just take away and and try and brainstorm a little because I think that’s a it’s a very universal issue.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much Beth. You’re absolutely right on that point and so you wanted to add a little something?

Dominique Hazael Massieux: So just to clarify, my question was actually answered but the point on translation is also one of the issues. We’re also very happy to hear any ideas that may be in strengthening translation support for the technical community because again another way we can better involve as many communities as possible is by making our specifications available in the many languages of the world. So we have a program for that but again it’s a voluntary bottom-up and the more people we have that can contribute to that program would also be super helpful. So maybe there is something indeed that we could work as a group on together.

Anne Rachel Inne: Wonderful. Communication, communication, communication. Valts, you wanted to add something to this one too?

Valts Ernstreits: Just to add a little bit about contacting. I do really understand the problem of getting the right person especially when it comes to languages and in that diverse landscape of language situations that I was previously mentioning this survey of indigenous languages. So one part of the survey of one function of the survey is that we also ask for those people who are responding for the future involvement. And we are doing through this survey, we are looking precisely to that, to finding right persons who are proficient answering questions about this language and who can be a contact point directly for that particular language community. So, I would definitely encourage to follow up all the developments regarding the International Digit of Indigenous Languages and the roadmap. And, yeah, we’ll just contact later.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much, Valt. So, we have less than two minutes left and I know they’re going to stop the mics very soon. So, whoever wants to jump in to talk about the one action, maybe that we can take in the next six to twelve months, having talked about the decade of Indigenous Languages and really real participation, meaningful participation in technical discussions coming from everywhere. We can’t leave anybody behind in all this. So, who wants to add that one little bit that we need to do to make sure that we have a real participation and multi-stakeholder participation?

Valts Ernstreits: So, maybe I will jump on. In the next six to twelve months, I think that, and I know that I was talking maybe a lot about multilingualism, but there’s one thing that is very much defining our future. And the thing that will happen somewhere in this period is the finalization of that roadmap of the multilingualism digital era. But following that, there will also be development of the action plan about concrete actions and practicalities on how to bring it to life. So I would call everyone to participate in that as well together with us.

Anne Rachel Inne: Thank you very much. So eight seconds, so I guess I’m just going to say thank you very much for coming here this morning. Thank you for brave in the morning and being here with us and thanks to all my panelists and have a great day.

Agreement points

Multilingualism is fundamental to meaningful internet participation and requires multistakeholder approaches

Speakers

– Guilherme Canela De Souza
– Theresa Swinehart
– Valts Ernstreits
– Anne Rachel Inne

Arguments

UNESCO promotes multilingualism as fundamental to free flow of ideas and has multistakeholder programs addressing this need

Universal acceptance ensures all valid domain names and email addresses work across internet applications, requiring technical implementation and awareness building

International participation in technical governance can drive domestic policy changes, as seen with Livonian language recognition in Latvia

Universal acceptance is gaining momentum in Africa where most languages exist and rural populations don’t speak colonial languages

Summary

All speakers agree that multilingualism is essential for inclusive internet governance and that achieving it requires coordinated multistakeholder efforts combining technical implementation, policy development, and community engagement

Topics

Sociocultural | Infrastructure

Current multistakeholder participation lacks sufficient diversity and meaningful inclusion of underrepresented groups

Speakers

– Guilherme Canela De Souza
– Elizabeth Bacon
– Amrita Choudhury
– Anne Rachel Inne

Arguments

Current multistakeholder models often lack true diversity within stakeholder groups, particularly missing indigenous communities from multilingualism discussions

Technical internet governance needs diversity of views and skill sets, not just technical knowledge, to create comprehensive implementable policies

Hand-holding and empowerment approaches, including WhatsApp groups and subcommittees, help retain underrepresented participants

Technical community needs to include broader stakeholders beyond regular internet governance participants, including telcos and ISPs

Summary

Speakers unanimously acknowledge that existing multistakeholder models fall short of meaningful inclusion, with participation dominated by usual suspects while underrepresented communities remain marginalized

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Capacity building and awareness creation are essential for meaningful participation of underrepresented groups

Speakers

– Theresa Swinehart
– Valts Ernstreits
– Elizabeth Bacon
– Amrita Choudhury
– Anne Rachel Inne

Arguments

Youth engagement through practical applications like hackathons helps bridge technical cooperation with real-world problem solving

Creating awareness among underrepresented groups about available opportunities initiates their participation process

Existing fellowship and newcomer programs need to be more robust and focused on bringing diverse perspectives rather than being checkbox exercises

Volunteers build capacity in technical communities and language communities to implement universal acceptance at grassroots level

Hand-holding and accompaniment are essential for empowering underrepresented groups to participate meaningfully

Summary

All speakers agree that systematic capacity building, awareness creation, and supportive accompaniment are crucial for enabling meaningful participation of underrepresented groups in technical internet governance

Topics

Development

Technical solutions require cross-stakeholder collaboration and translation between different domains of expertise

Speakers

– Elizabeth Bacon
– Amrita Choudhury
– Theresa Swinehart
– Anne Rachel Inne

Arguments

Translation between technical and policy communities is essential to prevent misaligned outcomes

Domain name abuse requires addressing technical, content-related, and social dimensions through different stakeholder involvement

Universal acceptance ensures all valid domain names and email addresses work across internet applications, requiring technical implementation and awareness building

Translation and interpretation skills are crucial for bridging communication gaps in technical discussions

Summary

Speakers agree that effective technical internet governance requires bridging different domains of expertise and ensuring proper communication between technical, policy, and community stakeholders

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the critical underrepresentation of indigenous communities in internet governance discussions that directly affect them, and advocate for systematic approaches to include these communities meaningfully

Speakers

– Guilherme Canela De Souza
– Valts Ernstreits

Arguments

Current multistakeholder models often lack true diversity within stakeholder groups, particularly missing indigenous communities from multilingualism discussions

Survey of indigenous languages serves dual purpose of data collection and community awareness building about digital opportunities

Topics

Sociocultural | Development

Both speakers advocate for moving beyond superficial inclusion efforts to create meaningful, sustained engagement programs that empower participants and provide ongoing support

Speakers

– Elizabeth Bacon
– Amrita Choudhury

Arguments

Existing fellowship and newcomer programs need to be more robust and focused on bringing diverse perspectives rather than being checkbox exercises

Hand-holding and empowerment approaches, including WhatsApp groups and subcommittees, help retain underrepresented participants

Topics

Development

Both speakers focus on the technical infrastructure requirements for supporting linguistic diversity in domain name systems, emphasizing the need for both technical implementation and expert linguistic input

Speakers

– Theresa Swinehart
– Edmon Chung

Arguments

Universal acceptance ensures all valid domain names and email addresses work across internet applications, requiring technical implementation and awareness building

Label generation rule sets involve local linguistic experts and technologists to develop policies for different languages in domain name systems

Topics

Infrastructure

Unexpected consensus

Institutional barriers prevent meaningful inclusion even when organizations have good intentions

Speakers

– Guilherme Canela De Souza
– Valts Ernstreits

Arguments

Institutional barriers exist, such as procurement systems not adapted for indigenous communities without traditional banking structures

International participation in technical governance can drive domestic policy changes, as seen with Livonian language recognition in Latvia

Explanation

Unexpectedly, speakers from both UNESCO and indigenous community perspectives agreed that well-intentioned organizations face concrete institutional barriers that prevent inclusion, such as financial systems incompatible with indigenous community structures. This consensus highlights that inclusion challenges go beyond awareness to systemic institutional design

Topics

Development | Legal and regulatory

Technical expertise alone is insufficient for effective internet governance

Speakers

– Elizabeth Bacon
– Amrita Choudhury
– Anne Rachel Inne

Arguments

Technical internet governance needs diversity of views and skill sets, not just technical knowledge, to create comprehensive implementable policies

Domain name abuse requires addressing technical, content-related, and social dimensions through different stakeholder involvement

Technical community needs to include broader stakeholders beyond regular internet governance participants, including telcos and ISPs

Explanation

There was unexpected consensus among speakers from different backgrounds that technical expertise alone is inadequate for internet governance, requiring integration of policy, legal, social, and community perspectives. This challenges the traditional view that technical issues can be solved purely through technical means

Topics

Infrastructure | Legal and regulatory | Development

Overall assessment

Summary

Strong consensus emerged around four main areas: the fundamental importance of multilingualism for inclusive internet governance, the inadequacy of current multistakeholder participation models, the critical need for systematic capacity building and awareness creation, and the requirement for cross-domain collaboration in technical solutions

Consensus level

High level of consensus with significant implications for internet governance reform. The agreement suggests a shared understanding that current approaches are insufficient and that fundamental changes are needed in how multistakeholder participation is conceptualized and implemented. The consensus points toward a need for more systematic, inclusive, and institutionally adapted approaches to internet governance that go beyond technical solutions to address social, cultural, and structural barriers to participation.

Different viewpoints

Approach to addressing institutional barriers for indigenous participation

Speakers

– Guilherme Canela De Souza
– Elizabeth Bacon

Arguments

Institutional barriers exist, such as procurement systems not adapted for indigenous communities without traditional banking structures

Existing fellowship and newcomer programs need to be more robust and focused on bringing diverse perspectives rather than being checkbox exercises

Summary

Guilherme focuses on fundamental institutional reform needed to accommodate different organizational structures, while Elizabeth emphasizes improving existing programs rather than systemic change

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Unexpected differences

Scope of technical versus policy integration

Speakers

– Elizabeth Bacon
– Amrita Choudhury

Arguments

Technical internet governance needs diversity of views and skill sets, not just technical knowledge, to create comprehensive implementable policies

Domain name abuse requires addressing technical, content-related, and social dimensions through different stakeholder involvement

Explanation

While both advocate for multidisciplinary approaches, Elizabeth emphasizes the need for policy and legal expertise in technical spaces, whereas Amrita focuses on breaking down silos between different types of technical problems. This represents different philosophies about integration versus specialization

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Cybersecurity

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion showed remarkable consensus on goals (multilingualism, inclusion, universal acceptance) but revealed methodological differences in implementation approaches, institutional reform strategies, and capacity building techniques

Disagreement level

Low to moderate disagreement level with high strategic alignment. Disagreements were primarily methodological rather than fundamental, suggesting strong potential for collaborative implementation despite different preferred approaches. The main tension was between institutional reform versus program improvement approaches to inclusion

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the critical underrepresentation of indigenous communities in internet governance discussions that directly affect them, and advocate for systematic approaches to include these communities meaningfully

Speakers

– Guilherme Canela De Souza
– Valts Ernstreits

Arguments

Current multistakeholder models often lack true diversity within stakeholder groups, particularly missing indigenous communities from multilingualism discussions

Survey of indigenous languages serves dual purpose of data collection and community awareness building about digital opportunities

Topics

Sociocultural | Development

Both speakers advocate for moving beyond superficial inclusion efforts to create meaningful, sustained engagement programs that empower participants and provide ongoing support

Speakers

– Elizabeth Bacon
– Amrita Choudhury

Arguments

Existing fellowship and newcomer programs need to be more robust and focused on bringing diverse perspectives rather than being checkbox exercises

Hand-holding and empowerment approaches, including WhatsApp groups and subcommittees, help retain underrepresented participants

Topics

Development

Both speakers focus on the technical infrastructure requirements for supporting linguistic diversity in domain name systems, emphasizing the need for both technical implementation and expert linguistic input

Speakers

– Theresa Swinehart
– Edmon Chung

Arguments

Universal acceptance ensures all valid domain names and email addresses work across internet applications, requiring technical implementation and awareness building

Label generation rule sets involve local linguistic experts and technologists to develop policies for different languages in domain name systems

Topics

Infrastructure

Key takeaways

Multilingualism is fundamental to meaningful multistakeholder participation in technical internet governance, as it enables true free flow of ideas beyond majority languages

Current multistakeholder models often lack genuine diversity within stakeholder groups, particularly missing indigenous communities and underrepresented voices

Technical internet governance requires both technical expertise and diverse skill sets including policy, legal, and community perspectives to create comprehensive implementable solutions

Capacity building through fellowships, mentorship, and practical engagement (like hackathons) is essential but must focus on retention and empowerment rather than tokenism

Universal acceptance of internationalized domain names requires coordinated effort across technical communities, language experts, and grassroots implementation

Digital cooperation can drive domestic policy changes when international participation creates feedback loops to local governance structures

Youth engagement and next-generation participation is critical as they represent the future of internet governance and bring fresh perspectives to technical challenges

Resolutions and action items

Participate in UNESCO’s global roadmap on multilingualism in digital era consultation currently open for public input

Follow up on the International Decade of Indigenous Languages survey and action plan development over the next 6-12 months

Establish connections between World Wide Web Consortium and UNESCO’s language expert networks for better internationalization support

Leverage existing fellowship programs more effectively by making them robust rather than checkbox exercises

Utilize ICANN’s applicant support program for underrepresented communities in the upcoming top-level domain application round starting April next year

Create specialized networking platforms and repositories for niche knowledge sharing among underrepresented groups

Develop concrete action plans following the finalization of the multilingualism digital era roadmap

Unresolved issues

How to systematically overcome institutional barriers like procurement systems that don’t accommodate indigenous communities without traditional banking structures

Effective strategies for retaining diverse participants beyond initial fellowship or capacity building programs

Scaling translation and localization support for technical specifications across the many languages of the world

Bridging the gap between non-decisional spaces like IGF and decisional spaces like ICANN policy development

Addressing the full spectrum of domain name abuse issues that span technical, content-related, and social dimensions

Finding sustainable funding and resource models for meaningful inclusion of underrepresented communities in ongoing technical governance processes

Suggested compromises

Use voluntary, bottom-up approaches for translation programs while seeking broader community support networks

Combine top-down international initiatives with grassroots local implementation to maximize impact and sustainability

Leverage existing technical infrastructure (like label generation rule sets) while building new inclusive participation mechanisms

Balance technical expertise requirements with the need for diverse perspectives by creating translation and bridge-building roles

Utilize multiple communication channels (including informal platforms like WhatsApp) to meet participants where they are rather than forcing participation through traditional formal channels

Sometimes unlike in real world if you want to go one floor up it’s easier actually and faster then you go all the way to the roof and then come back down down again… Throughout a couple of past years that we have been working Internationally, we see that domestically so we now have our Parliament our state institutions Look through all the technicalities and all the legislation that block using using Livonian on an official unofficial data system

Speaker

Valts Ernstreits

Reason

This metaphor brilliantly captures a counterintuitive but practical approach to advocacy – that sometimes engaging at the global/international level can be more effective for creating local change than working directly at the local level. It challenges conventional wisdom about grassroots organizing.

Impact

This comment reframed the entire discussion about multi-stakeholder participation by showing how international technical governance can be a strategic tool for domestic policy change. It shifted the conversation from theoretical benefits to concrete tactical advantages of global participation.

We need to acknowledge how… Important it is the inclusion of underrepresented groups in the conversation, but we also need to acknowledge that we are far from guaranteeing it. Because it’s difficult, because it costs money, because we are not fully prepared to do it… Even our procurement systems are not adapted for that. because you need to have a bank account to pay the per diem and the indigenous groups will say, no, we don’t have that bank account in that particular indigenous community.

Speaker

Guilherme Canela De Souza

Reason

This comment cuts through the typical rhetoric about inclusion to expose the mundane but critical systemic barriers that prevent meaningful participation. The bank account example is particularly powerful because it illustrates how seemingly neutral administrative processes can exclude entire communities.

Impact

This shifted the discussion from aspirational goals to practical implementation challenges. It forced other participants to move beyond surface-level solutions and consider the deep structural changes needed for true inclusion. The honesty about current failures elevated the conversation’s authenticity.

The value of getting folks into participating in that technical layer is really having the translation there… I used to work quite a lot with with the US government. And we would have technical folks come in. And they said, we want this result. And I said, Well, this is going to do absolutely the opposite, because that’s not how the internet works.

Speaker

Elizabeth Bacon

Reason

This comment identifies a critical but often overlooked function of diverse participation – not just representation for its own sake, but the practical necessity of having translators between technical and policy domains. The concrete example demonstrates real consequences of this gap.

Impact

This reframed multi-stakeholder participation from a democratic ideal to a functional necessity for effective governance. It influenced subsequent speakers to focus more on practical skills and knowledge gaps rather than just demographic representation.

We had an expedition which went out to one area… asking the same question, so do you have any Livonian heritage here? And all these institutions answered no, no, no. And then a week later what happened, a local newspaper found out and they went through the same places, asking the same question, basically. And in that one week, all these institutions started to say, well, yes, we have plenty of it.

Speaker

Valts Ernstreits

Reason

This anecdote reveals how visibility and attention can instantly transform institutional behavior and resource availability. It suggests that the problem isn’t always lack of resources but lack of recognition or incentive to acknowledge them.

Impact

This story provided a powerful illustration of how awareness-raising and visibility can be transformative tools. It influenced the later discussion about surveys and data collection as consciousness-raising exercises, not just information gathering.

The challenge is once you bring them, how do you retain them? So what we’ve been trying to do at the Asia-Pacific regional at large organization and at APR IGF is create WhatsApp groups and have them there because you have to interact with young people in the way they want, not the way we want it.

Speaker

Amrita Choudhury

Reason

This comment addresses a critical gap in inclusion efforts – the difference between one-time participation and sustained engagement. The WhatsApp example shows practical adaptation to participants’ preferred communication methods rather than forcing them into existing structures.

Impact

This shifted the conversation from recruitment to retention strategies and highlighted the importance of meeting participants where they are rather than expecting them to adapt to existing systems. It influenced the discussion toward more practical, user-centered approaches to engagement.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally elevated the discussion from theoretical ideals about multi-stakeholder participation to practical realities and strategic insights. Valts Ernstreits’ contributions were particularly transformative, introducing both the ‘going to the roof’ metaphor that reframed international engagement as a domestic strategy, and the heritage survey story that illustrated the power of visibility. Guilherme’s honest assessment of systemic barriers forced the conversation to confront uncomfortable truths about current failures, while Elizabeth Bacon’s ‘translation’ concept reframed diversity as functionally necessary rather than just morally desirable. Amrita’s retention-focused approach shifted attention from recruitment to sustainability. Together, these comments moved the discussion from aspirational rhetoric to actionable insights, creating a more nuanced understanding of both the challenges and opportunities in technical internet governance participation.

How can we structure better sources of expertise for internationalization across many languages, particularly for getting contact and input from the right experts across the diverse languages that exist?

Speaker

Dominique Hazael Massieux

Explanation

This is crucial for the World Wide Web Consortium’s Internationalization Program to make web pages work across as many languages and cultures as possible, but they currently lack sufficient contact with deep language experts

How can we strengthen translation support for the technical community to make specifications available in many languages of the world?

Speaker

Dominique Hazael Massieux

Explanation

This would enable better involvement of as many communities as possible by making technical specifications accessible in their native languages, though current programs are voluntary and bottom-up

How can we develop better methodologies and systems to actually guarantee participation of underrepresented groups, including addressing practical barriers like procurement systems not being adapted for indigenous communities?

Speaker

Guilherme Canela De Souza

Explanation

While the importance of inclusion is acknowledged, practical implementation faces significant challenges including financial systems that don’t accommodate indigenous community structures

How can we better coordinate and intentionally push mature ideas from non-decisional spaces like IGF into decisional spaces like ICANN when they’re ready and appropriate?

Speaker

Elizabeth Bacon

Explanation

There’s often a missed opportunity to transfer well-developed concepts from discussion forums to policy-making bodies where they can be implemented

How can we develop designated networking platforms and repositories specifically for underrepresented groups and niche knowledge areas in multilingualism and technical governance?

Speaker

Valts Ernstreits

Explanation

Underrepresented groups need specialized platforms for cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder dialogue, learning, and innovation, especially as technology moves toward tailored solutions

How can we better retain and continuously engage young people and underrepresented participants after initial fellowship or capacity building programs?

Speaker

Amrita Choudhury

Explanation

While bringing diverse participants through fellowships is important, the challenge lies in maintaining their engagement and building sustainable participation in technical governance

What concrete actions and practicalities should be included in the action plan following the finalization of the roadmap on multilingualism in the digital era?

Speaker

Valts Ernstreits

Explanation

The roadmap development will be followed by an action plan that needs specific, implementable steps to bring multilingualism goals to life in technical governance

Summary

This discussion focuses on leveraging technology and artificial intelligence to address agricultural challenges facing smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The participants, including researchers from Cosmopolitan University in Nigeria and the University of Oslo, emphasize that while agricultural challenges are well-documented, the key issue is connecting solution providers with farmers who need practical, accessible technologies. Moustapha Binta from the Center for Climate-Smart Agriculture argues that the focus should shift from simply providing more fertilizers to re-engineering solutions specifically designed for smallholder farmers, particularly women farming in small communities who need food processing, storage, and packaging solutions.

Barak Otieno from Kenya provides concrete examples of successful technology implementation, highlighting how sensor technologies can measure soil humidity to optimize water usage and prevent flooding. He explains how proper water management can transform semi-arid regions into productive agricultural areas, noting that some Kenyan farms using these technologies are already exporting produce to Europe. The discussion reveals that traditional farming practices, such as crop rotation and natural soil renewal through foliage, can be enhanced with modern sensor technology.

A significant challenge identified is the limitation of traditional training methods, where information is lost as it passes from instructors to farmers. The participants propose AI as a solution for agricultural education, with Professor Noel Josef highlighting Norway’s substantial investment in AI centers. The discussion also addresses the critical issue of youth abandoning agriculture, suggesting that attractive, high-tech solutions like programmable tractors and drones could make farming appealing to younger generations. The conversation concludes with the recognition that bridging the gap between advanced agricultural technology and practical implementation for smallholder farmers requires collaborative efforts between universities, technology developers, and farming communities.

Keypoints

**Major Discussion Points:**

– **Access to technology and AI solutions for agriculture**: The speakers emphasized that while AI and technology can provide valuable answers and solutions for farming challenges, the fundamental issue is ensuring access to these technologies, particularly for smallholder farmers in Africa.

– **Climate-smart agriculture solutions for smallholder farmers**: Discussion focused on practical solutions like drip irrigation, borehole systems, weather monitoring, and soil management specifically tailored for small-scale farmers rather than large commercial operations, with emphasis on connecting solution designers with actual community needs.

– **Water and soil management using technology**: Detailed conversation about using sensor technologies to measure soil humidity, proper water harvesting during rainy seasons, and sustainable soil management practices that combine traditional methods (like crop rotation and natural foliage) with modern technology.

– **Training and capacity building limitations**: The challenge of scaling agricultural education and training, particularly the information loss that occurs when knowledge is passed from trainers to farmers through multiple levels, and how AI could potentially address these educational gaps.

– **Youth engagement in agriculture through technology**: Discussion of how modern agricultural technology (like programmable tractors, drones for pest control, and mobile apps) could make farming more attractive to young people who currently view it as uncool or outdated.

**Overall Purpose:**

The discussion aimed to explore how technology, particularly AI and digital solutions, can address agricultural challenges in Africa, with a specific focus on supporting smallholder farmers, improving food systems, and making agriculture more sustainable and attractive to younger generations.

**Overall Tone:**

The tone was collaborative, optimistic, and solution-oriented throughout the conversation. The speakers consistently built upon each other’s points with enthusiasm (evidenced by phrases like “Excellent, excellent” and “Super, super”), showing strong agreement and mutual support. The tone remained constructive and forward-looking, with participants sharing concrete examples and case studies while maintaining a sense of urgency about addressing agricultural challenges in Africa.

Speakers

– **Noel Josef**: Professor at University of Oslo, works on AI centers and farming education, energy education

– **Moustapha Binta**: Works at Center for Climate-Smart Agriculture, Cosmopolitan University, Abuja, Nigeria; involved in climate-smart agriculture research and farmer incubation programs

– **Barak Otieno**: Professor at University of Oslo, Kenya; chairs the Association of Community Networks in Kenya; works on access and sensor technologies for agriculture

**Additional speakers:**

– **Dr. Rislan Kanya**: Center for Climate-Smart Agriculture, Cosmopolitan University, Abuja, Nigeria

– **Dr. Badaru Usmaniaya**: Chief Scientific Officer, Cosmopolitan University, Abuja, Nigeria

– **Dr. Ibrahim Mani**: Registrar for Communications and Strategy, Cosmopolitan University, Abuja, Nigeria

# Discussion Report: Technology and AI Applications for Agricultural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

## Executive Summary

This discussion brought together agricultural researchers and technology experts to explore how artificial intelligence and digital technologies can address agricultural challenges facing smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The conversation featured three main speakers: Professor Noel Josef from the University of Oslo, Moustapha Binta from the Center for Climate-Smart Agriculture at Cosmopolitan University in Abuja, Nigeria, and Professor Barak Otieno from Kenya who chairs the Association of Community Networks in Kenya.

The discussion centered on three key areas: the critical need for technology access and infrastructure, the importance of designing solutions specifically for smallholder farmers, and the potential for AI to scale agricultural education and training. Speakers emphasized that successful agricultural transformation requires moving beyond conventional approaches toward solutions tailored to small farming communities, particularly addressing challenges in water management, soil health, and youth engagement in agriculture.

## Key Speakers and Their Main Points

**Professor Noel Josef** from the University of Oslo focused on AI applications in agricultural education, arguing that traditional training methods face scalability limitations due to information loss at each transmission step. He mentioned the Norwegian government’s investment of 1 billion Norwegian crowns (approximately $100 million) in six AI centers and advocated for directing these resources toward practical agricultural applications in distributed African environments rather than solely high-tech solutions.

**Moustapha Binta** from the Center for Climate-Smart Agriculture provided practical insights from Nigeria, particularly referencing the 2022 floods in Jigawa State and ongoing farmer incubation programs. He emphasized the need to connect solution designers with actual farming communities, noting that women farming vegetables in small communities need support for food processing, storage, and packaging rather than just more fertilizers. He highlighted low-tech solutions like USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) for documenting farmers and connecting them to services and loans.

**Professor Barak Otieno** contributed examples from Kenya, particularly regarding sensor technologies for measuring soil humidity and preventing flooding. He discussed the importance of soil pH measurement and monitoring soil composition, warning that prolonged fertilizer use without proper understanding can damage soil health. He also addressed the challenge of youth abandoning agriculture despite being financed through university by smallholder farmer parents, noting that farming is no longer considered attractive by graduates.

## Main Topics Discussed

### Technology Access and Infrastructure

The speakers identified technology access as a fundamental requirement for implementing AI and digital agricultural solutions. Professor Otieno described infrastructure building work through community networks, while Moustapha Binta discussed how USSD technology can serve as an accessible stepping stone within current infrastructure limitations to help document farmers and connect them to essential services.

### Smallholder Farmer Solutions

A significant focus was placed on designing solutions specifically for smallholder farmers rather than adapting large-scale technologies. Moustapha Binta argued for re-engineering agricultural solutions rather than simply providing more fertilizers, emphasizing the need to address specific challenges including drip irrigation, borehole systems, weather monitoring, and carbon and nitrogen management. Professor Otieno provided examples of sensor technologies that have enabled Kenyan farmers to optimize water usage and access international markets.

### Integration of Traditional and Modern Methods

The discussion explored combining traditional farming practices with modern technology. Professor Otieno emphasized that traditional methods like crop rotation and natural soil renewal through foliage should complement modern sensor technologies. The speakers discussed flood water harvesting as a way to return nutrients to soil and the importance of understanding soil composition over time.

### AI for Agricultural Education

Professor Josef proposed that AI could overcome scalability problems in traditional agricultural training by providing direct, consistent access to knowledge and guidance. He suggested that university AI centers could redirect focus toward practical agricultural applications in distributed African environments.

### Youth Engagement Challenge

Professor Otieno identified a critical issue where young people are abandoning agriculture despite many being supported through university by smallholder farmer parents. He noted that farming is perceived as “business for the poor or those who have no direction” and suggested that advanced agricultural technology could make farming more attractive to youth, citing examples of programmable tractors and other high-tech equipment.

## Specific Examples and Case Studies

– Sensor technologies in Kenya measuring soil humidity to optimize water usage and prevent flooding

– USSD systems for documenting farmers and connecting them to loans and services

– School-based climate-smart agriculture projects mentioned by Moustapha Binta

– The 2022 Nigeria floods in Jigawa State as an example of climate challenges

– Traditional farming methods including letting land rest and using foliage for natural soil renewal

## Challenges and Solutions Identified

**Key Challenges:**

– Limited technology access and infrastructure in rural areas

– Mismatch between available solutions and smallholder farmer needs

– Information loss in traditional agricultural training methods

– Youth abandonment of agriculture

– Soil degradation from improper fertilizer use

– Water management in arid and semi-arid regions

**Proposed Solutions:**

– Developing AI applications specifically for distributed African farming environments

– Creating farmer incubation programs and collaborative AI centers

– Implementing low-tech solutions like USSD as stepping stones

– Combining traditional knowledge with modern sensor technologies

– Using advanced technology to make farming more attractive to young people

– Focusing on comprehensive support including food processing, storage, and packaging

## Conclusion

The discussion highlighted the need for practical, accessible agricultural technologies designed specifically for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The speakers emphasized that successful solutions must address infrastructure limitations, integrate traditional knowledge with modern technology, and appeal to younger generations. The conversation identified concrete opportunities for collaboration between AI centers, universities, and farming communities to develop relevant agricultural technologies that can scale effectively across diverse African farming environments.

Moustapha Binta: Dr. Rislan Kanya, Binta Moustapha Dr. Rislan Kanya, Binta Moustapha Binta Moustapha, Center for Climate-Smart Agriculture, Cosmopolitan University, Abuja, Nigeria Dr. Rislan Kanya, Binta Moustapha, Center for Climate-Smart Agriculture, Cosmopolitan University, Abuja, Nigeria Dr. Badaru Usmaniaya, Chief Scientific Officer, Cosmopolitan University, Abuja, Nigeria Dr. Ibrahim Mani, Registrar for Communications and Strategy, Cosmopolitan University, Abuja, Nigeria Dr. Barak Otieno, Professor, University of Oslo, Kenya

Noel Josef: That AI then will give me the answer which I need to have. But that then means that I need to have, and that is what I’m always saying here at the IGF, we need access.

Moustapha Binta: Excellent, Prof. In line with what Prof. has been saying, we’ve been talking about the challenges, the challenges, but at Center for Climate, Smart Agriculture, Cosmopolitan University, we recognize that there are solutions. The problem is how to connect solution leaders. We talk about drip irrigation. We talk about borehole systems. We talk about weather. We talk about carbon, nitrogen. Those are the challenges with agriculture for smallholder farmers. We do not need more fertilizers. We need to rethink, re-engineer. We need to talk to the technology developers of the solutions. What do we really need for smallholder farmers, not just big farming projects? How do we connect the gaps, the silos that exist within our communities to make sure that the solution designers are actually designing solutions that cater to the needs of not large-scale farmers elsewhere around the world, but in those small communities where women are farming vegetables, where we need food packaging, where we need food processing, where we need storage facilities, where we need to revive school-based, climate-smart agri-projects. Those are the conversations we’re having at the center, and we hope that as many of you can join us on this transformation to improve the food systems on the continent. So, Mr. Barak, are there case studies specific to your community that you can share with us?

Barak Otieno: Yes. I come from Kenya. I chair the Association of Community Networks in Kenya. We have been building infrastructure. Prof has just said that access is key. We have been working with him on access in the last five years. But as we interact with the government, the question now is beyond access, what next? Beyond access, we need solutions that are helpful to farmers. Kenya, as with the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, has different terrains. We have terrains that are arid, and we have terrains that are semi-arid. In fact, majority of sub-Saharan Africa is semi-arid. But we have seen that with technology, you can actually turn semi-arid places into places that are arable, places that are able to produce food. It’s all about management of water, which is a scarce resource, management of soil. We are talking about fertilizers, but we can’t talk about fertilizer without talking about measurement of the soil. DH and all the related ingredients of the soil. We can’t talk about fertilizers without understanding their effect on the soils. Because if we use fertilizer on the soil over a given period of time, there’s a likelihood that it will destroy it. And we have had natural ways of ensuring that our soils remain relevant from days of old. We could farm in some portions and let them rest during certain seasons, plant trees and allow leaves to fall there so that we can be able to have a natural way of… Foliage. Foliage, yes. A natural way of renewing the soils. And we are seeing sensor technologies, an area that Prof is working on, which can be able to tell you the amount of humidity in the soil. Based on the amount of humidity, you can determine how much water you need to take into the soil to avoid flooding. Because flooding is wastage. You may find that, for instance, a smallholder farmer may require 50,000 liters or 100,000 liters of water per year, which if properly harvested during the rainy season, then we don’t need to keep talking about the perennial water challenges or water situations that we do have. And that’s really technology in action. So we have farms that are already doing this and exporting produce here in Europe. But I think it’s an opportunity for many more farmers to be trained. As Prof has said, we need to do capacity building and capacity development so that we can be able to address food problems that are both in the global north and in the global south.

Moustapha Binta: Excellent, excellent. I kept nodding to all the comments you were making. You just hit on the notes for Kenya, and I wish that there were more African countries on the stage to share their experiences, especially maybe you, Taki, an experience which may be relevant for East Africa. There might be similar stories or different verticals for south, west, and north. I just wish that we had more smallholder farmers from the continent. So Prof, do you agree or disagree with the solutions that Mr. Otieno has just provided?

Noel Josef: There’s this point of training. And of course, we can only train a limited amount of people at a given time. When I give my classes, I have 20, 30 people. And the question is how much information is lost in the next step and the next step and the next step. Because there’s always the limitation that whatever training we are giving, we don’t get it all over to the next line. And that actually brings me again to, I’d love to bring in the AI, because I really see that we at university, we are lucky the Norwegian government has spent 1 billion Norwegian crowns, which is about $100 million on six AI centers. And as the University of Oslo, I have to say my colleagues have done such a tremendously good job to be in all of the six AIs. So what I want to bring across is we should, or what I love to invite you is when you can, together and after the stage, get out the use cases where we see the AI being used in our farming, in our distributed environments, which we have in Africa. Then we can bring them in to these AI groups and say that, hey, don’t only look at high-tech, look at how we can actually change the market for agriculture. Because I would believe that AI on education, on farming education, on energy education is a very, very good step.

Moustapha Binta: Super, super. What a way to step in into this lightning talk. I kept nodding when Mr. Barak was talking because he mentioned the environmental challenges, the value of geosensing. At the Center of Climate Smart, we have similar examples. For example, in 2022, Nigeria had one of the worst floods in 10 years. It was, it didn’t make the news globally, but it was very serious. There was loss in lives, loss. And you would be very surprised as we talk about climate challenges. Some of the locations that were worst hit are areas that are arid, semi-arid areas. One of the case studies where we’re currently working on at the center, Jigawa State, is in Northwest Nigeria. We’re trying to harvest the flood water to see how we can package it into a reverse solution that can be valuable for farms. Because when those floods come, they wash away all the nutrients, they take away the soil. But if you can integrate science and technology, you can find a way to return back what was lost. So that’s one of the samples. That’s one of the case studies that Chief Scientific Officer at the center is working on. We hope that we can have more partners to take this skill and in agreement with Prof, we have a center at the University Center for Collaborative AI. We have different programs, farmer incubation programs. We’re trying to see how to work with low tech, especially USSD, to document farmers. We have a lot of challenges with smallholder farmers assessing services, assessing loans, and other solutions that we talk about here that can be very valuable for them. So Mr. Barak, do you think that youth, because we have to talk about, this is the reality for Africa. The young people don’t want to go into farming anymore, whether it’s small scale or large scale. How do we get technology and digital solutions to bring them back into this? Because that’s the first occupation on the continent. What’s your take about Kenya?

Barak Otieno: You actually read my mind. It’s interesting to note that majority of the students in universities are actually financed by their parents who are smallholder farmers or peasants. But when they leave university, farming is no longer cool. It looks like the business for the poor or those who have no direction, for lack of a better word. And I want to give the example of Germany, which is way ahead in terms of agri-tech. And I was just reading that many youth are being attracted into farming because of the cool tractors that are coming up. You know, it’s really like a Mac, which you can be able to program and drive around. And you know, youth like toys or youth like things that they can be able to enjoy. There’s also a lot of usage of drones in dealing with pests or spreading pesticides and very advanced tech, which is the band for youth. And I think this is something that can actually attract many young people into the agricultural fields because the apps that we need is the young people that need to develop them. Operating the drones, most of the people who are senior in the society may not really have the interest in operating.

Moustapha Binta: . . .

Agreement points

Access to technology is fundamental for agricultural solutions

Speakers

– Noel Josef
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

Access is fundamental requirement for AI and digital solutions to work effectively

Community networks have been building infrastructure and working on access solutions for five years

Summary

Both speakers emphasize that access to technology is a prerequisite for effective agricultural solutions, with Josef advocating for access at IGF and Otieno describing five years of infrastructure building work

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Need for capacity building and training in agricultural technology

Speakers

– Noel Josef
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

AI can overcome limitations of traditional training methods that lose information through multiple transmission steps

Young people are abandoning farming despite being financed by smallholder farmer parents

Summary

Both speakers recognize the need for better training and capacity development, with Josef identifying limitations in traditional training methods and Otieno emphasizing the need to train more farmers

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Technology solutions must be practical and tailored to smallholder farmers

Speakers

– Moustapha Binta
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

Need to connect solution leaders and bridge gaps between technology developers and small-scale farming communities

Sensor technologies can measure soil humidity and optimize water usage to prevent flooding and waste

Summary

Both speakers advocate for practical technology solutions designed specifically for smallholder farmers rather than large-scale operations, emphasizing community-focused approaches

Topics

Development | Economic

Youth engagement is critical for the future of agriculture

Speakers

– Moustapha Binta
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

Technology solutions must be designed to attract young people back to agriculture as it remains Africa’s primary occupation

Advanced agricultural technology like programmable tractors and drones can make farming attractive to youth

Summary

Both speakers identify the challenge of youth abandoning agriculture and propose technology-based solutions to make farming more attractive to young people

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers advocate for leveraging university AI resources and collaborative centers to address practical agricultural challenges in African contexts

Speakers

– Noel Josef
– Moustapha Binta

Arguments

University AI centers should focus on agricultural use cases in distributed African environments, not just high-tech applications

Farmer incubation programs and collaborative AI centers can bridge technology gaps for smallholder farmers

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Both speakers emphasize the importance of combining traditional knowledge with modern technology to address specific community needs in agriculture

Speakers

– Moustapha Binta
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

Solutions should focus on specific needs like drip irrigation, weather monitoring, food processing, and storage facilities for small communities

Traditional farming methods like crop rotation and natural foliage renewal should be combined with modern technology

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Both speakers focus on sustainable soil and water management practices, emphasizing the importance of understanding and working with natural systems

Speakers

– Moustapha Binta
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

Flood water harvesting can be converted into valuable farming solutions, returning lost nutrients to soil

Proper soil measurement and understanding fertilizer effects are essential to prevent soil destruction

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Unexpected consensus

Integration of traditional farming methods with modern technology

Speakers

– Moustapha Binta
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

Flood water harvesting can be converted into valuable farming solutions, returning lost nutrients to soil

Traditional farming methods like crop rotation and natural foliage renewal should be combined with modern technology

Explanation

Despite the focus on modern technology and AI, both speakers unexpectedly emphasize the value of traditional farming practices and their integration with new technologies, showing respect for indigenous knowledge systems

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Low-tech solutions alongside high-tech AI applications

Speakers

– Moustapha Binta
– Noel Josef

Arguments

Low-tech solutions like USSD can help document farmers and connect them to services and loans

University AI centers should focus on agricultural use cases in distributed African environments, not just high-tech applications

Explanation

While discussing advanced AI applications, there’s unexpected consensus on the importance of accessible, low-tech solutions that can work in current infrastructure conditions

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Overall assessment

Summary

The speakers demonstrate strong consensus on key issues including the fundamental importance of technology access, the need for practical solutions tailored to smallholder farmers, the critical challenge of youth engagement in agriculture, and the value of combining traditional and modern approaches

Consensus level

High level of consensus with complementary perspectives rather than conflicting viewpoints. The speakers build upon each other’s arguments and share similar priorities for agricultural development in Africa. This strong alignment suggests potential for collaborative action and indicates that stakeholders in this field have developed shared understanding of key challenges and solution pathways

Different viewpoints

Approach to knowledge transfer and capacity building in agriculture

Speakers

– Noel Josef
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

AI can overcome limitations of traditional training methods that lose information through multiple transmission steps

Young people are abandoning farming despite being financed by smallholder farmer parents

Summary

Josef focuses on AI as a solution to overcome information loss in traditional training methods, while Otieno emphasizes the need for hands-on training and capacity development for farmers, suggesting different approaches to the same knowledge transfer challenge

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Unexpected differences

Technology complexity level for agricultural solutions

Speakers

– Moustapha Binta
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

Low-tech solutions like USSD can help document farmers and connect them to services and loans

Advanced agricultural technology like programmable tractors and drones can make farming attractive to youth

Explanation

Unexpectedly, while both speakers advocate for technology solutions, they differ significantly on the appropriate level of technology complexity – Binta emphasizes accessible low-tech solutions while Otieno promotes advanced high-tech equipment, representing different philosophies about technology adoption in African agriculture

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion shows remarkable consensus on core challenges (youth engagement, smallholder farmer support, technology access) but reveals subtle disagreements on implementation approaches – particularly between high-tech versus low-tech solutions, and institutional versus community-based approaches

Disagreement level

Low to moderate disagreement level with high collaborative potential. The disagreements are primarily methodological rather than fundamental, suggesting different but potentially complementary approaches to shared goals. This creates opportunities for integrated solutions that combine multiple approaches rather than requiring resolution of conflicts.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers advocate for leveraging university AI resources and collaborative centers to address practical agricultural challenges in African contexts

Speakers

– Noel Josef
– Moustapha Binta

Arguments

University AI centers should focus on agricultural use cases in distributed African environments, not just high-tech applications

Farmer incubation programs and collaborative AI centers can bridge technology gaps for smallholder farmers

Topics

Development | Sociocultural

Both speakers emphasize the importance of combining traditional knowledge with modern technology to address specific community needs in agriculture

Speakers

– Moustapha Binta
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

Solutions should focus on specific needs like drip irrigation, weather monitoring, food processing, and storage facilities for small communities

Traditional farming methods like crop rotation and natural foliage renewal should be combined with modern technology

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Both speakers focus on sustainable soil and water management practices, emphasizing the importance of understanding and working with natural systems

Speakers

– Moustapha Binta
– Barak Otieno

Arguments

Flood water harvesting can be converted into valuable farming solutions, returning lost nutrients to soil

Proper soil measurement and understanding fertilizer effects are essential to prevent soil destruction

Topics

Development | Infrastructure

Key takeaways

Access to technology infrastructure is fundamental for implementing AI and digital agricultural solutions in Africa

Technology solutions must be specifically designed for smallholder farmers rather than large-scale operations, focusing on local community needs

Traditional farming methods should be integrated with modern sensor technologies for optimal soil and water management

AI can overcome the limitations of traditional agricultural training by reducing information loss through multiple transmission steps

Advanced agricultural technology like programmable tractors and drones can attract youth back to farming by making it more appealing

Flood water harvesting and soil nutrient recovery represent viable climate-smart agricultural solutions for semi-arid regions

Collaboration between universities, AI centers, and farming communities is essential for developing relevant agricultural technologies

Resolutions and action items

Develop use cases for AI applications in distributed African farming environments to present to AI research centers

Continue collaboration between University of Oslo AI centers and African agricultural institutions

Expand farmer incubation programs and collaborative AI initiatives at the Center for Climate-Smart Agriculture

Work with technology developers to create solutions specifically tailored to smallholder farmer needs

Implement capacity building and training programs for farmers on new technologies

Unresolved issues

How to effectively scale technology solutions across diverse African terrains and farming conditions

Specific mechanisms for connecting solution leaders with smallholder farming communities

Funding and implementation strategies for widespread adoption of agricultural technologies

How to ensure technology solutions remain affordable and accessible for smallholder farmers

Methods for measuring and preventing long-term soil damage from fertilizer use

Strategies for making farming attractive to youth beyond just introducing advanced technology

Suggested compromises

Using low-tech solutions like USSD alongside high-tech AI applications to accommodate different access levels

Combining traditional farming methods (crop rotation, natural soil renewal) with modern sensor technologies

Focusing on both immediate practical solutions and long-term technological advancement in agricultural development

We do not need more fertilizers. We need to rethink, re-engineer. We need to talk to the technology developers of the solutions. What do we really need for smallholder farmers, not just big farming projects? How do we connect the gaps, the silos that exist within our communities to make sure that the solution designers are actually designing solutions that cater to the needs of not large-scale farmers elsewhere around the world, but in those small communities where women are farming vegetables.

Speaker

Moustapha Binta

Reason

This comment challenges the conventional approach to agricultural development by questioning the assumption that more fertilizers are the solution. It introduces a critical perspective about the disconnect between solution designers and actual smallholder farmer needs, particularly highlighting gender considerations and community-specific requirements.

Impact

This comment shifted the discussion from general challenges to specific solution-oriented thinking. It prompted Barak Otieno to provide concrete examples from Kenya and established the framework for discussing technology that serves smallholder farmers rather than industrial agriculture.

We can’t talk about fertilizer without talking about measurement of the soil. DH and all the related ingredients of the soil. We can’t talk about fertilizers without understanding their effect on the soils. Because if we use fertilizer on the soil over a given period of time, there’s a likelihood that it will destroy it.

Speaker

Barak Otieno

Reason

This comment introduces scientific complexity to the fertilizer discussion, challenging the simplistic view of fertilizer application. It connects traditional farming wisdom with modern technology needs and emphasizes the importance of soil health monitoring.

Impact

This deepened the technical discussion and led to exploration of sensor technologies and traditional farming methods. It bridged the gap between indigenous knowledge and modern technology, setting up the conversation about humidity sensors and water management.

There’s this point of training. And of course, we can only train a limited amount of people at a given time… And the question is how much information is lost in the next step and the next step and the next step… And that actually brings me again to, I’d love to bring in the AI.

Speaker

Noel Josef

Reason

This comment identifies a fundamental scalability problem in agricultural education and training. It’s insightful because it recognizes the information degradation problem in traditional training cascades and proposes AI as a potential solution to scale knowledge transfer.

Impact

This comment introduced AI as a concrete solution to the training scalability problem, shifting the discussion toward technology integration. It led to exploration of how AI centers could focus on agricultural applications and prompted discussion about collaboration between academic institutions and practical farming needs.

It’s interesting to note that majority of the students in universities are actually financed by their parents who are smallholder farmers or peasants. But when they leave university, farming is no longer cool. It looks like the business for the poor or those who have no direction… And I want to give the example of Germany, which is way ahead in terms of agri-tech… many youth are being attracted into farming because of the cool tractors that are coming up.

Speaker

Barak Otieno

Reason

This comment reveals a profound irony in agricultural development – that education funded by farming leads young people away from farming. It’s thought-provoking because it identifies the perception problem around agriculture and suggests that technology appeal, rather than just economic incentives, could be key to youth engagement.

Impact

This comment introduced the critical issue of generational transition in agriculture and reframed the youth engagement problem as one of perception and technology appeal rather than just economic opportunity. It provided a concrete pathway for making agriculture attractive to young people through technology integration.

Overall assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by progressively building a comprehensive framework for addressing agricultural challenges in Africa. The conversation evolved from identifying problems to proposing systemic solutions, moving through three critical phases: 1) Challenging conventional approaches and emphasizing smallholder-specific needs, 2) Integrating traditional knowledge with modern technology and scientific approaches, and 3) Addressing scalability through AI and youth engagement through technology appeal. The comments created a logical flow that connected immediate technical solutions (soil sensors, water management) with broader systemic issues (training scalability, youth engagement), ultimately presenting a holistic approach to agricultural transformation that considers both technological innovation and social dynamics.

How do we connect solution leaders and bridge the gaps between technology developers and smallholder farmers’ actual needs?

Speaker

Moustapha Binta

Explanation

This addresses the critical disconnect between available agricultural solutions and the specific needs of small-scale farmers, particularly women farming vegetables who need food packaging, processing, and storage facilities.

Beyond access to technology, what solutions are specifically helpful to farmers in different terrains (arid and semi-arid)?

Speaker

Barak Otieno

Explanation

This question emerges from the recognition that access alone is insufficient and that solutions must be tailored to specific geographical and climatic conditions across sub-Saharan Africa.

How can AI be effectively integrated into farming education and distributed agricultural environments in Africa?

Speaker

Noel Josef

Explanation

This explores the potential for AI to overcome training limitations and scale agricultural education, particularly important given the challenge of information loss in traditional training cascades.

What are the specific use cases where AI is being used in farming in distributed African environments?

Speaker

Noel Josef

Explanation

This research area is needed to provide concrete examples to AI research centers to demonstrate practical applications beyond high-tech solutions.

How can flood water be harvested and converted into valuable agricultural solutions, particularly in arid and semi-arid areas?

Speaker

Moustapha Binta

Explanation

This addresses the paradox of flooding in drought-prone areas and the potential to capture and utilize this water while recovering lost nutrients and soil.

How can technology and digital solutions attract youth back to farming and make agriculture ‘cool’ for young people?

Speaker

Moustapha Binta

Explanation

This addresses the critical issue of youth abandoning agriculture despite being financed by farming parents, which threatens the future of food production in Africa.

How can low-tech solutions like USSD be used to document farmers and improve their access to services and loans?

Speaker

Moustapha Binta

Explanation

This explores practical technology solutions that can work within existing infrastructure limitations to connect smallholder farmers to essential services.

How can sensor technologies be scaled and made accessible to smallholder farmers for soil and water management?

Speaker

Barak Otieno

Explanation

This addresses the practical implementation of precision agriculture technologies for small-scale farmers to optimize water usage and soil health.

Summary

This workshop focused on protecting children from online sexual exploitation and abuse (CSAM/CSEA), particularly in live streaming contexts, bringing together experts from civil society, academia, and the tech industry to discuss technology, policy, and prevention approaches. The discussion was structured around three main themes: integrating technology tools into trust and safety systems while protecting children’s rights, promoting cross-platform collaboration to prevent content spread, and strengthening policy frameworks to address emerging forms of abuse.

Speakers emphasized the importance of adopting a “safety by design” approach that incorporates protective technologies at both the front-end to prevent harm and back-end to detect violations. However, significant gaps remain in transparency reporting, with companies rarely providing detailed information about their moderation practices specific to live streaming. The discussion highlighted alarming trends, including that one-third of reported CSAM cases involve self-generated content, with 75% involving prepubescent children, suggesting widespread grooming and exploitation.

Cross-platform collaboration emerged as crucial since bad actors typically exploit multiple services across the tech ecosystem. The Tech Coalition’s Lantern project was presented as an example of successful signal-sharing between platforms, enabling companies to share information about violating accounts and activities while preserving privacy. Speakers stressed that technology solutions must be complemented by multi-stakeholder approaches involving human rights advocates, children themselves, parents, and law enforcement.

Policy recommendations included strengthening transparency requirements, improving age assurance mechanisms, addressing platform recidivism where banned users easily create new accounts, and enhancing complaint mechanisms designed from children’s perspectives. The discussion also emphasized the need for better law enforcement capacity and resources, as many countries lack adequate capabilities to investigate and prosecute these crimes. Participants called for equal focus on strengthening criminal justice frameworks alongside platform regulation, ensuring child-friendly court procedures, and involving financial institutions in detecting suspicious transactions related to commercial exploitation.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **Technology Solutions and Children’s Rights Integration**: The discussion explored how technologies to detect and prevent child sexual abuse material (CSAM) can be developed while protecting children’s rights, including safety-by-design approaches, AI-powered detection tools, and privacy-preserving methods like Apple’s on-device machine learning and metadata-based risk scoring systems.

– **Cross-Platform Collaboration and Information Sharing**: Speakers emphasized the need for coordinated efforts across platforms since perpetrators often exploit multiple services. The Tech Coalition’s “Lantern” project was highlighted as an example of secure signal-sharing between companies to identify and disrupt abuse networks more effectively.

– **Policy and Legal Framework Strengthening**: The conversation addressed gaps in national and international policies, including the need for better criminalization of emerging forms of abuse (like live streaming and self-generated content), improved law enforcement capacity, stronger transparency requirements for platforms, and enhanced complaint mechanisms accessible to children.

– **Multi-Stakeholder Approach and Youth Participation**: Multiple speakers stressed the importance of involving all stakeholders – including children themselves, civil society, academia, tech companies, and governments – in developing solutions, with particular emphasis on centering children’s voices in the design process.

– **Regional Challenges and Resource Constraints**: Participants from different regions (Africa, India, Brazil, Netherlands) highlighted varying challenges including digital literacy gaps, inadequate law enforcement resources, cultural contexts, and the growing scale of the problem versus declining resources to address it.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore comprehensive approaches to protecting children from online sexual exploitation and abuse, particularly in live streaming contexts, by examining how technology, policy, and education can work together through multi-stakeholder collaboration to address this evolving global threat.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion maintained a serious, professional, and collaborative tone throughout, reflecting the gravity of the subject matter. While there was one moment of tension when an audience member criticized another participant’s comments about privacy and encryption, the moderators handled this diplomatically. The conversation was characterized by mutual respect among experts sharing knowledge, with speakers building upon each other’s points constructively. The tone remained solution-focused and forward-looking, emphasizing the urgent need for coordinated action while acknowledging the complexity of balancing child safety with privacy rights and other considerations.

Speakers

**Speakers from the provided list:**

– **Sabrina Vorbau** – Project manager at European SchoolNet, representing the InSafe network of European Safer Internet Centers, co-moderating the session

– **Deborah Vassallo** – Coordinator of the Safer Internet Center in Malta, supporting with online moderation

– **Robbert Hoving** – President of Off-Limits (the Safer Internet Center in the Netherlands), President of the InSafe board

– **Dhanaraj Thakur** – From the Center for Democracy and Technology, co-moderating the session

– **Lisa Robbins** – Online safety policy analyst at the OECD

– **Aidam Amenyah** – Executive director of Child Online Africa

– **Patricia Aurora** – CEO of Social Media Matters (working in India region)

– **Sean Litton** – President and chief executive officer at the Tech Coalition

– **Sabine Witting** – Assistant professor for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, co-founder of TechLegality (consultancy firm specializing in human rights and tech)

– **Kate Ruane** – From the Center for Democracy and Technology

– **Jutta Croll** – From the Dynamic Coalition on Children’s Rights in the Digital Environment

– **Andrew Kempling** – Runs a tech and public policy consultancy, trustee of the Internet Watch Foundation

– **Sergio Tavares** – From SaferNet Brasil (safe internet center for Brazil)

– **Audience** – Various audience members who made interventions

**Additional speakers:**

– **Julien Ruffy** – Associate professor at the University of Paris 8, co-chair of the working group on internet governance

– **Shiva Bisasa** – From Trinidad and Tobago, speaking from experience with a victim of financial sextortion

– **Jameson Cruz** – Youth representative from Manaus, Brazil, part of the Brazilian Internet Young Governors Training Program since 2022

– **Cosima** – Works with the UK Government, has been with NAC for Internet Center for about six years working on digital literacy and policy

– **Raoul Plummer** – With the Electronic Frontier Finland

– **Unnamed speaker** – From the Finnish Green Party

# Workshop Report: Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Live Streaming Contexts

## Executive Summary

This 90-minute workshop brought together international experts to address protecting children from online sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA), with particular focus on live streaming contexts. The session was structured in three discussion rounds covering technology solutions, cross-platform collaboration, and policy frameworks. Participants included representatives from civil society organisations, academic institutions, technology companies, and government bodies, creating a multi-stakeholder dialogue on current challenges and potential solutions.

Key themes that emerged included the need for better age assurance mechanisms, the multi-platform nature of modern abuse, concerning trends in self-generated content, and significant gaps in law enforcement capacity globally. While participants agreed on the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration and centering children’s voices, disagreements emerged around privacy-preserving approaches and policy priorities.

## Key Participants

The workshop was co-moderated by **Sabrina Vorbau** from European SchoolNet and **Dhanaraj Thakur** from the Center for Democracy and Technology, with **Deborah Vassallo** from Malta’s Safer Internet Centre providing online moderation support.

Participants included:

– **Robbert Hoving**, President of Off-Limits and the InSafe board

– **Aidam Amenyah** from Child Online Africa

– **Patricia Aurora** from Social Media Matters (India)

– **Sergio Tavares** from SaferNet Brasil

– **Sean Litton** from the Tech Coalition

– **Sabine Witting** from Leiden University

– **Lisa Robbins** from the OECD

– **Kate Ruane** from the Center for Democracy and Technology

– **Jutta Croll** from the Dynamic Coalition on Children’s Rights in the Digital Environment

– **Jameson Cruz**, youth representative from Brazil’s Internet Young Governors Training Programme

– **Andrew Kempling** from the Internet Watch Foundation

– **Shiva Bisasa** from the Internet Society Uganda Chapter

## Rights-Based Framework for Child Protection

**Lisa Robbins** established an important foundational perspective, arguing that “protecting children from CSCA should not just be done in a way that protects and promotes their rights. I think it’s really important to acknowledge that protecting children from CSCA is protecting and promoting their rights, most obviously freedom from violence, but also acknowledging that this CSCA can infringe upon dignity rights, privacy, and a safe online space is really important for enabling children to access a large number of rights in today’s reality, such as opinion, assembly, information, or education and health.”

This framing positioned child protection as inherently rights-affirming rather than creating a safety-versus-rights dichotomy.

## Technology Solutions and Current Gaps

### Age Assurance Challenges

**Lisa Robbins** revealed a significant gap in current practices: “Only two of 50 services systematically assure age on account creation.” This represents a fundamental vulnerability in child protection systems across platforms.

**Andrew Kempling** emphasized that “age verification is important to prevent adults from accessing child accounts and content,” while **Jutta Croll** noted that privacy-preserving age verification mechanisms exist without being intrusive.

### AI and Detection Technologies

**Aidam Amenyah** stressed that “AI-powered platforms should be sensitive enough to detect, prevent, and report live streaming situations affecting children,” noting that children in Africa encounter concerning content virtually every day.

**Sean Litton** described privacy-preserving detection methods, including how “session metadata and third-party signals can generate risk scores for broadcasts without analyzing actual content” and how “on-device machine learning can detect nudity while preserving privacy through local processing.”

## Cross-Platform Nature of Abuse

**Sean Litton** provided crucial insight into modern exploitation patterns: “The bad actor might contact a child on a gaming platform, move them to a private messaging platform, and then perhaps use a live streaming platform down the road. So the abuse spans social media, gaming, live streaming, payment apps, and more. But the individual company is obviously unaware of what happened on the other platforms.”

This revelation highlighted why isolated company responses are insufficient and coordinated industry collaboration is essential.

### Project Lantern

**Sean Litton** presented the Tech Coalition’s Lantern project as an example of cross-platform collaboration, enabling secure signal sharing between companies about policy-violating accounts while preserving privacy. The project is piloting with payment providers to share signals on financial transactions, recognizing that financial extortion is a major component of crimes against children online.

However, **Sabine Witting** raised concerns that “Global South representation is often underrepresented in industry standard-making processes,” while **Kate Ruane** emphasized that cross-platform efforts “create significant risks for human rights and need multi-stakeholder engagement for transparency.”

## Alarming Statistics on Self-Generated Content

**Robbert Hoving** presented concerning data: “Of all the reports coming in, one third of those reports is self-generated, meaning young children making sexualized images themselves… And of those 1 third of reports, 75% is prepubescent, so implying very young children. This is not children going to middle school in their teenagers. This is really young children.”

**Sabine Witting** argued that self-generated content requires nuanced approaches considering voluntary versus coercive production, challenging simple criminalization approaches.

## Global Scale and Regional Perspectives

### Staggering Global Statistics

**Andrew Kempling** provided sobering context: “roughly 300 million victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation every year globally. That’s about 14% of the world’s children each year.”

### Regional Challenges

**Patricia Aurora** shared specific data from India: “9 million children out of the 36.2 million population of India have been targeted.” She noted that India lacks robust legal frameworks for child protection online and highlighted that live streaming platforms are being used for monetizing pre-recorded child abuse content.

**Aidam Amenyah** emphasized that Africa faces uneven digital literacy alongside rapid technology growth, and that laws are not effectively enforced while internet service providers lack accountability.

**Sergio Tavares** raised sustainability concerns, noting that Brazil faces growing numbers of reports while resources are declining globally.

## Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Gaps

**Sabine Witting** made a critical observation about policy priorities: “I would really like to see the same effort from governments that they at the moment put into platform regulation, they should put into law enforcement and strengthening the criminal justice framework. Because there is a bit of a, I feel like an over-focus at the moment on the responsibility of platforms, while we know that if these cases then really reach the court system, most of them either A, fall through the cracks, or B, the children that are forced to go through the court system leave extremely traumatized.”

She also noted that criminal justice systems lack protective measures and trauma-informed approaches for child victims.

## Privacy and Encryption Debate

**Kate Ruane** defended end-to-end encryption as essential protection, arguing that “privacy and safety should be viewed as complementary rather than opposing values” and that “content-oblivious methods are more effective than content-aware methods for most harmful content.”

One participant argued that privacy was being “weaponized” as an excuse not to stop CSAM sharing on encrypted platforms. **Raoul Plummer** stated his disagreement with suggestions that privacy advocates were somehow complicit in child abuse.

## Personal Impact and Human Cost

**Shiva Bisasa** provided powerful personal testimony about the human impact: “I know of a victim of financial sextortion who took his life because of this.” This reminder of the real-world consequences underscored the urgency of the issues being discussed.

## Children’s Participation

Multiple speakers emphasized involving children in solution design. **Aidam Amenyah** noted that “children want involvement in designing protection solutions to ensure they are fit for purpose,” while the inclusion of **Jameson Cruz** as a youth representative demonstrated practical implementation of this principle.

## Financial Aspects

**Sean Litton** highlighted that “financial extortion is a major component of crimes against children online,” while **Sabine Witting** noted that “following the money is one of the most important leads for law enforcement in organized crime.”

## Transparency and Accountability

**Lisa Robbins** noted that “companies rarely provide detailed information about their moderation practices specific to live streaming,” making it difficult for policymakers to understand where targeted action is needed. She emphasized that “better and more granular transparency and information is really key for policymakers to be able to react and understand where targeted policy action and deployment of safeguarding technology is needed.”

## Areas of Agreement and Disagreement

Participants generally agreed on the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration, better law enforcement capacity, improved platform transparency, and centering children’s voices in solution design.

However, significant disagreements emerged around privacy-preserving approaches versus content scanning, whether policy focus should prioritize platform regulation or criminal justice strengthening, and how to implement cross-platform collaboration with appropriate oversight.

## Commitments and Next Steps

Several concrete commitments emerged from the discussion:

– The Tech Coalition committed to publishing results of their financial payment provider pilot

– The OECD agreed to share Financial Action Task Force research on disrupting financial flows related to live stream sexual abuse

– The Internet Watch Foundation offered to collaborate with tech companies to validate tool effectiveness

– Participants agreed to continue conversations at the IGF village

## Conclusion

The workshop revealed both the complexity of protecting children from online sexual exploitation and the potential for coordinated action across sectors. The alarming statistics about self-generated content involving very young children, the multi-platform nature of modern abuse, and significant gaps in law enforcement capacity underscore the urgency of coordinated action.

While disagreements remain about implementation approaches and policy priorities, the consistent emphasis on centering children’s voices and the recognition that no single entity can solve these problems alone provides a foundation for continued collaboration. The path forward requires sustained commitment from all stakeholders, adequate resource allocation, and continued innovation in developing solutions that protect children while preserving their rights and digital participation.

Sabrina Vorbau: Wow, good morning, everyone. It’s nice to see you all, and welcome to the workshop on protecting children from online sexual exploitation, including live streaming spaces, technology, policy, and prevention. My name is Sabrina Forbaugh, I’m a project manager at European SchoolNet and representing here the InSafe network of European Safer Internet Centers. I will be co-moderating the session together with my colleague, Danarai Thakur, from the Center for Democracy and Technology, and we are also joined by our colleague, Deborah Vassallo, who is the coordinator of the Safer Internet Center in Malta, and she will be supporting us with the online moderation. Welcome everyone here in the room and also online for joining our session and for your participation. The session aims of exploring how technology, policy, and education can work together to tackle the evolving threat of online child sexual exploitation and abuse, also known as CSAM or CSEA, particularly in the live streaming context, but not exclusively. We are really fortunate to be joined by an incredible group of experts from civil society, academia, and the tech industry who will share their insight from different regions and perspectives, truly in the multi-stakeholder approach. of the IGF. We have structured our session that will run for 90 minutes in three parts where we will tackle different angles of the subject. Before we dive into the first round let me briefly introduce our speakers. Here in the room with us we have next to me Robert Hoving who is president of Off-Limits, the Safer Internet Center in the Netherlands and he’s also president of the Inhofe board and we have Kate Rouhani with us. She is also from the Center of Democracy and Technology. Virtually and online joining us from various parts of the world we have Sean Lytton who is president and chief executive officer at the Tech Coalition. We have Dr. Sabine K. Witting, professor at Leiden University. Patricia Aurora, CEO of Social Media Matters. Abo Aydam Achmea, execute director of Child Online Africa and Lisa Robbins, online safety policy analyst at the OSCD. So lots of expertise on our side and I see also loads of expertise in the room. So let’s begin by exploring how technology tools are currently being developed and implement to dedicate and to prevent CSAM in live streaming spaces but not exclusively and how can they ensure that these tools align with children’s rights and safety. So we will turn a first question to our speakers and after each round we will take a pause and invite you to share your intervention and your questions with us and if you would like to do so please just line up here in front of the microphone. So our first question how can technology technologies to prevent CSAM, be integrated and trust and safety systems in a way that protects and promotes children’s rights. And we will start with our first speaker joining us online. And I give the floor over to Lisa that we can see on the screen. Hi, Lisa. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. Hi, thanks so much. And hopefully you can hear me well. Wonderful. Yes. Great. So thank you so much.

Lisa Robbins: It’s really great to be here on this really rich panel for this super important conversation. So just for a tiny little bit of context, for those of you who don’t know the OECD, we’re a multilateral organization. We have a 38 member country membership, and we work on a multilateral on a consensus basis to develop research and evidence policy recommendations on lots of issues, but including digital policy and including within that digital safety and specifically work on children in the digital environment. My first remark in response to the question is that I think it’s really important to acknowledge up front that protecting children from CSCA should not just be done in a way that protects and promotes their rights. I think it’s really important to acknowledge that protecting children from CSCA is protecting and promoting their rights, most obviously freedom from violence, but also acknowledging that this CSCA can infringe upon dignity rights, privacy, and a safe online space is really important for enabling children to access a large number of rights in today’s reality, such as opinion, assembly, information, or education and health. So while it is really important to recognize where there are tensions between our rights in our solutions and in policy solutions, which is the angle that I come from, it’s really also important to recognize that there is a direct child rights implication on a number of layers of CSCA itself. Secondly, just to break down the question of what is it is that we mean by technologies. I guess in the question, are we referring to companies themselves that provide live streaming or safety technologies? And how can this be integrated and how safety technologies could be integrated into those services to provide safeguard for children’s? Or are we talking about a combination of both? And so for the interest of time, I’ll tackle the question really from the perspective of both. And I’m gonna highlight the importance of taking a safety by design approach. And I know that that’s not a technology in itself, but there are technologies that underline safety by design. Here at the OECD, we’ve done a little bit of work here to really understand what this concept means. And we last year published a report that posits eight key components for digital safety by design. These roughly fall into three buckets. I’m not gonna talk about one of them, which is more about corporate social responsibility and an environment of safety. But two of the buckets, one of which is putting in technologies and tools at the front end to prevent harm from occurring, and then putting in tools and technologies at the backend to detect harm should it occur otherwise really does require incorporating certain technologies into service design and delivery. So two, we also have done some research here which can shed some light on how companies are actually doing in this space and what is actually occurring in relation to the incorporation of technologies into companies to meet those sort of two aspects of what at the front end and also as a safety net. Firstly, we’ve done a series of reports looking at company practices for transparency reporting and there are other public facing policies and governing documents relevant to child sexual exploitation and abuse. Now we look at a wide number of things such as how CSEA is defined on a platform, how they enforce their. policies, moderation practices, and transparency reporting practices. But one of the things we do look at is how they detect CSEA. Now, we’ve done two reports relevant to this. One report was published in 2023, and another one will be published this coming Monday. And in the one that’s to be coming on Monday, it shows that companies really rarely provide detailed or clear information on their moderation practices. And now we don’t specifically break this down in the report. I did a quick scan of the some 80 services we looked at relevant to live streaming. And now only two of those, taking aside those services who sold businesses live streaming, only two of those provide information on their moderation practices specific to live streaming. And again, only a few provide metrics that break down their live streaming incidences. And so really for policymakers to be able to react and understand where targeted policy action and deployment of safeguarding technology is needed, better and more granular transparency and information is really key. Now, I realize I’m about to run out of time, but we’ve also done a similar exercise relevant to age-related policies. This paper is out today. And just to say really briefly, it’s clear from the research we’ve done that age assurance, and I know this is a hot topic on a lot of people’s mind, but we’re not quite there yet in achieving age assurance. We identify this as a key component of safety by design because companies need to know who their users are to put in place child protective safeguards. But of the 50 services we looked at here, only two systematically assure age on account creation. And so there still is gaps to be done in relation to age assurance. And I’ll leave it there. Thank you so much, Lisa, for kicking us off and sharing already with us the incredible work the OSCD is doing at global level, mentioning a lot of publications, and we will also make sure to include this in our session report. And you mentioned very interesting areas. And I think that’s a very good kick-off for this first round. We will now turn to Avo, who is from Child Online Africa, also a very big advocate on children’s rights, and we will hear from him a little bit more about what he thinks about protection of children’s rights. So, Avo, thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for having me.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you for having me. We will now turn to Avo, who is from Child Online Africa, also a very big advocate on children’s rights, and we will hear a little bit more from Avo what is happening in the space, particularly in the Africa region. I hope, Avo, you can hear us. And the floor would be yours. Yes, I can hear you.

Aidam Amenyah: Good morning. Hello, everyone. Pleasure connecting with you from Accra, Ghana. I’m going to build on what the background Lisa gave, because we don’t want to burn time. We want to build on what each other is presenting. So as much as possible, as you are all aware, Africa has a unique situation where we have an even situation of digital literacy, and the rapid growth of technology is helping to some extent, but it’s also exposing a number of incidences. And at Child Online Africa, our focus is to give children what they want, what they need in order to be online. So by so doing, we interact with these young people a lot to get things done. And one of the things they make us understand is that virtually almost every day, there’s something that they encounter in the space. So we’re asking, okay, so what can be done in order to safeguard your interests and your engagement in the space? And they made us understand that. understand that it’s important that now that AI is there, the platform is made in such a way that is sensitive to detect, prevent, and also report streaming of live situations that affect children by extension. And the moment they mentioned AI, you ask them, okay, so what can you do yourself? And so, okay, we can try to code something, but we haven’t gotten there yet. But then we are of the view that as a growing environment where young people are largely involved in the space, it will be important for us to look at protocols that allow laws to be enforced effectively, because one of the things they came up with is the fact that the laws are not biting and it looks like they are not working effectively as far as our country, our region is concerned. So they’re looking at the involvement of children in local communities to design solutions which affect them so that it will be foolproof. It wouldn’t be like adults sitting to come up with designs that do not really, really impact on children. And they also recommended that there should be human oversight on AI moderation to prevent false positives if possible. And again, there’s also the need, they said we should put a lot of responsibility on internet service providers, because they should be able to block some of the live streams of children, but they are not doing that enough. And all because there are no laws holding them accountable. So they will feel that if the service providers will be made a lot more responsible, the system will be good enough and conducive enough for them. But their involvement is very key in ensuring that the design for the protection solution. is fit for purpose and is intuitive for them to interact with. So by extension, they felt that it’s important for platforms to be faster in identifying incidences of abuse and rescuing young people if they show fall victims, prosecution of perpetrators, and also by also creating, making, having at the back of the mind of designers that children are using the platform. Even though they don’t give money, they don’t buy anything, they are also consumers and their interest should be taken on board and taken seriously. That’s what I can say for now, thank you.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you so much, Avo, and also for highlighting already youth participation in the whole process. So really making young people part of the development process, but also policymaking, the design as well, and definitely call for action for more responsibilities for the platforms. Thank you for now. We will now go to our next speaker, Patricia Aurora. We talked about platforms already. Patricia works for Social Media Matters, specifically in the India region. I hope, Patricia, you can hear us and the floor would be yours now. Thank you for joining us.

Patricia Aurora: Thank you, Sabrina, thank you for the opportunity. I’m so happy to be here, joining virtually, giving the context of our child safety work in India and what we have been doing, and how India is basically shaping the laws around child protection in India. Given that, just a brief introduction about who I am for the audience over there. So I’m Patricia Aurora. I’m currently leading Social Media Matters, an organization that’s working. in at the intersection of digital safety, child rights, and online harm prevention in India. Basically, I’ve been engaged in shaping conversations around child protection, digital literacy, and trust and safety frameworks. And hearing Lisa and Avu so far on inserting the context, I think so now this adds value when we talk about the ongoing initiatives that we have been doing in India for over a decade now. And this has given us a clear standing that what we need as children and their voices to be heard by many. Right now in India, what we come across is that many children who are facing any form of abuse or harm, they do not feel or they do not know the path of how to kind of report the situation, even if it is a form of online harm like cyberbullying. This is one area which is talked about across India. Cyberbullying amongst minors is a major issue in India. And when we’re talking about technology, and when we’re talking about policies, I think the tech platforms have a major role over here. Why? Because when we are giving that liberty to children to access the internet, which is somewhere a right for them as well in the digital space, and when we’re talking about digital rights in India. But sadly, the tech companies, what we are seeing is that they’re failing in a form that we do not have some standard mechanisms to protect children. And these standard mechanisms are not well defined because we do not have a robust legal framework. We are borrowing some sections from various laws currently to protect children online, which was not even into speculation until we realized that children, how children are being targeted in the online spaces. Coming to grooming, it has taken the lives of many young children as well, because of these harms in the online space. Now coming to live streaming, because live streaming is one platform where pre-recorded videos are being monetized for their own benefit. And this is coming from, you know, cross-platform as well. The use of child content, child-abusive content, is something which is at its peak right now. And quoting some stats from the reports that have been released by NECMEC, and also the TIPLINE report that stated that 9 million children out of the 36.2 million population of India have been targeted of these. So this gives a very big number for us to even think about what is happening, especially when we talk about the cultural aspect of it. How we are looking into this content, from the live streaming perspective as well, that how we are able to add a lens of safety for them in the online space. Are we giving them adequate mechanisms that, you know, they can freely access internet? Or that freedom is turning into a bad shape for them? So these are some points that, you know, I want to think about. And also think about that, do we need to redefine these policies? Do we need to rethink about them? Do we need to reimagine that what is happening? Do we need to reframe working? Do we need to have more collaborative efforts where civil society organizations, where tech companies, where regulatories can come together and create a full package where we are just thinking about finer safety over there? At this point, at this juncture, when we are talking about the legal frameworks, I think so many of you must have also heard about it. heard about the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, that is talking very specific about child safety in India. There was a parallel legal framework called the Digital India Act, which was only to take forward the Information Technology Act, where India is trying to define all sorts of online harm, protecting digital users. So these two important acts, we are also hopeful that that will reshape the whole cultural context of child safety in India, including live streaming spaces that will prevent children from feedback and situations that children are encountering in the online spaces at the given time.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you very much, Patricia, for your intervention and also bringing us closer a bit to the national context and the current situation in India and also the, yeah, very shocking numbers you have shared with us, but I think, and we will come back to this also in our second round where we will talk a bit more about cross-platform and multi-stakeholder collaboration, but reporting is, of course, crucial to make that more accessible to children and young people, but the public in general, build more awareness but also more confidence in young people to take the step to reporting. Before we come to our last speaker for this first round, I just remind everyone, if you would like to make an intervention or ask a question here in the room, please line up towards the microphone and also online, there’s the possibility to intervene. You can just raise your hand. We will now conclude this first round, giving the floor to Sean, Sean Lytton, President from the Tech Coalition. Sean, I hope you’re with us and the floor is yours now. Yeah, thank you. It’s great to be with you all.

Sean Litton: By way of introduction, the Tech Coalition is a global association of leading tech companies. We have social media, search engines. We have many live streaming platforms. Some, that’s their primary business. And then many platforms, it’s a component of their service. They’ll have a live streaming component. And we are 100% focused on preventing, disrupting child sexual exploitation and abuse and building our members’ capacity to do this. As we heard from the other speakers, there’s alarming trends with respect to online child sexual exploitation and abuse in a live streaming context. It’s used to, it is perhaps the number one way that children are now exploited commercially in terms of, we would call it sex trafficking. These trends underscore the need to develop and deploy technologies that prevent child sexual exploitation and abuse on live streaming platforms. While also ensuring children’s safety, well-being, and privacy. The Tech Coalition and our members are prioritizing ways to do this. Two examples I’d like to talk about today. First of all, we are working with one of our members. It’s a major live streaming platform to develop a tool to detect child sexual exploitation and abuse in a live streaming context. It uses session metadata and third-party signals to generate a risk score for the particular broadcast. And because this tool operates without analyzing actual content of the live stream, privacy standards are preserved. But based on that score, the child safety team can take a closer look and decide whether to shut down or intervene in some way in that broadcast. So in practice, this approach relies on participants. participant characteristics, like country of origin, the use of anonymization services, et cetera. And by combining these metadata signals, the system indicates the likelihood of child sexual exploitation and abuse activity occurring within a given live stream session for further investigation. Now, development of this tool began in the fall of 2024, and this summer, our members will test and formally evaluate its feasibility for this approach for broader industry adoption. So our goal is to advance detection methods that use behavioral signals and metadata rather than relying solely on content scanning and preserve privacy of the conversation. So another example is Apple’s communication safety feature. For example, Apple’s a member of the tech coalition. This uses on-device machine learning to detect nudity in photos and video accounts, and because analysis happens on the device, neither Apple or any other third party observes the content or is aware that nudity was shared. When nudity is detected, the image is blurred, and the child sees age-appropriate safety information and health resources. And recently, Apple announced the expansion of this feature to FaceTime calls. It is also available by API for free to all developers who develop apps for iOS. This enables any app to check for nudity in a video stream, detecting the sensitive content either from the device’s camera or the remote devices signed into the conference call. These are just two examples of how child sexual exploitation abuse detection can combine both children’s safety and privacy to reduce abuse in live streaming environments.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Sean. Also again, for giving us the perspective and the work that is going on in the space of tech companies, certainly a lot. We will come back. back to Sean also in the next round where we then also talk a little bit more about multi-stakeholder collaboration and also Sean mentioned already the promotion of well-being for children and young people when using technology. Before we get there I see we have a few people lining up. Just please before you intervene or ask your question quickly introduce yourself.

Audience: Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. I’m Julien Ruffy, I’m a associate professor at the University of Paris 8 and I co-chair the working group on internet governance and I’ve taken part in a few research projects on online use safety. One of the things that come up very frequently when we do focus groups in middle and high schools with young people is that a lot of the time they feel that partly they can be compelled by adults and institutions to use digital tools. Of course I’m not talking about live streaming but just having to use a mobile phone and being online a lot even when sometimes they might wish to disconnect and when they are faced with this kind of content or with cyber bullying problems or any of the things that you have talked about the main problem that comes up is where do I find a safe space where adults can hear my problems and act on them and I feel like a lot of the proposals coming from the tech company side is to say well we’re going to develop a technology that is going to detect nudity and things like that without infringing on privacy which is something that I would like maybe to question sometimes but actually what happens then if some content is flagged or something really bad happens what happens if then police for example doesn’t act upon it and so my question to you is in your work advocating for children’s rights in the online sphere how much effort are you targeting towards law enforcement agencies and educational institutions so that when something happens they act upon it because you can flag content as much as you like. Platforms can act as much as they’d like. If at some point there is no law enforcement coming up, problems are not going to be solved. Thank you. Thank you so much for your question. We haven’t

Sabrina Vorbau: heard from Robert yet but maybe this could already be a question for you to briefly answer but I know that you later on will give a bit more context on the work that Off-Limits are doing. Yes, thank you very much. Good morning everyone and thank you for that question. I would like to bring in the perspective of the

Robbert Hoving: safer internet centers, the system we have in Europe, because that actually is more a safe space both for parents, caretakers but also for people who are a victim. To find help and a lot of times that help can be that they just have someone that listens to them. They can also take the content down and then if they want to take more action, for instance go to the police, they can help with that as well but they can also provide them towards the right helping parties. So for me it would be really crucial to strengthen such a network because there are these spaces where people can go and a third aspect of them is the awareness raising to ensure to help schools and to give schools material to ensure that it doesn’t happen. You will always have people with bad intent so you cannot stop everything but I think you could step up much more in the prevention looking at the data that is actually coming in at the safer internet centers. And I think we will hear a little bit more about this later

Sabrina Vorbau: on in the session. Maybe for this round one more question or intervention and

Jutta Croll: Jutta please. Thank you for giving me the floor Sabrina. I am Jutta Kroll from the Dynamic Coalition on Children’s Rights in the Digital Environment and since I would like to say a few words about the Global Age Assurance Summit, which is part of the Global Age Assurance Summit, and Age Assurance was already mentioned as a tool to protect children from online sexual exploitation. I just wanted to intervene and to turn your attention to the Global Age Assurance Summit, Standard Summit communique on Age Assurance, which is a child rights-based approach to such issues, and I would like to say a few words about that. It’s possible with Age Assurance instruments to make sure that adults cannot join these spaces that are made for children, and the Global Age Assurance Standard Summit came to the conclusion that this can be done, data minimizing and privacy preserving, without being intrusive and gathering data from children, as well as providing a safe space for children to be able to join the community. So that’s what we are doing, and we are also working on the ISO standard 27566, so if anybody is interested how that can be done, you will find the communique. We have brought some copies and just come to the Dynamic Coalitions, who is in the IGF village, and we can talk about that. Thank you.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you very much, Sabrina, and thank you to all of you for being here. I think we have covered a lot of topics, and the great work you and colleagues are doing on children’s rights. I think we will move to the next round, but please stay with us. We will bring you in for intervention later.

Dhanaraj Thakur: I will hand over now to Danaraj to guide us through the second round, more looking into cross-platform and multi-stakeholder collaborations. Danaraj, I will hand over to you. Thank you, Sabrina, and thank you to all of you for being here. of content related to child sexual exploitation and abuse. This is a significant problem and part of the reality of how this kind of exploitation and abuse occurs. So, the question that we want to raise, to start with our experts, and then we can move into Q&A at the end of the round as well is how can we promote, or better promote, cross-platform efforts, including on livestream platforms, to prevent the spread of this kind of child sexual exploitation and abuse content. And to do that, I’m gonna start with you, Robert, to hear your thoughts first on this issue,

Robbert Hoving: on this cross-platform problem. All right, thank you very much. As we’re from the Safer Internet Center here in the Netherlands of Limits, we have the hotline for the child abuse material to be reported, we have the helpline for the other transgressive behavior, and also where caretakers can call for help. And we also have an initiative which is called Stop It Now, which is a prevention line for people actually watching this material. And when I bring that perspective in, when I start, for instance, with the perpetrator, we did research and we discovered that the people calling Stop It Now, more than half are males under 26, and they watch this type of behavior out of escalation behavior. For instance, because at a too young age they went online, and we know how easy it is to get access to an adult website, and we also know that looking at heavy material at a young age desensitizes and can ensure that people want to look for heavy material. Abuse material might be heavy material. When we look at the victims, for instance, at the numbers of the hotline at Off Limits, of all the reports coming in, one third of those reports is self-generated, meaning young children making sexualized images themselves, might be alone, might be with other children, might be with attributes, but they make them themselves. themselves through webcams, phones, et cetera. And of those 1 third of reports, 75% is prepubescent, so implying very young children. This is not children going to middle school in their teenagers. This is really young children. And then we look at platforms. And there are different types of platforms. There might be live streaming platforms or also social media. There are a lot of good aspects about social media. And some social media are really veered towards sharing content. But there’s also social media that is designed to meet people and to connect with people. Now, when we go back to that 75% prepubescent, we know from, and we’re going to investigate this now together with the Ministry of Justice, but we know that it might be grooming, for instance, in online spaces. But it might also be risk behavior, looking for attention because it comes from previous abuse or it’s because it’s stuff they have seen online at a too young age, and they’re enacting that. Now, when you have these three ingredients, Ms. Cole already mentioned age verification. I think it’s very important to, at certain online spaces, have age verification to ensure that old people who want to post as younger people and young people who want to post as older people, that they cannot connect. And also to chime in and to actually echo what Janice said at the session about deep fakes, cross-platform efforts, connecting with education. I think we could also really have companies stepping up to collaborate more with schools to give material instead of just pushing their tools towards schools, but also help build up the curriculum. Because we always say education, but when you put everything at schools, then there should also be the capacity at schools to be able to do that. And I think combining it with the tech sector, for instance, like Janice mentioned, could actually be a very good idea. So that would be my reaction. to your question. Great.

Dhanaraj Thakur: Thank you. Thank you for those points. Particularly the statistics you mentioned around prepubescent self-generated content. So Sean, I want to turn to you now, because given your particular perspective, your perspective with the coalition and therefore the opportunity to work across actual platforms

Sean Litton: and engage in efforts across platforms, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this issue of solutions, cross-platform solutions. Yeah, thank you for the question. So as the other speakers have noted, bad actors typically exploit multiple services across the tech ecosystem in their attempts to groom children, distribute CSAM, or engage in other harmful activities like financial extortion. So for example, the bad actor might contact a child on a gaming platform, move them to a private messaging platform, and then perhaps use a live streaming platform down the road. So the abuse spans social media, gaming, live streaming, payment apps, and more. But the individual company is obviously unaware of what happened on the other platforms. They don’t have all the information. And it makes them difficult, without the complete picture, to adequately grasp what’s going on and take action. So that’s why industry collaboration is essential at the Tech Coalition. We recently launched a program called Lantern, which is the first cross-platform signal sharing program that helps companies strengthen enforcement of their child safety policies. We launched Lantern so companies could securely share signals with one another about accounts and activity that violate their own child sexual exploitation and abuse policies. Until then, until Lantern, there was no consistent way for companies to share this information in a secure. and privacy-preserving way, Lantern helps fill that gap by revealing a fuller picture of the harm. Working with Lantern, companies can increase their prevention and detection capabilities, speed up threat identification, build awareness of emerging threats, bad actor tactics, and strengthen their reporting out to hotlines and other authorities. So we know this approach works. And last year, members shared hundreds of thousands of signals through Lantern. This led to account actions, content removal, and the disruption of offender networks and CSAM circulation. Signals helped flag contact and trafficking cases as well that may not have been identified otherwise. It’s really important. And crucially, these outcomes come in addition to the original action taken by the company that first detected the abuse, showing how Lantern enables a ripple effect of protection across the ecosystem. So together, initiatives like Lantern are helping close detection gaps, enabling faster action and improving that collaboration really does make a difference. It’s not just possible. It’s powerful.

Dhanaraj Thakur: So thank you. Great. Thank you, Sean. Very interesting to hear about Project Lantern. And I’m sure that might come up again in the Q&A. Very good. Also next, I want to now turn to one of our online speakers, Sabine Witting, based at Leiden University. Sabine, since this is, and hopefully you can hear us, and as well, since you’re joining us now and speaking for the first time, please, if you want to say more about yourself, please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I hope you can hear me all right.

Sabine Witting: Yes. My name is Sabine Witting. I’m an assistant professor for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, but I’m also the co-founder of TechLegality, which is a consultancy firm specializing in human rights and tech, especially on a lot of these hot potato topics that already came up today, such as age assurance. We do a lot of work on these topics across the world. So thanks so much for the question around cross-platform collaboration. And I think this kind of collaboration is essential because platforms all deal with the same human rights and children’s rights issues, especially issues around competing rights. And a lot of this really is essentially trying to square the circle, and this kind of collaboration can certainly assist with that. I think also that cross-platform collaboration alone, of course, is not enough. As important as it is that industry has their own space, for example, for the tech coalition to really collaborate, I think a multi-stakeholder effort is always crucial to have all people affected by technologies at the table, human rights advocates, child rights advocates, academia, but also parents and children themselves. And I also want to use an example of one of the technologies that’s often put forward as a solution to child sexual abuse in the digital space, but also especially for live streaming, which is age assurance, which has already come up a few times. And I think when we approach age assurance, for example, from a multi-stakeholder collaboration, one of the key gaps that’s always, always criticized about age assurance is the lack of clear evaluation criteria and how we can assess, for example, the effectiveness and the robustness of these technologies, and also to really understand better who is adversely impacted by these technologies. And at the moment, there are some standards, there’s some industry standards, which have played a very important role for quite a long time. But the problem is that a lot of the industry standards are not accessible and they’re not drafted in a multi-stakeholder way. They’re drafted by industry, they’re often drafted by age assurance providers themselves. And that, of course, then begs the question of might these standards be biased to a certain extent? Have human rights concerns from across the world really been taken into consideration? And here I’m not only talking about the Global North, but especially the Global South. And representatives of the Global South are usually underrepresented in these industry standard making processes, which is a huge problem because of the important role that industry standards are playing here. And maybe I want to point at a good practice example that I’m lucky enough to be part of, which is the current drafting of the IEEE standard on the prevention of CSEA and generative AI. And this group is really a combination of three groups. of all the actors that we need around the table. We have human rights advocates, we have industry, we have tech experts with academia. And it’s really enriching to see how an industry standard can be developed with all of these different stakeholders at the table. And also we have a strong representation from the global South. And of course, also generated AI, we’ve heard it from Abel and from Pratisha, is a different story in India and in African countries that is in the global North. So it’s really important to have not only a cross-platform collaboration, but multi-stakeholder and regional representation, especially of vulnerable groups.

Dhanaraj Thakur: Thank you. Great, thank you so much, Sabine. And thank you for raising this point about the relevance of standard settings, particularly around age insurance tech, and the utility of having multi-stakeholder projects with that. So I now want to turn to Kate Rowan, my colleague at the Center for Democracy and Technology. So Kate, we heard about, from Sean, about the industry efforts around cross-calibration, but we also heard both from Robert and Sabine, the importance of the multi-stakeholders in these efforts. So I’m curious on your thoughts on how we can better address the cross-platform proliferation of these kinds of content. Thanks so much, Jan-Raj. And thanks to everybody who has spoken so far.

Kate Ruane: I echo a lot of what’s already been said, and I specifically want to pick up on the point that cross-platform efforts need multi-stakeholder engagement in order to work best, in part because cross-platform efforts are going to create even more significant risks for human rights like free expression and privacy. And that is actually a necessary thing. Child sexual abuse and exploitation is such a large and clear harm. It is a crime around the world for a reason. And that means that efforts to restrict it are… necessarily proportionate to the harm. And so therefore, when mistakes get made, we can see really significant impacts on the lives of innocent people. And in order to ensure that our responses to the crime of CSEA is proportionate, multi-stakeholder engagement can ensure that harms do not propound beyond the criminal activity. And multi-stakeholder engagement can be really helpful for ensuring that there are things like transparency and appeals processes. The Tech Coalition, for example, has done human rights impact assessments on its efforts to combat CSEA. That’s really positive, and it would be really helpful to have more spaces in which children themselves, survivors, civil society, technologists, especially privacy experts, and others can engage in the ways that platforms are developing their information sharing efforts to ensure that human rights are respected throughout their development and their execution. And I specifically want to call out a couple of things. So the Tech Coalition has talked about its development of a tool to detect signals across platforms for child sexual abuse and exploitation. This is a really interesting and valuable tool, I think, and it would be helpful, particularly, to have transparency into the tools themselves, not just for signals development, but also for things like content detection, especially in live stream where it’s particularly difficult to execute. Most content detection tools are designed to identify content at rest, whereas live streaming content is constantly in motion. The various tools that exist to try to identify child sexual abuse and exploitation within live streaming are currently significantly lacking in benchmarks, yet we have. a number of organizations that are marketing technologies that claim to be able to identify child sexual exploitation and abuse content in live streaming or in video content. But we don’t really have a good way to identify whether these products actually work or work sufficiently, or whether there are sufficient safeguards in order to address potential errors in the content detection tools. Multi-stakeholder engagement and transparency can help with both of those things. It can help us identify and improve these types of tools, and it can help us sort of understand how they work going forward, and help us deploy better transparency and accountability tools for tech companies themselves and for governments who are engaged in proper enforcement of their laws going forward. So those are a couple things that I thought about. And I also wanted to turn back to Robert’s point about media literacy and ensuring that we are investing in people’s understanding regarding how to engage in combating CSEA at the local and person-to-person and user level. I think we definitely need significantly more engagement in that front, and we also need tech companies both in a cross-platform and a transparency way to talk to each other about how their reporting processes work. One of the things that we see is that your enforcement efforts sometimes are only as good as your reporting processes are. If it is difficult to find the button, just the simple design feature of how to report harm and ensure that it is moving forward, that is another simple thing that platforms can share information about can share transparency reporting about to make sure that we are consistently getting better in how we combat these harms, while also ensuring that we are protecting free expression and privacy in the process. So, we’re going to continue the pattern, the format that Sabrina laid out where we can now have a break for questions and interventions from the audience and we’re going to move on to the Q&A portion of the session. So, I’m going to turn it over to you.

Deborah Vassallo: Thank you. Thank you, Kate. So, I’m going to turn it over to you. We’ll take questions and interventions from the audience and, again, I would ask for the same thing where people can line up by the mic. So, please line up and we’ll take as many as we can. We do have a few minutes. So, yes, sir, please start and if you can just give just say introduction as well before you share your question or intervention. Sure. Good morning, everyone.

Andrew Kempling: My name is Andrew Kempling. I run a tech and public policy consultancy. I’m also a trustee of the Internet Watch Foundation. Since we’re talking about CSAM, no one’s actually given a number. I think we need to have a number. It’s estimated there’s roughly 300 million victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation every year globally. That’s about 14% of the world’s children each year. So, just to put some scale on this, this is a non-trivial problem. To add to the list that Lisa started with back at the start, a couple of people have mentioned age estimation and verification. I just wanted to reiterate that because a few sessions earlier in the week people have asserted that’s simply a mechanism to let social media platforms get even more data about their users. But as has rightly been said, there are privacy-preserving mechanisms to do age verification and estimation, which are important tools to keep children off from adult content, but importantly also adults off of child sites. and from accessing child accounts on site, so we need to make better use of that. What hasn’t really been said is that research shows us that end-to-end messaging platforms, encrypted messaging platforms, are widely used to share child sexual abuse material once it’s been captured, including video, and privacy is used as an excuse to not stop that, where people have weaponised privacy. I’d love to hear the panel’s comments. There are well-known privacy-preserving techniques to block known CSAM from being shared on these platforms. I’d love to hear your views on why they’re not being used. And then finally, I just wanted to also mention, since tech standards were covered, I think, by Sabrina, they are changing to the extent that a lot of existing parental controls and content filtering will stop working because metadata is increasingly being encrypted. That’s a major problem, not least of which because a lot of the policy community don’t take part in the way that tech standards are defined. So we need to find a better way for getting multi-stakeholder engagement, otherwise we see the problem getting bigger, not smaller, in the community. And then finally, Kate talked about those tools not being known whether they work or not. The IWF has data, we can test tools, so maybe let’s get together, perhaps with Sean’s members afterwards, and we can do some validation whether they actually are effective or not. Thank you.

Dhanaraj Thakur: Great, thank you. Thank you for the offer as well. So maybe we can have some quick reactions to this. First was the point about encryption. Kate, if you had any quick thoughts on that, and then the point about tech standards as well, maybe Lisa or Sabine, you might want to jump in there.

Kate Ruane: So, Kate, you wanna? Sure, I would love to start with the end-to-end encryption question. So, you know, I think that oftentimes privacy and safety are placed in tension with each other, and I find that framing to be a little bit difficult because I think privacy and safety are very much in line with one another. Folks often point to the distribution of child sexual abuse material through end-to-end encrypted platforms as a reason to create an encryption backdoor, or a justification for no longer using or relying on encrypted technologies. I think that that can obscure many of the benefits of encrypted technologies, and encrypted technologies are particularly salient for human rights defenders, for journalists, and for people who just want to keep their data private to both themselves and to the intended recipients, and keep it outside of the view, not just of governments and other bad actors, but also tech companies themselves. As tech companies continue to hoover up so much more data about all of us, that encrypted services are one of the few and potentially actually only place where they cannot see the content of the communication, and that becomes more and more important as we see the world changing in front of our eyes. But I want to point to a particular research that has been done by Rihanna Pfefferkorn at Stanford, where she looked at the effectiveness of content oblivious versus content aware methods of content moderation, and what she found is, for the most part, for the vast majority of harmful content, content oblivious methods. of detecting these types of abuse are far more effective than content scanning or content aware methods of detecting content. And so when you put that in front of the fact that CSAM is a very particular type of harm that is specifically probably best detected via things like content matching, putting it up against the value, putting the ability to detect it on every single surface across the entire internet, against the value of having a safe and effective place to engage in communications for national security purposes, for the purposes of journalism,

Dhanaraj Thakur: for the purposes of ensuring privacy from tech companies and from governments that would otherwise harm people for so many other reasons, I think that there are many other ways to detect CSAM on encrypted services, including through user reporting, which has been a very effective way to address that content, that we should continue to have encrypted services and continue to think about privacy and safety as things that are complementary to one another and not necessarily at odds. All right, thank you. Okay, for purposes of time and interest of time, I’m gonna ask the next two people in the line to maybe just very briefly offer your intervention or question and then I’ll bring it back to the panel and then we move to the next round. So please go ahead. And also Sir Amanda to introduce yourself.

Audience: Sure, Shiva Bisasa, Trinidad and Tobago. Speaking from the experience of knowing someone, knowing a victim of financial sextortion who ultimately took his life and what we’ve had to go through in the follow-up to that, in investigating, reporting, coming from a developed nation. I see a big gap between some of the things I’m hearing about on stages here and the reality that exists in the developing world. Definitely reporting needs to be improved, investigative methods need to be improved. If there’s the ability for victims to directly report to platforms, that would be good. Because we have material that we can put forward to the platforms and we need some outlet to give it to the authorities or competent authorities to deal with the matter. I think the first speaker, the first contributor, he talked about the law enforcement ability to do things. And I think that is something that needs to be developed further. Assistance with respect to development, developing capacity in law enforcement in developing states, as well as general awareness within the general population and some of the online harms that exist out there that needs developing in the developing world. Sean brought up the issue of financial extortion, he also brought up the issue of there’s an exit point, there’s a payment aspect to it. Direct question to Sean would be, does Landon’s project also contemplate signals from the financial transactions aspect, are you matching or are you searching within financial transactions to either find perpetrator payments, payments to perpetrators or payments from victims?

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you. Thank you. And thank you also for sharing your experiences. The next, yes, please go ahead.

Sergio Tavares: Hi, my name is Sérgio Tavares, I’m from SaferNet Brasil, which is the safe internet center for Brazil. And I come from a country with almost 200 million internet users. One third, one in three, are children and teenagers below 18 years old. And also live streaming. streaming has also become prevalent in Brazil, and we are seeing a growing number of reports, not only in my country, but everywhere. If you look to the U.S., you can see the NICMAC numbers. If you look globally, you can see you have the INHOPE numbers. So the numbers of reports, the number of cases is growing everywhere in the world. On the other hand, the resources is declining. And my question is, how to solve this dilemma? Because we need resources to create technology. We need resources to create, to develop policies and prevention programs. But when you look for the government resources, they are declining. Privacy resources, industry resources, they are also, if it’s not declining, it’s stable on a very low level. And the problem is growing everywhere. How to solve this dilemma?

Dhanaraj Thakur: Thank you. Great. Thank you. Okay. So we’ll have some quick reactions from our speakers before moving to the next round. So Sean, there was a question directed to you. Maybe you have some thoughts you can briefly share with us.

Sean Litton: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. There is a financial component to a lot of crimes against children online. With respect to Lantern specifically, we are piloting with two major global payment providers sharing signals on Lantern to determine the effectiveness of those signals. They are only ingesting. At this point, signals from the social media, gaming, et cetera, companies. And we’ll have a report out later this summer on the effectiveness of that pilot. If it’s effective, then we’ll scale it up and bring other financial companies onto the platform. So that’s, so you’re right. And I’m very sorry for what. happened to your friend, and there have been a number of cases of suicides related to financial extortion. It is a really difficult issue, and law enforcement is a big challenge there because the perpetrators of the abuse tend to thrive in countries where there’s lower law enforcement capacity, and then the victims may be in a different country. And so even if the report gets to that country where the origin of the crime or the abuse, law enforcement may not necessarily have the sufficient capacity to act on the report. And so this leaves everyone in a bind. But anyway, we are piloting with financial companies, and we hope to share those results later this summer. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so we do have another round of questions. So I

Dhanaraj Thakur: want to actually, I know we have got a lot of important feedback from the audience, but I do have to turn it back to Sabrina so we can have another round, and then maybe we can save some time for the Q&A later on as well. Definitely, please stay in line. We will bring you in

Sabrina Vorbau: towards the end of the session, but in our final round we want to turn the attention to policy. It was brought up a couple of times already, the need for more standard mechanisms and also the more stronger role of law enforcement as CSAM threats evolve, also including the rise of self-generated content. We heard global numbers and regional numbers, and we will now look more into how should national and international policy frameworks respond. So for our final round, the question to the speakers is how can national and international policy be strengthened to address emerging forms of abuse such as the self-generated content? And Lisa is already on screen, so we will start this final round with you. Thanks so much, Sabrina, and I do of course have some thoughts in relation to the question. I just wanted to mention quickly two things relevant to the discussion we just had.

Lisa Robbins: Firstly, not my part of the OECD, but there has been some research done by part of the OECD called Financial Action Task Force, which has done some specific research in relation to disrupting financial flows relevant to live stream sexual abuse and sexual extortion. And so I’ll share that report with Sabrina so it can be shared with the group as well. And the paper that I just mentioned in relation to CSEA, we developed an intensive list of services that facilitate CSEA. And that really reflected what was said about cross platforming and off platforming from larger services to smaller services and a need for some scrutiny on the smaller services as well, which I think takes me into the policy question. So I just wanted to mention those issues. I think when we talk about national and international policies and how to strengthen them, certainly the position from the OECD and what we advocate is to take a tech neutral approach, a multi-layered approach, which can range from awareness raising with children, digital literacy through to industry action and then stronger sticks, such as industry regulation and law enforcement. That approach is a multi-stakeholder and that we engage really in good international collaboration so we don’t end up with a really fragmented regulatory space in this really global, global area. But I think what might be useful in relation to this conversation is to have a think about what are some sort of specific policy actions that maybe aren’t getting scrutiny the same way that a broader overarching policy actions are. A couple that have really been already touched on and really are getting attention are transparency reporting, practices and platforms in a number of areas. We’ve talked about transparency, not just of what’s happening on platform, but actually how companies are. are using tools and we’ve talked a lot about age assurance. I think there’s two other areas that would be interesting to focus on from a targeted policy response when we’re looking at safety of children from CSEA in a number of areas. So not just in self-generated content online coercion, but in all the different manifestations that we have relevant to CSEA. And I’m really pleased that the two that I was concerned about and wanted to raise have already been an important part of the discussion today. So the first is recidivism on platforms, and I think has been noted already is that law enforcement is overwhelmed. And I, again, as with my colleagues on the panel, express my sincere apologies and empathy with the gentleman who mentioned the terrible tragedy of his friend. Recidivism on platforms, I’m not necessarily talking about a law enforcement recidivism, but where bad actors are banned from an account, but then are able to recreate an account without consequences or without scrutiny. Now, Sean has already mentioned the Lantern Project, and I obviously will let him speak to that. But we do know that there is problems with recidivism. Research from Australia’s e-safety commissioner under its transparency reporting program shows that companies have really very little safeguards in the way of recidivism in varied practices. There’s limited information sharing across services. And what e-safety looked at both CCA and TVIC material and found that users and bad actors users were able to open an account, have it shut down for a violation and easily be able to open other ones with really little oversight as to how that is managed and oversight across platforms and within platforms to stop new accounts being created. And that is one area that could be focused on. The second is complaint mechanisms. And I’m really happy that that’s been mentioned a lot today as well. And just to focus on children themselves. and the capacity for children to make complaints. And I think Kate mentioned this, and also Ava mentioned this already today about really listening to kids and understanding complaints from a kid’s perspective. Again and again, research on children, when we talk to kids about what they want from platforms, they want better complaint mechanisms. They wanna be able to understand what it means actually to file a complaint, what filing a report means, what’s the consequences, and they want responses back to them to understand what actually happened with their complaint. And so I would, I’m happy to mention on other things and also to mention the work that the OECD has done on transparency reporting and age assurance and more broad legislation and international cooperation, but I would posit those two as two important areas where policy action could be focused.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you so much, Lisa, and you mentioned the multi-layered approach, which I think comes out very strongly of the discussion we’re having today and then also really crucial, the strong collaboration that is needed with law enforcement, and I want to bring in Robert T also based on the work that Off-Limits is doing and specifically the hotlines.

Robbert Hoving: Yeah, when I look at policies, for instance, I think a lot is there. In the Netherlands, a lot is there. On the European level, for instance, with the DSA now coming into effect, a lot is there. We have enforcement, we have safer internet centers, so we have policies how to deal with them. Sometimes I think that authorities could maybe go a bit quicker when a party is not working. For instance, Telegram, we had troubles with them in the Netherlands. You could also decide, take them out of the App Store because we know there’s a lot of CSAM, there’s weapons being sold, et cetera, and I think that that is a very good solution to directly go after these companies instead, for instance, looking at privacy rights, so to say. Going to the back, a bit for me the buzzwords of the IGF and this is my first IGF so maybe there are more buzzwords that I didn’t hear, but I heard a lot like multi-stakeholder approach, public-private cooperation, but I think that that is what we need more and I think also how we’re sitting in this room, what we’re doing at the IGF, it’s like gold and you need to brush it and it starts to shine because the dominant theme with online abuse and with new forms of online abuse is its content. So that to me means you should have an integral approach of how you deal with content online because another theme which will be dominant in new forms of abuse, it will start as harmful but be lawful. It can still have tremendous effects on people offline, people of the LGBTQ plus community, it can be very racist for instance with memes, but it is very sure that the dominant theme is content and it’s a lot of the times it’s lawful, it’s allowed to post these things while we know that these people who are a victim need help and I think by working that way in the public-private stakeholders, working together in a public-private collaboration, you can pick up signals together, you can do triage and from those signals you can see like hey, maybe we see a trend online that really as a society we don’t accept anymore and then you might try, then you might start to change your legislation because out of all those signals you decide like we want to change the law, it’s something we did for an instance in the Netherlands with doxxing, had to collect data to intimidate someone and also to spread that data with addresses etc. has been criminalized since the 1st of January 2024. So I think by picking up these signals, by working integral on the content that’s online, that is what we should do more. Like mentioned, I think we have a perfect example in the Netherlands, the ECP, that area in the room. I think the way we did that in the Netherlands, that multistakeholder public-private working together and actually building something and looking at, like, how should we approach this content, and be curious, be curious as a company, be curious as education, also be curious as civil society and, for instance, as ministries, that that is much more the way forward, because a lot of the policies, legislation, in my opinion, is already there. And I think the way we did that in the Netherlands, that multistakeholder public-private working together and actually building something and looking at, like, how should we approach this content, and be curious as education, also be curious as civil society and, for instance, as ministries, that that is much more the way forward, because a lot of the policies, legislation, in my opinion, is already there.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you. Thank you for sharing also that best practice example and if colleagues are interested, we are also here in the IGF village with the better internet for kids and the others, also to discuss on a more personal level if you are interested later on and to continue the conversation with us. Before we will conclude this round, I would like to bring in two more colleagues and also turn now to Kate for intervening with her points. Yes. Very quickly, because I would like to get to questions

Kate Ruane: as well. So I think on policy I can think of two specific things that I would like to see happen. First, I would like to see companies, and I have mentioned this already, but I would like to see more transparency from companies regarding how they are identifying and removing child sexual exploitation and abuse. The first is we don’t actually know the prevalence of this type of abuse on many platforms, because we do not have enough data from the platforms regarding how much they encounter. Second, it would be interesting to see how the effectiveness of the tools they are using. Right now, there are generally speaking, I think, three categories of tools being used to prevent, identify, and remove child sexual abuse material, and they are just kind of basically design-based features, so, for example, in order to live stream, you need to have a certain number of followers or an account that has existed for a certain amount of time, or you need to go through an age assurance process to assure that you are not of a particular age in order to begin to do that. into live stream, it would be good to know the degree to which those types of tools are reducing the number of live streams or reducing the amount of problematic content shared. It would also be good to know the data on which content detection tools are trained. At this time, content detection tools like PhotoDNA, we know that those are trained on known CSAM, but they are specifically designed to identify particular images at rest. If we are talking about content in live streaming, content that is moving, content that is live, it would be helpful to understand, A, the data sets that are being used to train these types of tools, B, how the data is being sourced, whether it is being done ethically, and then C, whether there has been consent to the use of the training data, especially if it is being trained on existing child sexual abuse material. Currently, we are not aware, or at least we’re not sufficiently aware, of how these tools are being created and trained, and yet they are being marketed as tools to use to detect content in live streaming. And then kind of the last thing we need to know is, how well are signals detection tools being, or how well are they working? Tools that, as the tech coalition talked about, tools like, OK, we’re looking at where your IP address is coming from. We’re looking at signals regarding the content that is associated with the live stream, for example, to try to figure out the likelihood that child sexual abuse is happening within specific content or within a live stream. Data regarding how successful those are and what mitigation efforts look like when content is misidentified as being CSAM, I think, would be helpful things to engage in from a policy perspective. And the last thing I wanted to talk about is law enforcement. In the United States, one of the most of the biggest problems we have is under-resourced law enforcement. So we are doing, actually, probably a relatively decent job of identifying CSAM, particularly when it is at rest, and reporting it into NCMEC. But what we don’t know, or what is under-resourced, is the ability to address that identified harm by law enforcement. And another tool that is going to be necessary going forward, and it’s going to get more and more necessary, to separate out synthetic CSAM, AI-generated CSAM, from real, live CSAM that has been created using an actual child. Because that is going to be essential to helping law enforcement identify children that are in harm so that they can engage in enforcement efforts in a more efficient way.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you. Thank you for your points, and also for concluding a bit on the transparency. Aspect, and yeah, how holding companies more accountable, as Robert mentioned already, in the EU. We have the Digital Services Act that came into force recently with a specific article on the protection of minors. And here, this is also a good example where, for example, our colleagues from the Safer Internet Centers are very active, also kind of transmitting this transparency in the education to the children, the young people, but also the parents and the schools to make policymaking in general also accessible. One more intervention from our speakers for this final round, and we have Sabine on the screen. Last points from your side. The floor is yours.

Sabine Witting: Thanks so much. I think if you allow me to approach a question maybe from the legal angle, I think there are various areas of laws that still require strengthening, both on the international level, but also national level. And I think there is a bit of a misconception that technology-facilitated child sexual abuse and exploitation is equally criminalized across the world. And we all have the same understanding what that means. And that’s certainly not the case. So much more work needs to be done in ensuring strong national legislation, especially in areas. such as live streaming, we have still a lot of countries that do not criminalize the mere accessing of child sexual abuse material as a separate criminal offense. And that’s because the main focus of international law, for example, the optional protocol to the CRC was always on possession because that was the prevalent issue in the 90s when these conventions were drafted. So there’s still quite a bit of a push where upcoming issues such as live streaming need to be addressed in national criminal law. The same issue is with self-generated content. Self-generated content is often considered a homogeneous group of content, which we just also need to criminalize. However, that is a much more complex issue from a children’s rights perspective because there is content that is produced voluntarily, consensually of adolescents above the age of consent to sexual activity. And these issues also need to be approached, again, with the same care from a children’s rights sense within the context that this content is produced. And I wanna go back to one of the points, I think that was mentioned a few times, which was a question around law enforcement. I would really like to see the same effort from governments that they at the moment put into platform regulation, they should put into law enforcement and strengthening the criminal justice framework. Because there is a bit of a, I feel like an over-focus at the moment on the responsibility of platforms, while we know that if these cases then really reach the court system, most of them either A, fall through the cracks, or B, the children that are forced to go through the court system leave extremely traumatized. And this is for various reasons. First of all, because we still have a lack of protective measures for children in the criminal justice system. For example, protection from cross-examination. There is insufficient court preparation for children and the presiding magistrate, and also the prosecutor that interview and that examine children within the criminal justice system are not trained to do so in an age-appropriate and trauma-informed way. And I think this is a huge, huge gap. And I would really like to see an equal effort to re-strengthen that system. And the same applies, for example, and especially for victims of technology-facilitated child sexual abuse and exploitation. A lot of measures that are typically used in a child-friendly justice process, for example, the use of CCTV cameras, can be quite traumatizing for a child that is a victim of live stream of child sexual abuse and exploitation, because you put the child again in front of a camera in the criminal justice system, even though the camera has played a crucial role in the abuse and exploitation. exploitation. Much more consideration needs to be paid around also the use of technology in the criminal justice sector and how that might impact children that have experienced technology facilitated abuse and exploitation. My last point I want to make on the role of the financial sector because I think that also came up quite a few times times now especially again in the context of live streaming of child sexual abuse and exploitation where this is done in a commercial way. The financial sector can really play a very crucial role in flagging suspicious payments. I think mandatory reporting is really essential to make sure that financial institutions report suspicious transactions that might be linked to live stream of child sexual abuse and exploitation and one of the ways to do that is to consider these kinds of offenses predicate offenses under anti-money laundering laws and that really would help to oblige financial institutions to file suspicious transaction reports and as we know especially when it comes to organized crime and that includes a lot of cases of live stream of CSEA follow the money is one of the most important leads for law enforcement one of the most important starting points so I think also when we talk about industry responsibility let’s not leave at the financial sector especially in the context of commercial sexual exploitation and live stream. Thank you. Thank you very much

Sabrina Vorbau: Sabine also closing us up on a lot of action points and also very clearly mentioning that in all of this we should not forget the well-being of the child which is really needs to be and should be the center of the action. Thank you so much. For the last couple of minutes we would like again to give the audience here in the room and online possibilities for interventions and questions and please take the microphone and briefly introduce yourself.

Audience: So my name is Jameson Cruz. I live in Manaus, it’s one of the biggest Brazilian cities, and it is located in the middle of the Amazon forest. And I have proudly represented the youth delegation of the Brazilian Internet Young Governors Training Program since 2022. And during the Internet Forum in Brazil, the largest IGF event in the world, I have proposed a workshop focused on the protection of children and adolescents in the online environment. While addressing issues such as sexual exploitation is crucial, we must also emphasize the growing need to educate and communicate with people about the danger of overexposure online. This is a challenge that has intensified in recent years. Violence, discrimination, and sexualizing of minors have expanded beyond the physical and now permeate virtual space. The urgency to act is clear. We need platform regulations, public policies, education, and digital literacy to ensure that the internet is a safe space for all, especially for our youngest users. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. And wonderful to have you here and many other youth from all over the world, especially the Global South to participate in the IGF. And I think programs like the Youth IGF are crucial and important. And I think as you rightly said, there is the need to put also more youth voices in the different sessions within the IGF and definitely also put more spotlight on children’s rights.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you. We’ll turn to our next speaker here in the room. Hi.

Audience: My name is Cosima and I work with the UK Government. So, I’m going to start off by saying that I’ve been a member of the digital literacy initiative for a long time. I’ve been a member of the NAC for Internet Center for about six years, working on digital literacy and also policy. I think digital literacy is an incredibly powerful tool. I would just like to mention or get your insight, there’s not lots of time, on how we can frame sort of literacy initiatives to be sensitive to the fact that if we want to implement them, we need to be able to do it in a way that people can understand what we’re talking about. So, I would just like to say that I’m a member of the NAC for Internet Center for a long time. I think it’s really important so they can understand it but we’re also not breaching a line. And then just quickly on policy, I really appreciated your insights on policy. I just wanted to quickly flag the idea that beyond the EU, several countries are either showing apprehension to sort of the use of digital literacy as a way to regulate the use of AI. So, I think it’s really important to see how technology facilitated gender-based violence and also more specifically CSAM, how we can sort of navigate that. Because if we’re outlawing regulation of AI, then that also includes regulation of AI in CSAM. So, yeah, I just wanted to flag that. Thank you.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you so much. Thank you for your participation as well. I’m going to turn it over to you. I’m going to turn it over to you. I’m going to turn it over to you.

Kate Ruane: Sure, I mean, I’m not aware of every single policy effort around the world right now, but the U.S. is currently considering a policy which would prevent U.S. states from regulating AI to some extent. We, our organization, the Center for Democracy and Technology has identified this particular provision as incredibly important, and I think it even links to the need of more as the generation of non-consensual intimate images or synthetic CSAM is certainly one problem that might exist. One thing to think about though is whether existing laws actually already without naming AI specifically already cover that particular type of abuse. Hopefully there are around the world laws that currently exist that while they might not say AI, nonetheless encompass the content that would be AI generated child sexual abuse material. Again, I don’t know enough, but from our perspective, preventing the regulation of AI whole cloth without considering the human rights impacts of that type of an action is deeply problematic.

Sabrina Vorbau: Thank you. We have two last interventions and questions in the room and then we will close with Danaraj and some takeaways from the session. So maybe we can take both questions and then respond to it. Please go ahead. Thanks.

Audience: My name is Raoul Plummer. I’m with the Electronic Frontier Finland. My first IGF was in Joopessoa. I’ve been to quite a few of these. And this is the first time I actually have to take a little space to commend something [This portion has been removed from the record for violating the IGF Code of Conduct; particulalry the stipulation to “focus discussion or remarks on issues rather than on particular actors, whether they be individuals, groups, organizations or governments, and refrain from personal or ad-hominem attacks]. And this is a very polarized issue as it is. It’s very tough and complicated. I totally appreciate saying that privacy and children’s rights can be completely aligned. But this kind of polarization [This portion has been removed from the record for violating the IGF Code of Conduct; particulalry the stipulation to “focus discussion or remarks on issues rather than on particular actors, whether they be individuals, groups, organizations or governments, and refrain from personal or ad-hominem attacks]. Thanks. Thank you. We will give the opportunity for follow-up after the session. Last speaker, please. I’m from the Finnish Green Party. My question is mostly relating to the issue that we have a lot of this… I mean, even this week we’ve heard a lot from these different actors, international actors, organizations, about the efforts to take down this type of content. But quite often the conversation ends up at washing their hands, that, yeah, we took down this content, we don’t have jurisdiction to go further. The investigation and other things need to be left up to law enforcement, which severely differs between different countries as well as legislation. And quite often the law enforcement does not have resources, neither in personnel or skills or understanding of current technologies, to actually do anything about it. And thus we get those repeat offenders and recidivism on those platforms as well as larger crime syndicates which operate through this or earn some part of their income through perpetuating this material or disseminating it. And it just seems still very confusing that this is such a long-lived issue, but there is no proper official body to unite these platforms and law enforcement. I hope to see some…

Sabrina Vorbau: I think we are all continuing, I will continue trying our best to collaborate in the way that we have been doing here today. I think it’s just taking a sort of glimpse of the conversation, opening up the conversation, and hopefully continuing the conversation in mutual respect of everyone’s opinion and the work we are doing. We are up for time, but I would like to give a final minute to Dan-Ada. I would like to give a final minute to Dan-Ada to kind of take us a little bit through some of the takeaways from our session.

Dhanaraj Thakur: Yes, thank you, Sabrina. We are at time, so I’ll be very brief just to say that we are having this very important conversation, but I think it’s obvious that we all recognize that this is a very serious problem that has significant harmful life-threatening impacts on children, their families, and communities. It’s important to highlight many of the, as the speakers did, as well as the audience members highlighted many of the important paths forward, particularly in terms of different kinds of recommendations, which included, for example, a point that was made at the very start, centering children in the design of solutions, in addressing the problem, starting from the design of technologies right through to the criminal justice system, centering their views as well as their well-being. Many participants, speakers mentioned the multistakeholder, the relevance and importance of multistakeholder approaches, but even more specifically talked about how that relates not just to, say, cross-platform approaches, public-private approaches, but also in standard setting and even coordination, improving coordination with law enforcement, for example. And we also talked about technical solutions and where these technical solutions, where we, those developing policy, require more information and transparency around these kinds of technologies. And so transparency is a theme that came up. several times as well, both in the efficacy of technologies, but also in trying to disaggregate, for example, emerging problems around synthetic CSAM and actual CSAM and so on. I think there is a lot that was discussed. And I know, given the line of participants that came up, we didn’t even get to every point. We will be sharing a summary report of this afterwards as well. What I would like to end on, of course, is just to thank all of our speakers. We really appreciate everyone who was able to join from many different places, here on stage with Robert and Kate, but also online with Patricia, Ayo, Sabine, and Sean as well. And then thanks, of course, to Sabrina and Deborah,

Sabrina Vorbau: our co-organizers on this. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all of the organizers. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for your participation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Agreement points

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential for effective child protection solutions

Better and more granular transparency and information is really key for policymakers to be able to react and understand where targeted policy action and deployment of safeguarding technology is needed

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential beyond just cross-platform efforts, including affected communities

Cross-platform efforts create significant risks for human rights and need multi-stakeholder engagement for transparency

Companies should collaborate more with schools on curriculum development rather than just pushing tools

Children should be centered in the design of solutions from technology to criminal justice systems

All speakers agreed that addressing CSAM requires comprehensive multi-stakeholder approaches involving governments, tech companies, civil society, academia, and importantly, children themselves. They emphasized that no single entity can solve this problem alone.

Human rights | Legal and regulatory

Children’s voices and participation must be central to solution design

Children want involvement in designing protection solutions to ensure they are fit for purpose

Tech platforms need standard mechanisms and robust legal frameworks to protect children effectively

Children need better complaint mechanisms with clear understanding of consequences and responses

Children should be centered in the design of solutions from technology to criminal justice systems

Youth participation in development processes and policymaking is crucial for effective solutions

There was strong consensus that children and young people should not be passive recipients of adult-designed solutions but active participants in designing, implementing, and evaluating child protection measures.

Human rights

Cross-platform collaboration is necessary due to the nature of online abuse

Bad actors exploit multiple services across the tech ecosystem, requiring industry collaboration

Cross-platform efforts create significant risks for human rights and need multi-stakeholder engagement for transparency

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential beyond just cross-platform efforts, including affected communities

Better transparency is needed regarding how companies identify and remove CSEA content

Speakers agreed that because perpetrators use multiple platforms in their abuse activities, individual companies cannot address the problem in isolation and must collaborate while maintaining appropriate safeguards.

Cybersecurity | Legal and regulatory

Law enforcement capacity and resources are inadequate globally

Law enforcement capacity varies significantly between countries, creating enforcement gaps

Under-resourced law enforcement struggles with identification and prosecution of perpetrators

Laws are not effectively enforced and internet service providers lack accountability

Criminal justice systems lack protective measures and trauma-informed approaches for child victims

Developing nations need capacity building in law enforcement and general population awareness

There was unanimous agreement that law enforcement globally lacks sufficient resources, training, and capacity to effectively address online child sexual exploitation, creating significant gaps in protection.

Legal and regulatory | Development

Transparency from platforms about their practices is insufficient

Companies rarely provide detailed information on moderation practices specific to live streaming

Companies need to share information about reporting process effectiveness and design features

Tech platforms need standard mechanisms and robust legal frameworks to protect children effectively

Speakers agreed that technology platforms provide inadequate transparency about their content moderation practices, detection tools, and reporting mechanisms, making it difficult to assess effectiveness and improve policies.

Legal and regulatory | Human rights

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized that age assurance is crucial for child protection and that privacy-preserving methods exist, though implementation remains limited across platforms.

Age assurance is a key component but only two of 50 services systematically assure age on account creation

Privacy-preserving age verification mechanisms exist without being intrusive

Human rights | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers recognized the significant financial component of online child exploitation and the important role financial institutions can play in detection and prevention.

Financial extortion is a major component of crimes against children online

Financial sector can play crucial role in flagging suspicious payments related to CSEA

Economic | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers highlighted the complexity of emerging technologies in child exploitation and the need for more sophisticated legal and technical responses to address these evolving threats.

AI-generated synthetic CSAM needs to be separated from real CSAM for effective law enforcement

Technology-facilitated child sexual abuse is not equally criminalized across the world

Cybersecurity | Legal and regulatory

Both emphasized the critical importance of education and prevention strategies, particularly in school settings, as essential components of comprehensive child protection approaches.

Prevention through awareness raising and school materials is crucial alongside enforcement

Digital literacy and media literacy are powerful tools requiring sensitive implementation

Sociocultural | Human rights

Unexpected consensus

Privacy and safety as complementary rather than opposing values

Privacy and safety should be viewed as complementary rather than opposing values

Session metadata and third-party signals can generate risk scores for broadcasts without analyzing actual content

Despite coming from different perspectives (civil society advocacy vs. tech industry), both speakers agreed that privacy and child safety don’t have to be in tension, and that technical solutions can preserve privacy while enhancing protection. This consensus was unexpected given the typical framing of privacy vs. safety debates.

Human rights | Cybersecurity

Self-generated content requires nuanced approaches beyond simple criminalization

One-third of hotline reports involve self-generated content, with 75% being prepubescent children

Self-generated content requires complex approach considering voluntary versus coercive production

Both speakers, from different professional backgrounds (hotline operations vs. legal academia), agreed that self-generated content cannot be addressed through simple criminalization and requires understanding the complex circumstances behind its creation. This nuanced view was unexpected in a field often characterized by zero-tolerance approaches.

Human rights | Legal and regulatory

Global South perspectives are systematically underrepresented in standard-setting

Global South representation is often underrepresented in industry standard-making processes

Africa faces uneven digital literacy and rapid technology growth exposing children to incidents

Cultural contexts must be considered when addressing child safety in different regions

There was unexpected consensus across speakers from different regions and roles about the systematic exclusion of Global South perspectives in developing child protection standards and solutions, highlighting a significant gap in current approaches.

Development | Legal and regulatory

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion revealed remarkably high levels of consensus across diverse stakeholders on fundamental principles: the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration, centering children’s voices, addressing cross-platform abuse, improving law enforcement capacity, and increasing platform transparency. There was also unexpected agreement on nuanced issues like privacy-safety compatibility and the complexity of self-generated content.

Consensus level

High consensus with significant implications – the broad agreement across civil society, academia, industry, and government representatives suggests strong foundation for coordinated action. However, the consensus also highlighted significant implementation gaps, particularly in law enforcement capacity, Global South representation, and platform accountability. This suggests that while there is agreement on what needs to be done, substantial work remains in building the resources and mechanisms to achieve these shared goals.

Different viewpoints

Privacy vs. Safety in Encryption

Privacy and safety should be viewed as complementary rather than opposing values

Age verification is important to prevent adults from accessing child accounts and content

Kate argues that privacy and safety are aligned and defends end-to-end encryption as essential for human rights defenders and journalists, while Andrew suggests that privacy is being weaponized as an excuse not to stop CSAM sharing on encrypted platforms and advocates for privacy-preserving techniques to block known CSAM.

Human rights | Cybersecurity

Focus on Platform Regulation vs. Law Enforcement

Criminal justice systems lack protective measures and trauma-informed approaches for child victims

Companies need to share information about reporting process effectiveness and design features

Better transparency is needed regarding how companies identify and remove CSEA content

Sabine argues for equal focus on strengthening criminal justice frameworks as platform regulation, emphasizing that governments over-focus on platform responsibility while neglecting law enforcement capacity. Kate and Lisa focus more on improving platform transparency and accountability mechanisms.

Legal and regulatory | Human rights

Unexpected differences

Self-Generated Content Criminalization Approach

One-third of hotline reports involve self-generated content, with 75% being prepubescent children

Self-generated content requires complex approach considering voluntary versus coercive production

While both speakers acknowledge the serious issue of self-generated content, they have different perspectives on how to address it. Robbert presents alarming statistics about prepubescent self-generation and focuses on prevention through education and addressing root causes like grooming. Sabine argues for a more nuanced legal approach that considers the context and voluntary nature of some adolescent content, challenging the assumption that all self-generated content should be treated the same way legally.

Human rights | Legal and regulatory

Overall assessment

Summary

The main areas of disagreement center around the balance between privacy and safety measures, the appropriate focus between platform regulation versus law enforcement strengthening, implementation approaches for age verification, and the scope of multi-stakeholder collaboration in cross-platform efforts.

Disagreement level

The disagreement level is moderate but significant for policy implications. While speakers largely agree on the severity of the problem and the need for comprehensive solutions, their different emphases on technical solutions versus legal frameworks, privacy preservation versus detection capabilities, and industry-led versus multi-stakeholder approaches could lead to very different policy outcomes. These disagreements reflect broader tensions in internet governance between security, privacy, and human rights that require careful balancing rather than simple resolution.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized that age assurance is crucial for child protection and that privacy-preserving methods exist, though implementation remains limited across platforms.

Age assurance is a key component but only two of 50 services systematically assure age on account creation

Privacy-preserving age verification mechanisms exist without being intrusive

Human rights | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers recognized the significant financial component of online child exploitation and the important role financial institutions can play in detection and prevention.

Financial extortion is a major component of crimes against children online

Financial sector can play crucial role in flagging suspicious payments related to CSEA

Economic | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers highlighted the complexity of emerging technologies in child exploitation and the need for more sophisticated legal and technical responses to address these evolving threats.

AI-generated synthetic CSAM needs to be separated from real CSAM for effective law enforcement

Technology-facilitated child sexual abuse is not equally criminalized across the world

Cybersecurity | Legal and regulatory

Both emphasized the critical importance of education and prevention strategies, particularly in school settings, as essential components of comprehensive child protection approaches.

Prevention through awareness raising and school materials is crucial alongside enforcement

Digital literacy and media literacy are powerful tools requiring sensitive implementation

Sociocultural | Human rights

Key takeaways

Child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) in live streaming contexts requires a multi-layered, technology-neutral approach combining awareness raising, industry action, regulation, and law enforcement

Safety by design principles should be integrated into platforms from the outset, incorporating both front-end prevention and back-end detection technologies while preserving privacy

Cross-platform collaboration is essential as bad actors exploit multiple services across the tech ecosystem, requiring secure signal sharing between companies

Children’s voices and participation must be centered in designing protection solutions, from technology development to criminal justice processes

Self-generated content represents a significant portion of CSEA cases (one-third of reports, with 75% involving prepubescent children), requiring nuanced approaches that consider voluntary versus coercive production

Multi-stakeholder approaches involving civil society, academia, tech industry, law enforcement, and affected communities are crucial for effective solutions

Transparency in platform practices, moderation techniques, and tool effectiveness is essential for policy development and accountability

Age assurance technologies can be implemented in privacy-preserving ways but are currently underutilized across platforms

Regional differences in legal frameworks, enforcement capacity, and cultural contexts require tailored approaches while maintaining international cooperation

Privacy and safety should be viewed as complementary rather than opposing values in developing solutions

Resolutions and action items

Tech Coalition’s Lantern program will publish results of financial payment provider pilot later in summer 2024

OECD will share Financial Action Task Force research on disrupting financial flows related to live stream sexual abuse

Internet Watch Foundation offered to collaborate with tech companies to validate tool effectiveness using their data

Session organizers committed to producing a summary report of the discussion

Participants agreed to continue conversations at the IGF village and through ongoing multi-stakeholder collaboration

Need to strengthen Safer Internet Center networks globally to provide safe spaces for reporting and support

Companies should improve transparency reporting on moderation practices, especially for live streaming content

Development of privacy-preserving age assurance mechanisms should be prioritized across platforms

Unresolved issues

How to address the resource gap where CSEA cases are growing globally while government and industry resources are declining or stable at low levels

Lack of standardized evaluation criteria for assessing effectiveness of age assurance and content detection technologies

Insufficient law enforcement capacity and training, particularly in developing countries, to handle cross-border CSEA cases

Gap between content detection/reporting and actual prosecution, with many cases falling through criminal justice system cracks

How to balance AI regulation policies with the need to address AI-generated synthetic CSAM

Recidivism on platforms where bad actors can easily recreate accounts after being banned

Limited information sharing across platforms and insufficient safeguards against repeat offenders

Trauma-informed approaches needed in criminal justice systems for child victims of technology-facilitated abuse

How to make reporting mechanisms more accessible and understandable for children

Addressing the weaponization of privacy arguments versus legitimate privacy protection needs

Suggested compromises

Using session metadata and behavioral signals rather than content scanning to preserve privacy while detecting abuse

Implementing on-device machine learning for content detection that doesn’t require third-party access to content

Developing content-oblivious rather than content-aware moderation methods for most harmful content

Creating multi-stakeholder standard-setting processes that include Global South representation and human rights perspectives

Balancing platform responsibility with strengthened law enforcement and criminal justice frameworks

Combining industry self-regulation with government oversight through frameworks like the EU Digital Services Act

Using privacy-preserving age assurance technologies that minimize data collection while protecting children

Implementing graduated responses from design-based features to content detection to human oversight

Developing collaborative approaches between tech companies and educational institutions for curriculum development rather than just tool deployment

I think it’s really important to acknowledge up front that protecting children from CSCA should not just be done in a way that protects and promotes their rights. I think it’s really important to acknowledge that protecting children from CSCA is protecting and promoting their rights, most obviously freedom from violence, but also acknowledging that this CSCA can infringe upon dignity rights, privacy, and a safe online space is really important for enabling children to access a large number of rights in today’s reality, such as opinion, assembly, information, or education and health.

Speaker

Lisa Robbins

Reason

This reframes the entire discussion by establishing that child protection isn’t separate from rights promotion but IS rights promotion. It challenges the common framing that positions safety and rights as competing interests.

Impact

This foundational comment set the tone for the entire session, establishing a rights-based framework that other speakers consistently referenced. It prevented the discussion from falling into the typical ‘safety vs. rights’ dichotomy and instead positioned child protection as inherently rights-affirming.

When we look at the victims, for instance, at the numbers of the hotline at Off Limits, of all the reports coming in, one third of those reports is self-generated, meaning young children making sexualized images themselves… And of those 1 third of reports, 75% is prepubescent, so implying very young children. This is not children going to middle school in their teenagers. This is really young children.

Speaker

Robert Hoving

Reason

This statistic fundamentally challenges assumptions about online child exploitation by revealing that a significant portion involves very young children creating content themselves, suggesting complex issues around grooming, risk behavior, and early exposure rather than just external predation.

Impact

This revelation shifted the conversation from focusing primarily on external threats to recognizing the complexity of self-generated content and the need for different intervention approaches. It influenced subsequent discussions about age verification, education, and the nuanced nature of child-generated material.

So for example, the bad actor might contact a child on a gaming platform, move them to a private messaging platform, and then perhaps use a live streaming platform down the road. So the abuse spans social media, gaming, live streaming, payment apps, and more. But the individual company is obviously unaware of what happened on the other platforms.

Speaker

Sean Litton

Reason

This comment illuminates the sophisticated, multi-platform nature of modern child exploitation, demonstrating why isolated platform responses are insufficient and why cross-platform collaboration is essential.

Impact

This insight fundamentally changed how participants viewed the problem scope, leading to extensive discussion about cross-platform solutions like Project Lantern and the need for industry-wide collaboration rather than individual platform responses.

I think that oftentimes privacy and safety are placed in tension with each other, and I find that framing to be a little bit difficult because I think privacy and safety are very much in line with one another… encrypted services are one of the few and potentially actually only place where they cannot see the content of the communication, and that becomes more and more important as we see the world changing in front of our eyes.

Speaker

Kate Ruane

Reason

This challenges the dominant narrative that encryption and child safety are inherently opposed, arguing instead that privacy technologies can enhance safety for vulnerable populations including children.

Impact

This comment sparked significant debate and pushback from audience members, creating one of the most contentious moments in the discussion. It forced participants to grapple with the complexity of balancing different safety needs and challenged simplistic solutions that would weaken encryption.

I would really like to see the same effort from governments that they at the moment put into platform regulation, they should put into law enforcement and strengthening the criminal justice framework. Because there is a bit of a, I feel like an over-focus at the moment on the responsibility of platforms, while we know that if these cases then really reach the court system, most of them either A, fall through the cracks, or B, the children that are forced to go through the court system leave extremely traumatized.

Speaker

Sabine Witting

Reason

This comment critically examines the policy focus, arguing that the emphasis on platform regulation may be misplaced when the criminal justice system itself is failing children. It highlights systemic gaps in law enforcement and court procedures.

Impact

This shifted the policy discussion from focusing primarily on platform responsibilities to examining the broader ecosystem of child protection, including law enforcement capacity and child-friendly justice procedures. It influenced later discussions about resource allocation and multi-stakeholder approaches.

One of the things they make us understand is that virtually almost every day, there’s something that they encounter in the space… they felt that it’s important for platforms to be faster in identifying incidences of abuse and rescuing young people if they show fall victims, prosecution of perpetrators, and also by also creating, making, having at the back of the mind of designers that children are using the platform.

Speaker

Aidam Amenyah

Reason

This brings the authentic voice of children from Africa into the discussion, emphasizing that young people want to be involved in designing solutions and that they experience these harms daily, not as rare occurrences.

Impact

This comment reinforced the importance of youth participation throughout the session and provided concrete evidence of the scale and frequency of the problem from children’s perspectives. It influenced discussions about design processes and the need to center children’s voices in solution development.

Overall assessment

These key comments fundamentally shaped the discussion by establishing a rights-based framework, revealing the complexity of modern child exploitation, and challenging conventional wisdom about technology solutions. Lisa Robbins’ opening reframing prevented the session from falling into typical safety-versus-rights debates, while Robert Hoving’s statistics about self-generated content forced participants to confront uncomfortable realities about very young children. Sean Litton’s cross-platform analysis shifted focus from individual platform solutions to ecosystem-wide approaches, leading to substantive discussion about industry collaboration. Kate Ruane’s defense of encryption created the session’s most contentious moment, forcing nuanced consideration of competing safety needs. Sabine Witting’s critique of policy priorities challenged the focus on platform regulation over criminal justice reform. Together, these comments elevated the discussion beyond surface-level solutions to examine systemic issues, power dynamics, and the need for comprehensive, rights-respecting approaches to child protection online.

How can we better address the gap between technology solutions discussed at conferences and the reality in developing countries, particularly regarding law enforcement capacity and investigative methods?

Speaker

Shiva Bisasa (Trinidad and Tobago)

Explanation

There’s a significant disconnect between advanced solutions being discussed and the practical challenges faced in developing nations where law enforcement lacks resources, skills, and understanding of current technologies to effectively investigate and prosecute cases.

Does Project Lantern contemplate signals from financial transactions to match perpetrator payments or payments from victims?

Speaker

Shiva Bisasa (Trinidad and Tobago)

Explanation

Understanding how financial transaction data can be integrated into cross-platform detection systems could help identify and disrupt the economic aspects of child exploitation networks.

How can we solve the dilemma of growing CSAM cases worldwide while resources (government, private, industry) are declining or remaining stable at low levels?

Speaker

Sérgio Tavares (SaferNet Brasil)

Explanation

This addresses a fundamental sustainability challenge in combating online child exploitation – the mismatch between increasing problem scale and insufficient resource allocation.

How can we develop clear evaluation criteria to assess the effectiveness and robustness of age assurance technologies, and understand who is adversely impacted by these technologies?

Speaker

Sabine Witting (Leiden University)

Explanation

Current industry standards for age assurance lack transparency and multi-stakeholder input, particularly from Global South perspectives, making it difficult to evaluate their true effectiveness and potential harms.

How can we establish better benchmarks for content detection tools in live streaming, particularly to verify whether marketed technologies actually work effectively?

Speaker

Kate Ruane (Center for Democracy and Technology) and Andrew Kempling (Internet Watch Foundation)

Explanation

Many organizations market live streaming detection technologies without sufficient validation of their effectiveness, and there’s a need for independent testing and benchmarking.

How can we better understand the data sets used to train content detection tools for live streaming, including how data is sourced ethically and whether consent exists for training data use?

Speaker

Kate Ruane (Center for Democracy and Technology)

Explanation

Transparency is needed regarding how AI tools for detecting CSAM in live streams are trained, particularly concerning the ethical sourcing of training data and consent issues.

How can we develop better tools and processes to separate synthetic/AI-generated CSAM from real CSAM to help law enforcement prioritize cases involving actual children in harm?

Speaker

Kate Ruane (Center for Democracy and Technology)

Explanation

As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, law enforcement needs efficient ways to distinguish between synthetic and real abuse material to focus resources on rescuing actual victims.

How can we frame digital literacy initiatives to be sensitive and understandable while not breaching appropriate boundaries when discussing CSAM with children?

Speaker

Cosima (UK Government)

Explanation

There’s a need to develop age-appropriate educational approaches that inform children about online safety without exposing them to inappropriate content or concepts.

How can we navigate the tension between AI regulation restrictions and the need to regulate AI-generated CSAM?

Speaker

Cosima (UK Government)

Explanation

Some jurisdictions are considering broad restrictions on AI regulation, which could inadvertently prevent regulation of AI-generated child sexual abuse material.

How can we establish a proper official body to unite platforms and law enforcement to address the jurisdictional gaps and resource limitations that allow repeat offenders and crime syndicates to operate?

Speaker

Audience member (Finnish Green Party)

Explanation

Current fragmented approaches between platforms and law enforcement across different jurisdictions create gaps that allow perpetrators to continue operating, suggesting need for better coordinated international response mechanisms.

Summary

This IGF Open Forum session focused on leveraging artificial intelligence for sustainable development, examining country-level strategies and challenges in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals through AI implementation. The discussion was moderated by Yu Ping Chan from UNDP’s Digital AI and Innovation Hub, with panelists representing diverse stakeholders including academia, private sector, civil society, and government perspectives from organizations like Carnegie Endowment, Co-Creation Hub Africa, Intel, and the Indian government.

The panelists identified several key challenges in the current AI landscape for sustainable development. These include significant digital divides between the Global North and South, with Africa accounting for only 0.1% of global computing capacity, and concentration of AI power among a few multinational players. Energy consumption emerged as a critical concern, with modern AI systems requiring enormous computational resources that could undermine climate sustainability goals. The discussion highlighted the tension between AI’s potential benefits and its environmental costs, emphasizing the need for more efficient, locally-relevant AI solutions.

A central theme was the importance of “local AI” – systems developed by and for local communities rather than imposed from external sources. Speakers stressed that effective AI for development must involve affected communities in design and governance, addressing linguistic diversity and cultural contexts. The Indian government representative shared their DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure) model as an example of successful public-private partnership, making AI tools and datasets accessible at low cost while maintaining responsible AI principles.

Funding challenges were extensively discussed, with traditional donor models proving inadequate for the scale needed. New collaborative funding approaches are emerging, but they require more localized, non-extractive models that can become self-sustaining. The session concluded with cautious optimism about AI’s potential for sustainable development, contingent on addressing equity gaps, building local capacity, and ensuring inclusive governance structures.

Keypoints

## Major Discussion Points:

– **AI Equity Gap and Digital Divides**: The discussion extensively covered the growing divide between Global North and Global South in AI access, with Africa accounting for only 0.1% of world computing capacity and significant disparities in funding, infrastructure, and technical capacity.

– **Localization and Community Engagement in AI Development**: Panelists emphasized the critical need for AI solutions to be developed locally by and with communities, rather than being “helicoptered in from afar,” including considerations of linguistic diversity, cultural context, and user-centered design.

– **Sustainable AI vs. AI for Sustainability**: The conversation distinguished between making AI itself more sustainable (addressing energy consumption, environmental impact) and leveraging AI to achieve broader sustainability goals and SDGs.

– **Funding Models and Governance Challenges**: Discussion of how current funding paradigms often don’t align with local needs, the emergence of collaborative pooled funding efforts, and the importance of multi-stakeholder governance approaches in AI ecosystem development.

– **Evidence-Based Implementation and Capacity Building**: Strong emphasis on the need for concrete evidence of AI impact, moving from “hype to hope to truth,” and prioritizing capacity building and skills development as fundamental requirements for inclusive AI adoption.

## Overall Purpose:

The discussion aimed to examine how AI can be leveraged at the country level to achieve sustainable development goals, with particular focus on addressing challenges of bias, exclusion, capacity gaps, and infrastructure limitations. The session sought to translate global AI discussions into practical, in-country impact strategies while fostering international cooperation and multi-stakeholder collaboration.

## Overall Tone:

The discussion began with cautious optimism tempered by realism, as evidenced by the audience’s initial 5.0 rating on AI optimism for sustainable development. The tone remained constructively critical throughout, with panelists acknowledging both significant challenges and promising opportunities. Speakers demonstrated practical experience-based perspectives rather than theoretical enthusiasm, emphasizing the need for patient, evidence-based approaches. The conversation maintained a collaborative, solution-oriented atmosphere while honestly addressing systemic barriers and inequities in the current AI landscape.

Speakers

**Speakers from the provided list:**

– **Yu Ping Chan** – Head of Digital Partnerships and Engagements at the United Nations Development Program’s Digital AI and Innovation Hub; Session moderator

– **Armando Guio Espanol** – Representative of the global network of internet and society centers (Network of Centers); Academic network representative working on AI impact analysis and evidence gathering

– **Oluwaseun Adepoju** – Managing Director of the Co-Creation Hub Africa; Pan-African Innovation Enabler focusing on AI solutions for societal issues

– **Aubra Anthony** – Non-Resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Researcher focusing on AI funding models and governance in the Global South

– **Anshul Sonak** – Principal Engineer and Global Director at Intel Digital Readiness Programs; Private sector representative working on digital readiness and AI capacity building

– **Participant** – (Multiple instances, appears to be the same person) Additional Secretary Abhishek from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Government of India; Government representative discussing India’s DPI model and AI initiatives

– **Audience** – (Multiple instances) Various attendees asking questions, including Jasmine Khoo from Hong Kong

**Additional speakers:**

– **Abhishek** – Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India (mentioned by name in later parts of the transcript, same person as “Participant”)

# Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development: A Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue on Country-Level Strategies

## Executive Summary

This IGF Open Forum session, jointly organized by UNDP, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Co-Creation Hub Africa, examined practical strategies for leveraging artificial intelligence to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Moderated by Yu Ping Chan from UNDP’s Digital AI and Innovation Hub, the interactive session brought together perspectives from academia, private sector, civil society, and government to address challenges and opportunities in AI for sustainable development.

The discussion revealed significant challenges including digital divides, resource disparities, and energy consumption concerns, while highlighting promising approaches through community-centered development, evidence-based implementation, and innovative funding models. Audience polling showed moderate optimism (5.0 average on a 1-10 scale) with priorities focused on AI regulation, inclusion, and capacity building.

## Opening Context and Audience Engagement

Yu Ping Chan opened by noting that UNDP works in over 170 countries and territories, with 130+ countries engaged on digital transformation and AI for SDGs. The session used interactive Slido polling to gauge audience perspectives, revealing that participants rated their optimism about AI for sustainable development at an average of 5.0 out of 10, with many rating it at 3, indicating cautious optimism.

Priority polling showed audience focus on AI regulation and governance, inclusion and equity, and capacity building as top concerns. The interactive format was designed to complement another IGF session on international cooperation for AI.

## Evidence-Based Approaches and Information Gaps

Armando Guio Español from the Network of Centers emphasized the critical need for evidence-based decision making in AI development, highlighting significant information asymmetries between stakeholders. He noted that while there is considerable discussion about AI’s potential impact on employment, “Instead of replacement of jobs, for example, what we are seeing right now is augmentation, actually improvement in the work some workers around the world are developing.”

Guio Español stressed the importance of rigorous analysis to understand what AI technologies can actually deliver versus theoretical promises, advocating for methodological approaches developed with MIT colleagues to bridge the gap between AI enthusiasm and practical implementation realities.

## Global AI Equity and Resource Disparities

Aubra Anthony from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace provided stark evidence of global AI inequities, revealing that “Africa currently accounts for only 0.1% of the world’s computing capacity, and just 5% of the AI talent in Africa has access to the compute power it needs.” This data highlighted how AI development is concentrated among a few multinational players, creating systemic barriers for Global South countries.

However, Anthony reframed these constraints as potential innovation opportunities, suggesting that resource limitations could drive more efficient and locally relevant AI solutions. She advocated for “collaborative pooled funding efforts” and emphasized that AI development must be “non-extractive, self-sustaining, and involve communities impacted by AI.”

## Local AI Development and Community Engagement

Oluwaseun Adepoju from Co-Creation Hub Africa introduced the concept of transitioning “gradually from hype to hope” in AI development, acknowledging that “before we transition from hope to truth, we’re going to make a lot of mistakes, we’re going to have a lot of losses, and we’re also going to see a lot of success at the end of the day.”

Adepoju emphasized that “AI is local and must be built by local people,” explaining that effective local AI development requires substantial community engagement: “Forced to build anything in like a six month project, we spent the first two or three months just engaging the people, co-creating the problem statement with them.” He used the example of plantain classification to illustrate how local context shapes AI applications, noting that what constitutes “ripe” plantain varies significantly across different communities and use cases.

## India’s Digital Public Infrastructure Model

Abhishek, Additional Secretary from India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, presented India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) approach to AI development. He explained how India is applying successful DPI principles to AI, providing basic building blocks including compute access, datasets, and testing tools.

The Indian model includes making 35,000 GPUs available at low cost ($1 per GPU per hour) for AI developers, startups, researchers, and students. Abhishek emphasized that this infrastructure-first approach focuses on solving practical problems such as healthcare diagnosis, education personalization, and agricultural advisory services, ensuring AI applications address real societal needs.

India committed to making AI-based healthcare applications available through an AI use case repository for Global South countries, particularly Africa, at the upcoming AI Impact Summit in February.

## Environmental Sustainability and Energy Considerations

A crucial dimension addressed energy consumption concerns. Abhishek noted that “when we build compute systems for AI applications and models, the amount of energy that is needed for powering these systems is very, very high,” mentioning that an H200 GPU consumes power equivalent to one U.S. home. He emphasized the need to balance AI productivity gains with renewable energy objectives and carbon footprint reduction.

This environmental perspective introduced important constraints often overlooked in discussions of AI’s potential benefits, with Abhishek suggesting the need to “prioritise which are the tasks which AI should do, which are the tasks that AI need not do.”

## Personal Productivity and Skills Development

Anshul Sonak from Intel highlighted research showing AI can save “15 hours per week” in personal productivity tasks, emphasizing that “bringing AI skills to everyone should be a national priority.” He advocated for systematic approaches to capacity building that extend beyond technical training to include diverse expertise areas including AI ethicists and security experts.

Sonak stressed the importance of sustainable AI development and multi-stakeholder education approaches that recognize successful AI implementation requires diverse skills and perspectives rather than purely technical capabilities.

## Funding Models and Commercial Viability

The discussion revealed tensions around funding approaches. Anthony identified that “historical donor-led funding approaches are insufficient” and advocated for collaborative pooled funding that better aligns with local needs. Adepoju supported a “patient capital approach needed to avoid commercialisation pressure that compromises safety and equity,” suggesting AI innovations should have at least one year to prove safety and equity before facing commercialization pressure.

However, the Indian government representative emphasized that “AI applications must address real problem statements to be commercially viable and publicly fundable,” highlighting ongoing debates about balancing innovation patience with practical sustainability requirements.

## UNDP’s AI Hub Initiative

Chan announced that UNDP launched an AI Hub for Sustainable Development earlier this month with Italy as part of the G7 Presidency, aimed at accelerating AI adoption in Africa through international cooperation and resource sharing. This represents institutional commitment to supporting AI development in regions with limited resources.

## Audience Questions and Measurement Challenges

Audience questions highlighted ongoing challenges in measuring and tracking performance of locally-built AI systems across different contexts. Questions about efficient measurement approaches and performance tracking indicate gaps in developing appropriate evaluation frameworks for diverse AI applications.

The discussion of different levels of “local” in AI development – from language and cultural adaptation to local problem-solving – revealed the complexity of implementing truly community-centered AI solutions.

## Key Commitments and Next Steps

Several concrete commitments emerged:

– India’s continued provision of low-cost GPU access and healthcare AI applications for Global South countries

– Carnegie Endowment’s commitment to publishing research on funding needs and market inefficiencies in AI ecosystem development

– Co-Creation Hub’s maintenance of patient capital approaches prioritizing safety and equity

– UNDP’s AI Hub for Sustainable Development to accelerate AI adoption in Africa

## Conclusion

The session demonstrated a pragmatic approach to AI for sustainable development that moves beyond theoretical discussions toward evidence-based implementation strategies. The emphasis on community engagement, local ownership, and environmental sustainability indicates growing sophistication in addressing AI development challenges.

The moderate optimism reflected in audience polling, combined with focus on regulation, inclusion, and capacity building, suggests recognition that realizing AI’s potential for sustainable development requires addressing fundamental structural challenges around access, governance, and resource distribution.

The combination of immediate commitments (GPU access, healthcare applications) with longer-term research initiatives (funding models, measurement frameworks) provides a balanced approach addressing both urgent needs and systemic challenges. The session’s interactive format and inclusion of diverse global perspectives, particularly from the Global South, offers a model for future AI governance discussions that prioritize community needs alongside technological advancement.

Yu Ping Chan: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to IGF Open Forum session on AI for Sustainable Development, Country Insights and Strategies. Thank you also to everyone who’s joining us online from around the world. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, wherever you are. My name is Yuping Chan, I’m Head of Digital Partnerships and Engagements at the United Nations Development Program’s Digital AI and Innovation Hub. I’ll be moderating today’s session. And we’re very pleased to organize today’s session with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Co-Creation Hub Africa. Some of you might have been just at the session over in the other room about the international cooperation and the importance of international cooperation for AI. And here we’re proud to complement that with really an in-depth look at what it means to advance AI to leverage, to achieve the sustainable development goals on a country level, really turning global discussions into in-country impact while examining the challenges from bias and exclusion to capacity and infrastructure. So to kick everything off, and perhaps this session will be a little bit different from what you’ve experienced before, is to have a little bit more of an interactive flow with members of the audience. And this is where we wanted to use Slido to really take the pulse of the conversations in the room and what you yourself are thinking. So I’d like to first start by inviting everyone, including our online audience, to engage through Slido. And this is where we have our UNDP colleagues moderating online as well. So I also encourage our online audience to participate in the discussions. So the first question that I want to ask everyone to answer via your phones and devices is on screen right now. And you can scan the QR code and enter your answer to this question of what topic or theme would you like to hear about in this particular discussion? And this will be a chance for our speakers also to reflect on the results and prepare your answers so that we can really try and interact with the audience here. And so as we’re doing that and asking all of you to write back, to put in your responses via the Slido QR code. So scan the QR code, drop a word or phrase, there can be multiple words or phrases, and we’ll see the responses come on screen. And as you’re doing that, I also wanted to emphasize why from the United Nations Development Program, this particular issue is so important. The question of how we leverage AI at the country level to achieve sustainable development. We are present in over 170 countries and territories around the world. We work with more than 130 countries now to leverage digital and AI to achieve the sustainable development goals. And while we’re tremendously optimistic about the role that AI can play in supporting sustainable development, we’re also conscious of the significant AI equity gap that exists between the global south and the global north. And the question of how many people will potentially be left behind in this global AI revolution. And so we’re working to close this equity gap in a number of ways that I mentioned before. And a lot of our speakers today are working in this very practical area as well. How do we leverage AI in novel and exciting ways to achieve sustainable development? So very quickly, a few more minutes to fill in your responses, especially also those online. While I introduce the panel as well. On site, we have Mr. Oluwaseun Adepoju, Managing Director of the Co-Creation Hub Africa. Online we have Obra Anthony, Non-Resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Armando Guio-Español, Network of Centers. And Anshul Sonak, who is Principal Engineer and Global Director at the Intel Digital Readiness Programs. So it’s really a multi-stakeholder panel reflecting the best of the IGF. The idea that we both have government representatives, people from the international organizations, the technical sector, civil society, and really looking to see how we collectively as a community can come together. We also would have a representative from the Indian government, Additional Secretary Abhishek. But I believe he is actually in another session and hopefully will come over shortly soon. So very quickly now, we have reflected on this first question. And here I think we see a number of results where we have, for instance, the three keywords of AI regulation, inclusion, capacity building. And I believe the last one is media, AI in the media. And I also see a very interesting number, 2947217, which is possibly not a response. But you can see a little bit of the scale of the challenges, I think, that really are confronting us today with AI. But I’d also like the speakers perhaps to reflect on the areas that are highlighted in green because these seem to be top of mind among our audience, both online and in screen. And so thank you for those reflections, inclusion, AI regulation, and AI media. Let’s also take another second question. On a scale of one to 10, I ask the audience, how optimistic are you that AI can accelerate inclusive sustainable development within the next five years? One means very pessimistic, and 10 means very optimistic. Okay, we’re going towards the rather negative field. I see a lot of threes. It’s a bit of six. And overall, the score seems to be 5.0, very evenly split in the room, with a rather strong emphasis on number three, which is quite negative. So I think this is actually particularly interesting. We’ve actually done a survey at UNDP through our human development report, which shows that overall, most people tend to be optimistic. So I’m wondering whether maybe it’s the IGF community that slants us a little bit more towards the conservative side. But that’s an interesting reflection, that overall, we are in the middle in terms of optimism about AI and its potential to accelerate inclusive sustainable development. And I think perhaps that points to some of the challenges that we collectively are trying to address. All right, thank you for your responses on that. I’m going to start then to ask, again, the panel to reflect on perhaps what they’ve seen from the audience, and maybe think about those in your responses to some of the questions. And again, we’re going to have an opportunity for the audience to also come in as well to keep this a little bit more interactive. So let’s start a little bit now by going to our distinguished panelists. And we’ll start with, I believe, Armando. And so the question is really in terms of setting the scene. And I will ask this of all our panelists at the same time. How do you see the current landscape of leveraging AI for sustainable development?

Armando Guio Espanol: Yeah, well, thank you very much for this invitation to the UNDP, of course. I think that it’s, I really like the exercise of starting with these questions. I had been reflecting on this question, as you shared with us, with some time for preparation. And definitely, I think from the experience, so I’m here also representing the global network of internet and society centers. We are a network, an academic network of 130 centers around the world. And we have been basically working on this topic and on these issues. And what we are trying to do, it’s, of course, we are, the first thing is that we are working on bringing more evidence about the impact of AI and what AI is really achieving, where are we, where are we standing, and basically try to navigate all this immense, big amount of information that we are processing. Decision makers are getting into a lot of information, evidence about the work that is going on right now, the kind of technologies available. So we want to really help decision makers, policy makers, and of course, colleagues around the world to look into the kind of technologies that there are, the real features that we have, and the real impact of this technology. That’s the other thing that we really want to have access to good evidence of where is the impact and what’s specifically the main issues related with AI. One of the things we have been going through is, for example, we are measuring the impact of AI in the future works, and we have been working with colleagues around the world, especially now with colleagues at MIT, and we have been developing this idea of an epoch or an analysis in order to analyze the real impact of AI, for example, in specific areas. What we are seeing right now is that instead of replacement of jobs, for example, what we are seeing right now is augmentation, actually improvement in the work some workers around the world are developing, and actually AI being helpful in that sense. So this is just an example of how we need to gather this kind of evidence. We need to gather this kind of methodologies and analysis in order to make good decisions, and that’s why I think we can achieve a sustainable use of this technology, at the same time, a sustainable development, because basically what we are doing is trying to really understand what the technology is doing, and in that sense, we have to reduce those big information asymmetries that we have right now. I think that it’s good that we center ourselves on measuring the risks on AI, and that’s also going to be extremely helpful for some of the conversations we’re having on AI governance and AI regulation, as it has been also mentioned, but definitely we need good evidence in order for that process to take place in a way in which really it’s going to be helpful for many countries. And perhaps the last point in this first remark that I would like to make is that we are seeing a lot of efficiencies being gained and a lot of benefits also from the use of the technology. That’s something that we really need to highlight. Of course, there are… There are cases in which the technology is not being used for the best purposes, but we also see that there are some benefits, and that’s something which basically we want, especially countries from majority world, global south countries, to understand and have enough elements to determine how to better use and deploy these technologies in their society. So that’s the kind of work we’re trying to do, building capacity by building evidence, by taking this evidence into those decision makers and trying to promote also research, local research in many regions around the world, and also to provide collaborations in that sense. So that’s what we’re doing, and hopefully that’s first a good glance of the kind of work ahead and some of the challenges in which we are working right now. Thank you.

Yu Ping Chan: Thank you, Armando. I think that landscape of knowing what the challenges are and really having the kind of information that we have to make sure that there are informed decisions about the use of AI is particularly important. Let me go to Aubra now and ask her how she sees the current landscape of leveraging AI for sustainable development.

Aubra Anthony: Thanks so much, Yuping, and thanks to UNDP broadly and my fellow panelists. It’s an important discussion. I’m looking forward to diving in with you all and those in the audience as well. So Yuping, you asked about the current landscape. The way I see it is both promising and fraught for a few different reasons. The first reason that I want to point out is just with AI, I think the risk that we face in the context of the SDGs and inclusion has to do with digital divides that have been longstanding for many years, and with AI, I think we see the risk that those digital divides become more calcified and are linked to a few different things. In the context of tech broadly, but also specifically with AI, I think we see that power is becoming incredibly concentrated with just a few multinational players dominating the discourse, dominating the priority setting, and dominating the types of business models that end up getting pushed out. Sometimes often, these business models aren’t serving the populations that are most in question when we consider how we achieve the SDGs. The notion the bigger is better, a lot of these different themes and narratives end up not really well serving our priorities for the SDGs. I think that the concern is that the broad trend lines are just a continued entrenchment of that concentration, and it ends up that field shaping decisions, really consequential decisions continue to be made in ways that benefit those who are already benefiting the most from AI, both in terms of financially, but also as Armando said, the information asymmetries, et cetera, and the resources that are needed to disrupt that are globally very scarce. Just as an example, Africa currently accounts for only 0.1% of the world’s computing capacity, and just 5% of the AI talent in Africa has access to the compute power it needs as a result. Beyond that, on the data front, even though something like 2,000 worlds, 7,000 languages are spoken on the continent, those languages are considered under-resourced in the context of NLP, because there just isn’t or historically hasn’t been enough digital data on them to train LLMs. These different issues of inclusion crop up when you think about the way that concentration is affecting access globally, but there’s also opportunity there. If you flip it on its head, because of those constraints, I think we’ve seen some really amazing innovations emerge around building AI that’s more robust and less compute-intensive or less energy-intensive with the development of so-called smaller language models and things like this. Innovations that are better suited to the challenges at hand, the constraints at hand. Many firms have managed to do really groundbreaking work in light of those limitations, and in doing that, they offer a really fantastic alternative model to this brute force, bigger speakers, better ethos that’s been dominating the AI playing field. Firms like Lillapa AI, who have developed that small language model, Incubi LM, that stands as hundreds of millions of low-resource language speakers. There are promising signals, as well as the more pessimism-inducing ones, in line with the Slido results. I think we see both sides of the spectrum coming up. Just very quickly, I think there’s a couple of other points here that are worth highlighting in terms of the landscape of AI. I think also the sense of perceived urgency and a mentality of catch-up among many countries. If you don’t catch up, you’ll be left behind. This is very much tied to the digital divide. It’s a growing concern, especially in the context of Africa, which is where we’ve been focusing a lot of our research over the last several months. Some projections show that GDP growth attributed to AI may be 10 times lower or more in Africa than the AI-fueled growth elsewhere. That really creates this sense of urgency. It’s not just keeping up with your neighbors, keeping up with the Joneses. It’s really often coming from this perception that AI can serve as an accelerant of much-needed economic development. Of course, that’s good, but broadly, it’s also, I think, and this is an important thing for us to discuss as a community, I think, again, the flip side of that is that broadly, it’s tough right now to create the space that’s needed to ensure that we’re seeing AI as just another tool in the toolbox, in the arsenal of tools that we have available, that we can apply for what are often very systemic, political, and socially-rooted issues, right? Reduction of poverty, gender inequality, climate change, right? The AI is one tool in the toolbox, and when you have this sense of urgency, that can both help drive the conversation of how we leverage those tools to suit our needs, but I think it also risks forcing us to adopt a solution that may not always match the problem, right? As Armando pointed out, ensuring that we have the evidence that helps us make the decision of when AI is the right tool for that issue. So I think that’s one of the current challenges that we face, and then I have a third point that I’ll talk about more later when we have a little bit more time, and it’s really just around funding, right? I think a lot of the issues that we see right now have to do with the disparities in funding with the diminishment of U.S. foreign assistance and with others’ foreign assistance profiles becoming smaller, I think that really creates an additional urgency around how we address some of these problems. But in the interest of time, I’ll leave it there, and we can talk a little bit more about that later.

Yu Ping Chan: Actually, I do think that question about funding will be an interesting one. It will also be good to hear from voices in the room as to what they feel about this particular moment, because I do think that that is that moment of urgency. We couldn’t agree more with this point about the importance of bringing the global South and focusing on Africa. This is why, for instance, UNDP just launched last week in Rome the AI Help for Sustainable Development, which was with the Italians as part of the G7 Presidency that is really focused on accelerating AI adoption in Africa and really focusing on African countries and empowering and strengthening local AI ecosystems in Africa. So on the point of Africa, let me turn to Oluwaseun, who is here with us in the room. In your work at the Co-Creation Hub, what do you see as the current landscape of leveraging AI for sustainable development and the challenges there?

Oluwaseun Adepoju: Thank you so much, and thank you to the panellists who have spoken before me. I think they’ve raised a lot of important points there, but practically in the work that we do and what we observe every day, I want to point to four major things. Number one is that when we talk about AI for sustainable development and the excitement that comes with the potentials and the opportunities that AI brings to the society, we usually don’t also talk about the balance that we need to create for the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence. In the work that we do being the Pan-African Innovation Enabler, we’ve seen how as the models are getting smarter and bigger and big data is becoming easy to process, there’s also the heavy consumption of energy. In some of the work we’ve done recently, we’ve been benchmarking what’s led to transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in blockchain, and now that can actually be a future iteration for some of the unintended consequences of AI when it comes to energy as well. Number two trend that we are seeing is the transition of artificial intelligence from the stage of hype to the stage of hope. I believe every new technology goes through three stages, the stage of hype, where there’s a fear of missing out and everybody’s dropping investment, everybody’s talking about it, and I think Aubrey mentioned the fact that there’s that pressure from countries and organisations not to miss out in the AI race. And when we use the word race for a new technology, it’s very obvious that everybody wants to take part and nobody wants to be a last comer to the table when it comes to artificial intelligence. But we’ve seen that we’re transitioning gradually from hype to hope. We can see use cases that we can point to, that is driving confidence in a lot of ways and I also believe that the third stage, which is the stage of truth, we’re going to get there, but before we transition from hope to truth, we’re going to make a lot of mistakes, we’re going to have a lot of losses, and we’re also going to see a lot of success at the end of the day. But I think the stage that we are now requires a lot of intentionality in the way we innovate with the technology and also using a multi-stakeholder approach to building AI solutions. We’ve seen that a lot of people are technologically excited about AI. and Anshul Sonak. We have a lot of work to do in education. We have a lot of work to do in AI, but, you know, some of the work we do in education requires that we bring at least 32 types of professionals in the room, especially when we’re building AI for EdTech, especially solutions that include children. And also, for example, to build a very useful EdTech solution for children in Africa, for example, we need a lot of people in the room. We need a lot of people in the room. We need AI ethicists or technology ethicists in the room. You need safeguarding professionals. You need, you know, people who can look at the technology stacks and in terms of digital security as well. So that multistakeholder approach, we’ve started seeing it especially in countries like Nigeria and Rwanda where it’s no longer about the technical people but also multistakeholder approach, and we’ve started seeing it in the world. So, you know, we have a lot of work to do in education. And then, finally, linguistic equity. And a lot of people, because for AI, we see it across two classifications, the technology optimists and the technology skeptics. Some skeptics believe that linguistic equity in artificial intelligence is just a talk and it’s not concrete. And so, you know, we have a lot of work to do in that area. And then, finally, we have a lot of work to do in the multistakeholder approach. Linguistic equity is very important and we’ve started seeing some work in that area. Aubrey mentioned people building small language models, and this is because we need linguistic equity to build stacks and, you know, for some of the languages that are missing. And for us, we do a lot of benchmarking and testing of some of the large language models. So, there’s a lot of work in evidence and also to ensure that AI is, first of all, local, and it’s building features that helps people benefit from the technological dividends, I mean, at the lowest level possible.

Yu Ping Chan: Again, this is where we also, as UNDP, also see that priority in focusing on the areas that you had mentioned. So, for instance, when it comes to linguistic diversity, we’ve been working in countries such as Ghana, around low-resource languages, and looking at how we can use that around low-resource languages and looking towards digitalising those languages to create precisely what you said, that kind of inclusive models that can then serve the engine of AI. On the multi-stakeholder element, where, again, this is something that unites us all at the IGF and that you have actually mentioned, I’m glad now we can actually turn to Anshul, who is actually part of Intel and the work that Intel is doing to build digital readiness and capacity. Anshul, a little few reflections from you, perhaps, on what are the needs and what is the current situation with regards to AI? And, Anshul, I’m sure you have a lot to say about AI for sustainable development.

Anshul Sonak: ≫ Thanks, Yiping. Good morning. So, calling from Silicon Valley, this is a very interesting conversation. This is 6 a.m. for me in the morning. ≫ Thank you for being there. ≫ I appreciate that. I’m really hearing all the comments by all my fellow panellists and 100 per cent agree with everything. As a rural development professional coming from a rural background, I think AI is a great opportunity. So, really appreciate all the comments made by fellow panellists. From my reflection standpoint, I look at it as two big strands emerging in this space. One is sustainable AI itself, so how do we make AI more local, more clean, more green, more safe, more private, more fast, more cheap? So, this is all about AI technology itself, so that’s one conversation where we need to be paying attention at all levels. The other one is, what can AI do for larger sustainability? So, this is probably more relevant to this audience, what can AI do for larger sustainability? So, it’s not a technology conversation, it’s truly a developmental conversation. What does AI for sustainability truly mean? Now, research again shows enough that more than I think there was a nature research two years back, more than 79 per cent of SDGs can be done responsibly and appropriately. So, this gives a big opportunity and big challenge, yes, that’s the true reflection. Opportunity-wise, it can be a potential big equaliser. It’s truly a new electricity, so everything can change once electricity comes in your home, right? Just from a personal productivity standpoint, if you really use AI appropriately, we just did a research recently which shows that you can save roughly 15 hours of your time every week. You can save 15 hours of your own personal productivity. And then you can figure out how to use that time more responsibly for more value creation for yourself and your life, right? So, that’s an opportunity side. Challenges side, of course, I mean, we heard about AI divide argument, right? Not just technology divide, but there are much bigger asymmetries which are getting quite clear. There’s a gender divide, there’s a racial divide, there’s a colour divide, there’s a country divide. So, there are many issues which are emerging. If we want to be a truly inclusive and responsible society, we really need to have this conversation on how do we bring it together and create some kind of an equalisation for a long-term sustainability. So, there are opportunities and challenges in AI for sustainability itself, and there has to be a separate conversation on how to make AI itself more sustainable. These are the two big reflections. I’m happy to kind of be in this conversation. Thank you so much, Anshul.

Yu Ping Chan: This is Anshul from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Government of India. I think it might be a good time to come back to that slide that we had at the start. This is where we actually polled both the online participants as well as those in the room to ask them actually what was top of mind for them in terms of the conversation here and what to reflect on. So, those areas in green were actually what came up as sort of the areas that they like to hear about when it comes to AI for sustainable development. So, I turn to you very quickly for a quick response on these and what you see as the state of the field when it comes to leveraging AI for sustainable development.

Participant: So, like the thing that CF in the response, like, of course, regulation, inclusion, capacity building is very, very important. But when we look at sustainability in issues for AI, I would say that the energy use, especially with regard to renewable energy, is very, very important. So, I would say that the energy use, especially with regard to renewable energy, is very, very important. When we build compute systems for AI applications and models, the amount of energy that is needed for powering these systems is very, very high. To the extent that normally, in fact, now we are going to Blackwells and B200, which are more energy-intensive, but I was told that even an H200 consumes power equivalent to one U.S. home. So, when we are building applications and when we are trying to save time, as Anshul was mentioning, when we are trying to push the technology, when we are building applications and when we are trying to save time, as Anshul was mentioning, when we are trying to push the technology, when we are building applications and when we are trying to save time, as Anshul was mentioning, when we are trying to push on productivity, when we are trying to push on benefits in various sectors, you also have to see where do we balance the SDG objectives for renewable energies, for climate, with regard to more efficient computing systems. At some level, we will have to see that the benefits of AI applications and models should not outweigh the costs that come in because of high energy usage. So, this will require extensive research in building these systems, which are low energy consuming. This will involve more investments in renewable energies. This will involve limiting the use of AI for non-essential functions, like things that humans can do better. Why do we need to rely on using AI for doing the same things? When we found people using it for very simple tasks, like writing poems and writing text or summarising text. We need to prioritise which are the tasks which AI should do, which are the tasks that AI need not do. How do we limit the energy consumption for powering AI systems? How do we prioritise usage of AI? How do we not ignore the needs of the challenges that climate change poses? How do we reduce our carbon footprint? These are issues that I think are as important as the issues related to AI regulation or inclusion and building capacities.

Yu Ping Chan: Thank you so much, Abhishek. So, we’re now going to turn back to the panel and ask all of you to reflect on a little bit of what you’ve heard from fellow panellists, as well as what you see from the responses of the audience on the screen. And link that to perhaps a small tailored question based on your expertise in your areas of expertise. I’ll start with Aubrey, I think. And I want to pick up on a point that you had raised just now, and now I think has been picked up by a couple of other colleagues as well, around that question of funding and governance. And I find it particularly interesting, because India, for instance, will be chairing the next AI Action Summit. And so, in that question of governance and funding, how do you think funding models are shaping national AI ambitions when it comes to global majority? How do you think that’s going to play out? And how can we as an international community address some of these challenges there?

Aubra Anthony: Yeah, thanks, Yuping. And, yeah, a very auspicious time, really. I mentioned earlier some of the issues that I think we’re all tracking, right? The US foreign assistance has been effectively shuttered, and many of the largest bilateral donor governments and NGOs, philanthropies, have also kind of moved to shift away from international funding. And so, I think it’s really important for us to think about that. And I think it’s also important for us to think about how we as an international community address some of these challenges there. And I think it’s really important for us to think about how we as an international community address some of these challenges there. And NGOs, philanthropies, have also kind of moved to shift away from historical levels of foreign assistance. So, right now, it’s unfortunately a pretty precarious time for funding, not just AI applications, but the necessary components of AI ecosystems globally, right? So, the fundamental ecosystem strengthening that needs to be in place for AI to be leveraged in a responsible, sustainable way by locally impacted actors, as Shun mentioned, right? Like, the enablers, right? So, the enablers that are really key to having an ecosystem thrive, things like compute, interoperable privacy-preserving data systems, the talent that’s necessary, right? The capacity in-country to be able to do that. And so, I think it’s really important for us to think about that. And I think it’s also important for us to think about how we as an international community address some of these challenges there. And so, right now, it’s unfortunately a pretty precarious time for funding, not just AI applications, but the necessary components of AI ecosystems globally, right? So, the fundamental ecosystem strengthening that needs to be in place for AI to be leveraged in a responsible, be able to design these systems, which a lot of that may fall more into the realm of DPI than AI uniquely. But I think that’s absolutely part of this conversation. But even with those trends, I think there’s also a very strong growing recognition that given the scale and the scope of the need, supporting ecosystem development through these kind of historical donor-led, siloed, uncoordinated investment really leads to a sum that’s far less than just the addition of its parts. So because of that, I think in large part, there’s been an increase in recent years in these more collaborative pooled funding efforts. We’ve seen this with the AI4D Funders Collaborative that was launched in 2023 at Lesley Park, the current AI, Public Interest AI initiative that was launched earlier this year at the Paris AI Action Summit. Yuping, you mentioned the UNDP and Italian government’s launch of the AI Hub earlier this month or last month, which is very exciting. And then we’ll see what comes from the Indian Summit next year, right? There are a lot of different efforts that I think are trying to meet the moment and hopefully moving us in a better direction. But so part of the landscape and part of this kind of broader conversation needs to recognize that these larger, more multilateral, more multi-stakeholder funding initiatives that can honestly really better address the scale of the challenge financially are emerging. But they’re also kind of introducing new complexities and new challenges for those who are having to navigate that, right? So whether that’s governments, practitioners, the people who are having to navigate AI ecosystem strengthening are having to navigate a lot of different trends and trend lines. And I’m going to say something that I think Shen mentioned earlier. And we all hopefully at this point agree on. But if we don’t, I would love to get into more discussion here. But I think the assertion that I want to make here is that for AI to really deliver for the SDGs and for sustainable development broadly, it cannot be something that is helicoptered in from afar, right? Its development and deployment have to involve communities impacted by AI. Its governance has to involve the communities who are impacted by AI. And the problem is that critically, the funding paradigm historically has really not aligned with that as well. It’s really been more about AI that’s produced elsewhere reaching foreign shores. And so I think the way that we see this shaping out is really going to have a fundamental effect on whether we can actually achieve this goal that I think we all share of better leveraging AI for sustainable development. And I think there’s been a really solid movement amongst the ICT community over the last several years with the principles for digital development and kind of a recognition that the funding paradigm needs to shift. It needs to be more localized. And we need to better appreciate all of that. But we at Carnegie, we’ve been doing a lot of research on this and trying to understand where the funding needs are really best matched by what’s on supply and where there are divergences, right? Where there’s kind of a market inefficiencies that are coming up there. And so just very quickly, I’ll share at a high level some of the things that we found through the interviews, the consultations that we’ve been doing. Oh, sorry. Yes?

Yu Ping Chan: Yeah, I just want to give enough time to all the panelists and hopefully have some questions from the floor. So if you don’t mind, I think the Carnegie research actually sounds very interesting. And perhaps you could share some links in the chat for everybody to consult, if you don’t mind. Absolutely.

Aubra Anthony: So I was going to say we’re going to be publishing this soon. So hopefully, everyone can see this. But I can give you the three key takeaways from the different research that we’ve done around the funding that we’ve discussions that we’ve had. It’s basically, and I think we can get into more detail in the chat. A, funding must be structured to be non-extracted. And I think this is a key thing that’s come up in other comments as well. It must be capable of becoming self-sustaining at some point, even if it’s not at the outset. If donors are coming in to fund, there needs to be some path towards sustainability in the long term, whether that’s through engagement with the commercial sector or otherwise. And then also, lastly, and again, happy to share more links to this, but we really need to ensure that the way that funding is structured and supports ecosystem development plays to different stakeholders’ strengths, both in terms of what’s being brought to the table, but also how risk aversion factors in. And I think those are really big issues that often go unappreciated, especially when you have a lot of different stakeholders coming together, which is what’s critical here. Again, in the interest of time, I’ll stop there. But thanks so much for that.

Yu Ping Chan: Thank you, Ava. And actually, that, again, is a nice segue into Oluswane, when she mentioned, for instance, the role of ecosystems, the entrepreneurial ecosystems. That’s where, for instance, your work at the AI Hub working directly with tech innovators is relevant. And how are you supporting that work? And what do you think, in response to some of the areas of challenge that have already been highlighted so far?

Oluwaseun Adepoju: Thank you so much. Quickly, when I mentioned earlier that there is hype around AI in the early days, I think if you look at some of the amount of money that has gone into supporting AI innovators in Africa, we’ve not gotten at least even 2% of that investment. Because in the early days, everybody, all the innovators were just using Chargipiti to do summarization. And they would put a label on it that they were building AI companies. But in recent times, we’ve seen that you can no longer do that. And one of the strategies we used is to say, you are not just an AI company by just name. What are the core societal issues that you’re using AI to solve? And then recently, we’re supporting innovators using integrating artificial intelligence and DPI. Because I think we need to start connecting artificial intelligence to core societal issues. There’s also the situation of breaking what is not broken, or trying to fix what is not broken with artificial intelligence. So if, for example, a state in Nigeria has a social register that they use in distributing farm produce, or seed input, or farm inputs to farmers, but the state has been struggling with actually identifying the trends of who they are giving the seeds to, what does the trend look like in terms of output as well. That’s an instance of using artificial intelligence to get output, rather than build something that, we are all excited when you present it, or when you talk about it, but when you look at the practicalities of the application, it’s not really solving any issue, right? So for us, we are very intentional around AI solutions that are connected to core societal issues. When you need to transverse the Maslow hierarchy of need, you will not waste the little investment we have on white label AI projects. We want to see use cases. And I think some of the monetary commitment that comes to us as an organization to support innovators building AI solution, we are not in a hurry, because there’s that pressure to quickly demonstrate that something works. We are not in a hurry. If we are unable to get 10 use cases, we are fine. If we find two or three that works and solves practical societal issues, we are good with that. But there’s also the quick idea that you need to commercialize. I think it takes a while for us to demonstrate good use cases of artificial intelligence. And that’s why some of the work we do now, we based it on the public value theory, first of all, and not support the startups on the commercialization side first. Because once commercialization pressure comes, you begin to compromise on the safety of what you’re building. So we usually give ourselves at least one year for you to actually prove that what you’re working on is good, it solves problem, it’s safe, and it’s equitable in so many ways. And then you cannot start talking about your commercialization trail. So we usually work with patient capital now, because this innovation that needs patients must not be brought under pressure of commercialization, first of all. And I think that’s what some of the big techs are compromising on when it comes to some of the conversations around safety, around equity, and the good use of people’s data. There are so many tools that we’ve been experimenting with that we know, fundamentally, this is ethically wrong in the way the data is scripted to be able to fit those models. And we must not repeat that. And that’s why for us, AI is local and must be built by local people. And lastly, I’m very happy that we saw a capacity building on that side of the responses from people. For us, we’re doing a year-long module on AI for Business Masterclass, where we gather business people all across Africa, representing 33 countries every month, where we have conversations around for them to really understand artificial intelligence. Because sometimes when the society don’t understand a technology, we usually launch a very complex social technical solution on people, which they don’t understand how to use in the first place. When people understand, they’re able to contribute meaningfully and they’re able to use meaningfully as well.

Yu Ping Chan: Thank you very much. I think that was a very comprehensive answer that touches on many aspects. And I’d like to maybe turn to Abhishek here to really reflect on that, because from India has been a leader in the use of digital technologies, AI, and so forth. Reflecting from a macro level on some of the challenges that Suryan has actually mentioned, how has India actually addressed some of these? And how do you balance a lot of the challenges that he’s spoken about to be able to become really a global leader in all these aspects?

Participant: See, when you look at AI or when you look at digital public infrastructure solutions, one thing that one should keep in mind is that all these solutions are sustained and can be scaled up and be used by most people if they are actually addressing a problem statement. If they’re helping solve a problem, then there are ways and means to make it happen, make it commercially viable, make it public funding available if it results in larger social and economic benefits. For example, we had this sort of problem of financial inclusion. We had this challenge of people not having access to banking services, financial services, credit services. and Anshul Sonak. We have seen a lot of benefits that citizens need and this is a lot of needs. It has led to microfinance schemes, it has led to credit schemes, it has led to farmers getting insurance schemes. So when you build a digital public platform like ID, it resulted in a lot of spin-off benefits because all the leakages that were happening in public service programs was cut. People could benefit because they could take up livelihoods and once livelihoods improves, economic benefits, a lot of people can benefit. We have seen a lot of payments, like we realized that many people are out of the organized financial systems because they did not have any tools, they are not eligible for a credit card or a debit card and they are not able to do transactions, digital transactions. With that came the unified payment interface, UPI, as we call it, and today we do almost 20 billion UPI transactions a month and we account for almost 50% of digital transactions globally. We have seen a lot of benefits, like we have seen a lot of benefits in the rural economy, we have seen a lot of benefits in the urban economy, we have seen a lot of benefits in the rural economy and again benefits come in. Similarly, when we are looking at AI-based applications, again we have to look at what problem statements we are solving. For example, if you look at healthcare, one key challenge that we have is that for diagnosing tuberculosis or diagnosing diabetic retinopathy, we do have hospitals which have got X-ray machines and which can do diagnosis in the hospital. If there is an AI tool which can do diagnosis which is as correct or in times better than a human radiologist, then that tool can replace the human radiologist in that hospital. If it is offering that service, the health department, health ministry will be able to meet the cost for that. Similarly, if you look at education, there are a lot of needs of personalised learning plans, there are a lot of needs for augmenting the availability of science and maths teachers in rural areas where those teachers are not there, or helping the children with special needs, get access to lesson plans, get access to content that might be more useful for them, create content in all Indian languages. We are a diverse country. So therein, again, AI-based applications can create a lot of value and there will be public funding available for taking up such solutions. People will be willing to pay for such solutions. So, again, if it solves the problem statement, it becomes very useful. We have seen similar things coming in agriculture, where in AI-based applications, farmer advisories is helping farmers increase their incomes, reduce their input costs. Reduce the water that they use for irrigation. Do timely interventions for fertilisers, for pesticides, access the right markets, the right prices. When the farmers benefit economically, they will be willing to pay a cost for that. So if we design AI-based applications across sectors, so that it solves some social needs or it addresses some economic benefits, there will be a provision for funding them, there will be a provision for building a commercial model out of that, and then those are the solutions only that will ultimately be sustained.

Yu Ping Chan: Thank you very much. And I really want to still try and give some opportunity for some questions from the floor. So I’m going to ask Armando and Anshul, if you don’t mind, to try and keep your responses to a minute. Very quickly, from your respective perspectives as academia and research, as well as the private sector, reflections on what you’ve heard so far and any thoughts that come to mind. Maybe we start with Armando.

Armando Guio Espanol: Sure. Well, yeah, in a minute. I was just going to say that we really need to focus more on implementation and what is working or not. And especially we need to see the efforts that are being done on implementing several of the policies and some of the ideas that have been shared here. I think that we need to understand where are those accelerators of the implementation side and what is working and what is not. Because also we have to be very aware of how this process is taking place. And that will allow us probably to be a little bit more efficient with the resources that we’re having and a little bit more accurate in the kind of support that we’re receiving and also the support that we’re giving in that sense. So I think understanding more of that process, we need to analyze a little bit more of the implementation side, what is working, and we need to start delivering more results in that sense from all fronts. I think it’s very important right now. So that’s my minute. Thank you. That was a great minute. Anshul?

Anshul Sonak: Yeah, my minute, I mean, this requires a balanced, responsible public-private partnership and a great leadership. You have Abhishek sir sitting on the stage and his ministry, for example, really prepared this capacity-building tools for population-scale impact. Look at their example, AFRL for engaging public. Look at their example on education, what they have been doing with COVID-19. Look at their example on education. Look at their example on education, what they have been doing with companies like Intel and others. Employability, entrepreneurship. So these four E’s, right? Engagement of public, entrepreneurship, education, and economic development using employability, right? Creating the right public-private partnership model is very important, and hence the civil society dialogue is very critical.

Yu Ping Chan: Great. Thank you. Okay, before I open the floor, very quickly, another slido so we can all check in here. The slido that you see that Megan is now going to put on screen that you can answer via your QR code is going to be on the question of having heard all these conversations based on your own experiences and so forth, what do you think should be the number one priority for supporting or enabling an inclusive AI ecosystem? In one word or phrase, what should be the number one priority if we are to ensure an inclusive AI ecosystem? In short, what do you think should be the number one priority for supporting or enabling an inclusive AI ecosystem? And you can’t repeat the answer that you gave for the first question. So let’s try not to have the same answers that we saw just now. Capacity building has come up again, so despite my entreaty to you to try and have another answer, this clearly is a priority. One word. What is the priority for ensuring an inclusive AI ecosystem? And then I’m going to ask colleagues as well to start thinking of the question that you’d like to ask our distinguished panelists, and I will ask the distinguished panelists again to try and keep the answers short so we can try and hear from as many people as possible. I will start, I think, with one question that we have in the chat, while those in the room are still doing the QR code. How can IGF, WSIS, and other international stakeholders continue to support the adoption of AI and digital healthcare systems in Africa to achieve sustainable development, especially in this era of digital transformation and health globally today? I think Abhishek talked a little bit about the Indian experience, and specifically how health is actually particularly important here. I’ll ask you if you have any thoughts on that. So this question of digital health, especially in Africa.

Participant: Yeah, in fact, what I would like to say is that what we are looking to do, especially as part of the Impact Summit that we are hosting in February, is that adopt the DPI playbook that we have in which we built DPI, we built a repository for DPI applications and made it available for the whole world, especially the countries of the world, especially in the United States. So we’re going to do that. We’re going to do that in the context of our focus in Africa. We’re going to do that in the context of the global south. Similarly, the AI-based applications in health care, whether it is for cataract screening or whether it’s for diagnosing breast cancer or for tuberculosis or for diabetic retinopathy or similar use cases, those solutions will be made available as part of an AI use case repository. And any countries of the global south, especially countries of Africa, African Union, if they are wanting to use those solutions, we will be providing them. So we’re going to do that in the context of our focus in Africa. We’re going to do that in the context of the global south, especially countries of Africa, African Union, if they are wanting to use those solutions, we will be more than happy to offer those solutions for adoption in these countries with the necessary fine-tuning with the local data sets as may be needed.

Yu Ping Chan: And that really speaks to responsible AI, which is also right up there on the QR responses. Any questions from the floor here? Participants that are sitting here have heard the conversation, the distinguished panelists, and would like to ask a question or comment. I think I saw a gentleman over there. You can come up to the mic right here if you would like to say something. Yes, please. Thank you.

Audience: Is this mic on? A question for Mr. Abhishek. The Indian DPI model was very much rolled out in a partnership between the Indian government and the private sector, like letting the private sector decide what they want to do with the technology. How does that work? How does that work? How does that work? How does that work? How does that work? How does that work? So, you are basically asking the Indian government and the private sector, like letting that kind of agile, quick mindset into government and then using open source, using interoperability to roll that out. And in doing that mix of governance, do you see a change in that approach from the various deterministic kind of applications that came out building on top of an ad hoc, building on top of a UPI, so the idea of the payments? Is that the same way that you’re going to be thinking about building AI applications on top of your DPI?

Participant: It’s going to be similar. It’s going to follow the similar playbook that we had for the DPI. And while in DPIs, as you rightly mentioned, we build the basic building blocks like the Aadhaar or the UPI or the data layer and then various applications for various sectors are built on top of that. In AI, what we look at, what we are doing is that we are providing, again, the basic ingredients for building AI applications, which include providing access to affordable compute to all those who need it, especially AI developers, start-ups, researchers, academicians, students. So we have kind of made available almost 35,000 GPUs at a very low cost of a dollar per GPU per hour for those who are needing it. Then we are also enabling data sets platform called AI Coach, wherein data sets from across domains, across sectors, both from the public and the private sector. And then we are also enabling the data sets platform called AI Coach, wherein data sets from across domains, across sectors, both from the public and the private sector. And then we are also enabling the data sets platform called AI Coach, wherein data sets from across domains, across sectors, both from the public and the private sector. and the skills that they have to build AI applications. So, similarly, we are also providing tools for bias mitigation, for privacy preservation, for identifying deep fakes. So, all those tools which are required to test your applications for conformance to the responsible AI principles, are also being provided on a common platform. So, all the necessary ingredients which will be common for those who are fine-tuning, or those who are doing inferencing, or those who are building sector-wide applications will be provided as a common utility. Similar to the DPI model. So, that’s how we are going ahead with our AI development.

Yu Ping Chan: Thank you, Abhishek. Any other questions from participants here? Our in-person audience here at the IGF? Yes. Please introduce yourself as well.

Audience: Hi. This is Jasmine Khoo from Hong Kong. So, I heard about a concept about localizing the AI applications. So, also a thing that I heard about is, the local people need to build their own AI system. So, my question is, because there may be national level, when you say local, do you mean like national level, regional level, or even from a grassroots community? I just want to clarify what you mean, someone mentioned about the local people need to build their own AI system. And is there a way to measure or help those local people to efficiently build a system with the knowledge and a system to track the performance? Because when you’re helping them, you have to put yourself into their shoes. So, how does it come into an efficient way to do that? Thank you very much.

Yu Ping Chan: Maybe I’ll ask Yun to take the question, and then maybe I’ll ask Armando also to reflect on this question on measurement, and also then turn it over to other panelists.

Oluwaseun Adepoju: Yes, thank you so much. When we say local, it could mean the three examples you shared. For example, when you’re building agricultural stacks, for example, there are, I’ll use the example of plantain. There are different classifications of the, it’s a form of banana, right, plantain, right? And we’ve tested a number of foreign models that does not cater for that classification of plantain. So, when we say local, that means that people that came from the region where plantain is originated from, and those who have the history of the classification needs to contribute to it, right? That’s one of the examples when we say local. But also, some of the work we do in Northern Nigeria, for example, when we work with farmers or vulnerable groups, when you want to use their data, for example, for social welfare distribution from the government, for example, in regions where there’s flooding or there’s extreme poverty, we usually go back to them to ask for the permission to use their data and what we’re using their data to do, right? And that is why we use an SMS system where you get a prompt, you say yes or no for us to use your data for the process we’re building. That doesn’t mean that we’re not using their data for good, it’s for their good, but also we need to let them know what the data is being used for, right? Also in terms of contribution, and what we mean by local as well does not mean that the local people are the technical people building it, but they are aware and they are contributing to the stacks or a knowledge session or even a validation session of what you’re building for them so that at the end of the day, people believe that they co-created the AI solution that they are using. And trust me, when you connect AI and DPI, for example, you need the buying of the people. Forced to build anything in like a six month project, we spent the first two or three months just engaging the people, co-creating the problem statement with them, and then they contribute to the feedback when we build the first iteration of the solution. So that at the end of the day, the buying is almost automatic because they’ve been part of the journey. We’ve seen situation where people have invested millions of dollars on solutions, tech solutions that people rejected. Not even technology this time around. I think in Sudan, for example, the government built a well for people to use because of water issues. But after building that, the government discovered that the people still go to the local wells to go and fetch. And they ask them the question, why are you going to the local, you’re walking distance to fetch water again? And the women said, that is the only time we have to catch up in the evenings when we walk, when we take a walk to where we usually fetch water. And yet, potable water has been built in those communities for them. So for us to avoid unintended consequences of the technology we’re building, it’s good for it to be local. And that is a definition of local in the context of what I said.

Yu Ping Chan: Okay. Thank you so much. Armando and then Obra very quickly. And then we’re going to go back to a last round of one-liners from the, very quickly to the audience. Armando and then Obra. And then I see two very quick questions here. Armando, in 30 seconds.

Armando Guio Espanol: Perfect, no, not 30 seconds. No, well, I was just going to say that definitely this is very contextual. Again, I think we can talk about regional or local or national infrastructure and technologies being provided. That’s something that depends. So for example, in Latin America, we’re having some cases of LLMs being developed for the whole region as a regional project. We will see some elements that will succeed and others that will, of course, not deliver as expected. So this is still very challenging. And I think the big element for me is the governance of these technologies and this kind of public infrastructure that we are building. Who is being involved and what’s the kind of participation, stakeholder participation, and who is taking part in the decisions being made about the functioning, the training, and the whole development of this kind of infrastructure, which is critical for many sectors. So there’s also some perhaps food for thought about the governance of this technology, of this infrastructure, and of course, of many of the related projects that we are going to be seeing with the use of this technology and that will have a sector and national, regional impact, of course. So just for us to consider at the same time, not only the technology, but also the governance side there.

Yu Ping Chan: Oprah, over to you. Thank you so much, Armando.

Aubra Anthony: Yeah, just very briefly, I think I would just press one. Everything that Trinh mentioned around the need for engagement, it’s not, you know, when we talk about local contributions, it’s not just about tech expertise that needs to be brought in. It’s also about just engagement with the community and user-centered design, human-centered design specifically. And we’ve seen a range of examples where that’s been done really effectively. And also, importantly, ways that those opportunities for engagement can be turned into opportunities for capacity development. And so I don’t think we have time to go into it, but we can share a number of links of where that’s been done effectively. I’m thinking specifically of Togo in the context of COVID. They worked initially to develop a model for delivery of cash benefits with a university partner far, far away, and then transitioned that to a real strategic goal for the government of capacity development in country based from those learnings, kind of moving toward more sovereign approaches to developing AI from that experience. So I think there’s a range, there’s a spectrum of ways that that kind of local focus can look different across different contexts. But I think there’s a rich body of examples to draw from for that.

Yu Ping Chan: I think we’re out of time. So I’m very sorry to those who wanted to ask questions here, but the speakers will be available for a little bit. I’m going to ask Anshul and then Abhishek for their last sort of 10-second wrap-up. But at the same time, I just wanted to give the audience a chance to reflect on the question that we asked at the start. On a scale of one to 10, and to see if your opinions have changed since we asked the question just now, you recall that the results ended up at about the even 5.5 level where we were equally optimistic and pessimistic. So after having heard this conversation on a scale of one to 10, how optimistic are you that AI can accelerate inclusive sustainable development over the next five years? Then I’ll ask Anshul and then I’ll ask Abhishek for their last comments. Anshul.

Anshul Sonak: Yeah, 10-second comment, bringing AI skills for everyone has to be a national priority.

Participant: And then Abhishek, your closing words. See, like what I would say, I agreed that bringing AI skills, plus at the same time, I would say bringing more global partnership for enabling sharing of application, sharing of data sets, sharing of algorithms, and sharing of expertise. So if we bring it through summits, through conferences, more global sharing, it will really, really help us in moving forward.

Yu Ping Chan: Thank you so much. And again, to everybody here, to our distinguished panelists, to everybody in the room that’s really contributed to what I thought was actually a very rich and engaging discussion, and to also your views here. Thank you so much for all being here today and let’s all thank our distinguished panelists with a quick round of applause and to my online moderators in support for the UNDP. My thanks again to Co-Creation Hub and the Carnegie Endowment for co-organizing this event with us. Have a good day, everybody, and we hope you enjoyed the session as much as we did organizing it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s very encouraging. Thank you, thank you. Thank you I did a lot for him. You don’t do this for me. But by all I mean, it was quite moving share. Mate, show us that thing. This ball?

Agreement points

Need for evidence-based decision making in AI development

Speakers

– Armando Guio Espanol
– Oluwaseun Adepoju

Arguments

Need for evidence-based decision making to reduce information asymmetries and understand real AI impact

AI solutions must be local, built by local people, and address core societal issues rather than creating unnecessary complexity

Summary

Both speakers emphasize the importance of understanding what AI actually does and focusing on real, measurable impacts rather than hype or theoretical benefits. They advocate for evidence-based approaches to AI development and implementation.

Topics

Development | Economic

Community engagement and stakeholder participation essential for AI governance

Speakers

– Armando Guio Espanol
– Aubra Anthony
– Oluwaseun Adepoju

Arguments

Governance of AI infrastructure requires stakeholder participation in decision-making processes

AI development must be non-extractive, self-sustaining, and involve communities impacted by AI

Local involvement means community participation in problem definition, validation, and co-creation of solutions

Summary

All three speakers agree that AI development and governance must involve meaningful participation from stakeholders and communities that will be impacted by the technology, rather than top-down approaches.

Topics

Development | Human rights principles

AI solutions must address real problems to be sustainable and scalable

Speakers

– Oluwaseun Adepoju
– Participant

Arguments

AI solutions must be local, built by local people, and address core societal issues rather than creating unnecessary complexity

AI applications must address real problem statements to be commercially viable and publicly fundable

Summary

Both speakers emphasize that AI solutions should focus on solving actual societal problems rather than applying AI for its own sake. Solutions that address real needs become commercially viable and attract sustainable funding.

Topics

Development | Economic

Capacity building is fundamental priority for inclusive AI

Speakers

– Anshul Sonak
– Yu Ping Chan

Arguments

Bringing AI skills to everyone should be a national priority

Capacity building emerged as top priority from audience responses for inclusive AI ecosystems

Summary

Both speakers recognize capacity building as a critical foundation for inclusive AI development, with Anshul advocating it as a national priority and Yu Ping noting it as the top audience priority.

Topics

Development | Capacity development

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers critique traditional funding approaches and advocate for alternative funding models that prioritize long-term sustainability and community needs over quick commercialization and donor-driven agendas.

Speakers

– Aubra Anthony
– Oluwaseun Adepoju

Arguments

Historical donor-led funding approaches are insufficient; need for collaborative pooled funding efforts

Patient capital approach needed to avoid commercialization pressure that compromises safety and equity

Topics

Development | Economic

Both speakers emphasize that community engagement in AI development should be meaningful and transformative, turning participation into capacity building opportunities rather than mere consultation.

Speakers

– Aubra Anthony
– Oluwaseun Adepoju

Arguments

User-centered design and community engagement can be turned into capacity development opportunities

Local involvement means community participation in problem definition, validation, and co-creation of solutions

Topics

Development | Capacity development

Both speakers advocate for systematic, large-scale approaches to AI development involving strong public-private partnerships and emphasizing the importance of building national capabilities and international cooperation.

Speakers

– Anshul Sonak
– Participant

Arguments

Bringing AI skills to everyone should be a national priority

Public-private partnerships and global cooperation essential for sharing applications, datasets, and expertise

Topics

Development | Economic

Unexpected consensus

Energy consumption and sustainability concerns in AI development

Speakers

– Participant
– Oluwaseun Adepoju

Arguments

Energy consumption of AI systems must be balanced against SDG objectives for renewable energy and climate

Transition from AI hype to hope stage, requiring intentional innovation and multi-stakeholder approaches

Explanation

While the discussion focused primarily on social and economic aspects of AI for development, there was unexpected consensus on the need to balance AI benefits with environmental sustainability concerns, showing awareness that AI development must consider its environmental footprint.

Topics

Development | Sustainable development

Need to prioritize AI applications and avoid unnecessary complexity

Speakers

– Participant
– Oluwaseun Adepoju

Arguments

Need to prioritize AI usage for essential functions and limit energy consumption for non-essential tasks

AI solutions must be local, built by local people, and address core societal issues rather than creating unnecessary complexity

Explanation

Both speakers unexpectedly converged on the idea that not all tasks need AI solutions, and there should be intentional prioritization of where AI is applied, challenging the common assumption that more AI adoption is always better.

Topics

Development | Sustainable development

Overall assessment

Summary

The speakers demonstrated strong consensus on several key principles: the need for evidence-based, community-engaged AI development; the importance of addressing real societal problems rather than applying AI for its own sake; the critical role of capacity building; and the need for alternative funding models that prioritize sustainability over quick commercialization. There was also unexpected agreement on environmental sustainability concerns and the need for selective AI application.

Consensus level

High level of consensus on fundamental principles of responsible AI development, with speakers from different sectors (academia, private sector, government, civil society) aligning on core values of community engagement, evidence-based approaches, and sustainable development. This strong consensus suggests a mature understanding of AI development challenges and points toward actionable collaborative approaches for AI for sustainable development initiatives.

Different viewpoints

Approach to AI development speed and commercialization pressure

Speakers

– Oluwaseun Adepoju
– Participant

Arguments

Patient capital approach needed to avoid commercialization pressure that compromises safety and equity

AI applications must address real problem statements to be commercially viable and publicly fundable

Summary

Oluwaseun advocates for patient capital and avoiding early commercialization pressure, giving at least one year to prove solutions work safely before discussing commercialization. The Indian government representative emphasizes that AI solutions need to be commercially viable or publicly fundable from the start by addressing real problems, suggesting a more immediate focus on practical implementation and sustainability.

Topics

Economic | Development | Human rights principles

Priority focus for AI development constraints

Speakers

– Participant
– Aubra Anthony

Arguments

Energy consumption of AI systems must be balanced against SDG objectives for renewable energy and climate

AI development is both promising and fraught due to concentrated power with few multinational players and digital divides

Summary

The Indian government representative prioritizes energy consumption and environmental sustainability as key constraints that must be addressed in AI development. Aubra focuses more on power concentration, digital divides, and access inequalities as the primary constraints, with less emphasis on environmental concerns.

Topics

Sustainable development | Development | Economic

Unexpected differences

Urgency vs. patience in AI implementation

Speakers

– Oluwaseun Adepoju
– Aubra Anthony

Arguments

Patient capital approach needed to avoid commercialization pressure that compromises safety and equity

AI development is both promising and fraught due to concentrated power with few multinational players and digital divides

Explanation

While both speakers advocate for inclusive AI development, they have different perspectives on timing. Oluwaseun explicitly argues for patience and taking time to ensure safety and equity, while Aubra emphasizes the urgency created by digital divides and the risk of being left behind. This creates tension between careful, patient development and the perceived need to act quickly to avoid further marginalization.

Topics

Development | Human rights principles | Economic

Overall assessment

Summary

The discussion shows relatively low levels of direct disagreement, with most speakers sharing common goals of inclusive, sustainable AI development. The main areas of disagreement center on implementation approaches, timing, and priority constraints rather than fundamental objectives.

Disagreement level

Low to moderate disagreement level. The speakers largely align on core principles but differ on tactical approaches, suggesting that while there is broad consensus on the vision for AI for sustainable development, there are legitimate debates about the best pathways to achieve these goals. This level of disagreement is constructive and reflects different expertise areas and regional perspectives rather than fundamental ideological divisions.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers critique traditional funding approaches and advocate for alternative funding models that prioritize long-term sustainability and community needs over quick commercialization and donor-driven agendas.

Speakers

– Aubra Anthony
– Oluwaseun Adepoju

Arguments

Historical donor-led funding approaches are insufficient; need for collaborative pooled funding efforts

Patient capital approach needed to avoid commercialization pressure that compromises safety and equity

Topics

Development | Economic

Both speakers emphasize that community engagement in AI development should be meaningful and transformative, turning participation into capacity building opportunities rather than mere consultation.

Speakers

– Aubra Anthony
– Oluwaseun Adepoju

Arguments

User-centered design and community engagement can be turned into capacity development opportunities

Local involvement means community participation in problem definition, validation, and co-creation of solutions

Topics

Development | Capacity development

Both speakers advocate for systematic, large-scale approaches to AI development involving strong public-private partnerships and emphasizing the importance of building national capabilities and international cooperation.

Speakers

– Anshul Sonak
– Participant

Arguments

Bringing AI skills to everyone should be a national priority

Public-private partnerships and global cooperation essential for sharing applications, datasets, and expertise

Topics

Development | Economic

Key takeaways

AI for sustainable development requires evidence-based decision making to reduce information asymmetries and understand real impact rather than relying on hype

Current AI landscape is characterized by concentrated power among few multinational players, creating digital divides that risk excluding Global South countries

AI development must be localized and community-driven, involving affected populations in problem definition, validation, and co-creation of solutions

Funding models need to shift from traditional donor-led approaches to collaborative, pooled funding that is non-extractive and builds toward self-sustainability

Multi-stakeholder approaches are essential, requiring diverse expertise including AI ethicists, safeguarding professionals, and security experts beyond just technical teams

AI applications must address real societal problems to be viable and sustainable, rather than creating solutions for non-existent problems

Energy consumption of AI systems must be balanced against climate and renewable energy objectives

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) model can be successfully applied to AI development by providing basic building blocks like compute access, datasets, and testing tools

Capacity building and AI skills development should be national priorities for inclusive AI ecosystems

Resolutions and action items

India will make AI-based healthcare applications available through an AI use case repository for Global South countries, especially Africa, at the upcoming AI Impact Summit in February

India is providing access to 35,000 GPUs at low cost ($1 per GPU per hour) for AI developers, startups, researchers, and students

UNDP launched the AI Hub for Sustainable Development with Italy as part of G7 Presidency to accelerate AI adoption in Africa

Carnegie Endowment will publish research findings on funding needs and market inefficiencies in AI ecosystem development

Co-Creation Hub will continue patient capital approach, giving innovators at least one year to prove solutions work safely and equitably before commercialization pressure

Unresolved issues

How to effectively measure and track performance of locally-built AI systems across different contexts (national, regional, grassroots)

Specific mechanisms for ensuring linguistic equity in AI development for under-resourced languages

How to balance the urgency of AI adoption with the need for careful, community-engaged development processes

Concrete strategies for addressing the AI talent and compute capacity gaps in Africa (only 0.1% of world’s computing capacity, 5% of AI talent has needed access)

How to prioritize AI usage for essential vs. non-essential functions to manage energy consumption

Governance frameworks for AI infrastructure that ensure meaningful stakeholder participation in decision-making

Suggested compromises

Adopt a ‘patient capital’ approach that delays commercialization pressure for at least one year to ensure safety and equity in AI development

Use public value theory as foundation for AI projects before pursuing commercialization trails

Balance global AI ambitions with local capacity building by providing basic infrastructure (compute, data, tools) while allowing local innovation on top

Combine global cooperation for sharing applications and expertise with local ownership and governance of AI systems

Focus on augmentation rather than replacement of human capabilities, as evidence shows AI is more effective in improving rather than replacing jobs

Instead of replacement of jobs, for example, what we are seeing right now is augmentation, actually improvement in the work some workers around the world are developing, and actually AI being helpful in that sense… we need good evidence in order for that process to take place in a way in which really it’s going to be helpful for many countries.

Speaker

Armando Guio Espanol

Reason

This comment challenges the dominant narrative of AI as a job destroyer and reframes it as a tool for worker augmentation. It emphasizes the critical need for evidence-based decision making rather than fear-driven policies, which is particularly insightful given the tendency toward sensationalized AI discourse.

Impact

This comment set a foundational tone for the entire discussion by establishing the importance of evidence over hype. It influenced subsequent speakers to focus on practical applications and real-world outcomes rather than theoretical concerns, and established the theme of moving from ‘hype to hope’ that other panelists later built upon.

Africa currently accounts for only 0.1% of the world’s computing capacity, and just 5% of the AI talent in Africa has access to the compute power it needs… These different issues of inclusion crop up when you think about the way that concentration is affecting access globally, but there’s also opportunity there.

Speaker

Aubra Anthony

Reason

This comment provides stark quantitative evidence of the AI equity gap while simultaneously reframing constraints as innovation opportunities. It’s particularly insightful because it moves beyond general statements about digital divides to specific, actionable data points that illustrate the scale of the challenge.

Impact

This comment fundamentally shifted the discussion from abstract concepts of inclusion to concrete data about resource disparities. It prompted other speakers to focus on practical solutions and local innovation, and established the framework for discussing how constraints can drive innovation rather than simply being barriers to overcome.

We’ve seen that we’re transitioning gradually from hype to hope. We can see use cases that we can point to, that is driving confidence… but before we transition from hope to truth, we’re going to make a lot of mistakes, we’re going to have a lot of losses, and we’re also going to see a lot of success at the end of the day.

Speaker

Oluwaseun Adepoju

Reason

This three-stage framework (hype → hope → truth) provides a sophisticated analytical lens for understanding technology adoption cycles. It’s particularly insightful because it acknowledges both the inevitable failures and the learning process inherent in technological development, offering a realistic yet optimistic perspective.

Impact

This framework became a recurring reference point throughout the discussion, helping other panelists contextualize their observations about AI development. It encouraged a more nuanced conversation about expectations and timelines, moving away from binary success/failure thinking toward a more mature understanding of technology evolution.

AI is one tool in the toolbox, and when you have this sense of urgency, that can both help drive the conversation of how we leverage those tools to suit our needs, but I think it also risks forcing us to adopt a solution that may not always match the problem.

Speaker

Aubra Anthony

Reason

This comment addresses a critical cognitive bias in technology adoption – the tendency to apply new tools to problems they weren’t designed to solve simply because of their novelty or perceived importance. It’s insightful because it warns against ‘solution in search of a problem’ thinking while acknowledging the legitimate urgency around AI adoption.

Impact

This observation prompted several panelists to emphasize problem-first rather than technology-first approaches. It influenced the discussion toward more careful consideration of when AI is and isn’t appropriate, and reinforced the importance of evidence-based decision making that Armando had established earlier.

For us, AI is local and must be built by local people… when you connect AI and DPI, for example, you need the buying of the people. Forced to build anything in like a six month project, we spent the first two or three months just engaging the people, co-creating the problem statement with them.

Speaker

Oluwaseun Adepoju

Reason

This comment redefines what ‘local’ means in AI development, moving beyond geographic considerations to include community engagement, co-creation, and cultural understanding. The practical example of spending half the project timeline on community engagement challenges conventional tech development timelines and priorities.

Impact

This comment significantly influenced the discussion’s focus on community engagement and participatory design. It prompted questions from the audience about what ‘local’ means and led to rich examples from other panelists about successful community-centered AI projects. It also reinforced the theme that sustainable AI development requires patience and genuine partnership rather than rapid deployment.

When we build compute systems for AI applications and models, the amount of energy that is needed for powering these systems is very, very high… We need to prioritise which are the tasks which AI should do, which are the tasks that AI need not do.

Speaker

Abhishek (Indian government representative)

Reason

This comment introduces a crucial sustainability constraint that challenges the ‘AI for everything’ mentality. It’s particularly insightful because it connects AI development directly to climate goals and forces a conversation about resource allocation and prioritization that is often overlooked in AI enthusiasm.

Impact

This comment brought environmental sustainability into sharp focus and prompted discussion about the trade-offs between AI benefits and environmental costs. It influenced the conversation toward more thoughtful consideration of when AI is truly necessary versus when it’s simply convenient, adding a critical dimension to the ‘appropriate technology’ discussion.

Overall assessment

These key comments collectively transformed what could have been a typical ‘AI is great/AI is dangerous’ discussion into a nuanced exploration of practical implementation challenges and opportunities. The comments established several crucial frameworks: the hype-hope-truth progression, the tool-in-toolbox perspective, the importance of evidence-based decision making, and the centrality of community engagement. Together, they shifted the conversation from abstract policy discussions toward concrete, actionable insights about how to develop AI responsibly and effectively. The comments also successfully balanced optimism about AI’s potential with realistic acknowledgment of constraints and challenges, creating space for both innovation and caution. Most importantly, they elevated voices and perspectives from the Global South, ensuring the discussion remained grounded in the realities faced by the communities most likely to be left behind in AI development.

How to measure the real impact of AI in specific areas like future of work and job augmentation vs replacement

Speaker

Armando Guio Espanol

Explanation

He mentioned they are developing methodologies with MIT colleagues to analyze real impact of AI, specifically noting they see augmentation rather than replacement of jobs, but emphasized need for better evidence and analysis

How to address information asymmetries between different stakeholders in AI development and deployment

Speaker

Armando Guio Espanol

Explanation

He highlighted the need to reduce big information asymmetries that exist and help decision makers understand what technologies are available and their real features

How to balance AI benefits with energy consumption and climate goals

Speaker

Abhishek (Indian government representative)

Explanation

He raised concerns about high energy consumption of AI systems and the need to balance productivity gains with renewable energy goals and carbon footprint reduction

How to prioritize which tasks should use AI versus tasks humans can do better

Speaker

Abhishek (Indian government representative)

Explanation

He questioned why AI is being used for simple tasks like writing poems when humans can do them better, suggesting need for prioritization framework

Research on funding paradigms and market inefficiencies in AI ecosystem development

Speaker

Aubra Anthony

Explanation

She mentioned Carnegie is conducting research on where funding needs are best matched by supply and where market inefficiencies exist, with findings to be published soon

How to structure funding to be non-extractive and capable of becoming self-sustaining

Speaker

Aubra Anthony

Explanation

She identified this as a key finding from their research – funding must have a path towards sustainability whether through commercial sector engagement or otherwise

How to measure and track performance of locally-built AI systems efficiently

Speaker

Jasmine Khoo (audience member from Hong Kong)

Explanation

She asked about ways to measure or help local people efficiently build AI systems and track their performance when providing assistance

What constitutes ‘local’ in AI development – national, regional, or grassroots community level

Speaker

Jasmine Khoo (audience member from Hong Kong)

Explanation

She sought clarification on the definition and scope of ‘local’ when discussing locally-built AI systems

How to focus more on implementation and understanding what is working or not working in AI for development

Speaker

Armando Guio Espanol

Explanation

He emphasized need to analyze implementation side, identify accelerators, and understand what works to be more efficient with resources

How to transition AI applications from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake models to reduce energy consumption

Speaker

Oluwaseun Adepoju

Explanation

He mentioned benchmarking blockchain’s transition and suggested this could be a future iteration for addressing AI’s unintended energy consequences