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Summary

This discussion focused on the role of regionalism in Internet governance, particularly within the context of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). Participants explored how regional approaches contribute to global Internet governance and their evolving relevance. The panel highlighted that regional organizations are often better equipped to address local challenges due to shared cultural values, languages, and priorities. They noted that regional Internet Governance Forums (IGFs) serve as important platforms for capacity building, amplifying local voices, and bridging gaps between national and global levels.

The discussion emphasized the value of regional approaches in fostering multi-stakeholder engagement and developing context-specific policies. Panelists pointed out that regional organizations can better support member states in responding to global agendas like the Sustainable Development Goals. They also stressed the importance of regional cooperation in developing digital infrastructure.

Participants debated whether regionalism acts as a building block or stumbling block for global governance. While recognizing the need for global standards in technical areas, they acknowledged the benefits of regional diversity in addressing policy challenges. The discussion touched on the evolving nature of regionalism, noting that some coalitions form based on shared values rather than geographic proximity.

The panel also addressed youth engagement in regional IGFs, highlighting the importance of connecting young people to these platforms for capacity building and leadership development. Overall, the discussion underscored the continuing relevance of regional approaches in Internet governance, while recognizing the need to balance regional diversity with global coordination.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The relevance and importance of regional approaches to internet governance, including logistical benefits, capacity building, and strengthening voices in global discussions

– How regional internet governance initiatives (NRIs) contribute to and complement global internet governance processes

– The role of regional organizations in developing policies and strategies tailored to local contexts and needs

– The tension between global technical standards and regional policy approaches

– Youth engagement in regional internet governance processes

The overall purpose of the discussion was to examine the concept of regionalism in internet governance, exploring its relevance, evolution, and potential future role in global internet governance processes like the IGF.

The tone of the discussion was largely collaborative and exploratory. Speakers shared insights from their diverse regional experiences while acknowledging common challenges and opportunities. The tone remained constructive throughout, with participants building on each other’s points to develop a nuanced understanding of regionalism in internet governance.

Speakers

– Chris Buckridge – Moderator

– Markus Kummer – former head of Working Group on Internet Governance

– Jenna Manhau Fung – Works for a top level domain registry in Asia-Pacific, coordinator of Asia-Pacific Youth Internet Governance Forum

– Nibal Idlebi – Acting Director of Statistics Information Society and Technology at UNESCO

– Carolina Aguerre – Scholar and university professor studying regional internet governance

Additional speakers:

– Ulka Atle – Works at RIPE NCC (Regional Internet Registry)

– Roman Danyliw – Representing the IETF

– Nadia Tjahja – Co-organizer of the workshop

– Jamal Shahin – Co-organizer of the workshop, researcher at United Nations University

Expanded Summary: The Role of Regionalism in Internet Governance (Workshop #141)

This discussion, moderated by Chris Buckridge, explored the evolving role of regionalism in Internet governance, with a particular focus on its relevance within the context of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The panel, comprising experts from various regions and backgrounds, examined how regional approaches contribute to global Internet governance and their changing significance in an increasingly interconnected digital landscape.

Importance and Relevance of Regional Approaches

There was broad consensus among the speakers on the continued importance of regional approaches to Internet governance. Chris Buckridge highlighted that regional approaches address crucial logistical issues such as time zones, languages, and cultural differences. This sentiment was echoed by other panelists, who emphasized additional benefits of regionalism.

Nibal Idlebi, Acting Director at UNESCO, stressed that regionalism allows for capacity building and brings people into a deeper understanding of Internet governance. She argued that regional organizations are often better equipped to propose policies suited to local governance processes, as they have a more nuanced understanding of the specific challenges and priorities within their regions. Idlebi also shared insights from the Arab IGF experience, highlighting how governance processes can differ significantly between regions.

Jenna Manhau Fung, coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Youth Internet Governance Forum, pointed out that regional forums provide a vital platform for amplifying voices, especially for youth and developing countries. She highlighted the diversity within the Asia-Pacific region, noting the multitude of languages and cultures that necessitate a regional approach distinct from other areas. Fung emphasized the importance of regional approaches for youth engagement and capacity building in Asia-Pacific, discussing how these platforms offer opportunities for young people to develop leadership and policy skills.

Carolina Aguerre, a scholar and university professor, emphasized that the regional approach enables thought processes and development of digital infrastructure tailored to local needs. She noted a renewed interest in regional forums in Latin America and the Caribbean, possibly driven by geopolitical shifts and emerging technologies like AI governance. Aguerre also highlighted the lack of political and economic integration in Latin America and the Caribbean, explaining how this affects regional approaches to internet governance in the area.

Relationship Between Regional and Global Internet Governance

The discussion explored the complex relationship between regional and global Internet governance processes. Markus Kummer, a veteran of Internet governance with extensive experience in WSIS and other processes, pointed out that regional Internet registries complement the global ICANN governance structure. He also noted that regional solutions, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), can sometimes become global standards.

Chris Buckridge emphasized that regional forums help strengthen voices in global discussions, providing a stepping stone for local actors to engage in broader Internet governance debates. Nibal Idlebi added that regional organizations can support member states in responding to global agendas, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

However, an audience member raised the important point of balancing regional perspectives with global protocols necessary for an interconnected Internet. This highlighted the ongoing tension between the need for global technical standards and the benefits of regional diversity in addressing policy challenges. Roman Danyliw from the IETF provided additional insights on the technical perspective of regionalism in internet governance.

Evolution of Regionalism in Internet Governance

The panel noted significant developments in the evolution of regionalism within Internet governance. Chris Buckridge pointed out that national and regional Internet governance initiatives (NRIs) are a significant outcome of the IGF process, demonstrating the growing importance of regional approaches.

Jenna Manhau Fung discussed how the regional approach is evolving to address new issues like AI governance, indicating that regionalism remains relevant in tackling emerging technological challenges. Speakers mentioned specific examples of regional AI governance initiatives, highlighting the diverse approaches taken in different parts of the world.

An interesting perspective was introduced by Jamal Shahin, who suggested the need to consider non-geographically contiguous actors and coalitions. Shahin also briefly mentioned a UNU research project on regionalism in internet governance. This idea was further explored through an audience question about the potential for “middle powers” like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to form their own “region” based on shared values rather than geography. This concept challenges traditional notions of regionalism and suggests a potential future where regions might be defined by shared economic frameworks or political policies rather than geographical proximity.

Youth Engagement in Regional Internet Governance

The discussion also touched upon the crucial topic of youth engagement in regional Internet governance processes. Nadia Tjahja, a co-organizer of the workshop, suggested specific ways for youth to get involved, including connecting with NRIs and regional representatives. She also mentioned regional events and summer schools as avenues for youth participation.

Unresolved Issues and Future Considerations

While the discussion highlighted many benefits of regional approaches to Internet governance, it also revealed several unresolved issues. These include:

1. How to effectively balance regional needs with global technical requirements of the Internet

2. The role of non-geographically contiguous actors and coalitions in regional approaches to Internet governance

3. Improving pathways from regional to global Internet governance processes

The panel suggested some potential compromises and action items to address these challenges. These included using regional forums to develop common positions that can then feed into global discussions, and adopting a multi-layered approach that includes regional, sub-regional, and like-minded country groupings in addition to traditional geographic regions.

In conclusion, the discussion underscored the continuing relevance and importance of regional approaches in Internet governance. While acknowledging the need for global coordination, particularly in technical areas, the panelists emphasized the value of regional diversity in addressing policy challenges and fostering multi-stakeholder engagement. As the Internet governance landscape continues to evolve, it is clear that regional approaches will play a crucial role in shaping policies, developing infrastructure, and ensuring that diverse voices are heard in global debates.

Chris Buckridge: Okay. I think we are ready to go here. So I would like to welcome everyone to probably the first or second of the sessions of the day for everyone. This is workshop number 141 and it’s on regionalism and the IGF. My name is Chris Buckridge. I’m here, I think with no hats on today, just as a general IGF gadfly, but to moderate the session, and I’m very happy to do so. We have a panel of four speakers, two of whom are here with me on site in Riyadh and two of whom are online here. And hopefully we’ll also have a very active discussion with both participants online and in the room here. As Marcus just noted, we have more people in the audience than on the stage, which is always a good sign for these workshops. So looking forward to that. The speakers that we have, and I’m going to let them maybe, as we go around with the questions, introduce themselves a little bit more in terms of their affiliations. I know certainly many of us here probably have multiple hats on and I’ll let people identify for themselves. We have Marcus Kummer to my right here, Nibal Idlebi on my left, and online we have Jenna Manhao-Fung and Carolina Aguera. Apologies to all for any mangling of pronunciations there. The topic of today’s session, and sorry, just looking around for anyone, we are on channel two in the room, we have the audio set up. The topic of today’s session, regionalism and the IGF. So, I mean, from very early in the internet’s development and technical governance processes, there has been a bit of a focus on regional. groupings, regional coordination, regional preparation. The regional internet registries are one example of that, which has really emphasized that approach. And it’s allowed that structure was very much reflecting a need for local communities based around whether language, time zone, cultures to develop policies that suited their specific needs and circumstances while maintaining and contributing to global coordination on essential elements of governance. Now, today we see with the Internet Governance Forum, there is a really vibrant network of national and regional internet governance initiatives and internet governance forums, which we usually call NRIs. So I’m sure that acronym will be used very often in this session. So we have NRIs representing all of the national, regional internet governance initiatives. There are currently more than 170 of those around the world. And that also includes youth IGFs. Majority of those are in the global south, though I think it’s probably very well represented across the world. And they’re defined, those NRIs, by their multi-stakeholder bottom-up approach. This is something that’s laid out and overseen in some ways by the global IGF. So the recent, okay. There was a recent paper called Net Effects, which was produced by the DNS Research Federation. And in full disclosure, I was one of the co-authors on that. But one of the findings that it had was that those NRIs, the National and Regional Internet Governance Forums, were actually one of the most significant outcomes and products of this IGF process, and are seen as a really vital. space to foster and develop new leaders and informed governance participants for global discussions. And in the GDC, we actually see the IGF referenced in part for the importance of its connection to national and regional groupings. So with all this focus on on regionalism, I think the purpose of today’s discussion is to dig into that idea a little bit is is regionalism, how does it contribute to the idea of global governance, is it still as relevant today as it ever has been. And and how can that develop over time. The first question I want to sort of put to the panelists that we have here is, well, speaking to that how relevant is the regional concept for understanding the IGF or the multi stakeholder world. And how is that regional approach regional idea evolving and developing. And so I first want to put it to Marcus and Marcus as I said, if you maybe take the opportunity on this first question just to introduce yourself and your affiliations, that would be great. Thank you.

Markus Kummer: Thank you, Chris. Well, I’m a veteran of this space I was involved in WSIS, WSIS-I, WSIS-II. And then I was the head of the Secretariat of the Working Group on Internet Governance which provided input into WSIS-II, which was by and large adopted by the summit. That is the definition of Internet Governance explaining what Internet Governance is. So I worked and I also worked for Internet Society and I was on the board of ICANN. Right now, I’m mainly retired, but I stay involved. One of the advantages of old age is that you have seen a lot and previous life I was dealing with trade with free trade agreements. I worked then for the European Free Trade Association, which is the tiny brother of the European Union. Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland, but these are four highly developed and well-to-do countries and we had free trade agreements all over the world from Singapore to Canada to Chile and in free trade there was a saying of regional free trade agreements, a stumbling block or a building block for free trade globally. And I think we can ask the same question with regionalism in the internet space. Chris mentioned the RIRs that are more the regional side of internet governance, ICANN is the global side in trade that would be like the WTO in trade. So in the internet space, I think in the technical space, they are complementary. Now when it comes to internet governance, it’s not just about naming and addressing and the WSIS outcome clearly states that, it’s also about the use and abuse of the internet. There are issues like cyber security, like protecting children and, and, and, and you all know that these are all hotly debated issues. Now do we need to find global solutions or can we find regional solutions to tackle the problems we are facing? One of my favorite sayings, it was from your former boss, Chris from Axel Pavlik used to say good internet governance begins at home. There’s a lot to be said for that. A lot of internet governance is actually at the very national level. National governments have a lot to say, but obviously in the regional, there are usually countries that share a lot. lot of commonalities. They share the same, obviously are from the same region. So quite often they share the same language in Europe. That’s not the case, but, uh, they share the same legal background. Now, the European union is an excellent example of, uh, regional approaches. The European union has obviously the market power and it has the power also to impose their views. I mean, the GDPR was one of the examples where a regional solution by its sheer force became a global approach. Countries are more or less forced to adapt to the GDPR. If not, they will be forced to, they will be just left behind and their actors will face huge consequences if they don’t adapt to the GDPR. So this is obviously one example and the European union has others for digital market act, digital services act. So they are, uh, solutions that are regional, but they become kind of global standards. Now for other regions that don’t have the same market power, the same power to impose sanctions, they will not be able to do the same, but they can nevertheless, uh, share same experiences. And there, I think the possible way could be that they have a bottom up, uh, share the same, adopt the same practices in dealing with similar issues. Uh, so. In trade, there was never, um, a clear way of saying this is good or this is bad, the regional approach. And I think we are in the same way in the, uh, internet governance space. Uh, we cannot say it’s good. We cannot say it’s bad, but I think that is merit that obviously in discussing in sharing experiences and also in developing good practices in how to deal with some of the issues. And obviously it’s easier to get together on the regional basis where you share, have some commonalities, share cultural aspects and, uh, bring that into the global debate, but we are, as we all know, far away from having global solutions to some of the issues. We have one global solution to, uh, security, but that’s also highly controversial right now. And it shows it’s not easy to find global solutions with that. I think I hand it back to you, Chris. And I also apologize to the people in the room that I will nip out in between because I’m double booked for this session, but I will come back again. Thank you.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Marcus. But all right, we’ll, we’ll work around the, the very, um, uh, busy schedules that we all have. Um, for the next speaker and please, I w I want to go around the four. Um, panelists first, and then we’ll come to the room. I know there’s already, um, some questions or comments starting to bubble up. Um, but the next speaker I’d like to hand to is Jenna. So Jenna, please, the floor is yours. And with the same, um, sort of framing question there of, uh, how relevant is regional concept and how is that evolving?

Jenna Manhau Fung: Thanks, Chris, and thanks, Marcus. That makes so much sense because I was like, Marcus is the most experienced person I’ve ever met in the global IGF community, and I was like, it’s not a good sign to go after him because I was so stressed about what should I go next. But before I get started and answer the question, perhaps I can provide some background of myself before I started, especially given the topic, it’s about regionalism. I work for a top level domain registry in Asia-Pacific, mostly spending my time managing a program, a youth capacity building program on Internet governance for about six or seven years now. And I usually wear my hat as the Asia-Pacific Youth Internet Governance Forum coordinators when I get more involved in the IGF related initiative right here. So in the past year, I’ve been quite active in helping organizing the youth related activity and outreach within the IGF community. So speaking of this topic, I always get very interested. And I don’t want to repeat too many of Marcus’ points because I think he make it very clear and it also resonates with a lot of points I want to make. But I want to echo on some of the points and build upon on that. Earlier, Marcus mentioned how regionalism could help with creating some regional solution. But my personal experience and as a youth coordinator there for about six years, I think, especially for younger people in Asia-Pacific. Pacific region before you can even come up with anything that’s close to a regional solution. That regional approach is even more important as a platform for them to amplify their voices. As you might know, Asia Pacific is really huge. There are many languages and there are different cultures as well. Even there are times when we talk about the topics that we approach there would be very different from Europe, I would imagine. And now that I also reside in North America, I could really see that people usually have different focus. And there are times just like picking on my own experience organizing a youth IGF in the Asia Pacific region. I could see that Southeast Asian country will have a different interest on topics that might be different from East Asia, for example. And many of the students who are involved from some regions may care about more, for example, internet access, while the other maybe want to talk about more the issues related to AI or technologies, maybe not AI. Everyone wants to talk about AI because it’s really influencing our life right now. But what I wanted to say is there are times even with a region as vast as Asia Pacific, we already feel challenges making a conversation that’s constructive enough that leads us close to a solution, so to speak. And so that’s why I think a regional approach or even a sub-regional approach maybe even become more important, because if you couldn’t have a constructive conversation at home… then it will be very difficult for you to represent your voice at a global stage. Myself being very involved in the global internet governance forum for so long is that I do value and I do think that global solution or a platform for that kind of conversation is important. But as Chris kickstarted the sessions, time zone sometimes doesn’t work out and it just naturally eliminates some voices, right? And it’s, you know, there’s some level of practicality to like imagine an initiative having coordinator based in the region that has more resources that allow them to make this initiative or conversation happen. That’s, you know, just sometimes naturally make the conversation happen or flavoring people from certain regions. But for example, it’s like, of course, I know there’s like a mechanism, for example, rotating the schedule to kind of like accommodate, but, you know, it’s just different from how regional approach work. Well, I’m starting babbling right now because it’s right way past midnight here in Toronto, but I will stop here and pass it back to my fellow panelists and moderators so we could continue conversations as we move on.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Jenna. And thank you for the closing illustration there of the challenges of a global conversation and the importance of regionalism. I would like now to pass back to the room here in person. We have Nibal, please.

Nibal Idlebi: You hear me? Okay. Thank you very much, Chris, Marcus, and everyone on the panel here. I would, I’m Nibal Idilbi to introduce myself. I am currently the Acting Director of Statistics Information Society and Technology at the UNESCO. UNESCO stands for United Nations Economic Social Commission for Western Asia. I was involved and we are working mainly in the Arab region. We are focusing in the Arab region. However, we are of course linked to the UN Secretariat and we have a lot of collaboration with all UN agencies. Myself, I was also like Marcus, I was with WSIS since the starting point, since 2003 when the discussion started. I followed WSIS plus 20 and so on. We are now making the preparation for WSIS plus 20. We have Arab IGF which is one of the regional IGF. I am speaking about our experience in this regard. The Arab IGF was really established at the beginning since 2005, around 2005. We are continuing organizing the Arab IGF regularly. Sometimes each year, sometimes each two years. Based on our experience, I believe the regional dimension is very important. As Marcus was saying, we are sharing the same challenges in the region. We are aware of the dynamism of the countries in the region. We know very well the stakeholders. Based on our experience with the stakeholders, different stakeholders, especially that IGF is multi-stakeholder, we were able to engage them in a very dynamic way, I would say. We were able also during this experience to fill some stakeholders who were not very knowledgeable about the IGF and its importance and so on. We have made a lot of capacity building about what it is IGF and what it is even with us in some cases. It was very important for capacity building. I believe in the Arab region, we had a lot of things to say to engage people and to make them learn about the process. I believe also the challenges are very similar. As Marcus said, the culture, the language, it is the same language across the Arab region. I believe it was a very good experience for us also to bridge the gap between national and global. Because some countries at the beginning, they didn’t have this national IGF. Our role was also to encourage countries to establish the IGF at national level. We supported some of them. interacted with some of them, we feel till now some countries don’t have IGF, a national one. Then I believe the regional dimension filled the gap in a way between the national and the global. And also it was very important, I believe, for the common positioning, to have common position of the region vis-a-vis the global issues, I mean, that are discussed at a global level. And then it was an intermediary layer, I would say, and important block to fill the gaps and to give the voice of the region at a global level. This is from one side and also encouraging the stakeholder. I believe the dynamism in the Arab region was among the different stakeholder was completely not the same, I mean. For example, NGO, they needed really a lot of capacity building to have and so on. While public-private sector, they were more engaged and they were really very supportive and they wanted to be real, to play a role, very important role, especially that in many countries, it is more the government who is leading the scope of the regulation and everything in the country. Therefore, the private sector, they found it as a very important room and very important forum to discuss and to discuss sincerely with the government and to put their position and to put what they need, in fact, for enhancing the sector as a whole. This is what I think the most important issue that I would say. And I believe for the last 20 years now, I mean, I believe the discussion started smoothly, but now I believe we have a strong community for the IGF, very strong community for the IGF at regional level. And we can build on this what we have achieved so far. I believe it is more promising for the future. And although there is between Arab countries, there is is no binding rule as there is in the EU. You mentioned the EU and GDPR, which is a very important experience. However, in the Arab country, we don’t have this political power to impose anything at a regional level, unfortunately. What we do is more promoting, positioning, global positioning, and so on, and we try to make it as serious as possible, vis-a-vis the global community. I will stop here for the time.

Chris Buckridge: Okay. Thank you very much, Nibel. And turning now to the last of our panelists, or at least in this first round, and going back online, Carolina Aguerre, pass to you.

Carolina Aguerre: Thank you, Chris. Hi, everyone. Good morning. So, it’s also very late for me over here, so I empathize with Jena, and bear with me for my ranting a little bit. I’m a scholar, I’m a university professor, and I’ve been very much interested in how local and regional communities embrace internet governance. In my understanding, I mean, it’s conceptually very hard for people all over the world, global north, global south, or global majority, however you want to call that, to embrace something as powerful, but also as immaterial, and very material at the same time as the internet, without going down into the local layers, and how local actors organize themselves, how they imagine, how they build their networks, how they want their standards to operate upon. And this kind of struggles, and this kind of vision, is something that, in the case of the in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has been present, I would say, since the late 1980s. There was, and the struggle to sort of generate a regional internet registry portrays the relevance of thinking about this levels of subsidiarity where local policy or the policies of assigning IP addresses come closer to the communities that have to be served. And this applies to all our RIRs. And I think this is a very valuable lesson on how the internet evolved originally and how it still stands today, reflecting the needs and the identities of these regional and local communities. Lately, I would say that in my region, regionalism has tended to become more interesting for actors, and I’m not exactly sure why, but I think that this, a lot of the geopolitical turn concerning the governance of the internet, but also the governance of AI, really leaves much less space to think about the development of these infrastructures and the platforms that citizens want to engage with and the actual local power dimensions that need to be addressed. And I’ve seen that there is a renewed interest, not so much in national initiatives in Latin America and in the Caribbean, but more in the regional forum. This year’s regional IGF in Santiago de Chile, the 17th edition. it really sort of marked this kind of vibrancy that with the pandemic I think had lagged and now we’re seeing this spike coming up again. But just to end my first intervention, I also want to address something concerning Marcus’ original intervention, concerning this idea of, okay, so which is the platform, which is the kind of process that is guiding regionalism? And so he mentioned trade a lot, for example, right? And the EU, for example, it is an economic and a political bloc, but we don’t have that kind of regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean. That’s much more loosely bound. Actually, there’s so many sub-regions and countries that actually operate with the North much more commercially-wise, much more than with the South. But still, this brings in another cleavage or another interesting dimension to address, okay, but there are regional forums, there are regional, and not just the IGF, there are regional processes addressing the impact of this general-purpose technologies. We are seeing this in AI as well, where identity and culture from this regional perspective does matter. So I think that the challenge in a region that is not politically or economically integrated, as is LAC, we have the challenge to think about what kind of institutions, other than the existing RIR processes or LAC-TLD for the top-level domain sector, I mean, which other institutions will be able to sort of harness this regionalism that we need to think about in terms of the digital and the internet? world. And this is so this is my closing comment for my first intervention. Thank you.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Carolina. Yeah, okay. rectify that going forward. So I think that’s been a really good discussions here. I do want to commence from the floor. I think from my very limited attempt to sort of summarise where what I’ve heard or what key points I’ve heard here. The sort of the relevance and the importance of a regional approach comes down to obviously, logistical issues, there are time zones, there are languages, there are cultural distinctiveness that can be addressed in terms of a read more regional processes. There is the sort of capacity building element where you can bring people into an understanding of the importance of internet governance and this this sort of space and the opportunities there are to engage. There’s strengthening that that glow that those voices in the global discussions and I think maybe some of the discussions around EU processes, GDPR, etc. And Carolina, your points, then maybe speak a little bit to that. And I think also about your point about sort of regional processes, allowing for more sensitive discussions with stakeholders was with a really interesting and important one. So I want to see if Yeah, we have one at the back of the room there and another year. So thank you.

Audience: Hello. My name is Tiago. I am a PhD scholar at VLB in Brussels but also a fellow at Unicris. So, very nice to be here in this panel that’s discussing the discussion on the regionalism in the IJF. And my question is, and this has been part of the discussion that we had in Brazil during NET Mundial Plus 10, how we make regionals, IJFs or national ones to be more connected and like what’s being shared there and best practice of these flows. And one specific example that I think that can be very interesting if we can have some platform, some way of like sharing better and building bridge of these initiatives is how different stakeholders in these regions connect with the topic. Because I can give an example, at least in Brazil, I’m from there of course, and in Brazil we see civil society has really an outstanding role there in the way that talking about digital rights organizations, they are very well structured in a coalition and they do a lot of like policy agenda as like there are different institutions that work together for some common goals. And I see that the role of the Brazilian IJF makes a big difference for making them to connect. And this, for example, is a kind of what I could say good practice and stakeholders that could be shared in other regions. And I heard Nibal saying that, for example, here the private actors in Arab region is quite active and I hear that in some other places it’s not. And people say, yeah, we should have more people from a business being engaged. Otherwise, how can we say that this is really mood stakeholder, right? I think there’s also an imbalance of how, depending on the region, some groups of stakeholders are more or less active, and maybe it’s something that the regionalists’ approach could, I don’t know, see how they share, and trying to understand why is this happening here and not there, and vice versa. So, just food for thought.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much. A really, I think, important point there, particularly in terms of regional diversity and distinctiveness versus sort of emerging common best practices. So, I’m sure the speakers will come back to that. I think, Dana?

Audience: Thank you to the panel overall. Dana Kramer here, for the record. I’m a PhD candidate, and I study a lot of these regional elements, so I’m quite interested by this panel overall, and I thought that these opening remarks were phenomenal. I come from Canada, and our region does not have a strong regional focus. We’re a bit left out in the regionalism conversation because North America has very large landmass countries in Canada and the United States, and we have that Mexico tends to get looped into the South American space because of similar language, but also, too, the Caribbean nations also have their own regional initiatives because telecommunications-wise, they’re either European or North American or South American. From a numbers perspective, they get split between Aran and Latinx, and then also, too, culturally, they have a very distinct identity that doesn’t fit. Like, we don’t have a homogenized view the way that Europe or other regions might to help with it. And so that kind of guides like a… bit of why I’m going to ask two questions are a bit more like slightly geopolitics focused, but within the lens of recognizing that not all regions really have the capacity to act as regions in that North American context, which is like with Canada as a middle power, for example, and ahead of WSIS plus 20. Is there a role for middle powers to start to become their own region, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand have been moving together enjoyed statements in the space of the GDC and WSIS plus 20. But do we need to start seeing like regions emerge across like similar economic frameworks, similar political policies that might not be geographically the same, but have different socioeconomic factors to make a region such as including, for example, like the Nordic countries within them. And my second question, I think maybe Carolina would be best for this rest within thinking about a new Bradford’s book on digital empires, which notes that the EU, the US and China as three global digital empires overall. And I’m wondering if you could speak to how maybe instead of thinking as certain countries, as superpowers in the digital space, if it’s because that they might have a large stakeholder groups that create that local level. And that’s how we can better understand regions, their capacity to have these complex networked actors that then create global superpowers in this space and how then different communities overall might be able to become new digital empires in and of themselves for forecasting how we might see internet governance evolve over the next 10 years. Thank you.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Dana. I’m going to throw to Marcus quickly, because I know he has to leave us shortly. And so Marcus, obviously, we’ve got some very interesting questions. important insights and questions from the floor. The other sort of next round of questions we have here is in terms of I think a little bit more looking to the future. Will regions continue to be building blocks or be building blocks for a new multilateralism or multi-stakeholderism? So in the time you have, can I ask you to answer that definitively?

Markus Kummer: Yes, thank you. That’s all good questions and thanks to my fellow panellists also for their intervention and I think in particular I will circle back to Carolina. She corrected me or made an addition obviously which I forgot to mention. It’s the question of regional integration and there the European Union of course is light years ahead of most of the regions in terms of integration. So they have the institutions that allow them to find binding solutions to tackle the issues and that makes what comes out of the European Union, what comes out of Brussels so important. And the other was a very interesting question of like-minded middle powers who are not geographically linked whether they should work together more and you mentioned a case which is already happening. So and I also remember that my days when I was dealing in multilateral affairs for the Swiss government we worked actually closely together also with Canada, Australia, New Zealand because they were like-minded but definitely not geographically linked and that is definitely I think a way to approach these. And the last question I would address was Tiago made also very excellent points and I think that is precisely what the IGF is all about that we come here to learn from each other, to share good practices and also then to go back home and make sure. that governments don’t take the wrong solutions, because governments have a tendency to shoot from the hip, so to speak. They want a solution, a quick fix, and they don’t think of unintended consequences. Governments in particular, whatever their leaning is, they like blocking the internet, for instance, which is a quick solution, something they don’t like, okay, let’s block it. I come from a country which has excellent democratic pedigrees, but they actually adopted that solution when it came to gambling. They thought, okay, let’s protect our own gambling industry and block foreign providers of the same services. I’m also part of the Internet Society Swiss chapter. We went on the barricades against it. We think this is a bad solution. It essentially breaks the internet, but the government didn’t listen. They listened to the lobby groups who wanted that solution. This is, I think, one of the strengths of the IGF, that we actually learn and can promote good policy and also go back and prevent governments from taking the wrong quick fixes without thinking of the unintended consequences. We may not always succeed, but at least we learn from each other. Let’s keep up the good fight. With that, I apologize. I have to run.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Marcus. Thank you for being here and sharing your insights. As an Australian, I’m a little triggered by the example you gave there, but we’ll move on from that. I’ll throw back now again to our online speakers. Jenna, again, please respond to any of the questions, but also that looking forward as to how regionalism might play into evolving multilateralism and multi-stakeholderism?

Jenna Manhau Fung: Certainly. I will try to combine some of my responses to both of the questions and echo a little bit on what Marcus just mentioned as well. Every time Marcus makes his remark, it sparks me with some sort of like new insights all the time. And now that make me realize how to say that. Unlike Europe, Asia Pacific, for instance, there’s no singular institution that could help create a binding solution that could influence globally to an extent of how the EU works. Many of the time, it will eventually fall into the hands of the big power of certain countries or certain corporations in the regions. You can see that for example, microchip, you could see that some certain corporations are bigger there. I try not to name them out specifically because given my background, I’m not very comfortable naming them out directly. But many of the time, I want to name the power dynamic there as well. Because in the regions like Asia Pacific, for example, there are certainly countries that is so big with a big market, big political power to also influence how smaller countries react to approach certain issues. And then there’s economical factors on top of political factors that will influence how things are like. And so that’s why I think beyond the actual organizations like RIR were literally to deal with the technical aspect of the internet. I personally do see that the regional NRIRs are the ones that are the ones that are the ones that are the ones that are eyes or local NRIs for some countries, if they do have a more democratic system, they’re helpful as a channel for them to advocate what they concern. Because I do believe there are times where individuals may have to leverage some sort of power, but different kind of power, from people or organization beyond their own physical boundaries. I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s some of the cases. I think just echoing on the questions about whether I think that the multi-stakeholderism will be a beating block, like regionalism will be a beating block for this kind of new multi-lateralism or multi-stakeholderism. I do think that this approach could be a catalyst for that one. Just so how I mentioned earlier, I think how different countries share a geographical context and sometimes because of how they’re… It’s just a more practical way to do it regionally as you can’t really just start everything huge when a small country in one of the regions do not have such global impact where everyone will give them the attention, especially right now with us actually just living like living online, relying on whatever information we get through social media, for example, which is highly manipulative in my own opinion. I think that kind of platform is important, but at the same time, people who are in involved in IGF, regionally or globally, it’s still our own community or bubble sometimes. So I think Tiago mentioned and actually throw out questions about something related to that. Like in terms of collaboration, I think regionalism can favor collaboration beyond the actual physical IGF, whether it happen nationally or regionally. Because I mean, not speaking for businesses, I do believe that unless they are huge corporation which have a lot of resources to send people to a physical IGF to just like show up, to partake in conversation that we’re making, sometimes like smaller businesses, they’re trying to survive. And even if they care, they won’t be as active as those. And that’s why those people are usually missing in our conversation. And that’s why I think there are times some ongoing collaboration is important. But of course, there are many different kinds of businesses, but I won’t be speaking for them at this point. But I start to see that in some of the Southeast Asian countries, for example, especially around the AI area. Last year, I did a research, like a really casual research on how the developments in terms of their policy look like. And I could see that in some of the Southeast Asian country, they kind of like rely a little bit more on public-private collaboration into making things happen. Because I would assume not every country have such a system that allow them to develop something that’s like comprehensive right away, just to start with while they have to catch up everything that’s just like evolving so quickly, right? So I’ll stop here because I do believe. I echoed and respond to a few points that was asked and named earlier, and that’s my take on that. Thank you.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Jenna. I think some good points there, and I was wanting to push a little on the sort of AI aspect of this, not that this is the AI governance forum, but we have seen, I mean, groups like ASEAN, the African Union have all done regional AI strategies in the last 12 months, so we’re certainly seeing that engagement at a regional level, not necessarily in the specifically digital policy and internet governance related groups, but at the more geopolitical element of it as well. Nibal, I’ll pass to you.

Nibal Idlebi: I mean, okay, let me answer Teo, I believe, here some question about his question related to platform and exchanging experience. I believe, as Marco said, IGF, global IGF, is very good platform for sharing experiences. It is really, I believe, during the two previous days, I saw, I turned around, I saw many regional IGF, they were speaking, one of them, it was about the Arab IGF yesterday, there was a session about their experience, and it was really multi-stakeholder, I mean, the intervention and the people who participated in the session were from different background and from different groups, and then I believe such IGF, global IGF, is very good platform for sharing experience, but I will add to it that it could be even, that it could answer maybe this best practices exchange and also this building block that you have asked about. I believe, as, I mean, involved in the IGF and as involved in other platforms, I mean, related to WSIS or other development of policy in general in the IGF. for many, many countries. I believe having more reporting about the IGF, till now IGF they don’t have at the beginning there was any reporting about IGF process at regional or national or international. Then there was introduction at after 10 years of this of the IGFs, there was this introduction of chairperson messages or key messages that were shared by different IGF forum. I believe this is very important for sharing experience and capitalizing and exchanging the best practices and so on. I think reporting on what is taking place on IGF either nationally, regionally or globally, it is really very important for building on the things. It is like that, it will be more important, I would say important element to building the blocks. I mean for building blocks among the different regional IGF or even from national to regional, from regional to the global. This is maybe missing and this is where sometimes myself even when I want to look at the IGF, I don’t know in others area what was the result. It is really difficult to find the result. Then some reporting mechanism in the IGF, the introduction and I’m not here, I’m just giving this idea, it will really be very important for everyone. This is what I want to say and I want to mention that it is really, I mean the multi-stakeholderism that was introduced in the IGF, it was copied everywhere today. I mean in many platform and in many international forum, we find this, it is copied in a way. It is everywhere multi-stakeholderism. Even we are working as international intergovernmental organization. However, today, because we see the value of multi-stakeholderism, we duplicate this model everywhere. In all kind of activity that we are doing today for development, we are working more on development, socio-economic development, we are copying this model. Then multi-stakeholderism, even if there is no voting, I mean sometimes, but however, the process, the multi-stakeholderism that was introduced very much by IGF, it was copied everywhere nowadays in many forums. Then I believe this is really also a very good example to borrow from it and maybe to generalize it.

Chris Buckridge: Okay, thank you very much, Nibel. I think something that jumps out at me from that, and maybe others will want to comment on it. Taking up your final point there about there is this model that has been adopted and embraced by a lot of people, but also the point you made about the reporting back from the IGF to the regional areas. I think that relationship between the NRIs and the global IGF is something that is very important and is evolving. I mean, particularly that question of how do NRIs feed into the global IGF? Is that a sort of defined, distinct process? Or is that something that happens in a very organic way? Does that need to change as we go forward? I will throw to Carolina now, and I am sure we will have then more discussion after that. Carolina?

Carolina Aguerre: Yes, thank you, Chris. So, yes, I am taking your point and then we will address Tiago and Dana’s comments. So, concerning the function of regionalism in multistakeholder stakeholder governance or multilateral governance, I think that that avenue is very much alive. Again, I mean, for many of the national or local communities that are unable to speak or to have a voice or to a representation or even to sort of follow and understand global debates, the region is really there for them. It’s closer to them and there is this value from these different communities. And I’m not just talking about civil society, I’m definitely talking about governments, about SMEs, trade associations in smaller countries or in countries such as in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is, again, as was rightly pointed, I mean, there’s many sub-regions within such a vast cultural continent and with many subcultures and identities and languages as well. So going back to the question concerning the comment that Tiago raised about the role of the Brazilian IGF and CGI, that, again, raises the centrality of having mechanisms and institutions that can allow for this ongoing process, for this transparency and accountability about the discussions, about the outcomes and about how those processes feed into broader, more consistent national discussions, but also into the global IGFs or other relevant institutions. And you did mention, Chris, that you were interested about AI. And I have to say that in Latin America and the Caribbean, there has been a lot going in the. last two years concerning finding and building a regional institutional inter-ministerial platform to address what kind of AI governance the region is looking forward to and actually building on this regionalism is how they have addressed the Global Digital Compact’s search for comments in September. Finally, looking into Dana’s comment, thank you, I think that’s a super relevant question and also to think about is geography or regionalism the only way to address this issue of multi-stakeholderism and again let’s go back and be kindly critical towards the stakeholder discussion which sometimes it’s not just about being a different stakeholder but it’s sharing different points of views in the same space or venue, right? And what you were mentioning about like-minded countries in certain contexts or certain discussions, this brings in the idea that sometimes you may have countries that come from very different parts of the world, have different sizes and different capacities of stakeholder groups but they have a strong opinion about or a normative approach or consensus about how to move forward some of these debates and it is in this respect that this Brussels effect or this approach that the EU may have in some regions, it’s not because there is this, it’s because those values are in a way embraced by other jurisdictions as well so that’s a kind of like-mindedness I’m talking about but you can also find that for example in groups such as the D9, the advanced digital nations where governments from different parts of the world sort of embrace technologies to address government transformation for their citizens. And so this is again another way of reflecting how values, norms, ideas about certain issues make this kind of new networks or coalitions around certain topics.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Karolina. I want to again now maybe throw open to the floor. While you think about putting your hands up, which I encourage you to do both online and in the room here. I think one thing I’d be really interested in, I’m looking around the room here seeing some participants in technical processes and representatives of technical organizations. We started out this session, talking about how that regional approach was sort of embedded in the technical governance space. It would be really interesting to sort of hear in terms of those technical governance processes. Is that regionalism still central? Has that evolved? How has that developed over time? We have a speaker here in the middle of the room first. And then Anil, I see you as well.

Audience: Hello, sir. I’m Sardar Farmanullah from Pakistan. I’m a student of Defence and Strategic Studies at the University of Islamabad. Sir, what the youth can do in regional IGF? Some comments, sir? I’m sure I’ll throw it to our panelists, I’m sure, in terms of how youth can engage in regional groupings. I mean, I think coming back to the first one, there was that capacity building element is a really that educating and showing how they can have that voice is a really important aspect. Okay, Jamal. Thanks. Hi, good morning, everyone. My name is Ulka Atle. I work at the RIPE NCC, one of the five regional Internet registries, and a regional approach has been central to how the RIRs approach Internet governance right from the start. So at least from, I can tell you a little bit about how the RIPE NCC does things. For us, for the past few, for the past several years, we, while we have events that bring together the technical community and other stakeholders from across our region, which is very big, we also do smaller, more focused events. The Middle East Network Operators Group is reaching its 25th year next year. So that’s been a long running event that we have, which brings people together. But one of our more recent ones is the Central Asia Peering and Interconnection Forum, which is just in its third or fourth year. And this is particularly interesting because the Central Asian countries are landlocked. And you have to think about what makes a regional event happen, or success, and, you know, motive, means, and opportunity come to mind. Because when we carried out research on the Internet infrastructure in these countries, and we showed it to representatives there, they realized that cooperation and working together was the way forward for the digital economies that they hope to build. We heard from the minister, the deputy digital minister from Uzbekistan yesterday on the high level session, and he was talking about unlocking the potential of digital economies. But all of that is built on Internet infrastructure, which needs a lot more work. And this is really where we see the benefits of multi-stakeholderism. I also wanted to add that the RIPE NCC supports a lot of network operator groups. to be very technical and we also support a lot of Internet governance conversations, regional IGFs or like CDIG, EuroDIG, but we don’t always see these two groups coming together and that again is what makes the IGF so special. Thank you. Thanks very much, Ulka. Hi, Roman Danidio representing the the IETF here. I’m going to make a slightly different kind of statement, mostly as the IETF is the standards development organization for the Internet. Our approach on kind of regionalism is everyone comes to the IETF kind of as individual, we need everyone to come, come one, come all to provide that multi-stakeholder input, but the charm that makes the Internet work, the interconnectivity of thousands of networks around the Internet is that there is not a regional protocol. If we want an end-to-end Internet that interconnects everyone, it’s about a single collection of different kind of protocols agreed globally that makes the Internet actually kind of possible. So certainly kind of filtering up regional perspective is great, but ultimately that needs to come to one place if we’re going to have one Internet and the IETF develop such protocols, then we welcome everyone to come.

Chris Buckridge: Thanks, Roman. I think that captures, I was going to say, the tension between the global and the regional very nice. You’re not presenting as attention, which I think is important as well. I think it’s not necessarily attention, but it’s something to be balanced and understood as we go through. We had one more question in our planning with our speakers. Possibly we’ve answered it in many ways, but it’s, I think, a good opportunity for our speakers to go around again and maybe engage with some of the questions. It was, for which policy challenges are regional organizations better equipped to tackle than something at the global level like the UN or even the sort of global technical organizations? And we do have Marcus back. Thank you for coming back. we’ll put you on the spot again for that. I’m going to give you this. Oh, you have a microphone there. Thank you. Yes, seems to work. Yes. It is an excellent question. I mean, we refer to it,

Markus Kummer: I think, in our opening statement, each speaker in a different way. I think that is the commonality of the regions, same cultural values, and also different priorities. I think it was also mentioned by one speaker that different regions have different priorities. It became to me obvious when I first went to Africa, access was the number one priority. First, you want to have the internet, and then once you have the internet, there are different issues that come to the fore. If you come from a developing region where access is a major issue, then obviously, the focus will be on promoting access, sharing best practices on how to do that, and also sharing bad practices, what didn’t work. It was quite often that the incumbent telcos did not help with promoting access as they were defending their own priorities, what they owned, and their income. Just to get over that resistance by the incumbents, there was also the interconnection fees governments earned from the telcos. They were afraid of losing that. I do remember attending once a meeting in Africa where one minister said, no, they want to take that away from us. Overlooking the fact, yes, you may lose something, but you get benefits through the connection to the internet, which by far outweigh the interconnection fees. fees you had, but then quite often there were individuals who benefited from the interconnection fees. So that was built in resistance then to change. Yes, it’s nice if I have my car financed through that, why should I give that away? So there are many, many different ways. So just, I mentioned that as a negative example, but you have to overcome these obstacles in order to find good policy. And there, just one example, that was access. But so in different ways, I think regions can also learn. I mean, it’s one of the issues, I think everybody agrees that you have to take care of vulnerable children on the internet. Everybody who is a parent or a grandparent is aware of that, that there is content that is clearly not suitable for young people. Now, how to do that is a different issue. And there again, I mentioned in a previous intervention that governments like to shoot from the hip. So blocking is a quick reaction, a quick solution. And there we, I mean, I say we collectively now, we will go to the IGF and learn from each other. We know that blocking is not a good solution. So we have to talk and say, you know, what are the good solutions? And it’s, maybe it’s like parenting, you know, as a parent, you learn how to prepare your children for the bad world out there. You tell them not to take sweets from strangers and so on and so on. And the same is obviously questioned when you go to the internet. I mean, it’s parents, it’s their first and foremost responsibility to make sure that their children are in a safe space when they go online. Yes, it may be difficult. And not all parents are digital natives. The children are, they quite often, by far. smarter than the parents, they outwit their parents. But again, it’s a question of trust. Parents need to also have trust with their children. But simple word, it’s parenting. And governments cannot take over from the responsibility of parents. And, and, and, and. So they are, because of the cultural affinities, it is easier maybe to share good practices. In the Arabic region, so you are much better suited to find solutions within your own regions. And I’m not talking on hard law solutions, but on soft law solutions, on good practices, on what to do and what not to do. That’s my short comments on this issue.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Marcus. I know we’re having a little choppy sound online, but hopefully it’s going to come back and be better than ever. And I am also planning to throw it at Jenna, but Jenna, can you, are you hearing and you’re okay? Yes. No. And, and I mean, obviously I gave a very brief answer to the question of youth in these before, but you’re certainly much more expert in this. So yeah, very happy to hear your views. Yeah.

Jenna Manhau Fung: And it’s kind of weird to be called an expert in the youth thing, but thank you. The audio works fine now, but in, I realized maybe Marcus’ voice got cut out for like five seconds. I kind of missed it. But to approach and to respond to your last question about for which policy challenges regional organization better equipped to tackle them? I think since I also wanted to respond to that question related to how you’ve engaged, I would say that, like in my opinion, any kinds of policy challenge, especially for example, in Asia Pacific, I think it’s better to kind of approach it that way too, as usually young people, they are relatively having less experience as in how to practice into making policies and all that, comparing to people who might not be a digital natives, but having more experience in different institution into making policy changes. So that’s why in that context, I think for young people especially, trying to find a spot in the regional space to make a change is the first start, as many speakers already mentioned, how we get together to hear different people perspective. I think that’s important and it gives you inspirations on what kind of change you wanna bring, want to make and what kind of insights you wanna bring back to your own countries. Cause I mean, we can’t just like, we chat here, come up with some sort of ideal solution or best practice. And then the world doesn’t just work it that way because those solutions just do not naturally become law right away by the end of the discussion, right? You have to bring it back to your own country and to make the real change that will impact people back in your community who can’t afford to be in this room, talking about this issues. And those are the people who are also being impacted by all the things that we discuss all the time within our community. And so I think at least that’s the thing. I think I value so much. And perhaps some of the young people also share a similar sentiment, if not the same. So I think everyone will have a different path, but try to find your way on what kind of changes you want to make, whether you just want to mostly spending more time advocating, amplifying your voices of your respective community, whether geographically or value-based community. I think that’s very important. And so I think that’s a good starting point. And since I am mostly favoring this regional approach, and I think as different regions getting stronger in some sense, whether they’re being bond, bond, bond through certain topics, values, or purely geographically, I think that’s already making things slightly. I don’t know if that will be easier, but what I understand right now is that the issues we are facing, it’s getting more complex. And then perhaps sometimes this cross-regional approach could be one of the ways that could help us to start a conversation, especially on some sort of topics that may need to be discussed and approached at global level, as I think we mentioned about AI. But for example, their actual, like for example, climate change, it could be disastrous and it affect everyone. And then not directly related to what we’ve been discussing here, but there’s things that kind of menacing to people’s actual life these days where you need that kind of global conversation. But I think there are regional. platform where you can talk about the interests of those people more. And so, um, that’s why I think, I think any kinds of policy, uh, it’s better taking approach and started regionally and then as young people, for example, find their own path, whether you bring it globally or back to your own community. I think that’s like the important first step where we actually try to make change.

Chris Buckridge: Okay. Thank you very much, Jenna, um, Nibal, please. And then I’ll Carolina, and then we’ll have a closing comment.

Nibal Idlebi: Okay. To answer your question about what the regional organization are more suitable to do as, uh, as versus international, uh, for, um, let me say that because we are regional organization and we are working, we are related to the UN of course, but we are also working at regional level. I believe, uh, regional, uh, institute or regional organization are more suitable in general to make policy and to propose how to make policy and the strategy for specific area, like for example, uh, information society, knowledge society, research and development and so on. Um, um, but I mean, this is, I believe based on our experience. I want to tell you a story. I, when I started working with Esquire, I was, uh, dedicated as task to make a guidelines for information society for the Arab region, and I tried to copy what is the, uh, EU is doing in this regard. However, I was, it was useless for me, the experience of EU for one example, because the governance process in the Arab region, it is, I mean, I learned a lot from EU, uh, really, I mean, I learned a lot from the EU experience. However, because the governance process of the information society or the ICT sector in the Arab region is completely different, it is more oriented towards government who is. leading, not the private sector who is leading, then the scope was completely changed. I mean, then I was obliged to completely change the scope of the work because I mean, the governance process in the Arab region is completely different. It is guided by the government while it is guided by private sector in the area. And this make a change because the government in these cases in Europe, they are facilitator, they are enabler, they are not the one who do things. Then they are the facilitator, they make the regulation, enabling environment, whatever. However, in the Arab countries, it was everything controlled by the government. Then they have to do everything. Then the formulation of the strategy and the policy and the guidelines that we developed, it was completely different scope. However, we learned a lot from EU. We learned also a lot from the EU, for example, in rule and regulation. I believe and here the regional organization can do a lot also in regulation and legislation, legislative process. And because also the similarity in the governance process and in the administrative process at the regional level might be different from other region. And this is this administrative and how they deal with things and the cultural issue. Here it comes into the scope that the cultural issue also different at regional level. Then I believe the regional organization are more suitable to propose a regional dimension of legal and regulatory framework. I want to add one another, if you allow me. Yeah, rapidly. I believe the regional organization has a lot of role for answering to support state or member countries in the region to respond to the global agenda. For example, sustainable development goals, for example, a global digital compact nowadays. And you counted, there is a lot of global agenda and I believe the regional organization can support member state, their member state, whatever. it is much more than international one because of the similarity among countries. Thank you.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Nibal. Apologies for rushing you at the end. Carolina, please, some closing thoughts from you.

Carolina Aguerre: Yes, so just to complement what has already been mentioned by the other speakers, I mean, and the word services emerged a lot of times. I mean, if we make a word count of how many times the value of regional organizations that may contribute to this idea of service, I think this is crucial. So it’s service, it’s delivery, it’s being closer to the citizens which are being affected by these kind of policies. And so you really need to sort of be like the on the ground delivery of these global policies or general principles that then need to sort of get to the ground. And I also want to add another point, which is the essential for the information and digital society, which is that of infrastructure. And I do think that regional organizations are key institutions and processes that enable the thought process and the development of digital infrastructure. And this is something that we’ve seen already in the past with internet related technologies from ISPs, IXPs, undersea cables, that kind of connectivity, but it’s also the kind of discussions that we are beginning to see emerging more and more in Latin America and in the Caribbean concerning the infrastructure that is needed to develop AI capacity. Thank you.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Karolina. We’ve got just a little bit of time left, but I wanted to… And this workshop has been put together and driven by Nadia Chaha and Shahan Jamal Shaheen. And I want to give Nadia a chance and then Jamal to finish us off there. So Nadia, please.

Nadia Tjahja: Thank you very much. And thank you very much to the speakers and also the people in the room for your comments and your interventions. And I highly encourage you, if you haven’t seen, we’re taking notes online and you could still put in feedback and comments. We really want to start using this to build our conversation on. And what I would like to take a very brief moment on is to answer the question on how youth can participate in regional processes. And what I think is important is to take this opportunity while you’re here at the IGF to meet up with some of the NRIs. So there are NRI sessions where you can go to, where you can actually meet the people who are organizing events that are happening in your spaces. So for example, for Europe, there is the European Dialogue on Internet Governance or EURODIG. They have a stand. And also, if you go to these NRI sessions and you see these people on the stage, please don’t hesitate to actually walk up to them and say, hey, I live and work in your region. Can you please advise me? But if you are not able to find people on site, you can also find it on the IGF website for the NRIs. And also Jenna is one of the coordinators who facilitates youth participation in the NRI spaces. But if you don’t have a regional event or a regional space where you could go to, there is a dynamic coalition called the Youth Coalition on Internet Governance, and they have a regional representative space on the UN regions. So you are able to reach out to that representative and they can help you and support you with setting up your own events or connect you to other people in your region. your space who are working on particular youth issues or just wanting to connect to other young people. So it is not a space where you have to feel alone. And there are opportunities out there, especially for those. There are summer schools, winter schools and other youth events that are being organized. So the way to get involved is start joining the Youth Coalition Incident Governance mailing list, going to the NRI sessions, and also join the youth newsletter that is on the IGF. I hope that is very helpful. And I would then give the floor back to the moderator. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you, Nadia. And Jamal, going to you for last word here.

Jamal Shahin: Yeah, thanks. Chris, thanks very much to our panelists as well. Everybody. It’s been a great discussion. And thanks to everybody here. I have a lot of things to say, but there’s a lady at the back who wants me to finish. So I will go through just a few points. A few points as a reflection on what we heard, and how this fits into an ongoing research program that we’re carrying out at the UNU in Bruges, the United University for Comparative Regional Integration Studies. So we’re looking at this idea of regionalism. This is the thing that’s causing the problem. Okay, there we go. So, okay, we’re looking into how regions can be useful. also in the IGF sphere. I think, Mark, no, it doesn’t help. In project, Nadia has been in, Nadia has been, it’s working. Okay. Nadia has been involved in a project that we’ve been doing, comparing trade to internet governance. Be really interesting. We found that there’s quite a lot of differences that make this very difficult to compare these two. So I’d love to go into more on that. I think also this idea of the global needs of the technical community of the internet, in fact, and the regional needs of the actors to actually build up a common position is actually quite challenging. We need to think more about how those pathways from the regional to the global actually play out in something like the IGF. I think also we need to think that regions are only one of the complex set of actors in the mosaic. We have non-geographically contiguous actors as well. I think, Carolina, you mentioned them as other geopolitical actors, like the G7, the OECD, and so on. I think, Dana, you also alluded to this in your question. I think those are very important relations to think about as well. How does the region fit into the non-regional responses here as well? I think these are questions that we’ll carry on talking about as we go into the implementation of the GDC, as we go on to thinking about how the IGF will work and what role different actors like regional actors will play in the IGF in the future. So it’s been a great way to actually have this discussion with people, open up this way of thinking on our part, and also get some insights into this. The document that we’re doing will hopefully turn into… something a bit much more. So we’re looking forward to that. Thanks very much, Chris.

Chris Buckridge: Thank you very much, Jamal. And thank you, Jamal and Nadia for organizing this session. Thank you to our speakers. We’ve got Marcus, Nibal, Carolina and Jenna. Thank you all for being here and for your active participation in the discussion. We’ll bring this to a close. Have a good day.

Agreement Points

Importance of regional approach in internet governance

Chris Buckridge

Markus Kummer

Jenna Manhau Fung

Nibal Idlebi

Carolina Aguerre

Regional approach addresses logistical issues like time zones, languages, and cultural differences

Regional forums provide platform for amplifying voices, especially for youth

Regionalism allows for capacity building and bringing people into understanding of internet governance

Regional approach enables thought process and development of digital infrastructure

All speakers agreed on the significance of regional approaches in addressing specific needs, facilitating participation, and developing infrastructure in internet governance.

Relationship between regional and global internet governance

Chris Buckridge

Markus Kummer

Nibal Idlebi

Regional forums help strengthen voices in global discussions

Regional internet registries complement global ICANN governance

Regional organizations can support member states in responding to global agendas

Speakers emphasized the complementary nature of regional and global internet governance, with regional initiatives strengthening local voices and supporting global agendas.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers noted an evolution in regional approaches to address emerging technological challenges and a renewed interest in regional forums.

Jenna Manhau Fung

Carolina Aguerre

Regional approach evolving to address new issues like AI governance

There is renewed interest in regional forums in Latin America and Caribbean

Both speakers highlighted the potential for regional solutions to influence broader policy-making, either by becoming global standards or by better addressing local needs.

Markus Kummer

Nibal Idlebi

Regional solutions like EU’s GDPR can become global standards

Regional organizations better equipped to propose policies suited to local governance processes

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of non-geographical regional groupings

Carolina Aguerre

Jamal Shahin

There is renewed interest in regional forums in Latin America and Caribbean

Need to consider non-geographically contiguous actors and coalitions

While most discussions focused on geographical regions, both Aguerre and Shahin pointed out the importance of considering non-geographical groupings in internet governance, which was an unexpected area of consensus.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement included the importance of regional approaches in internet governance, the complementary relationship between regional and global governance, and the evolution of regional initiatives to address emerging challenges.

Consensus level

There was a high level of consensus among the speakers on the value and relevance of regionalism in internet governance. This strong agreement implies that regional approaches are likely to continue playing a crucial role in shaping internet governance policies and practices, potentially leading to more tailored solutions for specific regions while contributing to global governance frameworks.

Different Viewpoints

Role of regional organizations in policy-making

Markus Kummer

Nibal Idlebi

Regional solutions like EU’s GDPR can become global standards

Regional organizations better equipped to propose policies suited to local governance processes

While Kummer emphasizes the potential for regional solutions to become global standards, Idlebi focuses on the ability of regional organizations to tailor policies to local contexts.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement were subtle and centered around the specific roles and capabilities of regional organizations in internet governance.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers was relatively low. Most speakers generally agreed on the importance and relevance of regionalism in internet governance, with differences mainly in emphasis and specific applications. This low level of disagreement suggests a broad consensus on the value of regional approaches, which could facilitate more coordinated efforts in developing regional internet governance strategies.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the importance of regional approaches in addressing emerging technological challenges, but they focus on different aspects: Fung emphasizes policy development for AI, while Aguerre highlights infrastructure development.

Jenna Manhau Fung

Carolina Aguerre

Regional approach evolving to address new issues like AI governance

Regional approach enables thought process and development of digital infrastructure

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers noted an evolution in regional approaches to address emerging technological challenges and a renewed interest in regional forums.

Jenna Manhau Fung

Carolina Aguerre

Regional approach evolving to address new issues like AI governance

There is renewed interest in regional forums in Latin America and Caribbean

Both speakers highlighted the potential for regional solutions to influence broader policy-making, either by becoming global standards or by better addressing local needs.

Markus Kummer

Nibal Idlebi

Regional solutions like EU’s GDPR can become global standards

Regional organizations better equipped to propose policies suited to local governance processes

Key Takeaways

Regional approaches are important for addressing logistical issues, cultural differences, and capacity building in internet governance

Regional forums provide platforms for amplifying voices, especially for youth and developing countries

Regional organizations are well-positioned to propose policies suited to local governance processes

There needs to be a balance between regional perspectives and global protocols for an interconnected internet

National and regional internet governance initiatives (NRIs) are a significant outcome of the IGF process

Regional approaches are evolving to address new issues like AI governance

Resolutions and Action Items

Encourage youth to connect with NRIs and regional representatives to get involved in internet governance

Consider how to improve reporting and information sharing between regional and global IGF processes

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively balance regional needs with global technical requirements of the internet

How non-geographically contiguous actors and coalitions fit into the regional approach to internet governance

How to improve pathways from regional to global internet governance processes

Suggested Compromises

Use regional forums to develop common positions that can then feed into global discussions

Adopt a multi-layered approach that includes regional, sub-regional and like-minded country groupings in addition to traditional geographic regions

We have one global solution to, uh, security, but that’s also highly controversial right now. And it shows it’s not easy to find global solutions with that.

speaker

Marcus Kummer

reason

This comment highlights the tension between global and regional approaches to internet governance, particularly around security issues. It introduces complexity by acknowledging that even when global solutions exist, they may be controversial.

impact

This set the stage for further discussion on the merits and challenges of regional versus global approaches throughout the conversation.

As you might know, Asia Pacific is really huge. There are many languages and there are different cultures as well. Even there are times when we talk about the topics that we approach there would be very different from Europe, I would imagine.

speaker

Jenna Manhau Fung

reason

This comment provides concrete examples of why regional approaches can be valuable, highlighting the diversity within regions that global approaches may not adequately address.

impact

It shifted the conversation to consider more nuanced views of regionalism, acknowledging intra-regional diversity as well as inter-regional differences.

Based on our experience, I believe the regional dimension is very important. As Marcus was saying, we are sharing the same challenges in the region. We are aware of the dynamism of the countries in the region. We know very well the stakeholders.

speaker

Nibal Idlebi

reason

This comment reinforces the value of regional approaches by emphasizing shared challenges and stakeholder knowledge within regions.

impact

It deepened the discussion on the practical benefits of regionalism in internet governance.

Lately, I would say that in my region, regionalism has tended to become more interesting for actors, and I’m not exactly sure why, but I think that this, a lot of the geopolitical turn concerning the governance of the internet, but also the governance of AI, really leaves much less space to think about the development of these infrastructures and the platforms that citizens want to engage with and the actual local power dimensions that need to be addressed.

speaker

Carolina Aguerre

reason

This comment introduces a new perspective on why regionalism may be gaining importance, linking it to geopolitical shifts and emerging technologies like AI.

impact

It broadened the scope of the discussion to consider how global geopolitical trends are influencing regional internet governance approaches.

Is there a role for middle powers to start to become their own region, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand have been moving together joined statements in the space of the GDC and WSIS plus 20. But do we need to start seeing like regions emerge across like similar economic frameworks, similar political policies that might not be geographically the same, but have different socioeconomic factors to make a region such as including, for example, like the Nordic countries within them.

speaker

Dana Kramer (audience member)

reason

This question challenges traditional notions of regionalism based solely on geography, proposing a new conceptualization based on shared economic and political frameworks.

impact

It sparked discussion on evolving definitions of regionalism and how non-geographic factors might influence regional groupings in internet governance.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by progressively expanding and nuancing the concept of regionalism in internet governance. The conversation moved from acknowledging basic regional differences to exploring intra-regional diversity, practical benefits of regional approaches, geopolitical influences, and even reconceptualizing what constitutes a ‘region’. This evolution allowed for a rich, multifaceted examination of regionalism’s role in internet governance, considering both its current state and potential future developments.

How can regional, national, and global IGFs better share experiences and best practices?

speaker

Tiago

explanation

This would help improve knowledge sharing and collaboration between different levels of IGFs

How can middle powers like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand form their own ‘region’ based on shared values rather than geography?

speaker

Dana Kramer

explanation

This explores alternative ways of conceptualizing regions beyond traditional geographic boundaries

How might different communities become new ‘digital empires’ in internet governance over the next 10 years?

speaker

Dana Kramer

explanation

This looks at potential future shifts in power dynamics in global internet governance

What role can youth play in regional IGFs?

speaker

Sardar Farmanullah

explanation

This explores how to better engage and empower youth in regional internet governance processes

How can the relationship and information flow between NRIs and the global IGF be improved?

speaker

Chris Buckridge

explanation

This examines how to strengthen connections between regional and global internet governance forums

Summary

This panel discussion focused on the role of AI in enhancing trust and improving governance, particularly in the public sector. The panelists, representing Meta, OECD, and Oracle, explored how AI can reshape government services and build public trust. They emphasized the importance of open-source AI approaches to democratize access and foster innovation, especially in developing countries. The discussion highlighted the potential of AI to streamline government processes, from passport renewals to tax services, while also addressing concerns about data sovereignty and privacy.

The panelists stressed the need for harmonized global regulations to avoid fragmentation and ensure interoperability across jurisdictions. They discussed various regulatory approaches, including the EU AI Act and more principle-based frameworks in other regions. The importance of public-private partnerships was underscored, with examples of how governments can leverage private sector expertise and startup innovation to implement AI solutions effectively.

Key challenges addressed included building trust in AI technologies, ensuring data protection, and balancing innovation with regulation. The panelists shared examples of AI applications in healthcare, agriculture, and public safety, demonstrating the transformative potential of AI in improving public services. They also touched on the importance of education and transparency in AI adoption to build public trust.

The discussion concluded with an emphasis on the critical role of partnerships between governments, private sector companies, and startups in driving responsible AI innovation and implementation in the public sector. Overall, the panel highlighted the significant potential of AI to enhance government efficiency and public trust, while acknowledging the need for careful consideration of ethical and regulatory frameworks.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The role of AI in improving government services and public trust

– The importance of open source AI and data sovereignty

– Regulatory approaches to AI, including the EU AI Act

– Public-private partnerships and startup involvement in AI innovation

– Challenges around data sharing and trust in AI implementation

Overall purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore how AI can be leveraged responsibly by governments to improve public services and build trust, while addressing challenges around regulation, data privacy, and partnerships.

Tone:

The tone was largely optimistic and solution-oriented, with panelists highlighting the potential benefits of AI for government services while acknowledging challenges. There was a collaborative spirit, with panelists building on each other’s points. The tone remained consistent throughout, maintaining a balance of enthusiasm for AI’s potential and pragmatism about implementation challenges.

Speakers

– Brandon Soloski: Center for Corporate Diplomacy at Meridian International

– Sarim Aziz: Director for Public Policy for South and Central Asia at Meta

– Lucia Russo: Economist and Policy Analyst at the OECD, focused on digital economy and policy division

– Pellerin Matis: Vice President of Global Government Affairs at Oracle

Additional speakers:

– Anil Pura: Audience member from Nepal

AI for Responsible Governance: Enhancing Trust and Improving Public Services

This panel discussion, moderated by Brandon Soloski from the World Economic Forum, featured representatives from Meta, OECD, and Oracle exploring the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in enhancing trust and improving governance, with a particular focus on the public sector. The panelists included Sarim Aziz, Head of Public Policy for Asia Pacific at Meta; Lucia Russo, Head of Unit for Digital Government and Data at OECD; and Pellerin Matis, Senior Director for Public Sector Strategy at Oracle.

Setting the Context: Trust in Government and Technology

Brandon Soloski opened the discussion by referencing the Edelman Trust Barometer, which showed a significant trust deficit in government institutions globally. He also mentioned an IBM Institute for Business Value survey indicating that while 50% of government executives believe AI and automation will have a positive impact on their workforce, only 20% have taken action to implement these technologies.

Key Themes and Discussions

1. AI’s Potential to Enhance Government Efficiency and Services

The speakers unanimously agreed on AI’s significant potential to improve government efficiency and service delivery. Lucia Russo from the OECD emphasized AI’s capacity to enhance government responsiveness, while Pellerin Matis of Oracle provided concrete examples of AI applications:

– Healthcare: Improving delivery, hospital management, and patient care

– Citizen Services: More efficient passport renewal and document processing

– Agriculture: Enhanced monitoring and resource management

– Public Safety: Improved surveillance and emergency response systems

– Legal and Legislative Work: AI-assisted document processing and analysis

Sarim Aziz from Meta highlighted AI’s potential in streamlining government operations across multiple domains.

2. Building Trust in AI for Government Use

A central theme was the importance of building public trust in AI technologies for government applications. The speakers proposed several approaches:

– Sovereign AI and Cloud Infrastructure: Pellerin Matis advocated for dedicated cloud infrastructure to protect government data.

– Open Source AI: Sarim Aziz argued that open source AI increases transparency and accessibility, potentially fostering greater trust and ensuring global participation.

– Public-Private Partnerships: Lucia Russo stressed the importance of collaboration between governments and the private sector, citing Egypt as an example of successful partnership.

– Education and Transparency: Brandon Soloski highlighted the need for AI education and clear communication of benefits to increase public trust.

3. AI Regulation and Policy Approaches

The discussion touched on various regulatory approaches to AI:

– Global Harmonization: Pellerin Matis emphasized the need for harmonized global AI regulations to avoid fragmentation.

– Risk-Based Approaches: Lucia Russo advocated for risk-based and evidence-based regulatory approaches, mentioning the OECD’s work on AI governance principles.

– Principle-Based Regulation: Sarim Aziz noted that many Asia-Pacific countries are adopting principle-based rather than prescriptive AI regulations.

– G7 Hiroshima Process: The panel discussed the ongoing efforts to develop international AI governance frameworks.

4. Challenges in Government AI Adoption

Key challenges identified included:

– Legacy IT Systems: Pellerin Matis pointed out that outdated infrastructure and data silos hinder government AI adoption, citing Singapore’s efforts to overcome these challenges.

– Data Privacy and Security: Audience members raised concerns about data protection impacting trust in AI implementation.

– Digital Divide: The need to ensure equitable access to AI benefits across countries was highlighted as an unresolved issue.

5. The Evolving Nature of AI

Pellerin Matis provided perspective on the current AI landscape, noting the significant leap forward represented by technologies like ChatGPT:

“What’s new with ChatGPT and generative AI is not AI itself… What’s new is that it’s now accessible to everyone.”

6. Open Source AI and Global Accessibility

Sarim Aziz made a strong case for open source AI as a means to ensure global participation and accessibility:

“We need to fundamentally change the way, the path forward needs to be an open source one that has wide acceptance, that is accessible to all countries… to ensure that nobody gets left behind, to ensure that people in this part of the world and other parts of the world have a part in their conversation.”

Conclusion and Future Considerations

The panel discussion highlighted AI’s potential to enhance government efficiency and public trust while acknowledging the need for careful consideration of ethical and regulatory frameworks. The speakers emphasized the critical role of partnerships between governments, private sector companies, and startups in driving responsible AI innovation and implementation in the public sector.

Several areas for further exploration were identified:

1. Strategies for overcoming trust issues in data sharing between government and private sector

2. Balancing innovation with data privacy and security concerns in government AI adoption

3. Addressing the digital divide and ensuring equitable access to AI benefits across countries

4. Exploring AI applications in emerging and frontier markets

5. Ensuring interoperability across various AI regulatory frameworks

As governments continue to explore and implement AI solutions, addressing these challenges will be crucial for realizing the full potential of AI in improving public services and building trust in governance.

Brandon Soloski: Okay, that’s interesting. I hear a little bit of a delay. Good idea. All right. Good afternoon, early afternoon, everyone. I’m not sure if folks in the room are able to hear me. Welcome, everyone. My name is Brandon Soloski. Welcome again to our session today on revitalizing trust, harnessing AI for responsible governance. Again, my name is Brandon Soloski I am with the Center for Corporate Diplomacy at Meridian International. It’s a pleasure today to be in the intersection that we are at right now. And I’m very fortunate to be joined by some distinguished panelists who will be joining me today to talk about this pressing issue. To my left, Sarim Aziz, Director for Public Policy for South and Central Asia of Meta is joining me. In addition, over across the way from me is Lusa Russo, Economist and Policy Analyst at the OECD, focused on digital economy and policy division. And across my way, we have Matisse Pellerin, Vice President of Global Government Affairs at Oracle. Before we go ahead and begin, we’ll go ahead and just provide some quick introductions to our work, our companies, just to give you a little bit of a flavor of where we’re coming from as we dive into the subject today. I’ll turn it over to Sarim.

Sarim Aziz: Thank you, Brandon. And thanks, everybody, for being here on this really important discussion. So yeah, my name is Sarim. I’ve been at Meta for over eight years. I actually did not start on the policy side. I’ve been on the technology side of working on AI and mobile applications for most of my career. I’ve only worked in tech. But yeah, more increasingly… you know, we found that even though MEDA has been working on the app for over 10 years, actually, that this conversation has definitely, you know, gone up to the next level. So excited to be here and, you know, add to the discussion.

Brandon Soloski: Lucia?

Lucia Russo: Thank you, and good morning, good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation. I’m Lucia Russo, as it was said, at the OECD. At the OECD, we have a division that works on international AI governance. So it started years ago with the adoption of the OECD principles that are basically a guide for policymakers and stakeholders on how to foster trustworthy, innovative AI. And since then, we’ve been working to advance this work with our member states and beyond. We have also work that touches upon different sectors. And today we’ll talk about the public sector and, yeah, and then other domains. But I’ll stop here.

Sarim Aziz: Hi, good morning, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be with you today in Riyadh.

Pellerin Matis: Thank you very much for the invitation. So I’m Mathis Perrin. I’m the Global Vice President for Government Affairs at Oracle. I joined Oracle 2019, so almost six years ago. And my main job is to manage government affairs for Oracle outside the U.S. So in that job, I work a lot with government officials to see how technologies can help them be more efficient and support government public services around the world. For the one who don’t really know Oracle, probably you know the brand, you know the logo, but you don’t know what we do. It’s very common. So Oracle, we are a cloud infrastructure and a cloud application company. So we provide technology for private sector, for governments to manage their daily operations. So it can go from HR, payroll, but also customer experience. And you will find lots of our technologies in lots of sectors, including health care, e-government, financial services, and much more. So we have a very large portfolio and are very happy to join this discussion because AI is something very important now that we are investing a lot in that field. And in addition to our cloud infrastructure, AI technology is becoming much more important now.

Brandon Soloski: Thank you again, Serena, Malucia, and Mathis. Really excited to dig into our topic today, but before I go ahead and begin, there’s a couple of things I wanted to talk about in terms of trust. I work at the Center for Corporate Diplomacy at Meridian International. At the Center for Corporate Diplomacy, we are trying to provide the private sector with the experience, the tools, and the insights to navigate geopolitical issues, to understand matters related to trade, over-the-horizon policy matters that impact business. We do that by providing insights to our partners almost on a weekly basis, whether that be a foreign visiting minister or ambassador. The relationships that the private sector now has with the foreign diplomatic community, with governments, is now more important than ever. For the private sector, they are the new diplomats. They are part of the diplomatic community, and this is a new age that we are in at Meridian that we often refer to as open diplomacy. And one of the reasons this is so pertinent right now as well is when it comes to trust. trust. One of the things I wanted to highlight, and I don’t know if anyone ever follows the Global Advisory Edelman Trust Barometer Index. So Edelman, a public relations advisory firm, every year puts out a trust barometer index. They survey over 30 countries, thousands of participants all over the world. And what they found, I found, was quite curious to this conversation as well. The private sector is now the most trusted institution in the world, followed by the nonprofit sector, followed by governments, followed by media. There’s been times in my working life where I know that’s been completely reversed, where the private sector was not the most trusted institution. But we’ve seen quite an uptick over the past years, and that’s starting to ebb a little bit in terms of how high trust in the private sector is, but it’s still front and center. The private sector really is leading the way with diplomacy when talking about AI, when talking about governments, when talking about the possibilities that exist within this new infrastructure that we are now building out. So one of the things we’re going to talk about today, just on that topic of trust, there’s so much potential with AI, from potholes, navigating taxes, to getting your passport renewed, some of the most tedious things that we all deal with. The ability and the opportunity that AI presents is truly tremendous. But at the same time, I refer to that element of trust, 66% of global respondents right now actively believe that governments are purposely trying to mislead them. When you look at that stat right now in trust and governance, it is quite low, and there’s a lot to be done when it comes to AI and when it comes to this topic, and the possibilities are truly tremendous. So one of the things I wanted to start talking about was a survey that was done just recently conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value, and they found that respondents believe government leaders are often overestimating public’s trust in them. They also found that while the public is still worried about new technologies like AI, most people are in favor of government adoption of generative AI. So I’d like to open this up a little bit to my panel. So how can AI reshape this frustrating process often linked to the distrust of government and mitigate these touch points to build faith towards ethical, fair, and trustworthy AI solutions? Okay.

Lucia Russo: Okay. Thank you. I can start with that, and as I mentioned, we have at the OECD the public government directorate that is doing tremendous work in this field. And I believe that if used correctly, AI can indeed strengthen trust in the public sector. If you look at the components for government that are influencing trust, citizens’ trust, these include, for instance, responsiveness and reliability. So where can we have AI improve those two government components? So if you look at reliability, as you were mentioning, there are a number of tasks that can be done with AI. For instance, enhancing internal efficiency of processes, so speeding up routine processes and freeing up work of civil servants for tasks that are more useful to the citizens, and also improving the effectiveness of policymaking, for instance, by understanding through large amounts of data. of data, what better what the user needs are, and then when it comes to responsiveness, also being able to anticipating societal trends and user needs. So there is this report that was recently issued and it’s called Governing with AI, are we ready? And there are interesting statistics about how OECD countries have been using AI for these three key tasks that I just described, and we found that 70% of OECD countries used AI to enhance efficiency in internal operation, 67% to improve responsiveness of services, but only 30% to enhance effectiveness of public policy. So we see that this trend is ongoing, but of course it’s still not fully at scale, so here an important consideration is of course that the public sector has also a huge responsibility of implementing AI in a way that is accountable, transparent, and ultimately trustworthy for their citizens, and especially to minimize harms when it comes to special areas like immigration law or law enforcement, or even welfare benefits or fraud prevention. So here I would recall, as I mentioned, the OECD principles that really define what key values should be embedded in any deployment and development of AI, and I mentioned some of them, transparency, accountability, fairness, respect of privacy. And I’ll just end also with a final note on how public sector should build the enablers, so the skills, the infrastructure, and data for trustworthy innovation to actually flourish.

Brandon Soloski: Thank you so much. Matisse?

Pellerin Matis: If I can add a comment, I think I fully agree that education is very important, and if you want to promote trust in technology, especially on AI, you really need to make sure people really understand what is a technology and understand what is AI, how is it built, and how the data is managed, and that’s probably the first pillar of building trust. As a tech company, of course, our role is to support that, and we are working a lot with our colleagues. customers to provide them some digital trainings and some specific sessions to help them understand how AI is used in our solutions and how AI is built, how we can fight bias on AI, how you can manage your data and make sure that they are safe. Because you don’t use an AI tool the same way if it’s managed, if it’s a GPT or if it’s a government AI tool. It’s not the same way. It doesn’t build on the same technology. Another angle is, of course, transparency and explaining how our AI solutions are built, which, of course, will improve confidence in this technology. However, I think education is the first layer, but it’s not the only one. And there is also probably a more technical discussion to have about AI. And that’s why understanding the technologies is important to be able to go to the second layer, because if you have a more technical discussion, you need to make sure people really understand. So that brings me to the topic of sovereign AI. I think sovereign AI is becoming more and more important, especially for the private sector, because it ensures the data is secure and safe. If you’re a government, if you’re a private company, you’re not going to use the same AI technology that me or people in the audience here who are going to connect to chat GPT and use AI for their personal activities, or you go to X, a former Twitter, and use a new model, which has been just released last week. If you’re a private company or a government, you need to make sure that you are going to be able to train the AI models on some infrastructures that are safe, and your data is not going to be used by someone else, especially if you put some very confidential data. So I think sovereign AI definitions, at least that’s how I define sovereign AI, there is probably. two ways to defining, two things you need to check. First, what AI models you’re using. And are you able to train the models with your own data? And actually, when you are government, being able to train an AI solution using government data is super important. But you can only do that if you are able to get access to the models and train with your own data. If you cannot do that with ChatGPT, for instance, and sorry, Microsoft is not here. I’m just bashing ChatGPT, but I love ChatGPT, by the way. But I will not put my confidential data from Oracle in ChatGPT, because Microsoft is my competitor. So I cannot use this model to work. I need to have my own. So that’s very important. And so being able to give access to some LLMs and train the LLMs, LLMs is Large-Angle Models. To be able to train these LLMs with your own data is super important. That’s what we try to do in Oracle. We have lots of customers that are involved in very critical operations, like if you’re a nuclear plant or if you are a health care company, you need to be able to get access to these LLMs and use your own data. So we work with OpenAI. We work with Cohere, et cetera. And we give the ability to our customers to get these technologies, but with their own data. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is where your data is hosted and where your data is going. Because if you are a research institute or a university or an academic institution, you’re making some good research on a specific topic, maybe you don’t want your AI trainings to go in the US or to go in China. So that’s also another point, where you’re going to put your AI data. And it’s very important for if you want to build a sovereign AI, you need a sovereign infrastructure. So what is in the back? In the back office, I want to say of AI, it’s cloud. It’s very easy. Cloud technology is the first layer of AI. So you need to have a sovereign cloud which is going to host your data to make sure your data is not going to leave the country, and your data are going to be based in the country where you’re based. So that’s very important. And it’s even more important for government. And just to finish on that, to give an example is what we are currently doing here in Saudi Arabia. Oracle is building cloud infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. And we already operate a few data centers in Jeddah, in Riyadh, and very soon in Neom. However, we know that government entities here in Saudi Arabia, they want to have the benefits of cloud and AI technology. But they don’t want to put all their data in a public cloud. They want a sovereign cloud. So what we are doing here in Saudi Arabia is that we are also building, in addition to a public cloud, we are also building sovereign cloud with STC. STC is Saudi Telecom. It’s a telecom company here in Saudi Arabia. And STC is building, with Oracle, a sovereign cloud where we are going to be able to train and host critical data from the Saudi government, and make sure when they use AI technology, when they embed AI technology into public services in Saudi Arabia, they will be able to use government data and make sure it’s safe, and it’s not going back elsewhere. It’s not going back to the US. It’s not going back to UAE. It’s based here in Saudi Arabia. That’s very important.

Brandon Soloski: Thank you so much. And more questions to follow up on that related to some of the work here, as well as making sure data remains sovereign, and that we have interoperability as well. So quite a lot on this subject. But I want to turn it over to Mr. Aziz very quick.

Sarim Aziz: Thank you, Brennan, and thank you to my panelists. I think, as Lucia set the scene on the principles, and Matisse talked about some of the considerations for deployment, I think it’s important to just emphasize that, I mean, AI is not a new thing, right? I think sometimes we forget it’s, you know, I think it’s important to kind of differentiate and reframe the discussion around, like, why is this, the trust that you definitely mentioned, like, why is that increasing? You know, for something that, you know, what is the difference between the AI that we were using five years ago versus the AI today, from the perspective that, you know, AI has been used in any computer system that helps, like, analyze, perform functions on existing data. That’s been happening for a while. But what’s so exciting about this new age of AI, so to speak, is the fact that its ability to not just perform tasks on existing data, but to create new data. And this is, it’s multimodal. It can take text. It can take images. It can take video, audio. So that’s the exciting part. And I think that does what’s crucial as to what Matisse is saying, that this is so important, this technology. And we do believe at Meta that it has a transformative potential, to the point that it’s so important that it shouldn’t be, you know, in the hands of a few, which is the trust, which is actually exacerbating the trust deficit. You can’t have, you know, a few big companies based in the United States. Where do we get this technology, right? Especially in the developing world. So I think it’s really important to understand that the current model, especially as Matias kind of highlighted, of these closed proprietary systems owned by a few companies, is just not going to get us there. So we need to fundamentally change the way, the path forward needs to be an open source one that has wide acceptance, that is accessible to all countries. And I think that’s why Meta has, our CEO wrote this letter about open source AI is the way forward to ensure that nobody gets left behind, to ensure that people in this part of the world and other parts of the world have a part in their conversation. They can test the models, they can understand, they can look under the hood, see how it’s done. They can take it and fine-tune it, as Matias said, to their local cultural context and languages. So I just want to be clear, I think that is going to be fundamental in terms of governments adopting and supporting the open innovation approach to ensure they don’t get left behind, that they’re part of that conversation. I have lots more to say on that, but I just wanted to like seed that idea.

Brandon Soloski: No, that’s an absolutely great point. And that brings me to a little bit of my next question as well. So we’re not quite there yet, but not far on the horizon. One would want to ask AI about their evaluation that they received, or maybe the patient that was denied service as a result of AI, or other mix-ups that might happen, and the powerlessness that one might feel as a result of that. So I would be very curious to follow up on your question as well, and I would love for Matias and Lucia also to comment. But with Meta, can you talk to me a little bit about how Meta is leveraging and working with government to improve public services and enhance trust in AI?

Sarim Aziz: Thanks, Brandon. So yeah, I think in our conversations with government, we do see with our open-source approach that we see amazing adoption with startups. They love open-source technology. I mean, Meta, again, as I said, they’re not new to open-source. If you are familiar with web technologies, Meta has done plenty of open-source work around that, around React and many other technologies. In AI itself, we have a thousand different libraries prior to these LLMs that we’ve open-sourced. So I think the main consideration with government is, one, trying to tell them that, you know, if you are already doing an open data approach, that an open AI approach, open innovation approach is going to be an extension of that, right? So the first is, like, are your data sets open in terms of, like, allowing the public sector and the startups and private sector that works with those data sets? I mean, it’s becoming ubiquitous in terms of data sets. Yes, like, you need to control where it’s at. You need to have full control over it, be able to customize it. But I think it’s just, like, really about democratizing the access to that, to the data sets, but also, like, the models. And it’s about, you know, telling them that there’s this conception that, well, you know, open-source is not safe or secure. And that’s actually absolutely not true. In fact, the cybersecurity industry will tell you, including the DoD, that it’s not helpful in the cybersecurity space when signals and data are not shared. In fact, you have to share with third parties to ensure that you’re able to respond to the threats and bad actors. So from our perspective, it’s educating governments around the fact that open-source AI can accelerate innovation. It can increase access within public sector. and the fact that you control your destiny. It gives you flexibility where you want to deploy it, whether you want to do it some cloud, some on-premise, whether you want to know what amount of data you want to be fine-tuned, what do you want to use RAG for, for retrieval, augmented generation. And it increases accountability. And so there’s just been this concept that you need to go with a proprietary approach and to hold people accountable. Actually, governments can have more control and customization with an open-source approach. And so that’s been the discussion. And a lot of it has been being able to prototype. And we have plenty of great examples from France, where actually, it’s used by parliamentarians to use our LAMA model to make it simple, legal documents and legislations more simpler for other agencies to understand. So they use LAMA already. It’s deployed. There’s plenty of great examples in health care as well with Mayo Clinic, which is one of the largest medical nonprofits that is using it for radiation oncology in terms of their diagnostics. Huge potential there. For education, public sector, we’ve seen in places in Africa, Fundamate is using WhatsApp as a study assistant. So amazing things you can do with that. And so I think governments, there’s an opportunity for more public-private partnership there to see what private sector has done. As you mentioned, they’re already pushing the boundaries. If they had the support of the public from the government, I think we could do amazing work in the public sector. That’s been our focus at META.

Brandon Soloski: Thank you. Matisse?

Pellerin Matis: Yeah, I mean, AI is a top priority for governments, as you said. But we need to be realistic, because unfortunately, governments are still lagging behind the private sector in terms of AI adoptions. And lots of stuff has been done in the private sector. But governments are, for most of them, still running on very old technology. If we look at what they are doing, lots of governments have technology from the 90s or from the year 2000. So they are not very user-friendly. They are very expensive to maintain operational. they are even not very secure. So there is lots of work to do, but I think there is a good understanding now from world leaders and government officials that they need to modernize their public services, their public administration, to bring the best tool in country to support economic growth, to support better jobs that also improve the quality of the public services. So lots of governments right now are making huge investment to bring these new technologies. Cloud and AI are the two first priority. One of the big difference between private sector and the government is that the government is sitting on a huge amount of data. I mean, it’s a gold mine. A government has plenty of data. And usually, they don’t really know how to use this data. Because all the ministries usually work in silos. You have the health ministry. They have their own data. They don’t connect with the finance ministry, or they don’t connect with home affairs. So it means that they are not talking to each other, and they are not able to really leverage the power of AI. So the first thing that they need to do is, first, to connect this data, and also to use this new technology like AI to be able to really analyze the data and make decisions which are based on facts, so facts-based. And it gives insights to the politicians. It gives insights to the various head of administration about what decisions they should take through this analysis, through the big data, and also data analytics they can use. I’m very convinced that AI technology is really going to improve public services and improve the quality of public services. As Lucia said just before, I mean, there is a change in how AI technology today can be used. AI is not new. And for a very long time, we have been using AI to manage very non-complex operations with very low value added. But now with GenAI, we have a switch in how the technology can be used, because GenAI can manage very complex requests. And it can also give you personalized answer, which is very valuable for a government. Because if you’re a government, it means that you can use GenAI to automate. automate lots of the tasks which were done by your civil servants before because they were complex. And now you can make them autonomous, or at least you can reduce the time you need to really manage and operate them on a daily basis. So AI will for sure make government more efficient. For instance, to give you a few examples, you can use AI to manage a relationship with your citizens. Instead of having to send an email to a public administration to ask some question, I don’t know if some people in the audience have already tried to send a request to your tax authority, for instance. You want to know if you’re subject to this regulation or if you need to submit this revenue. It may take too much to get an answer from the tax authorities. If you’re able to embed an AI chatbot which is connected to your tax regulation, so the data set of your tax regulation, but it’s also connected to the revenue from the finance ministry, which are declared by your employer, well, the chatbot can, in a few seconds, give you the answer about your request. And so you went from two months to a few seconds, and you have the same exact answer. So faster service. Second thing is also trying to better optimize public expenditure. Through AI tools, you can drastically, I mean, detect tax fraud. You can identify the…you can also better calculate social benefits. So in Europe, for instance, we are working with a lot of governments to use AI to make sure social benefits are correctly calculated. And it can save you a billion of euro every year because in lots of countries, sometimes social benefits are not very well calculated. It’s not optimized because you don’t…the social ministry is not talking with the other ministries, and we don’t really know how much revenue you have. So we give you some money, but at the end, you were not supposed to get the money. So that’s another way. And also… So there is plenty of use cases. So at Oracle, what we try to do, we try to make AI easy to adopt. And how we make that happening is that we try to embed directly AI technology into our own applications to make sure it’s easy to use and easy to implement when you’re a government. But it also applies for the private sector, by the way. Another important point about AI is when you use AI, you need to use the good data. If you don’t use the good data when you train your models, probably the answers are not going to be very good. I’m going back to my first example about ChatGPT. But ChatGPT is very good if you ask ChatGPT to draft some content or to draft a keynote or a briefing document, because it’s based on a lot of public data which are available on the internet. However, if I ask ChatGPT to give me a specific answer about a health care situation or about a tax regulation, it probably will not be able to give me a very relevant answer. So contextualization of data is very important. And for government, it means that you need to bring specific data sets which are coming from your own industry to train your model and make sure it brings relevant answer to your citizens. You mentioned passport renewal just before. And I think it’s a very good example, because how we can use AI for passport renewal? Well, it’s very easy. You can have solutions that is going to be put on the website of the government. This AI-generated chatbot is going to be connected with various databases from the government. And so it’s going to help you prepare your passport applications. Because usually, when you need to do passport application, you need to gather lots of various documents which are coming. I mean, you need a birth certificate. certificate, you need justification of your address, you need your former documents, you need lots of various stuff. So this AI technology is going to be able to gather all these documents for you, connecting with the various ministries and data sets. It’s going also to generate automatically the form you need to prepare. It will give you, it’s going to give you the next meeting available in the agenda. And also, when you’re going to arrive for the meeting, the civil officer is going to review your application. For him, it will be much easier, because he will know that, probably, the AI won’t have done some human error. So the application will be correctly filled in, the documents will be correct. You won’t miss any document, because the AI will give you all the documents automatically. And at the end, it’s also going to improve how the civil officer is going to work, because he will not waste some time to tell you you need to come back, et cetera. So that’s a very small example about how we can use AI and why it generates very good benefits in terms of productivity, efficiency, and cost saving for the government. But just to finish on that, I think AI for the public sector is growing, but it’s still very new. And I think governments are still a bit cautious about using AI, but it’s clearly accelerating. And now we see lots of use cases which are already live and generate very good benefits for citizens and the government.

Brandon Soloski: Thank you so much. My apologies for the coughing attack. I seem to be going through right at the moment. I should have brought a little water on the stage. I think one of the things I wanted to talk about, and you were just mentioning this, was the interoperability aspect of much of AI. proliferation in this past year on new regulations, policies, laws, the attempting to regulate AI, to position various countries, even regions, for the future, to position themselves for this new sector. Now, it’s been a full year since the EU announced the world’s first major AI regulation, the EU AI Act, been following this. And I’m quite intrigued to hear some of all of your thoughts and specifically, as governments around the world draw on the EU’s regulatory approach as AI, as they shape their own AI policies, what may be lessons might they want to start taking into consideration or any thoughts or observations on any of these new laws or regulations?

Lucia Russo: Maybe I’ll go first. Yes, you’re totally right. We are seeing many policies and regulations emerging. And of course, the EU AI Act is, one may say, the pioneering regulatory approach in that it establishes this comprehensive, overarching legislation across sectors that aims at regulating AI systems that enter the EU market. But we are seeing, likewise, the EU, we are seeing some regulatory frameworks emerging, for instance, in Canada and Brazil that also follow a similar risk-based or impact-based approach, though these proposals are still being discussed before parliaments. And then, on the other hand, we also see different approaches, such as those taken by the US, you mentioned, but also the United Kingdom or Israel, where instead of going with a cross-sectoral approach, you’d rather see principles defined and then regulations to be defined more at the sector level. And this is clearly an approach that, so far, the UK has taken, Israel. And in the US, we have seen the executive order that has some components of risk management and safety and critical infrastructures, but still relies mostly on standards and then voluntary commitments. So I think this space is really evolving quite fast. And what concerns mostly the OECD, being an international organization working on consensus building and facilitating interactions across jurisdictions, is that, of course, this can lead to regulatory fragmentation, which, in turn, leads to higher compliance costs for enterprises operating across borders. So our mandate is really to establish interoperability across these various regulatory frameworks. And we do that at the very basic, for instance, trying with the definition of AI system, which, in fact, has been adopted by the UI Act, by the Convention of the Council of Europe, but also by the MIS framework. So having the same definition allows these frameworks to talk to each other, because they talk about the same thing. But also, we are mapping risk management frameworks to establish what are the commonalities. And so through responsible business conduct, allowing companies to see what compliance mechanism they need to ensure to trade across borders. I’ll just, perhaps, mention three things you said, what countries should look at when they look. at the UI Act. I think, of course, it’s prerogative of countries to establish frameworks according to their technological ecosystems, their priorities, their societal values. I think the key elements from the UI Act would be really the importance of creating regulatory frameworks that are risk-based according to the level of risk of the systems and so proportionate in terms of the requirements, accountability for deployers and developers, and then also establishing the robust testing and certification systems across the life cycle. And perhaps just to conclude on the risk-based approach, I think that should also be based on evidence, and that’s why at the OECD we also built an incident reporting framework, the AIM is called, and the purpose is really to see where risks actually materialize, because we talk a lot about risk in abstract, but then where is it that causes the most harm? And on that basis, this should be able to adapt alongside technological innovation.

Sarim Aziz: Thank you. I think just to add on to what Lucia said, from an Asia-Pacific perspective, I think it was exactly a year ago at the last IGF in Japan where the G7 Hiroshima process was announced, which is actually consistent with a lot of the OECD principles. So I think what we’ve seen is most countries in Asia-Pacific are not following the EU model. I think they have followed more of the G7 OECD kind of more principle-based approach on making sure, because I think they all understand this is new technology, right? It’s evolving so quickly, and by the time you regulate it, it would have already evolved perhaps. And so I think there are great examples, including the UK example, where there is a need for having harmonized and having AI safety institutes around the world as a network. That’s been a great initiative, and I think there’s to assess risks. And with the UK ASI, I think that because of that collaboration, they were able to launch something called Inspect, which basically is an open-source software library to, almost a year ago, assesses for risks like cyber, bio, and other kinds of safety risks. So I do think there’s lots of great work going on. It’s still early, but I do see that collaboration as the key here, not necessarily regulation to something that’s still evolving.

Pellerin Matis: Thank you. Yeah, but not working very well, okay, it’s back It’s not back Okay, can I have another mic maybe? No Okay Maybe just to come in quickly one is about harmonization. I think that’s for private sector very very important without going into details of Thank you, okay, that’s that’s funny So without going into into details about the AI testing for the private sector It’s it’s very important to have an harmonization and and and we don’t want to at least we should not see values different framework Define everywhere one in Europe one in Asia one in in South America I know in South America right now There is a lot of work in Brazil and a few other countries about AI and they are all wondering what we should do in AI Well, I think it’s for us It would be very complicated if we have a fragmented regulation around the world about how we use AI So that’s the first the first one and I really think Governments and officials working on that should really consider trying to harmonize the rules So the second point is innovation and adoption. We talk about adoption at the beginning of the panel We should not make sure we should be careful about not Reducing the trust about these technologies because these regulations are great and I’m not saying it’s not it’s not it’s not it’s a bad thing But in the book in the global opinion sometimes there is some misunderstanding about about about this technology and it’s not helping adoption because people think it might be dangerous or think their data are not safe and And and sometimes these regulatory and policy discussion generated generate some mistrust about technology and in the EU It’s not it’s not only about AI but if you look at about cloud and and all the debates around data sovereignty Unfortunately, it has slowed down drastically cloud adoption because companies, governments are worried about cloud because maybe there is a risk about the data. While we know from a technical perspective, usually it’s very safe to go to the cloud because cloud companies are cyber experts and they are putting billions of dollars every year to secure the infrastructure. So usually when you’re in the cloud, your data is safer. But there is a misunderstanding about it, and there is some, in the global opinion of the population, a sort of worry about data sovereignty. And adoption is very slow because of that. I was in Singapore a few days ago and I went through the customs and I was super impressed about their ability to use AI in the airport. Now you don’t need to, in the customs, you don’t need to go to take your passport. They recognize you automatically, we face recognitions. When you arrive at the boarding gate, you don’t need to have a boarding pass because they have embedded AI facial recognition into their process. And now people are just going through the boarding gate and they recognize you, they know you’re on seat 03B, and that’s fine, you can go in the plane. You will never see that in Europe because of GDPR, because of all the rules. It’s not possible. So we need to find a compromise between data privacy, but also innovation because innovation is important and it’s also through these new technologies and through these innovations that we can make government more efficient and easier for people.

Brandon Soloski: That’s a great point. And ironically, very likely a European company that is handling a lot of what you were just talking about, edemia, but you’re absolutely spot on right there with GDPR. I think one of the other things I wanted to talk about, and we started talking about this already, was in terms of partnerships. And you mentioned this a little bit about some of the large companies and the influence that this has, but I think one of the things I’d love to chat a little bit about and get some of all of your thoughts. thoughts are on what you think the role of partnerships with the private sector is going to play, including startups. How is this going to evolve outside of just some of the big companies? And I’ll kick it over to you, Aziz, as I know you started talking about this already.

Sarim Aziz: Thanks, Brandon. I want to make sure others can chime in. But I think just to using Singapore as a good example, even a government like Singapore that is quite innovative, I think still part of the reason is because they realize the value of the startup private sector and the startup community. And so I think that’s where governments can really tap into the local talent and entrepreneurs and startups who are already, they’ve picked up this technology, they’re already doing great things with it. And I think one of the proofs of this is that we ran an AI accelerator across Asia-Pacific across 13 countries, everything from Bangladesh, Nepal, all the way to Australia and New Zealand. And we were blown away by, and this is just the power of open source, how these startups and nonprofits were using our technology. And this is one of the blessings and challenges with open source is you don’t know how it’s being used because it could be used in incredible ways. And it’s only because we did this competition that we found that, oh my gosh, the New Zealand NetSafe organization, which is an organization that takes care of online harms and safety, is using our model to basically streamline complaints that are getting from the community around just content. And they’re empowered by the government to basically send information to digital platforms and not just NetApp but others. So it was amazing to see that in every sector, health care, in manufacturing in Japan, there were those uses of AI. And what we did was we did this regional experiment locally. We ran local competitions in these countries. And we brought the local government to say, come and see what your own local startups are doing with this technology. And they’re doing it in the sectors that you care about. They’re doing it in health care. They’re doing it in manufacturing. They’re doing it in Taiwan. There was a company that was able to use AI to identify building, like use blueprints to identify building code violations and whether the IDs are using adopts to the local laws and regulations. So it’s incredible stuff. Things we couldn’t think of were being done. And so we engaged over 23 different government agencies across the Asia-Pacific region to show them, here’s what happens when you work with the private sector. It can be foreign big tech companies, but it can be your local talent who are already using all the tools available to them. That’s the power of the cloud. Your local talent can use whatever tools they have, it’s Oracle Cloud or whatever makes sense for them, Amazon, Microsoft, and again, the power is open source because you’re not locked in. With open source, you can take your data and take it wherever you want to put it. You want to put it in Oracle? Great. If you want tomorrow, if you get a better deal with Microsoft, go there. It should be what makes sense for you and gives you that control and flexibility.

Lucia Russo: Maybe I’ll just bring in some perspective from Egypt. We’ve been working with Egypt for analyzing their AI strategy and they have a very nice example of public-private partnership in that they built this applied innovation center which model works as a tripartite model where you have the Ministry of Innovation and then the ministry that could be health or agriculture or the judicial system, and then you have the private sector. The idea is that this domain ministry comes in with the need and the Ministry of Innovation helps in gathering the technological solution together with private companies that help develop and scale the solution. This has proved very effective, for instance, in developing solutions for the health like diagnosing retinopathy linked to diabetes or even speech-to-text recognition for the judicial system. I think there is this benefit of having the private sector as providers and also knowledge transfer also in settings where, of course, technological innovation may be lagging because of the ecosystem itself.

Pellerin Matis: I think government can really learn from the private sector because there is lots of technologies and solutions which have already been implemented in the private sector that can easily be replicated in the government. If you look at what, if I take the Oracle example, what we are doing for private companies to run their HR, their payroll, their procurement, lots of these applications can easily be implemented in the Ministry of Finance to run your public procurement system, your public contract, your user payment of your civil servants, etc. So there is a lot of applications that the government can use to… to really leverage the power of cloud and AI. If I give you an example about health care, health care is a very important topic for Oracle. We bought Cerner a few years ago, which is a big electronic medical records company. And since then, we have made huge investment to modernize the health care sector, because we are very convinced that there is lots of things to do. One of the main challenges of health care right now is that the data is fragmented. You have lots of various actors, stakeholders on the health care space, from health agencies, to hospitals, to private hospitals, to private insurance, et cetera. So there is lots of them. And usually, the data is not really connected to each other. So what we are doing right now is trying to build an ecosystem solution that gives the ability to governments to connect all these stakeholders together and have a global visibility as a national level, population level, and using AI to give a better understanding for government officials about what is a national situation. So we call this a data intelligence platform for health care. It’s already implemented in a few countries. But this platform, using AI technology, gives the tools to identify and detect diseases, for instance, or to predict all the patients’ needs in a specific region. So even a specific country, a specific city, sorry. That’s something we have done during COVID. And we saw it was working very well. And there is a huge demand for governments to have this type of dashboard, which is going to help them reduce health care costs, but also be able to improve patient outcomes. And the second level is a bit lower. It’s about how we can modernize hospitals and how we can help health professionals, like doctors, et cetera, to improve their quality of work in the hospitals, to make the hospital more efficient. And so actually, we just released a few weeks ago a new electronic health record, which is actually, to make it simple, it’s a hospital management system. So it’s a software that manages the appointment for doctors, drug prescriptions, number of beds, number of beds you have, everything in the hospitals. And now we are embedding AI technology to try to automate all the tasks right now the health professional needs to do, like drafting a report, like putting the meeting in the agenda, or drug prescription. It takes time. And so now we are embedding voice recognition in our systems. And so doctors can just record the meeting. And at the end of the meeting, the AI is going to generate everything for you. So no reports draft, it will be generated by AI. So next meeting will be put in the agenda. automatically through AI, same for the prescription, et cetera. And we are able to reduce the time practitioners and health professionals are in front of their computer and not talking to the patient. So that’s very important. And that’s something which is already live. Actually, in Saudi Arabia, in UAE, in Qatar, we are already implementing these solutions in a lot of hospitals. And we see drastic, important improvement in how patients are using health care in these countries. But to analyze evidence, to schedule cases, to predict a potential outcome of illegal cases, so there is lots of ways to use that. Agriculture is very important. And we have some good cases in Africa, even in Philippines, where we use an agriculture solutions to help governments to monitor crops, to monitor the climate, to be able to anticipate climate change or some issues in the crop or stuff like that. Or even public safety. Public safety is the one maybe people know the better. Because when you are a police authority or you are an emergency authority, you can use AI for emergency response, or for video screening, et cetera. So there is lots of use cases.

Brandon Soloski: Fascinating subject. We could go on for quite some more time. And I have more questions in regards to emerging and frontier markets and how AI could be applied there. And I would love for us to continue on the conversation. But we are at the bottom of the hour. And I would love to end on that optimistic note around partnerships as well. So much can get done in that space. If one could have a favorite sustainable development goal, number 17, partnerships would be mine. So much gets done there. So just amazing to be able to talk about this with all of you today. Thank you again, Matisse, for joining. for joining us, Lucia for joining us from OECD, Aziz, thank you again, Mr. Aziz Surim, for joining us as well from MEDA. It’s really been a pleasure to have this conversation today, to understand the role that the private sector plays in this space, its leadership, in terms of building trust with the public sector as well, truly a fascinating subject, and it was a pleasure to join you all today. I’ll be around. I know Aziz, Lucia, and Matisse will also be around. We’d love to take some questions at the end, as I think we might be out of time. Yeah, thank you very much, it’s my pleasure to be here.

Audience: My name is Anil Pura, I’m from Nepal, and in terms of implementation of AI, there are a lot of challenges, but one of the most prevailing challenges is a trust issue, in terms of sharing the data by the government and public partnership. So how to overcome that, and are there any good examples you’d like to share with us? Thank you.

Lucia Russo: Well, quickly, about trust in data management for governments, I think we mentioned this a little bit about building sovereign infrastructure. A few examples, close to here, we work with the government of Oman, for instance. We have built sovereign infrastructure base in Oman, because Oracle was not operating any cloud infrastructure in Oman, but the government wanted to use our technology. They wanted to use our technology to modernize their governments, to modernize their public services, and use AI. And so what we have done is that we have built a cloud for them, which is a dedicated infrastructure. It’s built under the control of the Omani government, with their own security, their own standard certification, et cetera. So there is some solutions. as you say. And for me, the infrastructure, cloud infrastructure layer is probably one of the most important ones to check when you want to really protect your data. And after, we can also go into the protection of the data sets, anonymization, et cetera. But that’s another aspect, which is, I would say, much easier. But yeah.

Sarim Aziz: At the risk of contradicting Matisse, but just to say yes, I mean, that’s one option. But I think the answer is open source, where you’re not locked in, you control your data. I mean, actually, Lama, which is Matisse’s model, is available to Oracle’s cloud infrastructure. So yes, if you want to host it there, you can. But if things are too sensitive for the government of Nepal and you’d like to host it on your own infrastructure, you’re happy to do that. You can also do both. Like, it can be a hybrid. You’re not locked into one proprietary system. And I think open source is the answer to give you maximum control, maximum sovereignty, whether it’s cloud or on-prem. And basically, you control your data. No one else does. And so open source is a solution for governments to look at. In fact, many governments are using it. They don’t have to tell us that they’re using it. And to some point, there are use cases where, especially now, where I think the next generation is going to be not these things aren’t going to run on just cloud and servers and computers. We’re seeing edge devices. There are more mobile devices in the world and sensors in places that may not even have good connections. And so you need AI to run on those edge devices. And open source models now are getting so small that you can actually deploy it on your phone or on a small device, on edge devices as well. So lots of interesting use cases that could come out of that.

Brandon Soloski: All right. Well, I know we’re at the bottom of the hour. And our time has come to a conclusion. But thank you again for the great question. And I’m sure our panelists would love to stick around and field a few more questions if anyone else in the audience would like to speak with us. Again, thank you again for. joining today, to everyone online and everyone in the room, truly a pleasure. Such a fascinating topic. Matisse, Lucia, Aziz, thank you again. Serושka. Se next guest is Raul Garber. Raul, welcome! RAUL GARBER Yeah, that’s really, very interesting. I didn’t realize we had the right translation. It was a great job. Thank you for the enthusiastic response. Thank you. It was great. Thank you so much. Yeah. Very interesting topic. Yeah. I wish we could go on. Yeah, me too. I mean, I’m not worried about the hour, right? We can end this like easily in another two hours. I’m pretty sure we can do that. So there’s a restriction, but I think we’re happy to do it. I think she’s going to stop for a minute. OK, we’ll work with you guys. Yeah, I’ll do the stuff. We’ll see how it goes. Absolutely. Yeah, Allison is on our, I just saw her on Thursday. Oh, really? Yeah, she’s on our executive committee, which is kind of like our board. Oh, OK. So she is a really strong advocate for us. I know that. I know that. So she’s great. So I am also. She’s very supportive of us. I am also. She’s been really good to the community in the US. We have lots of people. But sometimes it’s difficult. So if I don’t see her, I like to talk to her. Very nice to talk to her. Same here. Thank you. A little bit. Before Jane and Michael was a consultant, I worked for like a bit less than 10 years as an advisor. But first, I started working with a French guy. But I have been paid in DC to work with French guys.

Agreement Points

AI can enhance government efficiency and service delivery

speakers

Lucia Russo

Pellerin Matis

Sarim Aziz

arguments

AI can enhance government efficiency and responsiveness

AI can improve healthcare delivery and hospital management

AI enables more efficient passport renewal and citizen services

AI enhances agricultural monitoring and public safety

AI assists with legal document processing and legislative work

summary

All speakers agreed that AI has the potential to significantly improve government operations and services across various sectors, including healthcare, citizen services, agriculture, and legal processes.

Need for trust-building measures in AI adoption

speakers

Lucia Russo

Pellerin Matis

Sarim Aziz

Brandon Soloski

arguments

Sovereign AI and cloud infrastructure protect government data

Open source AI increases transparency and accessibility

Need for AI education and explaining benefits to increase public trust

summary

Speakers emphasized the importance of building trust in AI through measures such as sovereign infrastructure, open-source approaches, and public education about AI benefits and safeguards.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers advocated for flexible, principle-based approaches to AI regulation that can adapt to rapidly evolving technology, rather than rigid, prescriptive rules.

speakers

Lucia Russo

Sarim Aziz

arguments

Risk-based and evidence-based regulatory approaches are important

Many Asia-Pacific countries adopting principle-based rather than prescriptive AI regulations

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of public-private partnerships in AI innovation

speakers

Lucia Russo

Sarim Aziz

Pellerin Matis

arguments

Public-private partnerships drive AI innovation in government

Open source AI increases transparency and accessibility

AI can improve healthcare delivery and hospital management

explanation

Despite representing different sectors (international organization, tech company, and cloud infrastructure provider), all speakers unexpectedly agreed on the crucial role of collaboration between government and private sector in driving AI innovation and implementation in public services.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement included the potential of AI to enhance government efficiency and service delivery, the need for trust-building measures in AI adoption, and the importance of flexible regulatory approaches. There was also unexpected consensus on the value of public-private partnerships in driving AI innovation in government.

Consensus level

The level of consensus among the speakers was relatively high, particularly on the benefits and potential applications of AI in government. This strong agreement implies a shared vision for the future of AI in public services, which could facilitate more coordinated efforts in AI development and implementation across different sectors and regions. However, some differences in approach (e.g., sovereign infrastructure vs. open-source) suggest that while the goals are aligned, the methods to achieve them may vary.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to data protection and sovereignty

speakers

Pellerin Matis

Sarim Aziz

arguments

Sovereign AI and cloud infrastructure protect government data

Open source AI increases transparency and accessibility

summary

Pellerin Matis advocates for sovereign AI and dedicated cloud infrastructure to protect government data, while Sarim Aziz argues that open source AI provides better control and transparency for governments.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around data protection strategies and regulatory approaches for AI.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers is moderate. While there are some differences in approach, particularly regarding data protection and regulatory strategies, the speakers generally agree on the potential benefits of AI for government services and the need for responsible implementation. These differences reflect the complexity of balancing innovation, security, and regulation in AI adoption for government use.

Partial Agreements

All speakers agree on the need for AI regulation, but differ on the specific approach. Lucia Russo emphasizes risk-based and evidence-based approaches, Pellerin Matis advocates for global harmonization, while Sarim Aziz highlights the principle-based approach adopted by many Asia-Pacific countries.

speakers

Lucia Russo

Pellerin Matis

Sarim Aziz

arguments

Risk-based and evidence-based regulatory approaches are important

Need for harmonized global AI regulations to avoid fragmentation

Many Asia-Pacific countries adopting principle-based rather than prescriptive AI regulations

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers advocated for flexible, principle-based approaches to AI regulation that can adapt to rapidly evolving technology, rather than rigid, prescriptive rules.

speakers

Lucia Russo

Sarim Aziz

arguments

Risk-based and evidence-based regulatory approaches are important

Many Asia-Pacific countries adopting principle-based rather than prescriptive AI regulations

Key Takeaways

AI has significant potential to improve government efficiency and services, but adoption lags behind the private sector

Building public trust is crucial for successful government AI implementation

Open source and sovereign AI approaches can help address data privacy/security concerns

Public-private partnerships and engagement with local startups are important for driving AI innovation in government

There is a need for harmonized global AI regulations to avoid fragmentation

Risk-based and evidence-based regulatory approaches are recommended for AI governance

Resolutions and Action Items

None identified

Unresolved Issues

How to overcome trust issues in data sharing between government and private sector

Balancing innovation with data privacy/security concerns in government AI adoption

Addressing the digital divide and ensuring equitable access to AI benefits across countries

Suggested Compromises

Using hybrid approaches that combine sovereign infrastructure with open source AI models to balance control and flexibility

Adopting principle-based AI regulations rather than overly prescriptive rules to allow for innovation

AI is not a new thing, right? I think sometimes we forget it’s, you know, I think it’s important to kind of differentiate and reframe the discussion around, like, why is this, the trust that you definitely mentioned, like, why is that increasing? You know, for something that, you know, what is the difference between the AI that we were using five years ago versus the AI today, from the perspective that, you know, AI has been used in any computer system that helps, like, analyze, perform functions on existing data. That’s been happening for a while. But what’s so exciting about this new age of AI, so to speak, is the fact that its ability to not just perform tasks on existing data, but to create new data.

speaker

Sarim Aziz

reason

This comment reframes the discussion by highlighting that AI isn’t new, but its current capabilities are what’s driving increased interest and trust concerns. It provides important context for understanding the current AI landscape.

impact

This comment shifted the conversation to focus more specifically on the unique aspects of current AI technology, particularly its ability to generate new data. It set the stage for a more nuanced discussion of AI’s potential and challenges.

We need to fundamentally change the way, the path forward needs to be an open source one that has wide acceptance, that is accessible to all countries. And I think that’s why Meta has, our CEO wrote this letter about open source AI is the way forward to ensure that nobody gets left behind, to ensure that people in this part of the world and other parts of the world have a part in their conversation.

speaker

Sarim Aziz

reason

This comment introduces the idea of open source AI as a solution to ensure global accessibility and participation in AI development. It challenges the notion that AI should be controlled by a few large companies.

impact

This comment sparked discussion about different approaches to AI development and deployment, particularly contrasting open source models with proprietary systems. It led to further exploration of how different approaches might impact trust, innovation, and global participation in AI.

AI will for sure make government more efficient. For instance, to give you a few examples, you can use AI to manage a relationship with your citizens. Instead of having to send an email to a public administration to ask some question, I don’t know if some people in the audience have already tried to send a request to your tax authority, for instance. You want to know if you’re subject to this regulation or if you need to submit this revenue. It may take too much to get an answer from the tax authorities. If you’re able to embed an AI chatbot which is connected to your tax regulation, so the data set of your tax regulation, but it’s also connected to the revenue from the finance ministry, which are declared by your employer, well, the chatbot can, in a few seconds, give you the answer about your request.

speaker

Pellerin Matis

reason

This comment provides a concrete, relatable example of how AI can improve government efficiency and citizen services. It helps illustrate the practical benefits of AI in governance.

impact

This comment grounded the discussion in practical applications, moving from theoretical benefits to specific use cases. It led to further discussion of various ways AI could be applied in different government sectors.

We should not make sure we should be careful about not Reducing the trust about these technologies because these regulations are great and I’m not saying it’s not it’s not it’s a bad thing But in the book in the global opinion sometimes there is some misunderstanding about about about this technology and it’s not helping adoption because people think it might be dangerous or think their data are not safe and And sometimes these regulatory and policy discussion generated generate some mistrust about technology

speaker

Pellerin Matis

reason

This comment highlights the potential unintended consequences of regulation and policy discussions, suggesting they might inadvertently reduce trust in AI technologies. It introduces a complex dynamic between regulation, public perception, and technology adoption.

impact

This comment shifted the discussion towards the challenges of balancing regulation with innovation and adoption. It led to a more nuanced conversation about how to approach AI governance without stifling progress or eroding public trust.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by moving it from general principles to specific applications and challenges of AI in governance. They introduced important tensions between open source and proprietary models, between regulation and innovation, and between theoretical potential and practical implementation. The discussion evolved to consider not just the benefits of AI in governance, but also the complex dynamics of public trust, global accessibility, and the potential unintended consequences of regulatory approaches. This resulted in a more nuanced and multifaceted exploration of the topic, considering both opportunities and challenges in the use of AI for responsible governance.

How can AI be applied in emerging and frontier markets?

speaker

Brandon Soloski

explanation

This was mentioned as a topic the speaker wanted to explore further but didn’t have time for, indicating its importance in understanding the global impact of AI.

How can governments overcome trust issues in data sharing for public-private partnerships in AI implementation?

speaker

Anil Pura (audience member)

explanation

This was raised as a prevailing challenge in AI implementation, particularly for countries like Nepal, highlighting the need for strategies to build trust in data sharing.

How can countries ensure interoperability across various AI regulatory frameworks?

speaker

Lucia Russo

explanation

This was mentioned as a key concern for the OECD, as regulatory fragmentation can lead to higher compliance costs for enterprises operating across borders.

How can governments balance innovation and adoption of AI technologies with concerns about data privacy and security?

speaker

Pellerin Matis

explanation

This was raised as a crucial consideration, noting that overly strict regulations might slow down AI adoption and innovation.

How can open-source AI models be leveraged to ensure data sovereignty and control for governments?

speaker

Sarim Aziz

explanation

This was suggested as a potential solution to data trust issues, allowing governments more control and flexibility in AI implementation.

Summary

This session at the 19th IGF focused on transformative digital inclusion and building a gender-responsive framework for underserved communities. Speakers from various organizations and countries discussed the challenges and opportunities in bridging the digital gender divide.

Key points included the importance of meaningful connectivity, which goes beyond basic access to consider factors like device quality, connection speed, and affordability. Speakers highlighted persistent gaps in digital access and skills between urban and rural areas, as well as between men and women. Examples were shared of initiatives to empower women through digital literacy programs, entrepreneurship support, and access to online services.

The discussion emphasized the need for comprehensive policies and partnerships to address digital inclusion. Speakers noted the importance of measuring progress through gender-disaggregated data and using frameworks like UNESCO’s Internet Universality Indicators. The role of libraries in providing public internet access was highlighted as crucial for underserved communities.

Challenges related to disinformation and the ethical use of AI were also addressed, with speakers calling for increased media literacy and safeguards against manipulation of information. The potential of emerging technologies like AI to both exacerbate and potentially help close digital divides was explored.

Overall, participants stressed the urgency of collaborative action to ensure women and marginalized groups are not left behind in the digital transformation. They called for targeted investments, policy reforms, and education initiatives to create a more inclusive digital future.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The importance of meaningful connectivity and digital inclusion, especially for women and underserved communities

– Challenges in achieving digital inclusion, including infrastructure gaps, affordability issues, and lack of digital skills

– The role of libraries, education initiatives, and targeted policies in promoting digital inclusion

– The need for gender-responsive frameworks and measuring progress on digital inclusion

– Concerns about disinformation and the impacts of AI/emerging technologies on digital divides

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore strategies and share best practices for creating inclusive digital ecosystems that are accessible to all, with a focus on empowering women, girls, and underserved communities.

The tone of the discussion was largely informative and solution-oriented. Speakers shared data, case studies and recommendations with a sense of urgency about addressing digital divides. There was an emphasis on collaboration and comprehensive approaches. The tone became slightly more impassioned towards the end, with calls to action and appeals to work together to tackle these critical issues.

Speakers

– Najib Mokni: Program Specialist for the CI sector at UNESCO Regional Office for Gulf States and Yemen, on-site moderator

– Tawfik Jelassi: Assistant Director General of Communication and Information Sector of UNESCO

– Alexandre Barbosa: Managing Director of CETIC, Head of the Regional Centre for Studies on the Development of the Information Society under the auspice of UNESCO

– Abdullah AI-Hawas: Head of the ITHRA library

– Sarah Birungi Kaddu: Dean and Senior Lecturer, East African School of Library and Information Science, Makerere University, Uganda; Information coordinator of IFLA Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Division Committee; Co-chair of International Steering Committee of UNESCO

– Nagwa Ebrahim Elshenawy: Professor at Cairo University, expert in ICT sector and digitization strategies and policies

– Xianhong Hu: UNESCO representative, online co-moderator

– Kossi Amessinou: Ministry of Economy and Finance of Benin, Chair of the NGO Women Be Free

– Onica Makwakwa: Executive Director of the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership (GDIP)

– Viktoriia Romaniuk: Director of the Mohyla School of Journalism, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla in Ukraine; Deputy Chief Editor of StopFake; Chair of the UNESCO IFAP Working Group on Information Ethics

– Mariam Keburia: International Relationship and Development Office Consultant at the Business and Technology University of Georgia

– Dorothy Gordon: Board member of UNESCO Institute for Information Technology and Education, former chair of IFAP

Additional speakers:

– Sun Hong: UNESCO HQ representative, online co-moderator

– Ani Chelishvili: Representative from the University of Georgia in Business and Technology

– Carmen Ferri: Online moderator from GDIP

Expanded Summary of IGF 2023 Session on Digital Inclusion and Gender Equality

This session at the 19th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) focused on transformative digital inclusion and building a gender-responsive framework for underserved communities. Speakers from various organisations and countries discussed the challenges and opportunities in bridging the digital gender divide, emphasising the urgency of collaborative action to ensure women and marginalised groups are not left behind in the digital transformation.

Key Themes and Discussion Points:

1. Meaningful Connectivity and Digital Inclusion

Alexandre Barbosa, Managing Director of CETIC, introduced the crucial concept of meaningful connectivity, arguing that discussions must move beyond the binary notion of being connected or not. He emphasised the need for a more comprehensive approach to fully understand and address the opportunities and challenges of digital inclusion and the realisation of human rights online. Barbosa highlighted the revised Internet Universality Indicators (IOI) and ROAM-X framework from UNESCO, which provide a multidimensional perspective considering factors such as device quality, connection speed, and affordability.

Several speakers highlighted the persistent gaps in digital access and skills between urban and rural areas, as well as between men and women. This underscored the intersectionality of digital exclusion, showing how gender, geography, and education compound inequalities.

2. Role of Libraries and Community Centres

Abdullah AI-Hawas, Head of the ITHRA library, emphasised the crucial role of libraries in providing public internet access for underserved communities. He shared specific initiatives and statistics, stating, “More than 60% which are females that are trying to access books, either physical or digital. Also, we have trained more than 1,000 female undergrad students. They come and use their internship in our library for every semester.” This practical example demonstrated how libraries can serve as hubs for digital inclusion and gender equality.

3. Gender-Responsive Frameworks and Policies

Sarah Birungi Kaddu, Dean at the East African School of Library and Information Science, advocated for the development of gender-responsive frameworks for digital inclusion. This sentiment was echoed by Nagwa Ebrahim Elshenawy, who discussed digitisation tools for women’s empowerment in Egypt, and Mariam Keburia, who shared local digital inclusion initiatives for refugee women in Georgia.

Tawfik Jelassi, Assistant Director General of Communication and Information Sector of UNESCO, introduced the IFAP (Information for All Programme) strategic plan, which aims to address digital era challenges including bridging digital divides and promoting inclusion for women, girls, people with disabilities, and rural communities. He also mentioned UNESCO’s work on the United Nations International Decade for Indigenous Languages, running until 2032, which aims to promote local and indigenous languages.

Dorothy Gordon emphasised the need for comprehensive policies, coordinated efforts among government agencies, and clear benchmarks for addressing digital divide issues. She suggested creating national-level platforms that comply with ROAM standards (Rights-based, Open, Accessible, Multi-stakeholder).

4. Challenges of Disinformation and Emerging Technologies

Viktoriia Romaniuk, Director of the Mohyla School of Journalism in Ukraine, brought attention to the critical issue of disinformation campaigns as a barrier to information access. She highlighted the acute problem of AI-generated fakes in Ukraine during the ongoing conflict, stating, “The issue of promoted manipulative narratives and artificial intelligence-generated fakes has become particularly acute for Ukraine during the full-scale invasion.” Romaniuk recommended cooperation between governments, information organizations, and technology companies to combat disinformation.

Xianhong Hu, a UNESCO representative, raised concerns about the lack of women in AI and frontier technology development, noting that only 27% of women are involved in AI development, with an even worse gender gap in quantum technology. This point highlighted both the potential for emerging technologies like AI to exacerbate digital divides and the opportunity to leverage these technologies to help close the gaps.

5. Measuring Digital Inclusion

Speakers agreed on the importance of measuring progress through gender-disaggregated data and using comprehensive frameworks. Kossi Amessinou advocated for the use of UNESCO’s Internet Universality Indicators to assess digital transformation. Alexandre Barbosa emphasised a multidimensional approach to measure meaningful connectivity, while Nagwa Ebrahim Elshenawy stressed the importance of gender-disaggregated data on internet access and use.

6. Local Initiatives and Global Strategies

Mariam Keburia provided insight into balancing global strategies with local implementation, stating, “Our solution and the formula is to follow the global strategies, to be in line with the global strategies that have been designed and have been put in place by high quality experts, to follow, to share, to continue to share the passion that you and the colleagues all share but also and also with the participation of local stakeholders, local experts and those who are well aware of the local complexities to design the local solution.”

Several speakers shared specific projects and initiatives, including:

– IFAP projects in India, Georgia, and Iran empowering women with digital skills

– Ithra Library’s initiatives for digital inclusion and gender equality

– A project in Georgia supporting Ukrainian refugee women

Conclusion and Future Directions:

The discussion highlighted several key takeaways and action items:

1. Adopt the Internet Universality Indicators to assess digital transformation progress

2. Implement comprehensive national policies for media and information literacy

3. Create national-level digital platforms complying with rights-based standards

4. Promote STEM education for girls from an early age

5. Increase efforts to involve women in AI and frontier technology development

Unresolved issues included effectively reaching and persuading women who are not currently online to gain digital skills, addressing the significant underrepresentation of women in AI and quantum technology development, and sustainably funding large-scale digital inclusion initiatives in developing countries.

The session concluded with a strong consensus on the urgency of addressing digital divides, particularly those affecting women and marginalised communities. Speakers called for targeted investments, policy reforms, and education initiatives to create a more inclusive digital future, emphasising the need for collaborative, comprehensive approaches that consider the multifaceted nature of digital inclusion. The collaborative spirit of the event was further demonstrated by a call for a group photo at the end of the session.

Najib Mokni: Good morning, everybody. Dear partners, distinguished experts and speakers, welcome to this IFAP event and IFAP session at the 19th IGF in addition on Transformative Digital Inclusion, Building a Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Framework for the Underserved. My name is Najib Mokni, I’m Program Specialist for the CI sector at UNESCO Regional Office for Gulf States and Yemen, and happy to be the on-site moderator of this important workshop. My colleague, Sun Hong, connected from UNESCO HQ, will be the online co-moderator for this meeting. The today 90-minute session will be enabling in-depth discussion. We have a joint meeting of two IGF Dynamic Coalitions, the Dynamic Coalitions Public Access in Libraries, led by IFLA, and the Dynamic Coalition Measuring Digital Inclusion, led by UNESCO, IFAP, and Global Digital Inclusion Partnership. In collaboration with the IGF, we have a joint meeting of two IGF Dynamic Coalitions, the Dynamic Coalitions Public Access in Libraries, led by IFLA, and the Dynamic Coalition Measuring Digital Inclusion Partnership. In collaboration with partners such as CITIC, UNU-IGOV, and the Tech and Global Affairs Innovation Hub. The aim is to engage IGF stakeholders in policy discussions on creating inclusive digital ecosystems accessible to all, especially women, girls, and underserved communities. Panelists will share best practices to inspire policy initiatives addressing connectivity and inclusion challenges. We’ll start our session with the opening remarks by Dr. Tawfik Jelassi, the Assistant Director General of Communication and Information Sector of UNESCO. Dr. Jelassi is responsible for UNESCO’s program on fostering freedom of expression, leading digital transformation, strategizing the role of ICT in education, and building inclusive knowledge society. Mr. Jolassi, the floor is yours.

Tawfik Jelassi: Good morning. Can you hear me? Excellent. Esteemed participants, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to welcome you to the session this morning in the context of the IGF. It’s a session organized by the UNESCO IFAP program, the Information for All program, which is an intergovernmental program of UNESCO running now for more than 23 years. The moderator, Mr. Najib Bokni, has introduced the topic transformative digital inclusion, building a gender-responsive and inclusive framework for the underserved. Let me express our gratitude to our long-term partners, the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership, GDIP, and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, IFLAW. We are very delighted to be together for this important event. I would like also to acknowledge the contribution of the National Commission of Saudi Arabia to UNESCO and to its Secretary General, His Excellency Mr. Ahmed Belhit. Let me say that the topic is very important for us because it is at the heart of the UNESCO mandate of digital technologies for a better world, for societal inclusion, for bridging divides that exist today, and I would like here to highlight briefly three key points. The first one, IFAP has published last year its strategic plan for the period 2000-2009, and the aim of this strategic plan is to address our digital era. I mentioned some of these challenges bridging the digital divide, which is not only a digital divide, it is also an information divide, it is also an education divide, it is also a knowledge divide. Second, promoting inclusion for women and girls, for also people living with disabilities and for rural communities, and therefore to ensure that individuals can create and access digital and AI-driven content in their local language. So multilingualism, linguistic diversity online are among the top topics that we try to address. In this context, I want to inform you, in case you are not aware of it, UNESCO has been in charge of delivering the United Nations International Decade for Indigenous Languages. This decade started a couple of years ago and will run until 2032. This is one of the efforts of promoting local languages and indigenous languages, many of which have been in danger of extinction. We believe that by addressing inequality communities, both between countries and within countries and communities, IFAP can contribute to building an inclusive, equitable and sustainable knowledge society. The second point I would like to highlight is regarding the role and the contribution that emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, generative AI and quantum computing, the role and contribution that these technologies can make, of course, for people, for individuals, for society. And here we want to promote the digital knowledge-based information by harnessing the new capabilities that these new technologies offer us. We are aware also of the risks and the dangers of these new powerful technologies, in particular generative AI, and we are trying to tackle the related risk. In this context, I want to remind you of a landmark contribution of UNESCO, the 2021 UNESCO Global Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. The work for this recommendation started back in 2018, way before the advent of chat GPT and generative AI. The third key point I would like to highlight is the crucial importance of partnerships. We are here with GDIP, we are here with IFLA, but we also recognized the dynamic coalitions that we have, one on public access in libraries, the other dynamic coalition on measuring digital inclusion. So we believe that technology is global, issues are borderless, and therefore to have such dynamic coalitions and such partnership makes a lot of sense in order to have to join forces, to join hands and to collectively tackle these important issues. In this context, I invite governments, academia, research institutions, civil society organizations and the technical community, in addition to private sectors, of course, to join us in advancing digital inclusion worldwide so we can create meaningful impacts that leave no one behind. Let me mention some statistics that many of you are, if not all of you, are aware of. Today we have 2.6 billion people who are still off-line. That is, of course, a huge number, and that’s a big challenge that we need all to tackle through meaningful connectivity, especially in less developed countries worldwide. And let me say also that we have 1.2 billion people with disabilities, and obviously we have to cater to these communities. We need to ensure inclusivity through digital, and we have to address and take into account the specificities of persons with disabilities. A recent survey from the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership, a survey conducted with over 6,000 women in India, Mozambique, Nigeria and the Philippines, revealed the significant barriers they face, the significant barriers that women face in achieving inclusion. connectivity, such as the lack of affordable Internet connectivity or the lack of high-speed connection to suitable online services. IFAP also works on these issues, and again, with the collaboration I mentioned, we are trying to come up with solutions. And here let me mention maybe three brief use cases. The first one is in India, where an IFAP project empowered 265 rural women with digital skills through the Swarm Lumban program. In Georgia, 60 women, including many Ukrainian refugees, went through a targeted training to master digital technologies. In Iran, women participants in an IFAP training now proficiently use digital tools offered to them for inclusive role in society. So digital technologies can, of course, transform lives, can also make users more successful in whatever they do through what we offer them. Yet many women and girls in marginalized communities still lack the connectivity, and this, of course, exacerbates inequalities. So I hope this gives you an idea about some of the initiatives that IFAP program at UNESCO has been working on, whether by itself or through partnerships, like the couple of partnerships I mentioned and the dynamic coalitions. I would like to end with a call to continue building together an inclusive, not only information society, but hopefully a knowledge society, where everyone, regardless of nationality, regardless of gender, regardless of circumstances or ability, can thrive in the digital era. Thank you very much.

Najib Mokni: Thank you very much, Dr. Jelassi, for the key messages chaired regarding the response. to today’s challenges and for this call for all parties to continue to empower member states and stakeholders in developing policy for inclusive, equitable and sustainable knowledge societies and also for reiterating this commitment to partnerships. So now let’s hear from our experts. We have nine speakers. We have four on site and five online. I’ll introduce five of them and ask them one by one to share their thoughts and experiences on the strategy, actions, work plans and synergies among these dynamic coalitions and exchange on methodologies, results and good practices for measuring and enhancing digital inclusion and participation of women and girls and their servants and on exploring the multiple implications of frontier digital technologies on women and girls empowerment and building an inclusive digital inclusion framework. Let’s start with our first speaker, Mr. Alexander Barbosa, who is the Managing Director of CETIC. Mr. Alexander Barbosa is the Head of the Regional Centre for Studies on the Development of the Information Society CETIC under the auspice of UNESCO, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He is responsible for managing research projects for the production of ICT-related statistics on the access to and use of ICTs in different segments of society. Mr. Barbosa, you have the floor. You have five minutes.

Alexandre Barbosa: Thank you very much, Najib, and good morning, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here and thank UNESCO for inviting me to speak in this interesting dynamic coalition. Well, let me say that to advance human rights, especially the inclusion and digital inclusion and bridging the gap of women’s digital age, it is important to mention that we need to discuss connectivity beyond the binary concept of being or not being connected. We need a broader, a more comprehensive approach to fully understand and address the opportunities and challenges of digital inclusion and the realization of human rights online. And this concept that I want to bring to your attention today is called meaningful connectivity. And I guess that most of you here in this room have probably seen the launch of the revised Internet Universality Indicators, the IOI and the ROMEX framework from UNESCO. And this second generation of IOI has updated to reflect evolving priorities in the digital age, including the critical concept of meaningful connectivity. So I invite all of you to know this new series of IOI. And being connected, as I have said, is no longer sufficient to guarantee that individuals can reap the benefits of the Internet. We need to go to a broader concept that truly means to be represented, truly to be included in the digital age. And meaningful connectivity requires us to adopt a multidimensional perspective that considers not only Internet access, but also the quality, affordability and contextual opportunities for women in the digital age and their engagement in this new environment. And the dimensions that I draw your attention to are at least four key dimensions. The type of device that we are using to connect, the quality of connection, meaning the speed, the availability, the stability. of the connection, the financial affordability, and the availability of digital inclusion to measure the conditions of digital inclusion of the population and for development of effective public policies. And this holistic approach allows us to measure the actual conditions of digital inclusion and in turn design and implement public policies that ensure no one is left behind in the digital transformation process. We in Brazil did build on the work of the A4AI and the ITU to develop an analytical and conceptual framework that refines and expand the concept of meaningful connectivity to better address these pressing challenges, especially the gender gap. And to illustrate the importance of meaningful connectivity, let me share some findings of our last report that we published and that serve as a basis for the G20 recommendation for the G20 countries in terms of meaningful connectivity. When you look at the Brazilian situation, we have almost universal connectivity, being 90% of Brazilians as internet users, but this proportion drops down dramatically to only 22% of the population when we apply this concept of meaningful connectivity. And this finding, this report, exposed the deep inequalities in the country that were hidden or underestimated when measuring connectivity solely through the concept of being connected or not connected. I’m not going into the details, but just to illustrate the… gender inequalities, we have 28% of men having meaningful connectivity and only 17% of women having this full connectivity, highlighting a significant digital gender gap. And when you look at the numbers without this concept, we have 50 and 50. It’s very equal, but when you go deep into more detailed dimensions, there is a big issue. And these extreme inequalities have profound implications for human rights as they exacerbate social, economic and digital divides and this limited meaningful connectivity directly impacts vulnerable population, while also marginalising their voice in the digital age. To conclude, this concept that I brought to you, to your attention, of meaningful connectivity, is a critical tool for advancing human rights and the digital inclusion in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. It provides a clear evidence framework for understanding and addressing the conditions that determine true digital inclusion. By uncovering hidden disparities and guiding the development of target effective policies, meaningful connectivity ensures that all individuals, regardless of gender, age, socio-economic status or geographic location, can fully participate in and benefit from the opportunities brought by the digital transformation. Promote meaningful connectivity is not just a matter of technology, but equity, dignity and human rights. It is a fundamental enabler of social and economic developing, empowering individuals and mainly women to access education, employment, healthcare, and civic participations in meaningful ways. As such, policies and initiatives to bridge the digital gaps must be grounded in principles of meaningful connectivities, ensuring that Internet becomes a tool for advancing human rights, equity, and opportunity for all. And last, just to mention the UNESCO work, by integrating meaningful connectivity alongside themes such as governance of digital platforms, privacy, and children’s rights, the data the UNESCO EUI ensures a more comprehensive assessment of the digital inclusion. So those are my main contributions to this debate. Thank you.

Najib Mokni: Thank you so much, Dr. Barbosa, for those important elements and information shared regarding this very important initiative and the meaningful connectivity. We will have the chance and give the chance to the audience to ask questions and interact with you at the Q&A session. Now I’ll move with our next speaker, who is Dr. Abdallah Al-Hawass, the head of the ITHRA library. During his time at ITHRA, he has managed key components of mega-projects and led multiple cultural programs, both nationally and internationally, all of which aimed to provide cross-cultural engagement aligned with Saudi Arabia’s vision to 2030. Al-Hawass also served as the project manager of ITHRA participation in international book fairs to position ITHRA among global cultural institutions, project manager of ITHRA content initiative, director of the cultural program of the Eastern Book Fair 2023, and Dr. Abdallah Hawass intervention will be on empowering communities through equal access and digital inclusion and how Ithra Library contributes in digital inclusion and gender equality. Dr. Al-Hawass, you have five minutes.

Abdullah AI-Hawas: Thank you for the nice introduction. First, I would like to welcome you all here in our country. We are really pleased to have you all here in Riyadh city, the ambitious and the great city. It’s nice always to interact with people with different cultures. So I hope you are enjoying your staying here in Riyadh. So I have five minutes, so I have to run. So I will share my experience, our experience in Ithra Center and the empowerment communities through equal and digital inclusion. So first of all, let me just give you who are we. We are a cultural center. We have different components that serve the community as per the field of culture. We have a theater, we have archive, museum, cinema, idea labs for innovation and creativity. And of course, we have the library. The center is located in Bahrain, which is almost 400 kilometers from Riyadh city. Here, this is our library, Ithra Library. So I am sharing with you the experience and what we are doing here in the library in terms of the gender equity and inclusivity. So Ithra Library was selected as one of the top four modern library as per IFLA in 2022. We have a vibrant space to attract people, to be a friend with the library. We are not just books on shelves. know we are bigger than this, so we’re trying to have this access and this concept to all of our visitors to like the library. We have different goals. First of all to increase the love of reading and make it a habit and also contribute to improving the community by empowering them to come and use the spaces to share their ideas and make their activities. Also to support the cultural need for community members. Okay, this is our library. We have five different, let’s say, levels. Back of house and we have second level for children and floor and children literacy and multimedia. We have social floor and nonfiction collection and we have the fifth level which is about research and reference floor. This is just a glimpse of our levels. This is the for children literacy and multimedia section and second level. We have this the social floor and fiction books. Here where we are hosting different communities to activate and to meet and to interact with each other. Also we have the level four for nonfiction collection and also for the level five for research and reference floor. So how Ifrah Library contributes in digital inclusion and gender equality and through the vision of Saudi Arabia 2030 and also through UNESCO. So basically our vision is ambitious one and its result you can see it around the city from now. We achieved a lot of targets so far, and yet to achieve the remaining, there are more than 90 targets. But here I put the target that’s related to the library fields, three main pillars, which is developing administrative and operational efficiency, enhancing the community participation, and developing the library sector, planning, developing standard and system, and financing and investment, and developing cadres. So what we are seeing here, this is where we interact or interfacing with 2030 vision. The red one, we are contributing this directly through Ithra Library, improving access to library service, raising information awareness and promoting reader habits, activating libraries as center for education, culture, and community development, and support the digital transformation of library services. Here where we are also interact with the 2030 vision in equity, where the promoting women’s participation in the workforce, offering equal opportunity in labor market, and engaging and empowering women, improving digital literacy and education, policy and legal reforms, public private partnership, and also awareness and advocacy. And here where we are also interfacing with UNESCO and the sustainable development goals, we have four shared goals in quality education and achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, also sustainable cities and communities, and last life and land. So we are trying to contribute and achieve those targets either in 2030 vision of Saudi Arabia or sustainable development in UNESCO. achieving that? This is part of our effort. First, we’re introducing digital library. We have now over 55,000 books and more than 7,000 digital magazines and newspapers. It’s free of access. Anyone has an email can freely see all of these titles in English and Arabic anywhere in the world. If you have an email, then you have this plenty of books you can access. This is where we’re trying to put the culture and digitalize the books among our community. We started in 2019 with low numbers. Once COVID came, we think it will be raised and go down, but that wasn’t the case because every year it’s getting better and increased. Until now, we have more than 3,000 active users with more than 25,000 checkouts, which is exploring the books. This keeps increasing with time. Also, we have access for all. There is free internet access, Wi-Fi. We have also free printing, mobile device charging, developing accessibility. We have the sign language for people with disability. We have more than 3,000 titles for Braille books. We have also our staff can serve the people with disability either with sign language and with the signage with Braille writing. Also, this is kind of our services. We either come back shelving, self-checkout machines, and also smart screen if you don’t need to interact with a human being. Also, we have the computers is disputed among the library with free access. We have smart book return system and also multi-purpose room. If you enter the library, you need to conduct a meeting. If you just enter the library, you can get these services for free. Also, we have the quality education. We have more than 60% which are females that are trying to access books, either physical or digital. Also, we have trained more than 1,000 female undergrad students. They come and use their internship in our library for every semester. All of them are girls and women because we don’t have in the city for college for males. Also, we have here also achieve gender equality and empower all women girls. 65% of our women and we have also many of leaders from girls and women. Also we have representing Ithra Library at local and global cultural event to support this idea and cause and concept leading the library programs by our female staff in different stages through the planning development and also we have the sustainable cities and communication. We always open the doors for any activities that are related to culture. We have more than 30 reading clubs that we host in over the different years. They can come and discuss their books. It’s open for them. They can utilize any space that they like and also 50% of this reading clubs are from females. Also we have the in life and land we have lots an initiative if we call it reading marathon. We conducted every year in January with different libraries on a time in Arab world that if you read come you if you come to the library and read 100 pages Ithra will plant a tree for you. This is part to make our land green and this is part of our crown of initiative to make the Saudi green. So we are contributing in the land and make the life better by reading and reflecting this in the environment. Okay we have also safe space for cultural activities. This type of activities it is free for all ages for all genders reading club, certain book fair. We have reading competition. We have good to be exhibition where we people can exchange their books with other books freely. We have different book signing for global and and also a local author in the picture, which is the Nobel Prize winner, Mrs. Olga. Also we have pottery night all the time. Also this is part of our initiative to make the new generation to like and love the reading. We have something called iRead program, which is designed to be a competition starting from Saudi then from 2022. It’s spread to include all the Arab countries. We have more than 100,000 applicants this year. 10 of them was the finalists to win the title of Reader of the Year. As you see, nine of the finalists were females and one is male. Sometimes the women and girls are better than males in this kind of competitions and especially in reading. So by these all of activities giving the access, we think that Ithra is always trying to bridging the gap in terms of the accessibility and inclusivity and also the gender equality. Thank you. I’m sorry for taking too much time.

Najib Mokni: Thank you so much for this brilliant presentation, Dr. Al-Hawass, and I think this is very important to share the efforts of Ithra Library and it could be very, I mean, inspirational for many of our partners present at Ithra. I will move to our next expert, which is Dr. Sarah Cadu. Mr. Sarah is the Dean and Senior Lecturer, East African School of Library and Information Science, Macquarie. University, Uganda. Dr. Kadu is information coordinator of IFLA Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Division Committee, and she is also the co-chair of International Steering Committee of UNESCO. The title of the presentation of Dr. Kadu is IFLA and Gender-Inclusive Digital Transformation in Uganda, a call for action. You have the floor, madam, with five minutes, if you could,

Sarah Birungi Kaddu: Thank you so much, moderator, colleagues. Good day to you all. My presentation is the Gender-Inclusive Digital Transformation in Uganda, and I will end the presentation by a call to action. So throughout the presentation, I will highlight the importance of digital inclusion. I will also look at the challenges and propose a framework that ensures that no one is left behind, especially the women and the underserved communities. So as we may all be aware, the digital age presents immense opportunities for development. However, not everyone has equal access to these opportunities, and so that is why I bring to a case study from one of the rural communities in Uganda. So the current state of digital inclusion in rural Uganda is that 29% of Ugandans are having access to internet, and the majority of them reside in rural communities, and many of them are underserved. And this comes with a lot of challenges. For instance, there is poor infrastructure. and limited connectivity, high cost of devices and Internet services and of course lack of digital literacy and this also is causing a gender gap as has been earlier on narrated too from our keynote speech. I bring to you, ladies and gentlemen, a case study from one of the rural communities by the name of Nakaseke. Nakaseke is in Nakaseke district where there is a very vibrant public library that started as a community library but later on taken on by the state. It has about 26,000 people and 75% are small scale farmers including women and youth. There are lots of digital inclusion initiatives going on in this village. For instance, it’s a hub for digital inclusion pilot projects. There are also community based digital literacy programs for women in technology, Uganda and also initiatives by the National Library of Uganda and others and also the government through the Rural Communication Development Fund has facilitated ICT access to enable women and youth to connect online their businesses and also tap into the opportunities that online transactions come along with. Now why then do we have to think of a gender responsive framework? Earlier on I’ve just shared that there are a lot of initiatives in one of these rural areas, Nakaseke, but why should we now think of a gender responsive framework? It’s because many of these initiatives are in the rural areas. in existence, but none of them comes with a clear digital inclusion framework. So my proposal for a gender-responsive framework has three main objectives. One, promote the principle of equity, and two, to address gender disparities in access to digital tools and resources, and three, to enhance society development. So the proposal, in the interest of time, has three major components. One, I’m proposing to have a policy and regulation, whereby policies, particularly, I emphasize gender-sensitive policies, and also the second one, the infrastructure, whereby you need to have universal connectivity and affordable technologies, and three, the policy should have a component on education and training to be able to address the digital literacy programs that we’ve just seen a challenge. So my call to action, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I know by now we all agree that there is a need for a gender-responsive and inclusive framework that can bridge the digital divide and empower all citizens, and of course, leaving no one behind. So I’m therefore, in conclusion, asking us to adopt the IC approach to this digital inclusion approach that I’m proposing. One, invest in digital infrastructure, two, encourage collaboration among government, private sector, and mostly IFLA, UNESCO, and all other parties present in the room, and actively involve women and underserved communities in digital initiatives. and finally, to encourage progressive policies such as tax regimes that lower costs of connectivity, adult education and female education. I thank you. Shukran.

Najib Mokni: Shukran. Thank you so much, Dr. Kadu, for the brilliant presentation and thank you for this call of action and this approach suggested to partners coming and based on the experience of Uganda. Thank you so much. Our next guest and speaker is Dr. and Professor Nagwa Ebrahim Elshenawy. I think I pronounced it right, huh? Okay, so quickly, Professor Ashenewi, she’s a professor at Cairo University. Dr. Negwa has more than 20 years experience in developing strategies and policies related to ICT sector and digitization. She also has experience in conducting studies, setting methodologies, producing statistics and indicators to evaluate and assess the ICT sector performance and its impact on the economic development. An active member in ICT Digital Economy International and Academic Experts Group, she conducted the research policy papers in the areas of ICT and digitalization. Professor Ashenewi, you have five minutes for your presentation.

Nagwa Ebrahim Elshenawy: Good afternoon. Thank you so much, Monji, and I would like first to take this opportunity to thank the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for their hospitality and for their excellent organization for the IGF 2024 and I would also like to thank UNESCO and my dear Alex, my dear friend, for really giving me this opportunity and share with you my experience in the digital inclusion as well as share with you some substance from a recent study I conducted titled Digitization Innovation Tools for Women Empowerment, the Case of Egypt. All of us knew that the gender gap has always been a socioeconomic concern everywhere in the world, even with the emergence of the technologies in the last few decades, but still globally this gender-based digital divide still persists. to present day. And according to the ITU figure, the world is slowly moving toward gender parity in Internet user. The percentage of female using the Internet in the year 2024 reached 65% for the female versus 70% of the of the male. And the gender-based digital gap exists everywhere, but to a different extent. But really the countries that suffered at most are the developing and the underdeveloped nation. Among this country, the Arab and the African region, where the digital gender gap reached from 9 to 10% compared to the other region. And also according to the International Labour Organization, the labor force participation for women on a global scale is approximately 49% almost compared to 75% for men. And this means that 25% gap between both genders. The countries during the last decade started to make a progress either by formulating policies or placing focus on how to digitally transform their economies. And this has allowed their societies, including women, to benefit from the opportunity offered by the digital transformation and digital economy. Among this country, Egypt, and digitization and innovation have significantly contributed to empowering women in Egypt, and offering her opportunity in the education, in the entrepreneurship, as well as in the economic participation. And let me share with you some of this substance and how this development are making a difference. For example, for the education. And I really I was proud and they had a great opportunity to initiate and managing. and Functioning, the first ICT for women platform in Egypt. And this is to fulfill the SDGs number five. And this platform really helped the women and girls to access learning and building their digital capacity, especially in the rural and under-served area. Not only this, but also this platform offer other service to the women and girls, among them, all the studies, the recent study conducted in the area of digital inclusion and in the area of ICT and women, we already succeeded to help them to reach these studies and this report, especially the report of the international organization. In addition to this also, we already, I already succeeded to convince the international companies and the local one working in the area of ICT to offer a percentage of jobs for women in the ICT sector in another also, in addition to other services. So as also in addition in the education, other initiative related to the e-learning established by the government in Egypt, which is decent live initiative, which focus also on equipping the women with some tech and digital literacy skills. For the second area, which is entrepreneurship and fostering the entrepreneurship, we have already the marketplace existing in our country. We have the national and the regional one, which help the women to manage their business from home, overcoming traditional barriers like mobility and social restriction. And also in addition to this, I had also some effort and I’m continuing this effort till now to build the capacity of, especially the women entrepreneur. Women entrepreneur, we have. different region, this region are almost, more of them are rural area. And this women entrepreneur, they lack not only digital skills, but they lack also to test the technology, the digital technology. Use this digital technology in order to develop, for example, their Facebook page, or Instagram page, or web page. So I really, I succeeded with some of my colleague and in collaboration with different NGOs in my country, to go to this entrepreneur in their rural area, in their villages, we offer them this type of workshop to help them really to test the technology, to help them to use the technology in order to building their web page, and then sell their product on this web page. In addition to this, as well for the entrepreneurship, we have mobile banking and FinTech innovation, and this is launched by the banking sector and financial institution, which allow the women to easy access to loan and financial tools to support their business. Supporting the employment, one of the important things that digitization has enabled a flexible and remote work option, allowing more women to join the workforce, especially those managing household responsibility. However, after all of this, yes, digitization opened new door and new opportunities for the women and girl in our country, but still the challenge remain existing to reach the gender equity. And for this, my proposal in this study is to, in order to define again these challenges and to focus on these challenges, the first one is related to the digital divide. Access to meaningful connectivity, reliable internet and affordable devices is still limited in some area in our country. Especially, for example, if we, according to the latest statistics and also published by the ITU in Egypt for the internet user, the individual who use internet. net in Egypt, it’s around 71-72%. When it comes to the gender percentage, for the female, it’s around 65 or 66%, and for the male, it’s around 79%. So the gap is big, still big. And when we go to the urban and rural area, the gap is more and more bigger. The second issue is related to employment in ICT sector and occupation that require intensive use of ICT. Women in Egypt really are at a disadvantaged position compared to the men. So this is also one of the great challenges, and I had the opportunity to participate in a study related to this area previously, and I’m planning now to conduct another study in this, because this is very important area, offering ICT jobs for women, especially jobs which use the ICT to an intensive level. This is very important also, not only for our country, but for all countries, whether developed or developing one. The third challenge is related to the cyber security concern as well. The data privacy issue, all of these are significant issues which can hurdle also the women in our country. Last things, which addressing this challenge through targeted policy and initiative can further amplify the impact of digitization and innovation on women empowerment, not only for our country in Egypt, I believe this is for a major country in the Arab region, in the African region, and in other region worldwide. With this, I submit Monje, thank you so much.

Najib Mokni: Thank you so much, Professor, for sharing these key findings from this important study coming from Egypt. So as I said before, how we will to enter, I mean, for the audience to interact with your presentations. I don’t see, Mr. Kossi, I may see no connected Sanhok, that’s, you can confirm? Yes, I confirm. available for this session. So I thank the speakers here present on the stage and I give the floor to my colleague, Sun Hong, to introduce the next speakers. Thank you. Thank you, Najib.

Xianhong Hu: Thanks to all the previous speakers. I heard so much insights, vision and aspirations from you. Now it’s really my great honor to continue the moderation and introduce our online speakers. We are only having 30 minutes. I will do my best and also want to ensure about 10 minutes to open the floor. So for those participants in the room and online, please feel free to prepare your questions and introduce yourself because of the Dynamic Coalition meeting. So we just want to know you more. So now…

Najib Mokni: Sorry, Sun Hong, sorry to interrupt you. Mr. Kosi was here. He was hiding in the room. So welcome, Mr. Kosi. And maybe before going to the online speakers, Sun Hong, could you give me five minutes? Yes, maximum. Also to the presentation of Mr. Amesinu. So Mr. Kosi Amesinu, from the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Benin, the chair of the NGO Women Be Free. He is a civil servant of the Beninese state since 2008 and he has been working since June 2021 at the Ministry of Economy and Finance. He is the current head of the private sector monitoring and support service. He is also the regional director for West Africa at the African ICT Foundation and he is the chair of NGO Women Be Free. Mr. Amesinu, you have the floor. Five minutes for your presentation.

Kossi Amessinou: Thank you for inviting me. Previously, I said to our colleague from UNESCO that I will share only the experience from our process. The statement we do with UNESCO in Benin, according to how to use the Internet Universal Indicators to transform our digital transformation process in our country. For the statement, for example, we put on the table one metric order group, where we have public representatives, private representatives, civil society representatives, and also the research staff, led locally by myself and globally by Professor Alain Kiyendu. And for the collection, data collection locally, I lead the staff with this colleague from different We collect information from all the stakeholders, we analyze the data we collect, we resume, and the government makes validation of each step of the information we collect. After that process, with the government representative, we do a one big validation event, where government provides his input to let the document be very acceptable for him, and also civil society and private sector, all of them provide their input, and we conclude our statement. In this process, we see the gap we have in implementation of digital process for ladies and women. We have more women who don’t have possibility today to attend mathematical study, physical study, and informatics study, technical study globally. They are mostly in literal study. We are working now with government to let them have found support to go through it for technical study now, and for this year, 2024, we have hundreds fellowship in a public university for the people who don’t have money, coming from a family where we don’t have more money to pay for their scholarship in high school. The government pay directly for them. With the support we have some projects, one called SWEDS, is financed by World Bank, but working with government. we finance more of ladies to go to technical high school this year. We will do it next year again and continue to do this process to have more ladies and women in technical area and let them become our champion in how women can be referenced in technical issue area in our country. That is the comment I need to share with you here.

Najib Mokni: Thank you. Thank you so much for this experience shared from Benin based on the IUI and the importance of the assessment based on the IUI indicators of UNESCO to come up with recommendations on gender inclusion. Thank you so much. I give back the floor to my colleague Sun Hong to continue with the next speakers. Thank

Xianhong Hu: you. Yeah, thank you, Najeeb. Thank you, Kosi. Since we only have 25 minutes, I’ll be very fast to introduce our following four wonderful women speakers online. Please forgive me if we don’t have time for open floor. So please do type your comments in the chat. We have online moderator Carmen Ferry from TDIP to moderate online with you as well. So now it’s my great honor to introduce Madam Onika Makwakwa, the Executive Director of the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership, TDIP, who is also co-founder of the ITF Dynamic Coalition on the Measuring Digital Inclusion. And Onika, the floor is yours. Thank you.

Onica Makwakwa: Great. Thank you so much and greetings to you all. I will get quickly right to it. It is an honor to join you today for this session. I am going to base my contribution on a summary of a recent report, which Global Digital Inclusion partnership published earlier this year, titled Connected to Resilience, Gendered Experiences of Meaningful Connectivity through a Global Pandemic. This report is a reflection of our shared journey through one of the most transformative global challenges in recent history, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the digital divide that continues to shape the experiences of billions of people around the world, especially women. The pandemic underscored the essential role of the internet. For many, it became a lifeline, a means of staying connected to family, education, work, and healthcare. Yet, this global crisis also revealed the deep inequalities in internet access, exposing how meaningful connectivity is far from universal. We witnessed firsthand how essential internet access had become, but we also saw how many, especially women, were left behind. The digital divide is not just a matter of access to technology, it’s a matter of equity. Despite the rapid acceleration of digital technologies, too many women, particularly in rural and marginalized communities, continue to face significant barriers to connectivity. Whether it’s lack of infrastructure, high cost of internet access and devices, or societal structures that limit their access and agency, these barriers have been amplified in the wake of the pandemic. In our study, we focused on understanding these gendered experiences by gathering insights from over 6,000 women across countries like Bangladesh, Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda, as well as engaging policymakers and digital experts from Africa and Asia, where we explored a new research method, which we called policy ethnography. What we found was eye-opening and deeply concerning. Women living in rural areas were three times more likely to lack internet access than their urban counterparts. And those with lower levels of education were significantly less likely to be meaningfully connected. This is a clear indication of how the digital divide intersects with geography, education, and class, creating new layers of inequality. In underserved communities, whether it’s a remote village in India or an impoverished urban settlement in Nigeria, women face compounded challenges. They often lack the infrastructure needed for reliable internet access, face high costs of device and data services, and in many cases, depend on male family members to access devices. Additionally, the unpaid care work that many women shoulder leaves them with little time to acquire digital skills or engage in online activities. Yet, despite these formidable challenges, we also witnessed incredible resilience. Women continue to find creative ways to access the internet for education, employment, and family connections. This resilience is something we must not overlook. It is a testament to the strength and determination of women everywhere. But it is also a call to action for us to do more to ensure that these barriers are broken down and that women are fully included in the digital economy. Our research also offers a glimpse of hope, a pathway forward. If we are to close the digital divide and make meaningful progress, we must center policies that are people-focused and rooted in community consultation. Solutions should not be imposed from the top down, but co-created with communities that are most affected. This is why we propose four actionable tiers of solutions. One. are deep investments. These are substantial targeted investments that can make significant impact on a specific community or issue, driving meaningful change, examples such as better use of universal service and access funds to close digital gender divides. Two is grand visions, long-term transformative initiatives that require substantial funding and years of efforts to bring about systemic change in the digital landscape, such as national broadband plans and key policy strategy documents that can be very clear about closing the gender gaps. Easy wins as the third recommendation, you know, looking at smaller, more targeted interventions that can deliver tangible benefits quickly and build momentum for larger change. An example of this is collecting gender data and actually using it. Scalable systems is the fourth recommendation, you know, programs that take existing structures and systems and scale them to reach a broader audience, creating a lasting impact. You know, multi-stakeholder approaches and gender targets can provide the foundation for processes to scale progress towards closing the gender digital divide. Importantly, no single solution will work for everyone. Each region, each community, and each person has different needs and priorities. That’s why it’s essential that policy makers engage directly with local communities, listen to their experiences, and design strategies that reflect their specific context. Beyond technological development, the advancement of meaningful connectivity also requires building a supportive social environment. This means ensuring that connectivity is affordable, that digital skills are accessible, and that everyone, regardless of gender or geography, has an equal opportunity to benefit from the digital economy. It also means emerging challenges like data protection, online safety, and consumer protection as millions more people come online. The numbers are stuck. If we do not act, the global economic losses from the digital divide could exceed half a trillion dollars in the next five years. The cost of inaction is far too high and the opportunity for change is now. As we look ahead, let us take this moment to reaffirm our commitment to digital inclusion. Let us ensure that women, especially those in marginalized communities, are not left behind as we move forward into a digital future. Together we can create a world where connectivity is not a privilege but a right, a world where everyone everywhere has the tools and opportunities to thrive. Thank you.

Xianhong Hu: Thank you Onika for sharing so extensive work you’ve done on the ground. And for those who like to follow GDIP and the dynamic coalition work, you could always fill the membership submission form as typed in the chat to join us and we’ll keep you updated on our good work. Now I’m very happy to present Dr. Victoria Romaniuk. She is the director of the Moila School of Journalism, the National University of Kiev, Moila in Ukraine. She is also the deputy chief editor of StopFake, a pioneering fact-checking organization. And most importantly, she is also the chair of the UNESCO IFAP Working Group on Information Ethics. So Dr. Romaniuk, the floor is yours.

Viktoriia Romaniuk: Thank you very much. It’s a great honor to be here and share our experience. Among the organizations I represented is fact-checking project StopFake. And today I would like to talk about the disinformation as one of the main threats and very big challenge for all of us. So the use of artificial intelligence in disinformation… information campaign and the manipulation of public opinion has become a significant challenge in spreading false narratives and misleading facts. Today, this is becoming a powerful challenge and an obstacle to access to information for all. The UNESCO report published in this year warns that without a decisive step to integrate ethical principles, artificial intelligence could distort historical data about, for example, the Holocaust, as it often generates false information. It has also been documented that AI enables a malicious actor to manipulate historical context, create fabricated testimonies, and even alter historical records. The issue of promoted manipulative narratives and artificial intelligence-generated fakes has become particularly acute for Ukraine during the full-scale invasion, and the use of artificial intelligence in the context of disinformation can be divided into following formats. First of all, it’s creation of fake content, manipulation of photo, video, and audio, audience analysis and contact adaptation to their needs, and dissemination of disinformation through coordinated inauthentic behavior generated by AI. In the spring of this year, OpenAI discovered five international disinformation campaigns that use generative AI to manipulate public opinion and influence The report mentions that the campaign involves governments, agencies, and private companies from Russia, China, Iran, and Israel. The content posed by this organization focused on the wide range of issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and conflict in Gaza, in India election, and politics in Europe and the United States, and, of course, criticism of the Chinese government. And since the start of full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Ukraine Fact-Checking and Analytical Organization have documented various types of AI during disinformation campaigns in Ukraine. These campaigns are associated with content generation and use the deepfakes, of course. And also, these campaigns were likely to undermine trust in the government and military, creating a crisis in society and intimidating the population and causing distortion, as well as inciting social and political conflict and undermining support for Ukraine. So, among the main narratives that we observe and that we analyze that Ukraine is a failed state, Ukraine is a fascist state, and military support Ukraine, and the narratives that are related to it are trying to undermine military support for Ukraine, and so on, and so on. Such technological disinformation campaigns are aimed at influencing a large group of people and are often used in the context of political and military events, as I mentioned before. And they target… And they target… changes in audience’s behavior. And it’s very, very important for us because disinformation campaign really very, very dangerous and change in audience behavior, distortion of factual knowledge and creation of false perception of reality. And such disinformation campaign post a direct threats to preventing access to trustful and often life critical information for all group of people. And this post a significant threats to the information security of society, especially during the crisis, military conflict, war, election and so on and so on. So it’s extremely important, it’s necessary to build information cooperation and coordinate effort between governments, information organization, international organization and technological company to effectively combat disinformation campaign. It’s important to actively cooperate with technology companies to direct and block, to detect and block disinformation, monitor the activity of bots and fake accounts, spreading manipulative contact and strengthen action within the legal framework. Additionally, it’s essential to investigate, to analyze the sources and sponsor of disinformation campaign to ensure transparency and hold all responsibility parties accountability. And of course, finally, it’s necessary to enhance media literacy skills amongst the audience and rise awareness about artificial intelligence, about disinformation, about different technologies that changes our perception. about reality. So I will conclude here. Thank you very much for the attention and we can continue to discuss if we will have some time.

Xianhong Hu: Thank you Dr. Romanilka for unpacking so much complexities of the disinformation and related issues. Also I enjoyed listening to your solutions you have already accumulated in your past experience. I understand your working group has also a LinkedIn group so if you can share in the chat so our participants can also follow with you on the entire work related to these issues. Thank you. Now I’d like to introduce the next speaker, Madame Maria Cabrera. She is the International Relationship and Development Office Consultant at the Business and Technology University of Georgia and I also take this opportunity to recognize the presence of Madame Ani Sharishvili, also from the University of Georgia in Business and Technology and you have been a wonderful implementing partner of the IFA project we support in your country. So Maria, please take the floor and share your good practice.

Mariam Keburia: Thank you. Thank you so much and warm greetings from Georgia and from our side from Business and Technology University. First of all I would like to on behalf of our team and we are together engaged in this great forum and opportunity to exchange with ideas. First of all we would like to thank you most cordially for welcoming us, Business and Technology University, one of the actors from Georgia to share our perspectives and also to feel much more global than before cooperating with IFA program and before cooperating with our global partners. If I could kind of title our intervention it would be the global reach and local impact. This is the stories that we would like to share with you from Business and Technology University, which is a relatively small institution in Georgia and basically focused on delivering value-driven initiatives, projects in and for local communities. But those local initiatives and the projects or initiatives that are designed for the emerging pressing needs for the local societies, they are also reflected and kind of designed from the global strategies, from the global needs and the perspectives that our partner institutions share through different platforms. And our presence today, being the part of this particular forum and also being the part of the coalition, enables us to follow all those general and much needed and already strategized initiatives that are in place. The experiences and knowledge that you have shared right now from different perspectives, from the people in the audience who are in person and also the representatives across the globe who have shared the common need for empowering those who have less access to technologies, enabling those who would otherwise have less possibilities to upskill, to use meaningfully their technologies. So coming back to the local impact and global reach, I would like to bring to your attention one of the initiatives supported by UNESCO-IFAP in Georgia, and that particular initiative was addressing Ukrainian refugee women in Georgia. One of the beneficiaries of the projects or to say one of the participants target group of the project where Georgian as well as Ukrainian refugees women living in Georgia. That was relatively small scale project, but again it had in mind to increase the meaningful use of technology. technologies and many of our colleagues have beautifully highlighted how important it is to have access to fight against fake news, to have access to the AI tools, to have access to the digital skills and especially and colleagues in person mentioned that it’s important to give such access to grant such access to those who would otherwise not be able to underprivileged so to say. So that was a project that we have completed with participation and with support of UNESCO IFAP program and the learnings and the feedback, the knowledge that we gained allowed us to move further in the next keyword in our intervention would be partnership to move farther and engage more partners and currently we have recently completed one of the larger scale initiatives for the targeting Ukrainian empowering tech empowerment of Ukrainian women in Georgia that was the next phase that was supported in this case with larger stakeholders with larger number of partners in Georgia international partners of course and what is more important to highlight is the project the tech empowerment for Ukrainian women has moved to the next phase even expanding our initiative and expanding opportunities and granting even more skills more courses more tangible outcomes more opportunities to those women who temporarily now have to live in Georgia and have to be away from their homes from Ukraine. One of the highlights that I wanted to bring to your attention is how we have improved after IFAP program that we have completed we have engaged more stakeholders we have engaged more partners because we understood it very clearly what it means to have global agenda, just like similar to today, what it means to translate the global strategies, a global agenda into local initiatives and that’s how our university works and that’s how these similar programs have started to work after sharing the experience that it gives us a great pleasure even to do today and in other cases as well to be a part of the international forum and international communities such as coalitions and various opportunities. We have engaged more participants but also more trainers from Ukraine for example. This time our this particular program that we have transformed and enlarged and kind of covered more participants have brought a feedback loop, have brought the feedback and recommendations from participants, have improved our practices based on the engagement of participants and we have invited more experts and more people from Ukraine on board in order to implement the projects for Ukrainian in much more efficient way. So what is our solution? Our solution and the formula is to follow the global strategies, to be in line with the global strategies that have been designed and have been put in place by high quality experts, to follow, to share, to continue to share the passion that you and the colleagues all share but also and also with the participation of local stakeholders, local experts and those who are well aware of the local complexities to design the local solution. So once again from global reach to local impact that is how IFAP and the international part have enabled us, and that is what we have for the coming next year in our agenda. Thank you so much, and we remain in touch for partnership, for exchange, and for enriching each other’s common goals.

Xianhong Hu: Thank you so much, Mariam. I mean, what you have shared in Georgia, just also telling me that even a local project can deliver such a global impact and also such a sustainability in the country. Thank you. So I think we are really on time, that I just want to give floor to the, sorry, I don’t have time to open floor, but I have to ensure that I’m going to introduce our last speaker, Madame Dorothy Borden, to address some final words. Dorothy has been a board member of UNESCO Institute for Information Technology and Education. She has been a global leading expert in the international development and technology. Of course, she has also been a former chair of IFAB. Dorothy, please take the floor and give some of your final remarks. Thank you again, Dorothy, for your participation.

Dorothy Gordon: Thank you. I do hope we’ll be able to collect some questions because this has been such an enriching session. The first thing that I want to note from all the speakers is that our failure to act in such a way as to bridge the digital divide that we are discussing today has created new problems. Particularly, I highlight the increasing inequality because the face of poverty has always been female. It’s always been people with disabilities. And now our failure to get them effectively online further deepens that poverty. And with frontier technologies such as AI that make it so easy to spread misinformation and fake news, the fact that that huge… number of our population does not understand what is happening, makes that our entire social fabric extremely vulnerable, our democracies extremely vulnerable. And so this is the time, and I’m very pleased that this dynamic coalition has brought together so many partners, this is the time when we absolutely have to collaborate. And we have got experience that shows us which kind of tools we can use, like the internet universality indicators. But many of the speakers stress the importance of measuring, of understanding exactly what is happening in terms of access to the internet. It’s not enough to count how many SIM cards. You have to know what proportion of people in rural areas have meaningful access. And I think that that emphasis on meaningful access actually came through in many of the presentations. I know that we don’t have much time, but I want to emphasize that we can’t, we need comprehensive policy. When it comes to media information literacy, we see that many of the efforts are very piecemeal, they are not coordinated among government agencies. When it comes to addressing digital divide issues, we are not seeing national policies that are rolled out consistently with clear benchmarks. So these things do have to happen. And I really want to end by emphasizing that we can, if we work together, and not just as women, but as men, and as policymakers, as people in the not-for-profit sector, and also people in the private sector. And here, let me just make a side remark. that it’s very important that we encourage the creation of national-level platforms that address these concerns for women. And those platforms should, in my view, comply with our Rome standards. They should be rights-based. They should be open. They should be access. They should give ease of access and they should be multi-stakeholder. That means we have to reduce dependency on major platforms and focus on building our national-level platforms. So, let me end by thanking all of the contributors to this session. It’s been very impressive and I hope that we can continue to build on that by using the IFAP strategic plan and many other international instruments that we have available. Thank you so much.

Xianhong Hu: Thank you. Thank you, Dorothy. You always give us so much spirit of IFAP and refresh our concept. So, that comprehensive is exactly what we are seeking here. So, may I ask to check with our online moderator, Carmen, if there are any burning questions, comments we are still able to handle. And also ask our on-site moderator, Najeeb, if any participants want to take the floor before we conclude. Thank you.

Najib Mokni: Okay. Thank you, Sun Hong. We think we are out of time and we should close now. But we will maybe collect one reaction quickly, if you want. Oh, yeah. And Carmen, anything from online? No, nothing online. Nothing online. Okay, great.

Dorothy Gordon: Can I comment online? Of course. Let me just say that listening to everyone. I felt that one of the things you see, I think, first of all, let me emphasize that every context is different. But I think that we have to look for the entry points that would make women who are not currently online enthusiastic about getting the skills that they need. So it has to be things that relate to their lives, whether it is helping them to understand better how to use online tools for the education of their children, or in my country, where women drive the market, giving them access to the tools to help them with e-commerce. But we have to assume that they have to be persuaded. They are so busy. We cannot afford to waste their time. From their perspective, they need to see how our programs will impact their lives. Thanks.

Xianhong Hu: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Now I just add one thing, because I think maybe one missing data we didn’t present in this session that we should go beyond the basic data of access connection, and look at really the extent to which women are influencing the development of digital technologies. For example, in the artificial intelligence industry, only 27% of women are involved in AI development. That’s a huge gap. And also not to mention the high level, even near to zero. Then I recently supported new policy research on quantum. Quantum is another new frontier technology, which is going to change everything we’re having here for AI, for internet. Then the gender gap is even worse than anything we’re having now. I think the fundamental question is how we empower women and girls, since they were a child. promote STEM education from the very beginning. It’s really, we need a comprehensive approach. It’s not just to say, in Chinese they say, you cannot cure a headache by just the medicine for the head. You need a systematic solution for that. And that’s exactly where we are here now. Thank you.

Najib Mokni: So thank you so much. We have to close the session. They informed me that we are out of time. So thank you all for your participation. I’m sure that this wonderful discussion will continue among our partners, among the coalition. So let me invite you all for a group photo if you want, please, and I thank you all again and see you very soon.

Xianhong Hu: Thank you so much. Very good idea. I also encourage everybody online, please turn on your camera if you can. And also I’m appealing to our IGF co-host, could you promote everybody to be a co-host so they could turn on their video? And maybe we are already too late to do that. But we are okay to do a screenshot. My colleague Yichen is going to do a screenshot with all the participants online. Then we can do a hybrid picture with those in the room. So that’s the amazing thing of internet. Okay, one, two, three, smile. Very good. Can we leave? Yeah, yes, I think so. And thanks again. Anyway, congratulations on pulling together some excellent speakers. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Stay in touch, have a good holiday. Yeah. Hi. Thank you.

Agreement Points

Digital divide exacerbating inequalities

Tawfik Jelassi

Onica Makwakwa

Dorothy Gordon

Digital divide exacerbating inequalities

Connected resilience: Gendered experiences of connectivity during pandemic

Rural-urban gap in internet access for women

Multiple speakers emphasized how the digital divide is deepening existing inequalities, particularly affecting women and marginalized communities. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted these disparities.

Need for comprehensive policies and partnerships

Tawfik Jelassi

Onica Makwakwa

Dorothy Gordon

Comprehensive policies and partnerships needed

People-focused policies rooted in community consultation

National-level platforms complying with rights-based standards

Speakers agreed on the necessity of comprehensive, collaborative approaches to digital inclusion, emphasizing community involvement and rights-based standards.

Importance of measuring digital inclusion beyond basic access

Alexandre Barbosa

Nagwa Ebrahim Elshenawy

Kossi Amessinou

Multidimensional approach to measure meaningful connectivity

Gender-disaggregated data on internet access and use

Internet Universality Indicators to assess digital transformation

Speakers emphasized the need for more comprehensive metrics to measure digital inclusion, going beyond simple access statistics to include factors like connection quality, affordability, and gender-disaggregated data.

Similar Viewpoints

These speakers highlighted the importance of targeted digital inclusion initiatives for women, emphasizing the need for gender-responsive frameworks and localized approaches.

Sarah Birungi Kaddu

Nagwa Ebrahim Elshenawy

Mariam Keburia

Gender-responsive framework for digital inclusion

Digitization tools for women’s empowerment in Egypt

Local digital inclusion initiatives for refugee women in Georgia

Both speakers emphasized the importance of education and skill development, particularly for women and girls, to address challenges in the digital sphere.

Viktoriia Romaniuk

Xianhong Hu

Enhancing media literacy skills to combat disinformation

Promoting STEM education for girls from early age

Unexpected Consensus

Libraries as hubs for digital inclusion

Abdullah AI-Hawas

Dorothy Gordon

Libraries as hubs for digital inclusion and gender equality

National-level platforms complying with rights-based standards

While coming from different perspectives, both speakers highlighted the importance of local, accessible platforms for digital inclusion. AI-Hawas focused on libraries, while Gordon advocated for national-level platforms, but both emphasized the need for community-based, rights-compliant spaces for digital access and learning.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers generally agreed on the severity of the digital divide, particularly its impact on women and marginalized communities. There was consensus on the need for comprehensive, gender-responsive policies, improved measurement of digital inclusion, and the importance of local and community-based initiatives.

Consensus level

High level of consensus on core issues, with speakers offering complementary perspectives and solutions. This strong agreement suggests a clear direction for future policy and research in digital inclusion, emphasizing gender-responsive, community-centered approaches and more nuanced measurement of digital access and use.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to measuring digital inclusion

Alexandre Barbosa

Kossi Amessinou

Multidimensional approach to measure meaningful connectivity

Internet Universality Indicators to assess digital transformation

While both speakers advocate for comprehensive measurement frameworks, Barbosa emphasizes a multidimensional approach focusing on factors like connection quality and affordability, while Amessinou promotes the use of Internet Universality Indicators for assessment.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement were subtle and primarily focused on different approaches to measuring and addressing digital inclusion, rather than fundamental disagreements on goals or principles.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers was relatively low. Most speakers shared similar overarching goals related to digital inclusion and gender equality, with differences mainly in specific approaches or areas of focus. This low level of disagreement suggests a general consensus on the importance of digital inclusion and the need for targeted efforts to address gender disparities in digital access and skills.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the need for targeted policies to address digital inclusion for women, but Makwakwa emphasizes community consultation and co-creation of solutions, while Kaddu focuses on a broader gender-responsive framework at the national level.

Onica Makwakwa

Sarah Birungi Kaddu

People-focused policies rooted in community consultation

Gender-responsive framework for digital inclusion

Similar Viewpoints

These speakers highlighted the importance of targeted digital inclusion initiatives for women, emphasizing the need for gender-responsive frameworks and localized approaches.

Sarah Birungi Kaddu

Nagwa Ebrahim Elshenawy

Mariam Keburia

Gender-responsive framework for digital inclusion

Digitization tools for women’s empowerment in Egypt

Local digital inclusion initiatives for refugee women in Georgia

Both speakers emphasized the importance of education and skill development, particularly for women and girls, to address challenges in the digital sphere.

Viktoriia Romaniuk

Xianhong Hu

Enhancing media literacy skills to combat disinformation

Promoting STEM education for girls from early age

Key Takeaways

Digital inclusion requires a comprehensive approach beyond binary access, focusing on meaningful connectivity

Libraries and community centers play an important role in promoting digital inclusion and gender equality

Gender-responsive frameworks and policies are needed to address the digital divide

Disinformation and AI-generated fake content pose significant challenges to information access and digital literacy

Local initiatives tailored to specific community needs can have significant impact on digital inclusion

Measuring digital inclusion requires multidimensional approaches and gender-disaggregated data

Resolutions and Action Items

Adopt the Internet Universality Indicators to assess digital transformation progress

Implement comprehensive national policies for media and information literacy

Create national-level digital platforms complying with rights-based standards

Promote STEM education for girls from an early age

Increase efforts to involve women in AI and frontier technology development

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively reach and persuade women who are not currently online to gain digital skills

Addressing the significant underrepresentation of women in AI and quantum technology development

Balancing the need for global strategies with localized solutions for digital inclusion

How to sustainably fund large-scale digital inclusion initiatives in developing countries

Suggested Compromises

Combining global reach strategies with locally-tailored implementation of digital inclusion programs

Balancing investment in infrastructure with digital skills training and content development

Engaging both public and private sector stakeholders in digital inclusion efforts

To advance human rights, especially the inclusion and digital inclusion and bridging the gap of women’s digital age, it is important to mention that we need to discuss connectivity beyond the binary concept of being or not being connected. We need a broader, a more comprehensive approach to fully understand and address the opportunities and challenges of digital inclusion and the realization of human rights online.

speaker

Alexandre Barbosa

reason

This comment introduces the important concept of ‘meaningful connectivity’ beyond simple binary access, pushing the discussion to consider quality and context of connectivity.

impact

It shifted the conversation from basic access metrics to a more nuanced understanding of digital inclusion, influencing subsequent speakers to address qualitative aspects of connectivity.

We have more than 60% which are females that are trying to access books, either physical or digital. Also, we have trained more than 1,000 female undergrad students. They come and use their internship in our library for every semester.

speaker

Abdullah AI-Hawas

reason

This provides concrete examples of efforts to promote gender equality in digital and information access, offering a practical perspective on implementation.

impact

It grounded the discussion in real-world initiatives, prompting other speakers to share specific examples from their contexts.

Women living in rural areas were three times more likely to lack internet access than their urban counterparts. And those with lower levels of education were significantly less likely to be meaningfully connected.

speaker

Onica Makwakwa

reason

This highlights the intersectionality of digital exclusion, showing how gender, geography, and education compound inequalities.

impact

It deepened the analysis by introducing multiple dimensions of exclusion, leading to more complex discussions about targeted interventions.

The issue of promoted manipulative narratives and artificial intelligence-generated fakes has become particularly acute for Ukraine during the full-scale invasion, and the use of artificial intelligence in the context of disinformation can be divided into following formats.

speaker

Viktoriia Romaniuk

reason

This comment introduces the critical issue of AI-generated disinformation, particularly in conflict situations, adding a new dimension to the digital inclusion discussion.

impact

It broadened the scope of the conversation to include information integrity and security aspects of digital inclusion, especially for vulnerable populations.

Our solution and the formula is to follow the global strategies, to be in line with the global strategies that have been designed and have been put in place by high quality experts, to follow, to share, to continue to share the passion that you and the colleagues all share but also and also with the participation of local stakeholders, local experts and those who are well aware of the local complexities to design the local solution.

speaker

Mariam Keburia

reason

This comment synthesizes a key approach of combining global strategies with local implementation, bridging high-level policy with on-the-ground realities.

impact

It provided a framework for thinking about implementation that resonated with other speakers, encouraging discussion of how to adapt global principles to local contexts.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by expanding the concept of digital inclusion beyond simple access to encompass meaningful connectivity, gender-specific challenges, rural-urban divides, the threat of AI-generated disinformation, and the importance of combining global strategies with local implementation. The discussion evolved from general principles to specific examples and challenges, ultimately presenting a multi-faceted view of digital inclusion that considers access, quality, gender, geography, education, information integrity, and the need for tailored local solutions within a global framework.

How can we better measure and understand meaningful connectivity, especially for women and underserved communities?

speaker

Alexandre Barbosa

explanation

Barbosa emphasized the need to go beyond binary measures of connectivity to understand the quality, affordability, and contextual opportunities for internet access. This is important for developing effective policies to bridge the digital divide.

What strategies can be implemented to increase women’s participation in STEM fields, particularly in emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing?

speaker

Xianhong Hu

explanation

Hu highlighted the significant gender gap in AI and quantum technology development, suggesting a need for comprehensive approaches to empower women in these fields from an early age.

How can we create more gender-responsive and inclusive frameworks for digital inclusion in rural and underserved areas?

speaker

Sarah Birungi Kaddu

explanation

Kaddu presented a case study from rural Uganda and called for action to develop frameworks that address gender disparities in access to digital tools and resources.

What are effective strategies to combat AI-generated disinformation campaigns, particularly those targeting women and vulnerable populations?

speaker

Viktoriia Romaniuk

explanation

Romaniuk discussed the growing threat of AI-generated disinformation and emphasized the need for coordinated efforts to detect, block, and counter such campaigns.

How can we design digital inclusion initiatives that are more relevant and persuasive to women’s daily lives and needs?

speaker

Dorothy Gordon

explanation

Gordon stressed the importance of creating programs that directly relate to women’s lives and demonstrate clear benefits, such as tools for children’s education or e-commerce for market traders.

What are effective ways to scale up successful local digital inclusion projects to have broader impact?

speaker

Mariam Keburia

explanation

Keburia shared experiences from local projects in Georgia and suggested the need to explore how such initiatives can be expanded and replicated in other contexts.

Summary

This discussion focused on addressing connectivity challenges in developing regions, particularly in South Asia and Africa. Experts highlighted the significant digital divide, with billions still offline globally. Key challenges identified included infrastructure gaps, affordability issues, and lack of digital literacy. Participants emphasized the need for innovative technologies and policies to expand access, especially in rural and underserved areas.

The discussion explored various strategies to improve connectivity. These included prioritizing bandwidth, promoting passive infrastructure sharing, leveraging satellite technologies, and adopting flexible licensing regimes. Experts stressed the importance of public-private partnerships and regional cooperation in driving progress. The role of universal service funds in subsidizing connectivity for underserved areas was highlighted, though concerns about their effective utilization were raised.

Capacity building emerged as a crucial factor, with speakers emphasizing the need to develop local technical skills and digital literacy. The potential of community networks and open technologies like Open RAN to reduce costs and foster innovation was discussed. Regulatory challenges were addressed, with calls for more adaptive frameworks to encourage new entrants and business models.

The discussion concluded by emphasizing the shared responsibility of stakeholders in promoting adaptive policies, targeted investments, and collaborative efforts to achieve universal internet access. Participants agreed on the need for continued dialogue and action to bridge the digital divide and ensure inclusive connectivity.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The current state of connectivity and challenges in developing regions, particularly South Asia

– Policy frameworks and regulatory measures needed to enhance connectivity

– Innovative technologies and partnerships that can help address connectivity challenges

– The role of capacity building and digital literacy in bridging the digital divide

– The importance of collaboration between governments, private sector, and civil society

Overall purpose/goal:

The purpose of this discussion was to explore challenges affecting connectivity in the developing world and identify actionable strategies to improve internet access and digital inclusion, particularly in underserved areas.

Tone:

The tone of the discussion was largely informative and collaborative. Speakers shared insights and experiences from their respective regions and areas of expertise in a constructive manner. There was a sense of urgency about addressing connectivity challenges, but the overall tone remained optimistic about potential solutions through policy reforms, technological innovation, and multi-stakeholder partnerships. The tone became slightly more critical when discussing regulatory barriers or lack of progress in certain areas, but remained solution-oriented throughout.

Speakers

– Omar Ansari: Digital Leap South Asia Project Lead at APNIC Foundation, Moderator

– Mahesh Uppal: Director of Comfors Private Limited, Digital leader and consultant to regulatory authorities in India

– Jimson Olufuye: Chair of the Africa ICT Alliance advisory council, Principal Consultant at Contemporary Consulting Limited

– Mohamed Shareef: Former Minister of Communications in Maldives, now in private sector

– Maria Beebe: Consultant IDG, Asia Open RAN Academy

– Syed Mohammad Shariar Jawed: Senior ICT Specialist, Economic Infrastructure at the Islamic Development Bank

– Shernon Osepa: Telecom and Internet Operations and Policy Strategist, Strategic advisor with the Caribbean Telecommunication Union

Additional speakers:

– Mirvez Khan: Works with a leading telecom company in Afghanistan

– Elisa: From Vietnam but based in Germany

– Nanjing Youth Development Center student

– Ajmal Amiri: Raised question about cyber awareness

Expanded Summary of Connectivity Discussion

Introduction

This discussion focused on addressing connectivity challenges in developing regions, particularly in South Asia and Africa. Experts from various backgrounds, including regulatory consultants, government officials, and development specialists, convened to explore strategies for improving internet access and digital inclusion in underserved areas. The dialogue highlighted the significant digital divide that persists globally, with billions still offline, and emphasised the urgent need for innovative solutions to bridge this gap.

The session began with an introduction to the Digital Leap South Asia Project, which aims to address key policy questions related to digital transformation in the region. These questions include how to leverage digital technologies for economic growth, improve digital infrastructure, and enhance digital skills and literacy.

Current State of Connectivity and Challenges

Omar Ansari provided specific connectivity statistics for South Asian countries, highlighting the disparities in internet penetration across the region. The discussion emphasized the importance of looking beyond headline statistics to understand the true state of connectivity, as official figures often overestimate actual internet penetration due to multiple accounts per user.

Jimson Olufuye, representing the Africa ICT Alliance, highlighted the economic significance of improved connectivity, noting that a 10% increase in internet penetration could yield up to an 8.2% increase in GDP per capita. This statistic provided a compelling economic rationale for investing in digital infrastructure and access.

Speakers identified several key challenges hindering connectivity in developing regions:

1. Infrastructure gaps, particularly in rural and geographically isolated areas

2. Affordability issues, especially concerning smartphones

3. Lack of digital literacy and technical skills

4. Insufficient institutional capacity and feasibility studies for connectivity projects

5. High government fees and aging subsea cable infrastructure in regions like the Caribbean

Mirvez Khan, an audience member, highlighted specific challenges in Afghanistan, including limited internet access, high costs, and the need for improved infrastructure and digital literacy programs.

Mohamed Shareef, former Minister of Communications in Maldives, emphasised the unique challenges faced by island nations, where prioritising bandwidth is crucial for connecting dispersed populations.

Policy Frameworks and Regulatory Measures

The discussion highlighted the need for adaptive policy frameworks and regulatory measures to enhance connectivity. Key points included:

1. Focus on disaggregated connectivity solutions and meaningful connectivity

2. Multi-stakeholder engagement and collaborative frameworks

3. Liberal and collaborative regulatory environment

4. Integration of capacity building into national ICT policies

5. Country-driven understanding and tailored solutions

6. Regional coordination, especially in areas like the Caribbean

Innovative Technologies and Partnerships

The discussion explored various technological solutions and partnership models to improve connectivity:

1. TV white spaces and IPv6 for enhancing connectivity in underserved areas

2. Open RAN technology for interoperability and cost reduction

3. Public-private partnerships, as exemplified in Maldives

4. Satellite technologies for reaching remote areas

5. Community networks for extending connectivity to underserved communities

6. Energy-efficient technologies for sustainable connectivity solutions

Syed Mohammad Shariar Jawed from the Islamic Development Bank discussed the digital village project in Pakistan, which aims to bring connectivity and digital services to rural areas. Maria Beebe highlighted the Free Internet Wi-Fi Connectivity in Public Places program in the Philippines as an example of expanding access.

Capacity Building and Digital Literacy

Maria Beebe provided a detailed list of critical skill gaps contributing to the digital divide, including digital literacy, technical skills, and infrastructure management. The Asia Open RAN Academy was mentioned as an initiative to address capacity building in the region.

Collaboration and Regional Cooperation

The discussion underscored the importance of collaboration between governments, the private sector, and civil society. Syed Mohammad Shariar Jawed emphasized the Islamic Development Bank’s digital inclusion strategic partnership program. Shernon Osepa highlighted regional cooperation in the Caribbean, focusing on disaster resilience for telecom infrastructure and addressing data sovereignty challenges.

Unresolved Issues and Future Directions

Several issues remained unresolved or required further attention:

1. Effectively addressing smartphone affordability

2. Balancing government regulation with innovation in the telecom sector

3. Connecting geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas

4. Improving the utilisation of Universal Service Funds, as discussed by Jimson

5. Enhancing cyber awareness and security in developing regions, a concern raised by an audience member and addressed by multiple speakers

Conclusion

The discussion provided a comprehensive overview of connectivity challenges in developing regions and explored a range of potential solutions. Key takeaways include the need to address infrastructure, affordability, and digital literacy challenges simultaneously; the importance of flexible policies and public-private partnerships; and the potential of innovative technologies and financing models to provide scalable solutions for digital inclusion. The session underscored the critical role of connectivity in driving economic development and social inclusion, emphasizing the urgency of concerted efforts to ensure universal and meaningful internet access in the digital age.

Omar Ansari: Okay, we can see your channel now. All right. Thank you very much. Good morning. Sabah al-khayr, ladies and gents. My name is Omar Ansari, and I work for the APNIC Foundation as its Digital Leap South Asia Project Lead. According to ITU, approximately 2.6 billion people worldwide are offline. Most of these individuals reside in the developing world, with South Asia accounting for about 57% of the world’s offline population. Thereby, in six of the South Asian economies, around 50% of the population lacks Internet access. Afghanistan, 82%, Pakistan, 54%, Bangladesh, 55%, Sri Lanka, 43%, India, 47%, and Nepal, 48%. Other regions with significant online population include Nigeria, Indonesia, and China. Asia alone harbors around 1.9 billion offline population, making it the most offline regions globally. Some of our participants seem that you can hear us. Okay, now go ahead. APNIC Foundation’s Digital Leap South Asia Project organizes this session to explore the challenges affecting connectivity in the developing world. developing world and explore actionable strategies. The session aims to address three policy questions. One, how can policymakers adopt regulatory frameworks to promote innovation and investment? Two, what strategies can be implemented to address the digital divide and ensure equitable access to the internet connectivity? Three, how can regional cooperation initiatives be strengthened to foster collaboration among countries in addressing shared challenges in accelerating efforts towards universal internet access? This is a panel discussion, and I’m joined by leaders and experts from across the globe. Mahesh Upal, Director of Comfors Private Limited. Jameson Olufeye, Principal Consultant at Contemporary Consulting Limited. Mohammad Sharif, Director of Government and International Relations at Auxia Enterprise. Syed Mohammad Shariar Jawed, Senior ICD Specialist, Economic Infrastructure at the Islamic Development Bank. Dr. Maria Bibi, Consultant IDG, Asia Open RAN Academy. She’s online. And Sharnon Osipa, Telecom and Internet Operations and Policy Strategist, who’s also online. The panel discussion would be 60 minutes, and it will be organized in three segments. Segment number one, we’ll discuss the current state of connectivity and challenges. Segment number two, we’ll discuss policy framework. and regulatory measures, and segment number three will discuss innovative technologies and partnerships. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A session, which will be approximately 30 minutes, and we’re interested in taking questions from the audiences. So please make it as interactive and participatory as you can. So let’s start with segment number one, which is about the current state of connectivity and challenges. So I’ll come to my distinguished speakers. Mahesh, let’s start with you. In the context of South Asia, particularly India, what are the key infrastructure or policy challenges hindering broader internet connectivity, and how they can be addressed?

Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks, Omar. And ladies and gentlemen, it’s a great pleasure to speak to you. We all know that today, internet, of course, is central to more or less every aspect of our social as well as economic lives. So it’s critical that we understand what the challenges themselves are in terms of internet access. And I think for that, we also need to have a more nuanced look at some of the numbers that we are talking about. And while I’ll try and use India as an example, but I suspect the issues are common to most countries, especially in South Asia, but also probably amongst the developing world. Thank you, Omar. Thank you. I’m going to talk about three particular aspects. One is the number of users that we are talking about, the nature of usage, and the kind of methods in which people are accessing internet and what the challenges might be. Now, India, for instance, officially claims to have roughly about 1.2 billion phone connections and roughly 950 million internet users. However, I think like all of us know that most of this usage is wireless and wireless users in particular tend to have multiple accounts. So when you actually look at the unique number of users of telephone connections or indeed internet connections, you find that that number probably is roughly about 65 odd percent of this larger number. And so the number of unique users is about that. And even there, what we also notice is roughly about 60% of the phone lines and the internet connections are urban, where roughly 30 odd, 35% of the people live or 30% of the people and roughly about 50% of the connections are rural. And they’re actually more than 70 odd percent of the people live. So again, you have a sense of how the distribution of access is. Further, you also see that the, now you come to the type of usage. For instance, you will also notice that roughly 300 million Indian users out of the 1.2 billion relies still on 2G technologies, 2G phones. So, you can also begin to understand that the quality of internet access on a 2G phone is barely functional. So, beyond WhatsApp, etc., sorry, beyond simple SMSs, there is very little data that you can use in a 2G connection. And much the same thing, a similar message can also be drawn from the kind of usage people have. So, for example, whether it is WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, etc., we have roughly about half a billion, close to 500 million users. So when you try and imagine a typical internet user who does not use any of these services, you will find that number probably is a very, very negligible small number. So the limited point I’m making is that we haven’t really captured the actual quality or if indeed the intensity of the lack of connectivity in South Asia. So that is something that I point out and we’ll come to that. And I’ll just mention, this is largely because regulators across South Asia have been focused on aggregate numbers rather than unique users. And we’ll discuss that further. I hope that…

Omar Ansari: That was a very good start. You’ve touched upon the number of users, the issues that you raised in nature of usage. And what are the methods of the usage in India and the broader developing world? Jameson, you have a lot of experience of working in Nigeria and the wider African region. Most of it is developing. How do you see the lack of connectivity? affecting the socio-economic development in those regions.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Romar. And greetings, everyone. My name again is James Ndolufuye. I’m the chair of the Africa ICT Alliance. That’s the advisory council of the Africa ICT Alliance. It’s an alliance of ICT associations, companies, and professionals across Africa, 43 countries in Africa, so to speak. So it’s not only Nigeria, but the spectrum, as you said, covers Africa and also globally. Well, the topic is very, very important. It’s really crucial. And when we talk about connectivity, without connectivity, you are not in the digital world. And not just connectivity, just as mice talk about meaningful connectivity. It’s very important. Meaningful connectivity so that you can really have something productive to do with it. So in developing world, at least let us have connectivity. Nigeria, for example, we had 75% internet penetration. And that even got reduced last two months to about 61%, because there was a requirement for NIN, National Identity Card Number, National Identity Number to be ported to the phone number. So those that are not ported, they were cut off. So that is to agree with you, that around 61% is the actual people. Okay. But these are in the cities, okay, basically. So to reach the interior, we need to use, because the interior is a challenge, getting to the connectivity to the interior. There is this fund called Universal Service Provision Fund. It has not been used very well. Even at the session, that was the last session I attended. where a panel didn’t even know that there is a universal service provision fund by ITU. So we need to talk more about that and our regulators are using that fund. So stakeholders within their countries, they need to engage the regulators and find out how it is being used to subsidize reach into the underserved areas. And lastly, I did a report on behalf of UNECA, United Nation Economic Commission of Africa. And that report showed that a 10% increase in internet penetration yield up to 8.2% increase in GDP per capita. So that is an incentive to government to take this thing very seriously. Thank you very much.

Omar Ansari: And that was very good. And in a point that was new as well, like the relation of internet connectivity to GDP increase. That’s very interesting. Sharif, you worked as Minister of Communications. You were in the government and now in the private sector in Maldives. How are the islands economies addressing the challenges, especially Maldives and other geographically unique economies? And how do you see, what are your advice and good practices that could be utilized?

Speaker 3: Thank you. Well, let me start by thanking Ethnic Foundation for inviting us to share our perspective as well. As Omar pointed out, I am from the island context. A small island developing states, we call ourselves SIDS. But in reality, we are large ocean country. If you take Maldives, for example, the country is as big. is some European countries, but the land mass is only less than one percent. So our challenge is how do you connect hundreds and hundreds of islands, small islands, across hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of ocean? And I will give you the answer because I only have two minutes. So the answer is prioritizing connectivity, prioritizing bandwidth, right? As developing countries, we have many needs, but we have few resources. And often we say, okay, we’ve got poverty, we’ve got health issues, we’ve got education, we’ve got no money for connectivity, infrastructure. But I think today we’ve got to, if we want to actually tackle poverty, if you want better health, if you want better education, we’ve got to invest in infra. In Maldives, we’ve gone from a geostationary internet gateway back in 2004, pre-tsunami, to today we have five submarine cables landing in the Maldives. And we have a Starlink LEO-based satellite communication. Because over the, especially between 2020 and 2023, we prioritized just having bandwidth. Thank you.

Omar Ansari: The bandwidth prioritization, that’s one key important issue. And I think many of the countries in our region, in South Asia particularly, when I was in Afghanistan, the bandwidth was not addressing the needs of the country. So one of the solutions could be to battle with import in the flow. And that will really affect the cost and the quality of services, and more people will connect. Thank you very much, Sharif. Let’s take some views from our online participants. Maria, from the capacity-building perspective in the developing world, what critical skill gaps do you see that’s affecting the digital divide, and what could be done to address this?

Maria Beebe: Hi, everyone. Can you hear me? Thank you, Omar. I’m just going to dive right into the critical skill gaps contributing to the digital divide. First is basic digital literacy, which is the lack of foundational digital skills, such as using computers, smartphones, or navigating the Internet, which limits ability to access information, services, and opportunities online. Another one is advanced technical skills, such as programming, cybersecurity, data analytics, and AI, which hinders local innovation and participation in the global digital economy. A third is telecommunications and network infrastructure. Some of you have already discussed that, but skills in network design, management, and maintenance, for example, open run, 5G deployment, they need to be developed in developing regions to speed up digital infrastructure expansion. Fourth, we normally don’t think about this entrepreneurial and business skills, knowledge to leverage digital technologies for entrepreneurship, local businesses, and economic growth. And some of you already talked a little bit about the policy and regulatory considerations. There is a need for technical knowledge to develop and implement effective digital policies, because policies that are not effective hinder equitable access and innovation. And there’s language barriers, limited proficiency in global languages, can restrict access to online content, training and collaboration opportunities. A couple more, teacher training in digital education. Educators often lack the skills to integrate digital tools into their teaching and learning, and they perpetuate a cycle of low digital literacy. Finally, of course, cultural and gender barriers, where women and marginalized groups have less access to digital skills, training, perpetuating existing inequities. I think half of my question is to like strategies to bridge skill gaps. I think I shall leave that for the question and answer. Thank you.

Omar Ansari: Thank you, Maria.

Maria Beebe: We lost you, Omar.

Speaker 4: Thank you. We’ve done fiber optic backbone programs in West Africa and Sierra Leone and the Gambia. So we do have financed a good number of projects and we’re working closely with other MDBs like African Development Bank, the World Bank, and of course we are now working on developing certain programs in the Arab and African states in partnership with UNDP, with ITU. But what we have really realized is the lack of capacity, the institutional capacity in terms of master plan in order to bridge the dollar-digital divide in the country, and also of course lack of proper feasibility studies of large-scale infrastructure projects that we have realized is the main bottleneck that we believe that is resisting in terms of bridging the digital divide in our member states. So probably I’ll stop here and of course I’ll be happy to share more examples later on.

Omar Ansari: Thank you, Sheryar. So lack of bankable documentation, lack of prioritization, the lack of institutional capacity to do all these is a major challenge that Sheryar touched upon. Do we have Shanon online? Yes. Okay. Yes. You can hear me? Yes, I can. I can. Shanon, thank you very much and sorry for the technical issues. In the Caribbean context, what disparities in the internet access do you observe and how these disparities influence regional development priorities? Yes.

Shernon Osepa: First of all, I would like to thank you, Omar, as well for the invitation. I’m a strategic advisor with the Caribbean Telecommunication Union, so we have been observing several challenges within the Caribbean. First, the Caribbean is very diverse. When we talk about the Caribbean, sometimes people think it’s a country, you know, but we have a lot of islands. and countries in the Caribbean and each one of them are different. If we look, we do have for example two big extremes. If we look for example at the poorest country in this western hemisphere which is Haiti, its internet penetration is approximately 39 percent and when we look at countries within the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Barbados and others which higher GDPs, their internet penetration is above, is more than 80 percent. So we are seeing big disparities in the Caribbean and this is also true when we look at the technologies being used. Mostly in the Caribbean, we are using mobile technologies, 3G and 4G, mostly 4G and nowadays there are some discussions and pilots ongoing with respect to 5G, but we haven’t seen a big let’s say case for 5G as yet. So when we look at the challenges, we look, we have some economic barriers. For example, very high government fees. The Caribbean is also part of the SIDS, small island development states, so they have some very unique challenges. We see high government fees, taxes, dominance of over-the-top providers which especially telecoms operators are saying they are not receiving enough revenue based on all these over-the-top services being provided. When we look at the infrastructure itself, it has some challenges as I did mention. It depends which country you are looking at. Some are very well developed some are less developed and one other very important issue that we’re having that you’re focusing right now in the Caribbean is the what we call the subsea cables as you know all the all the internet traffic is being transported over the subsea cables and what we have in the Caribbean is quite old most of these cables are reaching their end of life period so we need to find ways how to if we would if we would like to continue for the for the for the development to continue to see how we can enhance all these subsea cables so this is very high level maybe later on in the questions and answers I’ll make a more a deep dive but for now this is very high level what what we’re seeing in the Caribbean thank you very much.

Omar Ansari: thank you very much Shannon you’ve also touched upon the correlation of GDP with connectivity earlier Jimson said that the higher the connectivity the higher the GDP so it enhances GDP if more people are connected so it means connectivity should be prioritized so that you know enhance the GDP in terms of the over the top operators in the ARPU when I was in Afghanistan the operators would complain that our ARPU is very low because there were complaints about the price of internet and when I did a little calculation the ARPU of the afghan operators were higher than India and Pakistan so that that was much higher and there were times it was like extremely high when the NATO forces were still in Afghanistan but they kept the price really really unaffordable for the Afghan population, and you see around 80% of the country is still offline. So these are some of the challenges that we need to identify and in address. So with this, we’re done with our first segment, but I’m happy to take one comment or question from the floor before we open the second segment of our conversation. Is there anybody who would like to share an opinion or question? So the gentlemen, we’ll take one, and then in the next segment, we’ll take another one. So perhaps we could take you next. So please keep it brief at one minute so we can, yeah, there will be a Q&A later as well.

Audience: Hello, everyone. This is Ajmal Amiri. I have a suggestion and request. We have a big challenge in cyber awareness. We have a big challenge in cyber awareness. Most of the people who are educated or uneducated, they are using internet without knowing the threat of cyber attacks and how to use internet in a safe manner. So it will be better to have a plan and awareness program for cyber attacks outside of Afghanistan and the same in the other countries. So cyber attacks, how we can secure our infrastructure and how we can protect our populations from the cyber attacks.

Omar Ansari: Who would like to comment on that? Okay, so a quick one from Sharif and then Jimson.

Speaker 3: I think the point that’s been raised is extremely important as we are trying to connect everybody. We have to understand that. What are the dangers for individuals in the cyberspace and we had to put in national programs in place to make everyone as a contributor to a safer digital space nationally and globally. So yes, a cyber awareness should be a national strategy and program. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, very important question. So I’d like that, because of this importance, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, actually commissioned that report, and that report, I mentioned on internet penetration connection to GDP, also talks about cyber security maturity connection to GDP. A 10% increase in maturity, cyber security maturity will yield around 5.4% increase in GDP per capita. So that is to underscore the fact that government need to take cyber security maturity very seriously to build trust the internet. And lastly on this, we build a framework, a framework for organization for enterprises for countries to assess themselves on that is maturity assessment. So if you want to check it out, you can check it out, it’s still available free you can check your organization maturity is at tcm.africa. So through that link, you can check your gaps, so that you can improve on your cyber maturity measures to bridge gaps. Thank you.

Omar Ansari: So another interesting finding, the relation of, of cyber security maturity with the GDP.

Shernon Osepa: who has shown on what do you like to comment on this yes yes yes very very quick we have seen especially during the covid pandemic in the caribbean when governments started to use more their portals to communicate with the with the community that also the cyber criminals or the criminals let me call like them decided okay this is an opportunity for us as well you know so while we’re trying to address connectivity try to get more people connected we need to be aware that the cyber that criminals also will use this mean to contact let’s say potential victims and it’s it’s very important to look at a few areas when we talk about the cyber talk about cyber security just the domain names you can have ways how to protect them okay we don’t have time to go in depth right now but it’s a very important topic that we need to focus on because criminals also are using these very important tools which is the internet to contact their victims.

Omar Ansari: thank you with this thank you shannon with this i’d like to move to our segment number two which is policy frameworks and regulatory measures the purpose of this segment is to evaluate the current policies for effectiveness regulatory balance between innovation affordability and privacy and the government’s role in driving connectivity and inclusion such as gender i’ll go back to my i’ll go back to mahesh mahesh what specific policy reforms in india or south asia could most effectively enhance connectivity in rule uh in underserved areas

Speaker 1: well picking up from what Shannon, in particular, and Jimson have mentioned, but also from what I was saying, a key regulatory shift in focus that is required is what I would call disaggregation. That is to look at different parts of this, the lack of connectivity puzzle. Now, clearly, there are wireless technologies, terrestrial mobile that we are all familiar with, has been a godsend for most countries, particularly developing countries. They have managed to expand in telephone as well as internet access in a very, very speedy way. However, there are gaps. For example, the same cellular technologies are not particularly suitable in remote areas. They’re extremely expensive to use in those areas. Similarly, there are other technologies which are actually more appropriate. But sadly, I think for most of the regulatory regimes that I’ve studied are focused on the aggregate connectivity. I think they are missing the point that certain very, very important disadvantaged areas and populations are getting caught in the middle. So, for example, we do need focus on technologies like satellites for remote areas. We also need to make sure that other, for instance, most of the telecom sector everywhere in this region is led by telcos. And telcos have their strengths in that they have managed to connect countries, but they also have their own commercial imperatives. So, I think we have to recognise that some of the less attractive commercial usage will need other players. We’ll need other technologies. And that is something which the regulators need to open their eyes to in a way and focus on and to enable that environment. I’ll stop here, but we’ll take it up.

Omar Ansari: Thank you, Mahesh. Technologies are changing, they’re advancing. The regulator needs to be, you know, they should adopt the change. They should be more flexible. That’s, I think, a key message that…

Speaker 1: People are falling between the cracks and they need to be…

Omar Ansari: Right. Right. So, in how they could be protected, these are some of the key issues. Mahesh, thank you very much. Jimson, how has Nigeria or Africa or similar countries in Africa or other places that you’ve been working in have managed to balance between fostering innovation and ensuring affordability in the digital services? Earlier, you spoke about the relation of connectivity with digital services. You talked about the SIM card registration perhaps enhancing connectivity in Africa. What do you say about this?

Speaker 2: Thank you very much again for that brilliant question. As was understood, at a global level, good frameworks… Look at recently the Global Data Compact, Path for the Future, with five objectives bridging, you know, digital divides, making everybody to have the benefit of digital economy, human rights, talking about data governance, talking about AI management for peace, for progress. At a global level, regional level in Africa, we have a number of frameworks like Malabo Convention. like the African Union, data, and many framework to guide us. But the key challenge is in the countries, inside the countries. And in Nigeria, for example, we have made a lot of progress because I got your points. The government listened to all the stakeholders. So you now have a multi-stakeholder engagement framework. They listen to the private sector, the civil society, the academy, and the technical communities. We all came into the roundtable. The president called where we have issues so that we can resolve amicably. And through that collaboration, we’re able to resolve many techniques. For example, the management of dot-ng. There was crisis over that, but the government, the president, called all the stakeholders, resolve it. So very important, we need that multi-stakeholder engagement at the local level so that we can find solution. As I mentioned earlier, the issue of management of universal service provision fund is a major challenge across Africa. Many collected, and in the session yesterday, she was talking about mismanagement or corruption. And then the way to that is digitalization. When you digitalize processes, you can deliver services to the citizens cheaply and affordably. And of course, when we allow citizens to have a stake, the regulators have a forum whereby they meet with all citizens quarterly. They have a meeting with all citizens. So they call in, and here, they take action. Thank you very much.

Omar Ansari: Thank you, Jameson. So with digitalization, the people will be part of the development process. Citizens will have a say. And this could also address the issues related to. corruption, perhaps. Mahmoud Sharif, what were the successful policy regulatory strategies in Maldives that helped with the connectivity?

Speaker 3: Thank you. I think if we actually draw some lessons from where Maldives has been and where it’s going, for example, having achieved over 85% internet penetration and 50% 5G penetration, I definitely would say overall the regulatory framework or the regulatory regime has to have two key features. One, it’s got to be liberal. Two, it’s got to be collaborative. And this is the challenge. How can you have a regulatory environment where the regulator, the service providers, and the policymaker, minimum these three players, can come together and work on a consensus-based policy environment and develop aligned strategies? So the national policies, the regulators’ strategic guidance and protections of the customers align with how the service providers want to invest in that market. Ultimately, everybody wants to protect the market integrity because if there’s no market, there is no incentive for private sector investment. In a country where hundreds of kilometres of domestic submarine cables now connect hundreds of islands, this has been the key. Plus, how do you bring in international ISPs like Starlink? Again, because we have have a collaborative environment where service providers and the regulator and the government spend a lot of time. And now, the final point, the national IGF, the fourth stakeholder, need to come together. Thank you.

Omar Ansari: Thank you, Sharif. So the need for policymaker, regulator, and operator to work together. And there is a fourth segment that you’ve mentioned is the community, or let’s call it the consumer, which was mentioned before. So they can work together to develop and enhance the policy and regulatory environment. Thank you very much, Sharif. How can governments in developing countries integrate capacity-building initiatives into the regulatory frameworks to drive digital inclusion?

Maria Beebe: You want me to take that, Omar? Yes, please. I guess I’m keeping with the capacity-building theme. So I guess a few suggestions. For example, integrating capacity-building into national ICT policies. For example, developing national digital skills agendas, setting targets, mandating digital skills training programs. At the same time, requiring telecom companies and Internet service providers to support training initiatives as part of their licensing agreements. Another example is to establish digital inclusion funds where a percentage of revenues from telecom operators or… spectrum auctions is allocated to fund digital skills, skill training and inclusion programs. Then there’s another big basket of strategies related to public-private partnerships. For example, collaborations with industry leaders. I’m not sure the word is mandating, but encouraging partnerships with tech companies to develop training programs tailored to local needs, such as open-run deployment or 5G infrastructure management. And that’s part of the work that’s being done by the Asia Open Run Academy in the Philippines. Another maybe possible area for discussion for regulatory discussion is providing tax breaks or other incentives for companies in upskilling local talent in digital technologies. And of course, in some countries, they already have corporate social responsibility, leveraging that to sponsor digital literacy and advanced IT training programs. What I find in the Philippines is a lot of corporate social responsibility. They prefer to do food drops and so on. So like it’s trying to convince people that digital literacy is just as important than food in the stomach, just as important. Another one is regulating for workforce development in emerging technologies. That includes creating training standards for new technologies, like establishing guidelines for capacity building in critical emerging fields like 5G, open run, cybersecurity that was mentioned, and it should be tied to global standards like 3GPP or an alliance. And I’ll give one more example. in terms of certification and licensing requirements, including digital skills certifications as prerequisites for employment in regulated sectors, such as telecommunications or IT.

Omar Ansari: Thank you very much, Maria. Some very insightful discussions. I particularly like the idea of digital inclusion fund. Most of the countries have a universal fund. Perhaps a portion of this universal fund could be allocated to digital inclusion. And tech companies and telcos also investing in capacity building because without digital literacy, perhaps it would be really difficult for people to connect. The first thing is the connectivity and second is how that connectivity could be meaningful and how it can become meaningful is for the people, the users to understand how they can better utilize the internet and technologies. Shannon, what lessons from global best practices in regulatory framework could be applied to promote a market driven connectivity?

Shernon Osepa: Yes, I think, first of all, it’s very important for us not to just to replicate everything that we’re seeing, let’s say, going on globally, because as I did mention, as small island development states, we are different. We have some very unique challenges that maybe those big countries don’t have. For example, we are vulnerable to natural disasters, we have small and close economies, we have lack of capacity, we have higher import and export costs and we have limited resources. But it’s still important that… that we look what is happening globally. But what I’m trying to say is that we cannot just replicate them one-to-one to our local situation because that would not work. What is very important, one of the measures that we are focusing on that is also happening globally is for example, passive infrastructure sharing because then we would like to reduce the cost for telecoms operators. If they can share the towers and mast sites and buildings, this can reduce the cost. We haven’t seen much development happening with respect to active infrastructure sharing. There are some, let’s say discussions ongoing but we haven’t seen them really in the real life happening. One of the also other developments that we are seeing in the Caribbean is what we call data center and cloud services. We do have one, what we call tier four data center in the Caribbean. So that’s the highest level of data center that we can reach. And there is another one being built right now in Trinidad and Tobago as well. So this is one of the developments that we are seeing. One of the other challenges that we are seeing and we are trying to address is data sovereignty. Some countries, if you look at how the infrastructures in the Caribbean are developed, most or all the traffic has to go through the US. So you may have some concerns from government saying, okay, we would like to see an alternative route and not all traffic going through the US. And right now you have through, it’s called the ELA link from Europe, from Portugal to. to Brazil and they’re trying also to get a link to the Caribbean on that. In addition to that, there is also another cable system coming from, let’s say, from Europe going to Martinique and then from there they would like to reach the Caribbean as well. So what we’re trying to do is to look for alternative routes and this is also one of the global, as you did mention, global best practices that we have seen. One other challenge that we’re seeing is collaboration among operators and here is, for example, where my own organization, the Caribbean Telecommunication Union, is focusing a lot on, especially with respect to spectrum sharing and coordination. When we talk about the Caribbean, we do have two ITU regions in the Caribbean. We have the Region 2, which is the Americas, but we also have, based on constitutional developments, for example, Martinique, Guadeloupe, they are part of Europe, they are part of the ITU Region 1. So we need to coordinate, especially when it comes to spectrum, to avoid interferences and these kind of things. So these are basically global developments that we are seeing and we are trying to use those developments that we think can give us an added value in our region, but as I did mention, it’s not just to replicate one-to-one because some of these global developments would not work given that we are small island development states. Thank you.

Omar Ansari: Thank you, Shannon. So the very important issues you’ve raised, two of them were very interesting for me, number one, the passive infrastructure discussion. In Afghanistan, from my experience, Mr. Bunyad is here, who is running an ISP in Afghanistan, 80% of the cost of fiber extension would go to the digging and laying the passive infrastructure. So, if you kind of deduct that, it’s going to be 20% left. And I think many, many investors would be interested to invest that. So, the government needs to support the passive infrastructure first, so that would make it easy and attractive for the investor to work on the active infrastructure. And the second issue you’ve raised was about the collaboration between the operators. Now, this is a very interesting topic. And in some countries, it might be against the regulatory measures or policy for the operators to collaborate with each other. But that’s an interesting discussion, perhaps we can dig deeper into it in our future discussions. So, with that, I’d like to go back to Sheryar. Now, from your perspective, Sheryar, working with different policymakers, with the governments across member states, what policy frameworks or financing strategies have proven most effective for attracting investment in digital infrastructure?

Speaker 4: Thank you very much. I guess it’s a very important question to address. And just to let you know that the Islamabad Bank has been in operation for over 49 years. And next year, we’ll be celebrating our 50th anniversary. So we have a lot of experience in different countries. And you know, we’ve often heard about the challenges, the local dynamics. So one fit solution is not for all. What we have done is more recently, traditionally, we’ve been financing digital public infrastructure. And more recently, what we have come up with last year, we in Riyadh, we launched our digital inclusion strategy 2024-2027. And as part of this strategy, what we have done is we have come up with a program called digital inclusion, strategic partnership program. And I’ll specifically share a couple of examples that we have done out of this program. But before that, I would like to maybe probably address that, what is the guiding principle of what we are trying to do with our new strategy? So what is the core of our strategy is that we would like to make sure that we provide meaningful connectivity in a safe environment, making sure what we are addressing is availability, accessibility, and affordability. So these are the three key aspects that we target whenever we do. And we want to make sure that we have the right capacity, once the service is available, so that we make the best use of the services or the infrastructure that we have got out of the project intervention that we finance. Now coming back to the examples. So I’ll share a couple of examples like starting with what we are doing with ITU. We are helping developing smart villages in Pakistan. So what we are doing is we are providing meaningful connectivity in smart villages where we are connecting local schools for girls with teachers sitting in the city, teaching subjects which were not available in the villages before. And on top of that, providing internet connectivity to a nearby local health facility, where a doctor sitting in the city is basically doing online consultations with a trained nurse in the local village through this program. So what we are doing is we are now replicating in other villages as well. So this is one example that we are doing in partnership with ITU. In terms of capacity building, what we’ve done with ITU recently. Just I was mentioning three weeks ago, we were in Nigeria. We did a digital regulation training in partnership with ITU. It was a five-day training program for the policymakers and regulators from the African region. So we had like 16 countries represented in those programs. So the government of Saudi Arabia, FCDO from UK, ITU, and Islamic Development Bank basically co-organized this digital regulation capacity building program for African policymakers. Last but not least, one of the examples that we are currently working with UNDP is on harnessing artificial intelligence for inclusive village development. So what is this initiative? What we are doing is with the Ministry of Villages in Indonesia, we are helping them because in any infrastructure planning, they have a local consultation process to gather the requirements, to know the challenges, to know what solutions would best fit in those villages. So we have hand-picked three villages, three provinces. We are in 200 villages and working with UNDP to basically use artificial intelligence to collect the data of the requirements for better infrastructure services in the villages across Indonesia and use this information to do better planning and then ultimately replicated other villages in Indonesia as well. So the essence of what we are trying to do is we provide connectivity, we provide capacity building and also last but not least, what we are focusing on is mainstreaming of technology to support other services like a smart education, e-agriculture services, also in the smart education, telemedicine health services as well on top of facilitating energy transport, urban smart cities, water, all these aspects of different established development sectors. We are promoting use of technology in these just for the sake of bringing in efficiency, transparency and. and overall digitalization process that we have addressed.

Omar Ansari: Thank you very much, Sheheryar. With this, we are concluding our segment two and moving to our third and last segment. But before we do that, there was a question. You had your hand raised at the end of the segment. Do you still have the question, or is it addressed? OK. So please keep it short, and then I’ll just need one of our panel speakers to respond to this so that we have sufficient time for the next one.

Audience: Can you hear me? OK. Is there a Dr. Nazar Niklas Kerama from Tanzania? Can we make an intervention? I just wanted to make an intervention as part of my work to connect the unconnected in Tanzania. And what we have been able to manage in Tanzania is working on the low-hanging fruits in terms of connecting in rural and urban areas. Is it OK? Yeah? Like this? OK, I’m learning to use microphone. OK, so the idea is, while we continue to debate on the policies and the actions that we need to actually take. In our space, we also need to continue to use the available infrastructure to be able to connect schools and communities. For example, in Tanzania, we have been able to connect about 10 schools using the fiber network, and also using the combination of microwave that is available in the villages, by using a simple model of communities coming together to ensure that they pool their resources together in the form of community networks to connect communities as well as the schools. So I think as we continue to debate on the right kind of policies and infrastructure that is needed to connect, we also have to take advantage of the hanging fruits to connect schools especially, because the schools are where we are defining the future of digital Asia, or digital Africa, or digital whatever America, because that is where the kids are and they need to be connected to digital opportunities online. Because we are not just connecting communities and schools for the sake of connecting, but we are connecting them to the resources that can help them even solve the SDG number one to get people out of poverty. Thank you.

Omar Ansari: Thank you very much, and that was a good comment and perhaps a good start to our last segment, which is about innovative technologies and partnerships. Mahesh, let’s start with you again. You are the digital leader. You work with the regulatory authorities in India. You have been consulting. in advising the governments to enhance connectivity. So in your view, what innovative technologies and infrastructure solutions have been most effective in improving internet access in report areas?

Speaker 1: Well, I would, yeah. I would say that, sure. I too am learning to use the mic. So well, you’re in the club. Okay, so I think in a way, the answer to your question, Omar, is that we have seen very limited innovation. I think what we have seen is a huge success of terrestrial mobile services, which the operators, particularly telcos, have innovated in many different ways. For example, the whole question of prepaid and in India, you have something called micro prepaid, where you could actually get a recharge of something like five rupees, which is not even 10 cents, right? And that kind of innovation has really worked quite well. But I think there is another kind of innovation which hasn’t worked. For example, our approach to Wi-Fi hotspots has not worked and our approach to USF has not worked. And the main reason for that is that the telcos themselves are a huge interest in this area. And if their incentives are not aligned, they don’t really work very well with these things. So we have found very little attention to actually getting the right kind of balance between the stakeholders in trying to come up with some agreed approach. And I think the regulators need to work more carefully on that. There’s no shortage of innovative models. For example, one of the things that we in India lack is the freedom to use alternate business models. For example, in Indian scheme of things, you cannot bundle a handset with your service, which actually has been hugely beneficial to a lot of people who have affordability problems. But our regulatory regime, if you like, or our licensing regime has an approach which actually disallows that. So there are many things like that, which actually, same thing, we do not necessarily encourage anybody with a solution for, let’s say, a particular community or a small sub-region. Because our licensing regime requires licenses at a certain scale, at a certain geographic size. And given what we are talking about today, we’re talking about marginalized people, populations, regions, which need to be specifically focused on. I think the licensing regime, which actually evolved at a time when there was exactly one operator and one service in most countries, namely, the government was the main operator and there was only one telephony, which was the only service. So now, given what the whole internet space, the way it has evolved, our regulatory regimes are just struggling to keep up. And I think they have not managed to liberalize the entry into this market sufficiently so that people have the freedom to try new innovative solutions. And regulators also, I think, need to innovate in a big way, which again, is a separate subject. I’ll be happy to discuss it, but it is an issue.

Omar Ansari: Thank you very much. I agree that regulators need to enhance and improve. And the licensing regime is very important. I was speaking with Bunyad the other day about how voice over IP is abandoned. in Afghanistan, it’s nowhere in the law, nowhere in the policy that it’s banned. But in the licenses of ISPs, it’s written that you can offer voice over IP. So that was surprising. So I was in a session with Dunmurai, where he was speaking, I think, remotely. And he was talking about the definition of coverage. And when we say coverage, it’s the population covered. It’s not the land covered. But the future, not only internet for people, but internet of things as well. We’re talking all these technologies that would need connectivity. So it means that we have to work on enhancing some of our enhanced understanding of some of these concepts. I’d like to come to Emson. What do you think? How can technologies such as set-up, it’s not a new thing, be scaled to regions?

Speaker 2: Thank you again for that question. Starlink has demonstrated that you can really use satellite technology profitably and effectively. And that brings us to find out what happened to country-launched satellites. I think we need to ask a lot of questions about that. There are a number of countries that have satellites up there for internet, but we don’t see benefits, so much benefits. So perhaps they may need to bring about competition, open it up, okay? We recommend there should be openness, liberalization, let there be more competition. And with that, there’ll be more innovation. Talking about other technologies, if I may, there is TV white spaces. TV white spaces can help. Even in the widespread island countries, TV white spaces can be utilized. But we have seen that some telcos don’t like that idea because of interest. And then, also, we must not forget about IPv6. Because when we talk about meaningful connectivity, IPv6 will guarantee meaningful connectivity and even security. And that is where regulators, those that are in the room, need to take transition from IPv4 to IPv6 seriously. Because there are a lot of features, there are a lot of benefits in terms of faster connectivity speed, bandwidth, that we can derive from that. And lastly, services. We need to, government need to demand services through digitalization. And then, outsourcing, that will help a lot. Outsourcing to other SMEs. Because I’m in private sector, and I’ve been a beneficiary, my company have been a beneficiary to outsourcing of government activity. So they need to outsource, but now with the private sector, the more, so that we can get deeper into meaningful, providing meaningful connectivity for everyone. Thank you very much.

Omar Ansari: Thank you, Jameson. We’ll ask our other speakers. But let’s make it, keep it short. Because we also, I think, how much time do we have? 20 minutes left, total, in total. OK. So if we can keep it at one or one and a half minutes, so that we can have some time for our audiences to speak, Shahryar, you spoke about the partnerships for the world. What are good examples that could help address the challenges we have been discussing?

Speaker 4: I think, thank you very much for this. I’ve probably shared some of the examples that we are already working with some of the regional organizations, UN agencies, multilateral development banks, in order to address. But I think the core of what we have seen as best practice is the country itself, which needs to understand what they want and where they are and how they would like, where would they like to proceed, like from A to B, if they understand and only then external partners could help and assist. If the understanding is not there, if the capacity is not there, then it becomes a huge challenge when external partners come in to facilitate and help the government bridge the digital divide with the essence of leaving no one behind. What we need to understand is if we can collectively work and complement each other’s strengths that if a partner like UNDP comes with the technical expertise and a financial institution like the Islamic Development Bank comes in to provide the finances needed to address a given challenge, that’s how we complement with the technical and financial resources because both are extremely important in order to address any challenge in this current phase. I think we are now seeing the role of digital cooperation organization in Saudi Arabia coming in to encourage collaboration with different partners, donors, institutions, banks, UN agencies and regional organizations that come up together to address a given challenge. Of course, we are also part of that ecosystem and happy to contribute as a multilateral development organization.

Omar Ansari: Thank you very much. Sharif, what are some good examples of public-private partnerships that contributed to enhancing connectivity?

Speaker 3: Well, let me just take one example, a controversial example from the Maldives. I would take the example of our incumbent, one of the biggest, well, we’ve got two big telecom companies. as ISPs in the Maldives. We’ve got four ISPs, but our oldest telecom service provider started as a partnership between Cable and Wireless UK and the government of Maldives, right? And over the years, it’s transformed itself into a public limited company. Now the government has a smaller share, the public have shares, and Batelco, Bahrain Telecom, has the majority shares, right? We’ve gone from connecting the islands to becoming a co-owner of CMAV6, one of the most advanced submarine cable systems that has been currently laid. So it’s a small country of a few hundred thousand people becoming a co-owner of one of the most advanced cable systems, ensuring connectivity to Maldives. This is, I think, a perfect example of how government, the citizens, the public, as well as international partners can work together to take the country to a new level. Thank you. With that, I would like to take leave because I have another session starting in the plenary. So with your permission, thank you.

Omar Ansari: Thank you very much. Amit. Thank you. Okay, thank you for being with us. With this, I will go to Maria. You talked about the, oh, thank you very much. You talked about Open RAN in similar projects. How do you see, like, what are the technology trends that could help with enhancing connectivity as well as the affordability across the developing world?

Maria Beebe: Thank you for that. I guess I’ll start with Open RAN. What is Open RAN? and RAN is the Radio Access Network. So what Open RAN does is it decouples hardware and software in telecom networks. It enables interoperability between components from different vendors, thus reducing costs and fosters innovation. Sadly, all of the examples right now are mostly in developing countries, like the US, some countries in Europe, Indonesia to some extent. There are benefits for developing economies for going Open RAN, and that enables local vendors to participate in the telecom supply chain, which would boost local economies, supports scalability for rural and underserved regions, and encourages regional talent development in telecoms and software engineering. A related example would be, excuse me, community networks and shared spectrum. Community networks, community-owned networks, they enable small-scale, low-cost deployments in rural areas. It does require sharing of spectrum, and it requires something like the citizens’ broadband radio service to optimize spectrum usage. That CBRS is not yet practiced in the Philippines, another sad story, but something for consideration for policy and regulatory consideration. It is, CBRS is quite used in the US, in addition to doing innovation zones. So community networks and shared spectrum, they empower local communities. is to deploy and manage their own networks, which of course requires then capacity building. It does reduce dependency on large telecom operators, which are, I mean, they are there for their return on investments. And then shared spectrum lowers entry barriers for small scale providers, enhancing affordability. And however, getting the spectrum allocation to benefit community networks is kind of a big challenge and a big headache. I think I want to maybe two more examples. AI, somebody’s already mentioned it for network optimization. And then let’s not forget energy efficient technologies like solar powered base stations, low power internet of things devices. And energy efficient network components to reduce costs and environmental impact. So I guess the challenge for us is like how we can leverage this trends, this technology trends and align them with policy, infrastructure development and capacity building efforts. Thank you.

Omar Ansari: Thank you, Maria. Sheldon, in your view, how regional collaboration initiatives could be strengthened to improve connectivity across the Caribbean in other regions that are still offline?

Shernon Osepa: Yes, I’ll focus of course on the Caribbean and given the time constraint, I will just focus on two areas. So we see, for example, leveraging regional organizations that we have in the Caribbean, for example, Caribbean. CARICOM is one of the, you can compare it a bit with European Union, more or less the same idea behind it. So it’s called CARICOM. And we also have the Caribbean Telecommunications Union at which I am affiliated with. And in addition to those, you have also another organization called CANTO. CANTO stands for Caribbean Association of National Telecommunications Operators. So these three organizations, when it comes to telecoms developments, they are key. Because each one of them, they have specific roles to play, but together they can enhance, let’s say collaboration in the wider Caribbean. So these three organizations have been working together, but in one way or the other, still we need to enhance that collaboration. One other topic is what I would call disaster resilience. As you know, the Caribbean is vulnerable to natural disasters. So here is also where we have been working with international and other global organizations that can help us to address and to raise awareness on the need to build a resilient internet and telecommunications infrastructures. If you look when disasters strike in the Caribbean, and when we look back at, let’s say, our telecoms infrastructures, most of the times we have been identifying some key challenges. If you look, for example, at the towers that have been used or antennas, sometimes if you can expect a hurricane category number five and you see what they have been using, it’s like calling, asking for trouble, you know? So we need to continue to raise awareness in that regard and to help all these telecoms operators. and others and also working with government to ensure that we have resilient let’s say telecoms and internet infrastructure in place. So these are two areas in addition to others that we have been collaborating in the region to ensure that we have meaningful and resilient telecoms and internet services provisioning.

Omar Ansari: Thank you Sheldon. So with this I’d like to open the floor for questions from the audiences. You’ve been here listening to us. Now I’d like to you know involve you in the discussion. So please feel free to raise your hands if you have questions or comments but keep them short, inconcise so that we can take as many. So the three hands raised. The lady in the back and okay please go ahead. Introduce yourself, name, affiliation and then your question.

Audience: Okay thank you very much. I am Mirvez Khan. I’m working with a leading telecom company in Afghanistan and also part of the technical community of Afghanistan. My question is for Mr. Sheryar. As you shared your insights about your projects in different parts of the world, considering the challenges Afghanistan is facing as a landlocked and least connected country, does ADB has any future plan or program to support the connectivity of Afghanistan? Thank you. So let’s take all the questions and then we can. Yes. Hi my name is Elisa from Vietnam but based in Germany and I’d like to ask a question to several speakers and I’d love you to elaborate on your country’s situations. Maria, you talk about the situation? I can’t hear you. It’s working, but just keep it closer. You talk about digital inclusion fund and you talk about various infrastructure challenges facing the Filipinos. However, in the context of the Philippines there are only a few internet companies and the geography of the Philippines makes it very difficult to receive internet, a lot of islands. So, what can the civil society actors can do to counter these challenges? I have one question to the speaker from Pakistan. In the context of Pakistan, the government plays an active role in slowing down the internet. So, these top-down challenges, how can the civil society actors counter these top-down crackdowns on the internet? I also have a question to the moderator from Afghanistan. Can you tell us about how the conflict in Afghanistan impacts the internet and how can you describe the internet resilience in your country?

Omar Ansari: Thank you very much.

Audience: Thank you for this really, really interesting and a very comprehensive discussion because it covers a major part of the world where connectivity is an important part. My question is to Sheheryar. You talked about a village, the digital village that you’re working on. Usually, there also is another digital village probably ITU is working on in Pakistan. Are you targeting areas of true access gap when you’re selecting areas for these digital villages because our experience has been that they just try to do it in an area near Islamabad or where their connectivity issues are not really a big issue because the private sector doesn’t really go into areas of true access gap? So can we have development partners work on those areas? And then, if yes, what kind of challenges do you think you’d encounter? Thank you so much for this insightful conversation. I’m a student from Nanjing Youth Development Center, and I would really like to learn more about how the government of each of your countries adjust policies on digitalization to account for those marginalized groups to make sure that innovation can cover everyone.

Omar Ansari: Okay, any more questions? I think that’s okay.

Audience: Yeah, thank you very much. Am I audible here? I like the discussion. I really enjoyed the example of the school connectivity, the examples of connectivity in India, how much people are connected, the digital inclusion fund Maria mentioned. So all are like very interconnected. And one of the interconnected challenges is the affordability. So I have read that sometimes these kinds of solutions are temporary, for example, the RFDD project, which is funded to the activities are finished. So what happens? So like I have read in Afghanistan, we have the same issue of the affordability. Sometimes in some areas, there are internet connectivity there. The service providers are providing the services, but people are not able to, I mean, they are not affording it. So do you have any comments or any suggestions like Mahesh knows about the revolution, the geo route in India? So is there any other solutions where governments or any international organization can help support to provide such a permanent solution to the connect? Thank you very much.

Omar Ansari: All right. Thank you very much. I think all of you have questions, but I had a few of them were addressed to you. So if you can go first, and then we can, you know, ask others.

Speaker 4: Sure, I’ll try to address some of the questions that were addressed to me the baby. First of all, just wanted to clarify that I am, although I’m originally from Pakistan but I’m representing the Islam Development Bank here. So, of course, I will not be commenting on the government perspective of Pakistan, the probably starting with the question that was raised. So, the Islam Development Bank works mainly with the government. And we operate in a model that we try to assist the government needs. So as long as the government of Afghanistan officially writes through the official channel to the Islamic Development Bank, then we are here to address, because what we need to make sure that we are targeting a problem, which is understood and owned and prioritized by the government. So as long as these three aspects are there. We don’t come up with our own set of agenda to address any, if we believe that you should be doing, you know, in Afghanistan we should be doing that in Pakistan we should know. The idea is that the government reaches out to us, sharing a problem and needing a solution for a sustainable development. Right. And then we assess based on our technical due diligence and our financial due diligence legal due diligence and then we try to assess the country. This is one aspect. So we are actually in Afghanistan we are currently working with UN agencies, because they are actively engaged there and you know the challenges that we have in terms of accessing places to access projects sites and everything. So we are working with a UN implementation partner, like other fragile countries that we operate in that are in conflict zones and war situations. So there are certain number of countries unfortunately in today’s world that we do not directly work, but we work through agencies like UN. UN agencies. This is so probably I’ve addressed the question. I think, you know, as we understand that even this forum is about governance, right? So I think every country has their own set of rules and regulations to govern the internet. And probably whatever actions any government, including government of Pakistan would take is to in order to make sure that, you know, there are no social unrest there, you know, people are following the rules and regulations set by the government, set by the parliament of, you know, of that particular country, in order to make sure that if they, you know, to avoid any casualties, any social unrest, so whatever they need to do in order to, you know, address a bigger nation, like Pakistan, they will take all those measures. So I think I’ll probably have addressed, you know, at least that aspect. And coming back to the question that was raised about the smart village. So you’re absolutely spot on. The program is by ITU. So we are we are not directly involved. The program is basically prioritized by the government of Pakistan, which is the Ministry of IT and telecom working with the ITU. They’ve already implemented one, you know, phase. The second phase, we assess based on an eligibility criteria that, okay, what are the set of initial assumptions that should be there, because we have very limited resources. So we can with we can do only limited things with a limited technical and financial resources, which are, you know, where are certain assumptions are there that okay, if they have a paved road, they have connectivity, in terms of transportation, if you’re not able to reach to that place, how are we able to provide those services. So I think these are certain eligibility criteria that we based on that we shortlist certain villages, and the government writes to us. So it’s not we are not selecting such the government writes to us that we would like your assistance in order to address these challenges in these gaps, whether would you like to assist or not. So thank you very much. There was

Omar Ansari: I think our time is up, but we’ll close it in a few minutes. There was one question for Maria related to the islands being disconnected and distributed and what role the civil society can play. And the second question, the last one, was I think you addressed most of the question. And her question was about how the policy can help to connect the marginalized communities. So that would be a question for perhaps Mahesh could address that. And Shannon can share his opinion. Maria, then I will come back to Mahesh then.

Maria Beebe: OK, let me keep it brief. I think we’re finished with the time. Yes, let me give it a try. So in the Philippines, there is a government program called Free Internet Wi-Fi Connectivity in Public Places. Then some of the program also goes to connectivity concerns for state universities and colleges. So that’s sort of one way of getting connectivity down to the communities. So there’s that. There’s the Asia Open RAN Academy. It is an NGO. And the point of the academy is actually to, it’s an alliance. It’s to bring together government, academics, and industry pulling together in terms of this Open RAN solutions. A big problem for the Open RAN, of course, as I mentioned earlier, is the radio spectrum allocation. By definition, when you say RAN, it means access to radio, radio spectrum. And yes. There are 7,000 islands in the Philippines, so it’s difficult to connect all those islands. So we’re talking also about us in the smart village, the idea of smart islands. And of course, the connectivity is very uneven, where you have things like smart homes in places like Metro Manila. And then of course, in the geographically isolated disadvantaged areas, there is no connectivity. One thing that we’re trying to, the Asia Open RAN Academy is trying to do is also to encourage private enterprise networks. So away from the big telcos that kind of take forever to turn them around in terms of the technology. So if you have a province, for example, where they do mining, so you can start thinking about smart mining and how you can have connectivity for the miners who are mining, and then at the same time, share that connectivity with the rest of the community. Another example, of course, is smart hospitals. And the smart hospital is trying to ride on the internet, Wi-Fi connectivity in public places. So trying to get the various actors kind of to work together instead of separately, because they have separate targets, separate deliverables, separate funding, is an excellent challenge. And I would like to continue this conversation with a lot of you in terms of like, how can we do this together? In the Philippines, yes, but Indo-Pacific and in places where there are islands and geographically isolated. development areas.

Omar Ansari: Thank you, Maria. Thank you very much. So just to finalize before they kick us out, one minute, Mahesh, how can policy address the marginalized groups, the issues related to them?

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think two things, I’d make two simple points. One is, of course, that as far as service provision is concerned, the private sector has done a fairly reasonable job. I think prices across the South Asian region, I’m not sure about all, but have fallen quite considerably. India certainly brags about being one of the cheapest markets, both for data as well as voice. However, there are two areas where policymakers and regulators need to work. One is actually access, which is the regions and populations that are currently not reached and where the private operators do not have the commercial incentive to deal with it. And that is where the USF type of funds come into and they need a great amount of creativity. And amongst the creative bits that they require is also attention, in my view, to smartphones. Because while the service is cheap, the physical device is not. And the price of smartphones is actually increasing quite significantly while the price of services, you mentioned, Gayur, the case of Jio or Reliance Jio, which actually crashed the prices and which everybody else has had to follow up. And so the price of services has one way or the other fallen, but the price of smartphones has not. And also the cost of connecting those who are not connected hasn’t fallen. And for that, governments as well as regulators would need to work very creatively with… with tools such as the USF and various others to deal with it.

Omar Ansari: Thank you very much, Mahesh. Just to quickly answer your question, the colleague from Vietnam. I am from Afghanistan, but it’s been a few years I’m not living there. So I don’t have a full understanding of what’s happening now. But from my participation at Afghanistan IGF and other similar local events that are still happening online, it was said one of the experts said that people were concerned with the fall of the government in Taliban takeover that internet will be shut down in Afghanistan. But due to the fact that Afghanistan internet is uniquely designed, it was hard to be shut down. So it doesn’t have one switch from where you can shut it down. It’s so distributed and so unique that it makes it difficult for anybody to shut it down. So later on, the colleagues from Afghanistan, you could perhaps discuss more with them to learn more about the realities on the ground. So just to conclude this session, I think that the session is starting. So key takeaways or the highlights, bridging the connectivity gap, addressing infrastructure, affordability, and digital literacy challenges is critical for connecting the offline population. That’s one. Number two, policy and collaboration matters. Effective policies, regional cooperation, and public-private partnerships drive meaningful progress towards universal internet access. Number three, technology innovation drive inclusion. Technologies like AI, satellite, wireless, innovative financing models provide scalable solutions for digital inclusion. Now, what needs to be done in order to achieve these? promote adoptive policies and investment. So this is a shared responsibility of all of us to work on. So we need to encourage the governments and stakeholders to prioritize flexible policies and targeting investment that foster innovation, affordability, and inclusion, as Shariar said, in underrepresented regions. And also, we all need to invite public partnerships and regional cooperation to resources, share experiences, and implement scalable connectivity solutions. Finally, let’s keep this discussion. This should not be, it’s a start of a discussion, but it should not be the end of the discussion. So in the future, more post-session collaboration from you, share your insights with us on policy issues, the recommendations, and opportunities that could contribute to the connectivity issues across the region. Thank you very much, Mahesh, Shariar, Sharnan, Maria, and also James and Sharif, and everybody for participating with us. I wish you a wonderful GF. Thank you. Thank you, Omar, and thank you all. Take a picture if you’d like to join us, of all the participants. Thank you.

Agreement Points

Need for improved connectivity in developing regions

Mahesh Uppal

Jimson Olufuye

Mohamed Shareef

Maria Beebe

Syed Mohammad Shariar Jawed

Shernon Osepa

Nuanced look at connectivity statistics needed – aggregate numbers don’t tell full story

10% increase in internet penetration yields up to 8.2% increase in GDP per capita

Prioritizing bandwidth is key for island nations to connect dispersed populations

Critical skill gaps in areas like digital literacy, technical skills, and infrastructure management

Lack of institutional capacity and feasibility studies hinder connectivity projects

High government fees and aging subsea cable infrastructure are challenges in Caribbean

All speakers agreed on the urgent need to improve connectivity in developing regions, highlighting various challenges and potential benefits.

Importance of policy and regulatory reforms

Mahesh Uppal

Jimson Olufuye

Mohamed Shareef

Maria Beebe

Regulators need to focus on disaggregated connectivity solutions, not just aggregate numbers

Multi-stakeholder engagement framework helps resolve connectivity challenges

Liberal and collaborative regulatory environment enables connectivity progress

Integrating capacity building into national ICT policies and regulations is important

Speakers emphasized the need for policy and regulatory reforms to address connectivity challenges and promote digital inclusion.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers argue for more liberal and flexible regulatory approaches to address evolving connectivity needs.

Mahesh Uppal

Mohamed Shareef

Regulatory regimes struggle to keep up with internet evolution and need to liberalize

Liberal and collaborative regulatory environment enables connectivity progress

Both speakers highlight the potential of innovative technologies to improve connectivity and reduce costs in developing regions.

Jimson Olufuye

Maria Beebe

Technologies like TV white spaces and IPv6 can enhance connectivity

Open RAN enables interoperability and reduces costs for developing countries

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of public-private partnerships

Mohamed Shareef

Syed Mohammad Shariar Jawed

Public-private partnerships transformed Maldives telecom sector

Partnerships between technical and financial institutions complement strengths

Despite representing different sectors (government and development bank), both speakers strongly emphasized the crucial role of public-private partnerships in improving connectivity.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers generally agreed on the need for improved connectivity in developing regions, the importance of policy and regulatory reforms, and the potential of innovative technologies and partnerships.

Consensus level

There was a high level of consensus among the speakers on the main challenges and potential solutions for improving connectivity in developing regions. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of the issues, which could facilitate coordinated efforts to address connectivity challenges across different countries and organizations.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to regulatory frameworks

Mahesh Uppal

Jimson Olufuye

Mohamed Shareef

Regulators need to focus on disaggregated connectivity solutions, not just aggregate numbers

Multi-stakeholder engagement framework helps resolve connectivity challenges

Liberal and collaborative regulatory environment enables connectivity progress

While all speakers agree on the need for improved regulatory frameworks, they propose different approaches. Mahesh Uppal emphasizes disaggregated solutions, Jimson Olufuye advocates for multi-stakeholder engagement, and Mohamed Shareef promotes a liberal and collaborative environment.

Unexpected Differences

Focus on economic impact vs. skill development

Jimson Olufuye

Maria Beebe

10% increase in internet penetration yields up to 8.2% increase in GDP per capita

Critical skill gaps in areas like digital literacy, technical skills, and infrastructure management

While both speakers discuss factors affecting connectivity, Jimson Olufuye unexpectedly focuses on the economic impact of internet penetration, while Maria Beebe emphasizes the importance of addressing skill gaps. This difference in focus could lead to different policy priorities.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around regulatory approaches, technological solutions, and priorities for addressing connectivity challenges.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers is moderate. While there is general consensus on the importance of improving connectivity, speakers offer diverse perspectives on how to achieve this goal. These differences in approach could lead to varied policy recommendations and implementation strategies, potentially impacting the effectiveness of efforts to bridge the digital divide in developing regions.

Partial Agreements

All speakers agree on the need for technological innovation to improve connectivity, but they propose different specific solutions. Mahesh Uppal suggests liberalizing regulatory regimes, Jimson Olufuye advocates for TV white spaces and IPv6, while Maria Beebe promotes Open RAN technology.

Mahesh Uppal

Jimson Olufuye

Maria Beebe

Regulatory regimes struggle to keep up with internet evolution and need to liberalize

Technologies like TV white spaces and IPv6 can enhance connectivity

Open RAN enables interoperability and reduces costs for developing countries

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers argue for more liberal and flexible regulatory approaches to address evolving connectivity needs.

Mahesh Uppal

Mohamed Shareef

Regulatory regimes struggle to keep up with internet evolution and need to liberalize

Liberal and collaborative regulatory environment enables connectivity progress

Both speakers highlight the potential of innovative technologies to improve connectivity and reduce costs in developing regions.

Jimson Olufuye

Maria Beebe

Technologies like TV white spaces and IPv6 can enhance connectivity

Open RAN enables interoperability and reduces costs for developing countries

Key Takeaways

Bridging the connectivity gap requires addressing infrastructure, affordability, and digital literacy challenges

Effective policies, regional cooperation, and public-private partnerships are crucial for driving progress towards universal internet access

Innovative technologies like AI, satellite, wireless, and new financing models can provide scalable solutions for digital inclusion

Regulators need to focus on disaggregated connectivity solutions rather than just aggregate numbers

Integrating capacity building into national ICT policies and regulations is important for developing digital skills

Country-driven understanding of connectivity needs is key for effective partnerships and solutions

Resolutions and Action Items

Encourage governments and stakeholders to prioritize flexible policies and targeted investment in underrepresented regions

Promote public-private partnerships and regional cooperation to share resources and experiences

Implement scalable connectivity solutions tailored to local needs

Continue post-session collaboration to share insights on policy issues, recommendations, and opportunities

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively address affordability issues, especially for smartphones

Balancing government regulation and innovation in the telecom sector

Addressing challenges of connecting geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas

How to improve utilization of Universal Service Funds

Strategies for enhancing cyber awareness and security in developing regions

Suggested Compromises

Collaborative approach between regulators, service providers, and policymakers to develop aligned strategies

Balancing commercial incentives for private operators with government initiatives to connect underserved areas

Using a mix of technologies (e.g. terrestrial, satellite, community networks) to address diverse connectivity needs

India, for instance, officially claims to have roughly about 1.2 billion phone connections and roughly 950 million internet users. However, I think like all of us know that most of this usage is wireless and wireless users in particular tend to have multiple accounts. So when you actually look at the unique number of users of telephone connections or indeed internet connections, you find that that number probably is roughly about 65 odd percent of this larger number.

speaker

Mahesh Uppal

reason

This comment challenges official statistics and provides a more nuanced view of actual internet penetration, highlighting the complexity of measuring connectivity.

impact

It shifted the discussion towards a more critical examination of connectivity statistics and the need to look beyond aggregate numbers to understand the true state of internet access.

A 10% increase in internet penetration yield up to 8.2% increase in GDP per capita.

speaker

Jameson Olufeye

reason

This statistic provides a concrete economic incentive for improving internet connectivity, linking it directly to economic development.

impact

It emphasized the economic importance of connectivity, potentially influencing how policymakers and stakeholders view investments in internet infrastructure.

We prioritized just having bandwidth.

speaker

Mohamed Shareef

reason

This simple statement encapsulates a key strategy for improving connectivity in challenging geographical contexts.

impact

It introduced the idea of prioritizing basic infrastructure over more complex solutions, potentially influencing how other regions approach connectivity challenges.

There is a need for technical knowledge to develop and implement effective digital policies, because policies that are not effective hinder equitable access and innovation.

speaker

Maria Beebe

reason

This comment highlights the importance of technical expertise in policymaking, a often overlooked aspect of digital development.

impact

It shifted the conversation towards the need for capacity building not just for users, but also for policymakers and regulators.

What we have done is more recently, traditionally, we’ve been financing digital public infrastructure. And more recently, what we have come up with last year, we in Riyadh, we launched our digital inclusion strategy 2024-2027.

speaker

Syed Mohammad Shariar Jawed

reason

This comment introduces a shift in approach from a major development bank, moving from infrastructure to a more holistic digital inclusion strategy.

impact

It broadened the discussion from purely technical solutions to a more comprehensive approach to digital development.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by challenging simplistic views of connectivity, emphasizing the economic importance of internet access, highlighting the need for prioritization in infrastructure development, stressing the importance of technical knowledge in policymaking, and introducing more comprehensive approaches to digital inclusion. They collectively moved the conversation from a focus on basic connectivity metrics to a more nuanced understanding of the challenges and potential solutions in bridging the digital divide.

How can the Universal Service Provision Fund be better utilized to subsidize connectivity in underserved areas?

speaker

Jameson Olufeye

explanation

The fund is not being used effectively in many countries, and stakeholders need to engage regulators on its use to improve connectivity.

How can regulators innovate to liberalize market entry and allow for new innovative solutions in connectivity?

speaker

Mahesh Uppal

explanation

Current regulatory regimes are struggling to keep up with technological changes and may be hindering innovation in addressing connectivity gaps.

What strategies can be implemented to address the affordability of smartphones, given their increasing prices?

speaker

Mahesh Uppal

explanation

While service prices have decreased, smartphone prices are increasing, creating a barrier to connectivity for marginalized groups.

How can policy frameworks be adjusted to account for marginalized groups in digitalization efforts?

speaker

Audience member (student from Nanjing Youth Development Center)

explanation

Ensuring innovation covers everyone, including marginalized groups, is crucial for inclusive digital development.

What sustainable solutions can be developed to address long-term affordability issues in connectivity?

speaker

Audience member (unnamed)

explanation

Many current solutions are temporary, and there’s a need for permanent solutions to make connectivity affordable for all.

How can civil society actors counter top-down challenges to internet access, such as government-imposed slowdowns?

speaker

Audience member (Elisa from Vietnam)

explanation

Understanding how to address government-imposed restrictions on internet access is crucial for ensuring connectivity.

How can regional cooperation initiatives be strengthened to improve connectivity across the Caribbean and other regions that are still offline?

speaker

Omar Ansari (directed to Shernon Osepa)

explanation

Regional collaboration is crucial for addressing connectivity challenges, especially in geographically dispersed areas like the Caribbean.

How can we leverage emerging technology trends and align them with policy, infrastructure development, and capacity building efforts?

speaker

Maria Beebe

explanation

Aligning new technologies with policy and development efforts is crucial for improving connectivity in developing regions.

Summary

This discussion focused on the emerging field of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology and its implications for global internet connectivity. The panel explored technical, regulatory, and policy aspects of LEO satellites, highlighting both opportunities and challenges.

Dan York provided an overview of LEO satellite systems, explaining their potential to provide high-speed internet access to remote areas and increase network resilience. He noted the rapid growth of LEO constellations, with companies like SpaceX’s Starlink leading the way. Berna Akcali Gur discussed data governance issues, emphasizing the need for transparency in data use and flow patterns. She highlighted concerns about digital colonialism and the importance of addressing privacy and security issues.

Jane Coffin stressed the importance of a holistic, collaborative approach to assessing and implementing LEO technology, emphasizing the need for feasibility studies and cross-governmental cooperation. Joanna Kulesza addressed cybersecurity concerns, noting the need for risk assessments and the potential for governments to maintain control over these technologies.

The discussion touched on several key challenges, including space debris, environmental impacts, and the potential for LEO satellites to exacerbate the digital divide. Participants also explored the role of multi-stakeholder governance in shaping the future of LEO satellite technology.

Questions from the audience raised issues about competition between private companies and government-led initiatives, as well as the implications of LEO technology for developing regions like Africa. The panel emphasized the need for continued dialogue and collaboration among stakeholders to address these complex issues as LEO satellite technology continues to evolve.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Technical aspects and current state of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet constellations

– Regulatory and policy challenges around LEO satellites, including data governance and cybersecurity

– Potential impacts on developing countries and concerns about digital colonialism

– Need for multi-stakeholder approaches to address challenges

– Environmental and space sustainability concerns

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore the opportunities and challenges presented by LEO satellite internet constellations from technical, policy, and practical perspectives. The goal was to raise awareness about this emerging technology and its implications, particularly for developing countries.

The tone of the discussion was largely informative and analytical, with speakers providing overviews of different aspects of LEO satellite systems. There was a sense of both excitement about the potential of the technology as well as concern about various risks and challenges. The tone became somewhat more urgent when discussing the need for multi-stakeholder governance approaches and addressing sustainability issues. Overall, the speakers aimed to provide a balanced view of both opportunities and risks.

Speakers

– Dan York: Senior advisor with the Internet Society, technology expert, open internet advocate, author on networking and security topics

– Jane Roberts Coffin: Seasoned executive and internet community expert, experienced in connectivity, infrastructure development, policy and regulatory strategy, and international development

– Akcali Gur Berna (Berna Akcali Gur): Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, Associate Research Fellow at United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies

– Roxana Radu: Associate professor of digital technologies and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford

– Kulesza Joanna: Tenured professor of law teaching international law, internet governance and media law at the University of Lodz, Poland

Additional speakers:

– Simon Grasci: From ICTP Italy

– Vladislav Ivanets: Internet Society Youth Ambassador

– Alan Veloso: Technical advisor of international cooperation at the Brazilian Space Agency

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Satellite Technology: Opportunities and Challenges

This comprehensive discussion explored the emerging field of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology and its implications for global internet connectivity. The panel, comprising experts from various backgrounds, delved into technical, regulatory, and policy aspects of LEO satellites, highlighting both opportunities and challenges.

Technical Overview and Current State

Dan York, a senior advisor with the Internet Society, provided an overview of LEO satellite systems. He explained their potential to provide high-speed internet access to remote areas and increase network resilience. York described the three main components of a satellite system: satellites, user terminals, and ground stations. He highlighted the rapid growth of LEO constellations, with companies like SpaceX’s Starlink leading the way.

York mentioned the emerging capability of direct-to-device connectivity, which could allow smartphones to connect directly to satellites. He aptly described the current state of LEO satellite technology as “a grand experiment”, acknowledging both the potential and uncertainties surrounding this emerging technology.

Regulatory and Policy Challenges

The discussion revealed a complex landscape of regulatory and policy challenges surrounding LEO satellite technology. Dan York explained that national regulators allocate LEO orbits and frequencies, while Berna Akcali Gur, a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, noted that licensing requirements vary by country and business model. The panel highlighted the challenges faced by LEO providers in obtaining regulatory approval across different jurisdictions.

Jane Roberts Coffin, a seasoned executive in internet community development, stressed the importance of a holistic, collaborative approach to assessing and implementing LEO technology. She emphasised the need for feasibility studies and cross-governmental cooperation, stating, “There’s a huge dynamic here with respect to the need for a holistic collaborative approach across the multi-stakeholder ecosystem”.

Data Governance and Cybersecurity

Berna Akcali Gur discussed data governance issues, emphasising the need for transparency in data use and flow patterns. She highlighted concerns about digital colonialism and the importance of addressing privacy and security issues. Gur argued that “if a common understanding of data governance in the context of satellite broadband is to emerge, transparency in data use and flow patterns of this technology will be essential”.

Joanna Kulesza, a professor of law at the University of Lodz, addressed cybersecurity concerns, noting the need for risk assessments and the potential for governments to maintain control over these technologies. She also mentioned the potential impact of quantum computing on LEO services, introducing an important future consideration for the field.

Global Competition and Development

The panel explored the competitive landscape of LEO satellite development. Dan York mentioned Europe’s IRIS-2 project, a government-backed initiative to develop a European LEO constellation for autonomy and security. Berna Akcali Gur provided additional context on the IRIS-2 project, highlighting its importance for European strategic independence.

York also noted the challenges faced by competitors in launching their own satellites due to SpaceX’s dominance in the launch market, adding another dimension to the competitive landscape.

Jane Roberts Coffin discussed the potential impact of LEO technology on developing regions, particularly Africa. She suggested that LEO could provide connectivity options for the continent, while also emphasising the need for feasibility assessments for countries considering LEO adoption. Coffin mentioned the potential role of development financial institutions in funding LEO projects and discussed the importance of integrating LEO systems with existing infrastructure, such as internet exchange points in Africa.

Environmental and Space Sustainability Concerns

Environmental impacts and space sustainability emerged as significant concerns in the discussion. Dan York mentioned issues around space debris, satellite de-orbiting, and the impact of LEO satellites on astronomy. He also noted the potential effects of space weather on LEO satellite systems. Alan Veloso, a technical advisor at the Brazilian Space Agency, raised a crucial dilemma, asking, “How can we assure the universality of connection, of connectivity, and at the same time guarantee that we are not polluting our atmosphere, that we are following some guidelines that are addressing sustainability issues?”

Multi-stakeholder Governance and Future Directions

The discussion emphasised the need for continued dialogue and collaboration among stakeholders to address the complex issues surrounding LEO satellite technology. Joanna Kulesza suggested that the traditional multi-stakeholder model may not fully apply to LEO decisions, indicating a need for new governance approaches.

The panel identified several unresolved issues and areas for future focus, including:

1. Effective global regulation of LEO satellite networks

2. Long-term environmental impacts of large satellite constellations

3. Ensuring equitable access to LEO technology for developing countries

4. Addressing cybersecurity risks associated with LEO networks

5. Balancing national security/sovereignty concerns with open internet principles

6. Exploring business models and economic viability of different LEO initiatives

7. Integrating LEO technology with existing terrestrial infrastructure

8. Addressing the challenges of licensing and regulatory approval across jurisdictions

Conclusion

The discussion on LEO satellite technology revealed a landscape filled with both promise and challenges. While LEO satellites offer significant potential for expanding global connectivity, especially to remote areas and in disaster relief situations, they also present complex regulatory, environmental, and governance challenges. The panel’s insights highlighted the need for a multi-stakeholder, collaborative approach to address these issues effectively as LEO satellite technology continues to evolve.

As the field progresses, ongoing research, dialogue, and policy development will be crucial to balance the benefits of expanded connectivity with concerns about digital colonialism, environmental sustainability, and cybersecurity. The future of LEO satellite technology will likely depend on the ability of stakeholders to navigate these complex issues collaboratively and transparently, while also considering the unique needs and challenges faced by developing countries in accessing and implementing this technology.

Dan York: I know in the speaking order, it had me first, followed by Berna, followed by Jane. Rox, Roxanna, are you going to be showing any slides to begin the session or anything? Nope.

Roxana Radu: No slides, no.

Dan York: Okay. So it’ll, the first slides will be, will be me and then it will be Berna. Okay. And then, um, is that Jane?

Jane Roberts Coffin: It is Jane. Jane doesn’t have slides.

Dan York: That’s okay, Jane. You’re looking very spooky there with your background.

Jane Roberts Coffin: It’s very early, right? It’s too early.

Dan York: Yeah. Thank you for joining us. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s okay. Um, okay. Huge dedication to the IGF. Oh, oh God, Jane, yes, you’re right. So it’s so late there. Um, thank you, Jane.

Jane Roberts Coffin: That’s all right. It’s normal.

Dan York: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then, all right. So then, yes, I’m talking to the, so I’ll be the first one showing slides. And then, um, when I’m done, we’ll then go to Berna, who’s on there and she will then share some slides. Uh, Berna, could you try sharing now? Okay, there we see what’s there.

Akcali Gur Berna: Is it working? I think it is.

Dan York: We’re seeing it on Zoom. He’s just working to get it up on the, on the main, uh, screen in the front. That’s me, yes. After I’m there. Yep. I’ll just. No, no, no, no, no. So I’ll just do my part and then I’ll be done. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. So then do I, can that clicker work for me? Okay. Oh yeah, it needs to be in the back there. We’re just getting a clicker set up. that for me here. Yeah, and then just do that, yeah. Okay, and then it. Yep, it’s working. Okay. All right, that works good.

Akcali Gur Berna: Okay, so I stop sharing?

Dan York: Yep. Okay. All right, so, Roxana, or, do you, are you gonna be introducing the session?

Roxana Radu: Yes, I’ll be introducing the session, introducing the speakers, and then I’ll give you the floor.

Dan York: Okay, sounds good.

Roxana Radu: I won’t do a very long introduction, so feel free to add more details in your presentations if you want. I didn’t want to preclude anything that you might want to say, but I’ll tell them a little bit about the run of show and then hopefully we have an engaging discussion towards the end.

Dan York: Sounds good, and like I’ve done in past times when we’ve done this together with Berna, I’m doing, I’ve got some kind of the, like setting the groundwork for what satellites, for the satellite situation and the pieces there, and then I’ll kind of go through some of that. So in my allotted 10 minutes or whatever we’re asking people to do. Yeah, 10 to 12 would be excellent.

Roxana Radu: I think you can take maybe up to 15, no more than that.

Dan York: Well, I will keep it to that.

Roxana Radu: Excellent.

Dan York: I can adjust to whatever.

Roxana Radu: And Dan, can I ask kindly for your help with any questions from the room? Because I won’t be able to point to anybody.

Dan York: Yeah.

Jane Roberts Coffin: And for all of you, don’t be surprised that I will give a disclaimer that I’m speaking in my personal capacity, not in.

Dan York: Okay.

Jane Roberts Coffin: I have to do that for ethics clearance.

Roxana Radu: Right. And Jane, I’ll just introduce you as a seasoned expert and so on, I will not mention any affiliation. You can bring it in if you want, but it’s up to you.

Jane Roberts Coffin: Yeah, they were keen that I didn’t over-highlight it, and I said, don’t worry.

Roxana Radu: That’s fine. That’s fine. All right.

Jane Roberts Coffin: I’m also new, so.

Roxana Radu: Okay. Yeah, no, that’s. Yeah.

Dan York: Channel four. Okay. Okay. This is a silent one. Hearing only with the headset. Ah, okay, okay. Okay, good, all right. All right, interesting. Little side detail. Everybody here has to wear headsets.

Jane Roberts Coffin: It was like that in Baku, Dan. I think they have every room is on a different frequency. Is that right?

Roxana Radu: Yeah, I think it might be the case. The other sessions I attended had the same requirements, so yeah.

Jane Roberts Coffin: Yeah, that was 2012.

Roxana Radu: There is an open ceiling, so.

Jane Roberts Coffin: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Roxana Radu: A lot of background noise, yeah.

Jane Roberts Coffin: Yeah, interesting.

Dan York: Who has to wear headsets, so there we are. Yeah. People are listening, because they’re hearing our conversations right now.

Roxana Radu: Let us know when we can get started. I think we’re keen to start.

Dan York: Oh, we can go.

Roxana Radu: We can start?

Dan York: We’ll wait to see. Are you good to, oh yeah, you can get going.

Roxana Radu: Oh, wonderful. Good morning, everyone. Good morning and welcome to our session entitled Satellites, Data, Action, Transforming Tomorrow with Digital. My name is Roxana Radu and I’m an associate professor of digital technologies and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. It’s a great pleasure to moderate this round table on the role of low Earth orbit satellites, data governance and infrastructure governance. And we’ll look at how this drives part of the social economic change and development that we’re seeing in particular in conflict areas. This session is closely aligned with the sub-theme of enhancing the digital contribution to peace, development and sustainability and benefits from the endorsement of the global academic network. Network on Internet Governance, Giganet, and presents some of the results of two projects supported by Internet Society. It has been convened by Professor Jona Kulesza from the University of Lodz and the Lodz Cyber Hub, who will be joining us online as soon as she can. Unfortunately, she has a conflict in her schedule. That is why you will see me here instead of her. We’ll discuss today some of the key challenges and opportunities associated with low Earth orbit or LEO satellite solutions, including the developmental angle as well as the data sovereignty angle. We have three objectives for this session. The first one is to facilitate a broader conversation around this emerging field and also the global implications based on multi-stakeholder perspectives. Second, to zoom in on the challenges and opportunities in conflict areas, promoting sustainable development and peace building with digital technologies. And thirdly, to sketch out a set of policy recommendations that can hopefully drive more of the dialogue in this space and support policymakers with some of their decisions at both the national and international levels. So we have the following plan for this session. We have three amazing speakers with us today and we’ll give them the floor very shortly to lead on a particular aspect that they want to focus on for about 12 minutes to lead the discussion on that. And then we’ll take any clarification questions shortly after, give everybody one or two minutes for immediate questions. Then we will open the conversation for. an interactive discussion. We’re hoping to get your inputs as well as other questions and comments from the speakers themselves. So we’ll have this moderated discussion for the remaining time and we’re hoping to bring out not only regional experiences but also some of the global implications for these developments. Without further ado, I’ll give the floor to our first speaker, Dan York, who is on site. Luckily, he managed to do this trip to Riyadh. Unfortunately, some of us were not as lucky as he was, so we will be joining online. So Dan is a technology expert and open internet advocate, author of many books on networking, security, IPv6, Linux, and we can go on. He is currently serving as senior advisor with the Internet Society and he has been directly involved in leading a particular project back in 2022 on low-Earth orbit satellites. So we’ll give him the floor for the opening remarks and then we’ll move on to our two other speakers that are joining us online, one of them in London and the other one in the US, and I’ll give you more details shortly. Dan, you have the floor. Thank you, Roxana, and thank you, everybody.

Dan York: Oops, I’m loud. Oh, well, then I can’t hear any comments they make. Oh, and I’m falling apart. Okay, so my name is Dan York. I work for the Internet Society and I’m going to kind of start by talking a little bit about what are low-Earth orbit satellites and some terminology that we’ll be using throughout the rest of the presentation that we have today. So if this works, let’s see. Oh, it’s not advancing here, let’s see. This did just work. Let’s see. Sorry folks, we’re just experiencing a difficulty with the it was just working when we tested it a minute ago. … … … … Okay, we’re just going to try switching to a different machine. Okay, it did work here. It did work here just a minute ago. Oh, you might need to get to PowerPoint on here for PowerPoint to focus. … Okay, now let’s try it. Sorry folks, we’re just getting back to it. Okay, now let me try it. … Oh, there we go. Perfect. Okay. Alright, there we are. So, I just wanted to begin by talking a little bit about the power that we see in low Earth orbit satellites and whether it’s Starlink or OneWeb or some of these different systems. … There we go. So, this was an example, a picture that I’m showing here from a community network that was built up in the northwest territories of Canada far up in the Arctic area where they had no capability to go and get any other kind of subsea cable or anything like that. And so what they did was they used a connection through Starlink to be able to connect in and be able to share that connection with everyone else that was there. In the United States, most recently, we had some large hurricanes that came through our area. And as part of the disaster response, organizations were using, again, in this case, Starlink, to be able to go and help coordinate disaster response and work with us. They also set up wireless charging stations. They did other things like this. Similarly, in that same area, they were using OneWeb, another constellation, to go and provide 5G connectivity to people in the local area. These are just some of the many examples around how this can be truly life-changing in so many different kinds of ways that people have. The subject we’re talking about today is really around these Low Earth Orbit Satellites, or LEOs. And I want to just put a couple of pieces of terminology in here. If you look at the Earth and the orbits that are out there, the traditional satellites that we’ve used for the last 50 years or so are all out way at the very end in something called geosynchronous orbit, which is abbreviated as GEO, or sometimes GSO. And it is out at 36,000 kilometers away from the Earth. And that’s where all the satellites are that do a lot of the broadcast TV, a lot of the communications broadcast. All of that is happening out there. And that’s been the space where it all goes and has for so many years. The challenge is that it takes a really long time for a signal to get all the way out there and come back. It takes around 600-plus milliseconds, which would mean that we can’t do a Zoom call over that kind of connection. It’s a very long time. Things like video calls start to end around 150 milliseconds or so. So it takes a long time to get out there and get back. So this is why people have started to do stuff in what’s called medium Earth orbit, which is in the middle. and low earth orbit, which is what we’re going to talk about here. Now, what happens though, is that if you do something out at the geosynchronous area, you can use like three satellites to connect around to get global coverage. But when you start going in lower, you need more. There’s a couple of providers that have about 20 satellites in the medium earth orbit. And then as you get down into the low earth orbit, which is under 2,000 kilometers, you get into needing hundreds to then thousands of satellites as you have with Starlink right now. So there’s three parts to a satellite system. One is the satellites, the constellation, as we call it, of all the satellites that are there. There’s also the user terminal, the antenna, the dish, the thing that you’re using there. And then there is also the ground stations that connect these constellations to the rest of the internet. There are policy implications around all three of these different things, and they all come into play in different ways. So in a typical system, what happens is you go and you are connecting from your dish up to the satellite network and back down to a ground station and out to the public internet. And this is what a picture typically looks like, but because these satellites are moving so fast, you might only see one in the sky for about five minutes. It actually looks maybe a little bit more like this, where your signals are actually bouncing off multiple satellites as they’re traveling around. And this is one of the innovations that happened in this space. But then there was even a little bit more of an innovation, which is that what if you’re not near a ground station? You’re not, you’re not able to go and connect to one easily. This is where you might hear about space lasers and stuff like this. This is truly where we are connecting across the constellation to be able to go and have your, your traffic go across the constellation and then drop down to a ground station somewhere else. Again, though, this will have some policy implications as you start looking at this in terms of, well, where is that ground station located? Where is that? Who’s, who’s got sovereignty over that? Who’s got control? control over that. Where is it? You’re going across different borders, different things like this. So this is all part of what we’re seeing in this environment. As Roxanna mentioned, back in 2022, the Internet Society created a document. You can get it at internetsociety.org slash leos, L-E-O-S. You can get this document, which outlines a lot of the issues and things that have happened. But a lot has happened in two years. It’s amazing to think of what’s going on. The biggest one is that right now there have been 7,500, and this number’s actually probably wrong because it was from last week, and there’s probably been a couple of Starlink launches since then. I actually haven’t looked. But there’s almost 7,000 satellites just by one company right now up in space that are operating in this kind of thing. Amazing just to see what is happening around this. We’re also seeing a lot of innovation. I don’t know if… I was at a conference recently where somebody just pulled out one of these Starlink mini dishes, and he just had it in his backpack, just like a laptop. He just pulled it out, set it up, and he had Starlink connectivity. Amazing the way that we’ve changed the dynamics of being able to get this kind of access. I’m a little bit too frugal to go in. I don’t want to spend the amount of money to the monthly subscription fee, but it’s pretty cool. If somebody wanted to give me a gift, I’d love one. But it’s like, that’s not something I would do, but it’s very cool to see what’s happening in this kind of space. There’s also… People are using this for all sorts of roaming, off-grid capabilities. This, again, you’re getting into some policy things, because people are just able to go put this on their car, drive wherever, do whatever, and go into whatever jurisdiction, wherever they kind of are. From a technical point of view, they could get connectivity anywhere in the world. We’ll talk about some of the legal aspects of that in a few minutes that are there. There’s also… We’re seeing it now for in-flight connectivity. Many of the airlines are looking, they often have had contracts with the geosynchronous providers. And now, because of the higher speed and lower latency, because they’re that much closer to the earth, you can have latency speeds of down like 50 milliseconds. So you can do Zoom calls, you can do streaming video, you can do all these kinds of things. So increasingly, we’re seeing airlines doing it. We’re seeing new economic models. In some parts of the world, we’re seeing people renting out Starlink dishes. They’re renting out other kinds of things. They’re doing other creative ways to get these in the hands of people in some form. We’re resilience in the shape of disaster relief in having additional connectivity. It doesn’t necessarily have the same capacity as for instance, a subsea cable does. Subsea cables are often in gigabits to terabits of capacity. And these are more in the hundreds of megabits connection that you’d have here. But you are seeing this kind of resilience that the people are looking for. So you’re also seeing some people just going and buying a whole bunch of dishes. The state of Maine, which is near where I live in the United States, just went out and is buying a whole bunch of these dishes to go connect people in very remote communities where there’s no connectivity. Because part of it is you pay a fee for the dish and then you pay a monthly subscription fee. So they’re doing some work like this to go and do this kind of thing that’s happening. You’re also seeing, and this is the big disruptor that’s coming right now, is that these services are starting to offer direct to device. So you don’t need that dish, you could just use your cell phone. And you’re seeing this happening in the United States. Starlink SpaceX has been working with T-Mobile to provide this connectivity. And they need to get permission to use spectrum to communicate with these phones. They also need to equip their satellites with the radios that will transmit over the spectrum, but they’re doing that. They’ve been launching. satellites with this. They just got approval last month to go and turn on a trial of the connectivity in the United States to do this. They’re working with other telecom companies around the world, and other telecom companies are working with other providers. Vodafone here in Europe just signed a deal with another company called AST Space Mobile that’s putting up satellites. So this will be direct to your device without the need of a satellite dish, and it would give you telecom and also internet connectivity. So a very different model. It’s being fought, of course, by all of the incumbent telecoms, by the other mobile providers who are not, who don’t have those relationships. But this is, from a policy point of view, this is something that’s happening. It’s already happening in some spaces. There’s some islands out in the Pacific that already have this enabled through another provider. All of this is going on. The other part that’s happening is you’re seeing some more launching of more satellite systems. You know, China has started to launch their equivalent of Starlink. Well, they have two different constellations they may be launching, but they’re looking to launch about 10,000 to 15,000 satellites into each of these that’s going on. So you’re seeing a lot of these different things happening. I mentioned some of the policy challenges along the way, but one is that each of these constellations has to go through a set of approvals. And it goes, this is a curious part, and we talk about the multi-stakeholder model and how all this works and the pieces. There’s actually nobody in charge of where, of who gets to put LEO satellites where. The ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, tracks the geo-stationary satellites. They allocate slots for geo-satellites because due to some physics and other stuff, there’s around 1,400 spots that you could have around the earth. So the ITU allocates that, but they don’t allocate. LEO orbits and slots. Instead, what happens is each national telecom regulator goes and allocates the altitudes and frequencies, et cetera, and then that all bubbles up to the ITU for kind of record keeping and coordination. But it’s an interesting aspect of the current world that all of these things are launching, but they’re all under the kind of the national regulators who are sort of agreeing with each other on what’s going to happen. So we’re all, it’s all a grand experiment. Then those user terminals, they have to be approved for use within the country through typical consumer equipment kind of, you know, policies and pieces like that. And in these ground stations, you need to have permission to go and connect down to a ground station to go back out to the internet in some form. All of these things need permitting and need licensing and all this, which is why you’ve seen, for instance, OneWeb, which is another constellation that was now it’s owned by a company called Eutelsat in the EU, but they have their satellites up there already, but they’re struggling to provide connectivity because they don’t have the licenses for ground connectivity. So there are people at these organizations whose job it is just to go into each country and try to negotiate with the regulator what kind of, you know, relationship, what will you be able to do? And often in many countries, the incumbent telecom companies are fighting this because they don’t want the competition. And so they’re pushing back and making it challenging for some of these systems to go on. A couple other different things that are happening in this space is next. Okay. Let’s see if we can, what, it’s not, we’re not advancing again. I think we have to have focus on that. Okay. Yep. Oh, okay. The other big thing that’s the challenge that’s happening right now for the space is that there’s only one company that is consistently launching satellites, and that’s SpaceX launching rockets. So far this year, they’ve launched over 120 Falcon 9 rockets that have had their satellites on them. The other competitors in the space, such as Ariane Space, they’ve only launched one rocket this year. ULA has launched one, which is United Launch Alliance. Blue Origin has not launched a rocket yet. So the challenge that this whole space has, quite literally, is that there’s only one company that’s actually getting the rockets up there. And this is a challenge because all of these other providers are, they have no way to get their satellites up in the space. So I’m gonna just kind of talk a little bit about there’s some resilience questions. There’s a lot of spectrum kind of issues happening that are going on around, and you’ll see about WRC, the World Radio Telecommunications Congress. There’s a lot of these issues around spectrum sharing, what goes on. There’s also the ITU has some standards that are going on that they’re looking at. So there’s a lot of different things happening within the UN space. And we also, one of the questions we had here was about access during, in regions of warfare or restrictions or things like this or shutdowns. Technically, you could go and turn on this kind of access anywhere in the world. Legally, you can’t. It’s, there’s treaties, et cetera, that all do this. Now, sometimes that can be ignored in some cases. Recently, SpaceX, or last year, they had turned on the internet access over Iran. Iran did not let them do that, but they did anyway, out of pressure from other organizations and pieces so that people could be able to use it. Well, that created, Iran, of course, has filed complaints within the. and ITU and other spaces. But this is a space where it’s a challenge with that. The other challenge is that if you’re using these systems, they transmit. And so you can’t just, you know, they can be seen by other people. They can be found. So it’s not like just a passive observer. It’s actually doing that. So I think I wanna wrap it up here with just a final piece to say, there’s a host of other things. There’s space debris that’s going on right now. There’s environmental issues. We have real questions around all of these satellites have about a five-year lifespan. And so then they burn up in the upper atmosphere. We’re not quite sure whether that’s a good thing or not. When you’re at some point, when we reach capacity, we’ll have maybe 40 or 50 of these burning up a day in the upper atmosphere. I don’t know. We don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing or something. So all of these and the rocket launches associated with that. There’s a big impact on astronomy. These can block a lot of the different, some of these systems are huge. You’ll see a picture here. This is about the size of a, in their new configuration. If you think of a basketball court, if you know that about half the size of that is what one of these satellites will be. So they’re pretty huge. So they go and cover a lot in that. So there’s astronomy concerns, there’s climate or environmental concerns, there’s space weather. There’s a lot of other different questions that we have around this. And the main piece is that these are things that we all have to figure out. And I’ll leave you with a final note, which is just to say that there’s a lot of people who want to launch into LEO right now. And let me get to, let me just give you this one chart here to end. There’s, I think if I read this correctly, at the moment there are plans for about 555,000 satellites that people have suggested that they would launch. Not all of those. are going to happen, right? OK, you’ve got to manufacture them. You’ve got to launch them. You’ve got to do all that. But the point is, there’s a lot of people who want to get into this game, want to be able to provide this access. There’s all sorts of different countries playing in this, lots of different places. So it’s a big space, and a lot’s going on in that. And I will leave you with one aspect, which is to say that with the new US administration and the proximity of Elon Musk to what’s going on with the new administration, I’m expecting that a lot of what they’re looking at will be greenlit. They’ll get to go ahead to go and do it, which will mean SpaceX will probably launch. It has plans for 30,000, possibly 40,000 satellites that will be going up, and some other pieces, and much more of this directed device. So with that, I’m going to say thank you very much. And we can stop sharing this screen and give it over to the next presenter.

Roxana Radu: Thank you very much, Dan, for this wonderful presentation. I’m wondering if there are any clarification questions, either in the room or online. We can allocate about a minute to anything that needs to be clarified.

Dan York: Are there any questions here that people have before we go on? I’m not seeing.

Roxana Radu: I’ll just say that we can summarize all of this as it’s all a grand experiment, in your own words. It’s something I’m going to use in the future. It’s all a grand experiment. As you were saying, there’s huge potential for connectivity innovation, but also a high concentration in the market. There are questions related to standards, to the danger of potentially weaponizing this technology. There are environmental concerns, as well as concerns around issues we haven’t explored fully yet, from astronomy to bird behavior, and so on and so forth. And with about half a million LEO satellites in the making. we can absolutely see this rising up on the policy agenda. So we’ll now turn to an academic perspective.

Dan York: Sorry. One second, Roxana. We do have a question here in the room. So let me give this to somebody here.

Simon Grasci: Yeah, this is Simon Grasci from ICTP Italy. I had just one question. I really like your presentation, but one kind of aspect that I’m actually wondering about is what will happen with these remote communities? Because if they will start to rely on this connectivity, let’s say, you know, one day something bad happens and, you know, we get a bunch of space debris, all these things falls down. I mean, what worries me that, you know, governments might have, you know, less incentive to kind of start to build and deploy and push the connectivity to this really remote area. So I’m kind of just wondering about your perspective on this.

Dan York: Yes, and that’s one of our concerns is just that they’re like, you know, this is truly can be, especially for the remote communities, this can be truly life changing. You know, we’ve got any number of stories of people who have been able to go and participate in the modern world through this. But yes, if we become very reliant on that, and we don’t have any other way to provide that connectivity, then if there is some kind of major issue with space debris or with solar weather, space weather, we don’t understand all of the aspects there, then it could become a situation where all of a sudden we’re losing that. So there is this warning that it’s awesome. We can get great connectivity out of this, but we have to think about the fact that if it’s the only path, and one of the worst cases we could see is that if these, the systems are currently being deployed, you have the biggest players are SpaceX, okay, with Starlink. They’re the biggest one. Then you have Eutelsat with their OneWeb constellations up there now. Then you have Jeff Bezos’ Amazon with their Project Kuiper, which they’re trying to get launched, but they’re building the satellites. They’re doing all that. They’re going to have one that’s the size of SpaceX, Starlink right now and that kind of thing. So you’ll have a number of Western companies that are primarily controlling this space. And it is a question if they wind up, if we wind up with a lot of terrestrial internet service providers winding up losing out on profitability, and we’re all using space-based internet, and it’s in the control of a few corporations and maybe a couple governments, the EU just announced they’re going to launch their, they got a plan to put together some by 2030 or so. So, yeah, that is a concern we have. Now, I mean, the reality is right now, even if they’re in low orbit, you still get better speed and lower latency out of fiber. So if you can get fiber connections, you’re going to get higher speed and also a synchronics that will be both download and upload and a lower latency. So that’s kind of your best case. But you know what? There’s also people in many parts of the world who found that their fiber infrastructure was wiped out in floods or other things like that. And so some of those folks are saying, hey, maybe I should have something startling for backup or something like that. But it is a question. And I think it’s a global concern that we need to make sure that as much as we embrace this for some things, we make sure we have other plans too. Yes. Roxanna, just tell me when I need to end the questions.

Roxana Radu: Sorry, this is fast. I wanted to say yes. And also the concern that if these are like private companies that governments as they move towards e-government are building systems around and then somebody decides to turn off the internet or they’re also providing service to like a country that they’re having issues with, that’s also very interesting.

Dan York: Yes. Who’s in control of the internet access? Go ahead.

Audience: Okay. Mine is on ground stations. Yes. For this kind of system, one ground station can cover even a continent. What will be the impact on? on internet exchange points and the original intended need to monitor traffic?

Dan York: So, yeah, good question. So one interesting aspect is that some of these ground stations are in fact being located near internet exchange points because you are able to connect into all of those different networks. If you’re not aware, an internet exchange point is where a whole bunch of other networks interconnect and agree to share traffic. So that’s what an IXP is. It’s a place where they all join together often with just shared peering agreements and that kind of thing. Sometimes these ground stations are being located near data centers so that you can be able to have quick access to cloud computing or to other kinds of capabilities that are there. But your second point comes in, and this is where some governments are being, if it’s going to somewhere else, then who is in control of the monitoring or whatever is going on? And so some governments who want to monitor or impose certain monitoring around that are reluctant to open up to these systems because they want to have control over what is seen in their country and that type of thing. Now, we don’t know what the licensing agreements are because that’s all not available in the public, but there is certainly a speculation that if I’m going to be approved, if I’m a LEO provider and I’m going to be approved to operate in the country, the country may impose certain requirements on the use of spectrum that say, you must have a ground station in my country or something like that. You know, again, one challenge is we don’t know a lot of what happens. It’s a kind of a black box. We know that TCP IP packets go into the Starlink network and they come out the other side. What happens in the middle and all that, we don’t know. It’s a lot of mystery around that because it’s a private network basically. Yes. Thank you.

Audience: Thank you for your presentation. It was very informative. First question is basically regarding the capacity because we saw some of the deployment and it was limited to 100 something megabit per second. If we are assuming having large island, then this 100 megabit per second will not be enough for them to operate. Maybe if we increase the number of satellite, then we’ll increase the capacity. This is the first question. The second one is basically regarding the business model, how it would be in the future. So do, for example, Starlink going to operate their services with local operators, mobile operators, or they will do it by their own and spreading all the internet connectivity all over the world, and I don’t know what will be happening in the future, so are we getting rid of these mobile operators?

Dan York: So Roxanne, I’ll wrap up with that one there, and the AV gentleman, if we could stop sharing that screen that’s up there, that would be great, so that the next person could come up with that. So the two questions, one on the capacity, this is actually why Starlink, SpaceX is in the process of trying to launch more satellites, because right now they have about 7,000 satellites that are up there right now, but they’re looking to go to, they want to grow to 42,000 satellites, their filings right now, largely so that they can be able to provide more capacity and higher bandwidth and all of that. They’re also looking to bring some satellites a little bit closer to the earth, down almost into the very low earth orbit area, so they’ll be able to get lower latency and higher capacity, and the third aspect is that when they get their starship, their large rocket to be able to launch things, they’re going to be launching what they call their V3 satellites, which will have a much higher, they’ll be larger, and they’ll have a higher capacity and higher ability to go and do this. So they’re looking to dramatically grow that infrastructure. As far as that business model one, that’s one of the open questions, because for instance, Starlink has very much a direct-to-consumer model, and that’s been their model. In some places they are working with mobile operators in some places, and especially now for the direct-to-dial component that’s there. Other providers like OneWeb are primarily working with mobile and other retailers and others, so their business model is more of a wholesale working with that. Like I said. a grand experiment. We don’t know how this is all going to end. So it’s going to be a lot of interesting times ahead of us. Over to you, Roxanne. Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to see

Roxana Radu: such a vivid conversation in the room already. And many of your questions already touched upon governance challenges. And this is what we are going to address with our second speaker now. Dr. Bela Bernamt Akalib Gur is a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and an Associate Research Fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies within the Digital Governance Cluster. Berna, you have the floor.

Berna Akcali Gur: Thank you, Roxanne. You can see my PowerPoints and hear my voice. Yes, it’s all well. Okay, so good morning from London. And thank you very much for the kind introduction and for moderating this panel. Now, it is always a privilege to contribute to the IGF. Of course, it’s much better when it can be in person. But this year, unfortunately, I cannot be there due to conflicting personal commitments. Nevertheless, I am glad to continue our discussion on satellite broadband from an internet governance perspective at IGF 2024 as well. Now, as we all know, satellite technology is not new. Telstar 1 was the first active communication satellite, and it was launched all the way back in 1962. Now, many more had been launched since then. However, with the emergence of mega constellations, and the broadband quality connectivity they offer, there’s a renewed discussion on a wide range of issues relevant to this technology. Now, some of the most urgent questions overlap with the contemporary debates on internet infrastructures and the current geoeconomic and geopolitical tensions. Now, one company, Starlink, the undisputed current leader in this domain, ignited these discussions. There isn’t any strong competition yet, so most of what we discussed is based on its very short past. Okay, so… Going back, okay. Now, I have been working on a research project focused intensively on international law and policy aspects of satellite broadband since the beta testing days of Starlink, which was a bit longer than three years ago. Now, many in the industry in those days, they were asking whether this time, this project could be realized, because in the past, in the 90s, other mega constellations were planned. Teledesic was the most famous. It had promised to provide fiber-like connectivity, and the project was abandoned only for commercial reasons. Around the early 2000s, a lot of constellation projects had gone bankrupt, so the early investors in Teledesic, they just decided not to go ahead. And one of the main investors in this project, maybe of interest to the audience online, was a Saudi Arabian company. Anyway, so it has been possible for us to conduct this extensive and long project with Joanna Colessa, my research partner, Roxana mentioned, with the funding and support of the International Society Foundation. So when Joanna joins us, maybe she can talk a bit more about what. we had done so far. But today I will present my, I will limit my presentation to only one aspect of this project, which is data governance. And it is one of the two issues we receive most questions on. If you’re wondering what the other question, what the other group of question is, it is the environmental risks of these constellations posed to the low Earth orbit environment and the Earth. Just as Dan mentioned, it is a very important topic, but I will not talk about it today. But I have to say, I want to mention that we take that issue very seriously. And we propose in our research that all decisions concerning societal, economic and political benefits of this technology to be balanced against its adverse impact on environment, space safety, orbital sustainability, and astronomical impact. Now, if you want to learn more about what we had said on these issues, and some other questions, please visit our website. Now, Dan gave a good explanation of, of mega constellations and the orbits, but I just want to say that the low Earth orbit is a very valuable, but limited natural resource. And why is it valuable because of its proximity. And because it is, as I said, a limited natural resource. Now it is utilized not only for mega by mega constellations, but other satellite services, including Earth observation and scientific research, the famous International Space Station is there. So because of the ITU’s first come first serve system, and with the emergence of these mega constellations, the available space for the newcomers is shrinking fast. education, all the countries that have the financial, technical, and industrial capacity are rushing to put their constellations in this domain. And so this competition is a big aspect of the mega constellation discussion. Okay. Now, again, Dan’s talk and mine overlap a little bit, but I would like to mention the legal definition of the mega constellations. Now, we know now that constellations consist of multiple identical or similar satellites designed to operate as a network through shared control for a common purpose. And SpaceX has been very successful not only because of its launching capabilities, but also because of its mass manufacturing capabilities. So in response to this exponential increase in satellite filings and satellite deployments in the LEO, the International Telecommunications Union also updated its regulations in 2019 and provided for the first time a legal definition for LEOs. This is the only international law definition that exists, so I would like to read it. Constellation applies to all non-geostationary satellite systems having more than one orbited plane where the mutual relative position of each orbital plane and each satellite within its plane is important. It means that all these satellites, they work together as one system. Okay. So what inspired us to do this project? It was pure fascination and hope. We knew that infrastructure development stood in the way of closing the global digital divide within and between countries, and we knew that we needed to do something about it. In some regions, there was no business case to invest in terrestrial infrastructures, whether because these regions were sparsely populated or located in inhospitable terrain. So minimizing the need for terrestrial infrastructure seemed the perfect solution in these areas. There is also the case for increasing the resilience of existing infrastructures in times of conflict or natural disaster. We have already seen a few examples of this in the last three and a half years. So the first step for us was to see whether the domestic and international governance systems were conducive to the use of the Benga constellations by the communities on the wrong side of the digital divide. We have to remember that the developing world has a legitimate interest in broadband connectivity to stay abreast with the rapidly changing digital ecosystem. In recognition of its enabling role for all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, connectivity has sometimes been referred to as Sustainable Development Goal Zero. Now, the Digital Acceleration Agenda recently corroborated this claim, indicating that 70 percent of all 119 Sustainable Development Goal targets will benefit from connectivity. With a view to supporting satellite broadband technology to serve the best interests of the developing world, we analyzed whether the legal frameworks applicable to satellite broadband service providers to see if they were fit for this new infrastructure and to see whether they address the problems that we associate with cross-border Internet connectivity. Now, what are these regulatory frameworks? Any company offering satellite services must obtain landing rights from each jurisdiction in which they want to provide their services. So if Starlink intends to provide services in the United Kingdom, it has to go to the UK authorities. These licenses and permissions can change from country to country and will depend on the business model of each service provider. Does it want to provide services directed to consumers? Does it want to provide services to existing telecom service providers? Does it want to install a ground station but nothing else? The range of licenses, the cost and the requirements will change for each business model and each country. And each state is free to decide this for themselves as long as these frameworks do not contradict the international commitments they have undertaken. So the spectrum assignments should conform to the ITU radio regulations whereas the importation of user terminals will be expected to conform to its commitments under its bilateral regional or international trade agreements. Now data privacy and data security are among these concerns and a foreign service provider is expected to comply with the requirements of domestic authorities. In its broadest sense data security focuses on maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of data and protecting against threats like unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification and destruction. Data privacy on the other hand involves the ability to share data consensually with clear expectations about the context and scope of sharing. Both concepts are fundamentally linked to privacy, personal data protection and intellectual property. So they also relate to internet access as a right as meaningful access requires secure connections and safe navigation. Now digital data security and privacy are perceived to have a cross-border dimension. In response to the growing cyber risks and threats countries worldwide have implemented domestic regulatory measures that govern digital data flows, collection, storage, processing, often requiring data localization. Now, global companies that control and access data must comply with these regulations. Satellite broadband service providers are not exempt from domestic requirements and must adhere to the regulations of the countries that they operate. I’m sharing the privacy page from Starlink’s website. As you can see, there are additional links for the EU, the UK, Mexico, and Brazil. It has recently been reported that they agreed with India’s data localization requirements as well. When you look at the availability map, these are not the only jurisdictions in which Starlink has been able to obtain landing rights. The others are either content with the general privacy commitments of the company and do not require jurisdiction-specific commitments or there are other arrangements in place. Now, this fragmentation is clearly difficult from a market access perspective. But it is clear that Starlink is willing to commit to complying with diverse legal requirements. These practices are likely to set the industry standards. Though it seems very difficult in today’s global dynamics, aligning regulatory approaches through regional or treaty based initiatives could have reduced the regulatory burden on the emerging satellite broadband market and enhanced these measures’ effectiveness. But I do not see that happening soon in the next couple of years. Now, I will end my intervention by briefly talking about the data governance issue. Digital platforms, cloud services, data analysis. This is a PowerPoint. that shows the satellite infrastructures placed in the overall internet infrastructures. I thought it could be informative, so I’m sharing that as well. And in that context, I want to talk about digital governance. And our digital platforms, cloud services, data analysis and processing technology businesses have accumulated immense funds and influence, global influence, as a result of their global reach to data. The concentration of these companies in a few states, as well as resulting in global imbalance, benefiting from data resources, has raised concerns about the exploitation of countries that merely provide data and rely on others for digital technology, access and services. This concept is known as digital colonialism. And it is understood to expand the already existing digital divide. Now, the deployment of Leo satellite broadband services is also evaluated in terms of their position in the global data value chain. And there are questions if they have the potential to worsen the problems labeled as digital colonialism, as I just mentioned. Now, we argue in our research that if a common understanding of data governance in the context of satellite broadband is to emerge, transparency in data use and flow patterns of this technology will be essential. If satellite broadband technology is to contribute to sustainable development, authorities and users will expect their concerns to be addressed and debated openly. We argue that this would be best achieved through a multi-stakeholder process. And with this, I end my presentation. Please, we can discuss, I can take a few questions here, but also you can reach me through this email if you have further questions after this panel.

Roxana Radu: Thank you so much, Berna, very insightful presentation. I’m sure there are lots of questions. May I suggest that we keep all of that for the final discussion and we go now to our third speaker who has kindly agreed to join us from the US in the middle of the night. Huge commitment to the IGF there. Jane Coffin is no presentation. A lot of you will be familiar with everything she has done in the past 30 years or so. She’s a seasoned executive and internet community expert who has been working at the Center of Connectivity and Infrastructure Development Policy and Regulatory Strategy and International Development for many years now in different parts of the world. So we’re very excited to hear your remarks, Jane, before we go into a conversation with everybody online

Jane Roberts Coffin: and in the room. Thank you so much, Roxana, and thank you for everyone for this panel and it’s very exciting to be with you. I should say good afternoon, good morning, good evening, because I know people are beaming in from around the world. I just have to give a quick disclaimer that I’m speaking in my personal capacity. I’m not speaking on behalf of any entity and nothing I am going to say draws on non-public data. All the data is public or from my own experience. I’m going to come, what I’m going to say is more from the practical, is as practical as you were hearing from Dan and Berna, but from a different perspective and it adds another dimension to the technical, the policy regulatory, but also the more practical policy regulatory perspective that needs to take place on the ground, I believe, in a country when you’re assessing something like looking at licensing or bringing LEO connectivity into your country. There’s a huge dynamic here with respect to the need for a holistic collaborative approach across the multi-stakeholder ecosystem and that can be done, of course, through mechanisms like governments working across different ministries and different entities, as Dan and Joanna, I’m sorry, Berna were both mentioning. There are the technical aspects, so you need the technical expertise. There’s the legal, regulatory expertise that you would need. And if you don’t have it, you can draw on others who have been through the process. And you need that policy expertise, but also the practical, how do you do something on the ground in a country? How do you get it done? Where do you start? And I often like to say that when you start to have that practical focus, you really have to start to lay out a feasibility assessment and approach to how you would assess a LEO in your regulatory framework in your country. What would you do? Where do you start? And then what the impact is, and Verna’s mentioned the environmental, Dan has spoken about technical, there’s also the question of how are you going to integrate a new type of technology into your current infrastructure ecosystem? Where does it fit? Does it help with redundancy and resiliency? What are the economic implications? And it’s really, I think it’s useful to lay this out. And a way that you can find out more information about how that’s been done before is to read the paper, of course, that Verna and Joanna put together. But there are other guides out there. There’s one on satellites and communications by Dr. Whitney Lohmeyer, more from a technical perspective. That might be interesting. It breaks down satellites in general. It’s also taking a look at other countries’ filings and proceedings. If they put out a notice of public rulemaking or if they’ve done what’s called a notice of public inquiry where they’re just gathering data. And those are really useful tools from a practical policy and regulatory approach. Ministries use them all the time. UN agencies use them all the time. Regulators do. And I think what I would just say is that because we’ve heard that this is a grand experiment from Dan, that’s a great phrase. When you’re looking at this from a regulatory perspective, there are some very hard, hard, fast rules on the ITU-R side, which Verna mentioned earlier. But if you’re looking at this from the more holistic across government approach, you do need to be flexible. If you think this is only going to take one proceeding, I think that you could take a look at what other governments have done and realize that it’s as iterative as we move into the system of having more of these constellations, mega constellations, as Verna noted. earlier, in the ecosystem. And I would quickly just mentioned from that overall landscape approach when you’re looking at what to do. And those feasibility assessments. These have been run by other in other contexts, you know, for broadband mapping, for example. In other countries, there’s lots of data out there on how to run a feasibility assessment or to do a notice of public inquiry to gather that data. And it’s a normal tool I just want to stress again and pulling in that information is also extremely useful to you as an as whether you’re a regulator policymaker or civil society just trying to figure out what across the multi stakeholder multi stakeholder ecosystem is relevant to you. It’s also really important to think about your neighbors if you’re a landlocked developing country. I’ll take a country that I visited several times which is Kyrgyzstan. They’re triple landlocked. And so as a country and in the middle of many other countries. There are border issues. There are issues of, you know, can I talk to a can I work with my partners nearby. In order to see what’s good regionally and looking across the region from from an economic perspective and what’s doable. There’s also research, taking a look at again, not only the paper that the colleagues have written Burnett and Joanna, but others out there, there’s something called Leo con which is an interesting group of people that have come together. There’s the Internet Engineering Task Force looking at standards and other organizations looking at standards like the ITU. So you can broaden out your information you can take a look at all of the resources cited in different publications a paper in particular. And Dan also has when he didn’t mention a document he’d put together in the ITF which is also super helpful. Where you can also find good global information is working through the ITU development sector. There’s some questions looking at different types of connectivity on the ground and redundancy and resiliency and what that means for your country. From the technical community perspective, I mentioned the IETF. I’m sure there are others out there. You just want to do a survey. And that’s where that notice of inquiry can be really interesting or notice of information. I mentioned the ITU. There’s UNOSA, there’s JOSOA, there are other governments out there that have run these processes themselves. So take advantage of those processes to inform yourselves. There was a conference just recently there in Riyadh, I believe. It was the Connecting the World from the Skies Conference from the 25th to the 26th of November. So last month. There’s good data that’s coming out of that event, I believe, and lots of good experts there that participated globally. From a collaborative governmental approach, and Verna had mentioned this earlier, but I’ll just say this from my personal experience. You really need to know what the trade and customs authorities are thinking on customs duties, right? And I used to say this when I worked at the Internet Society that promoting the internet is wonderful, but keeping it in jail in a customs warehouse is another thing if your equipment isn’t certified. So take advantage of other countries having gone through processes, look at what they’ve done, run your own inquiry process because that will give you a lot of data. And it will help you think about those cross-governmental sort of vectors that you would want to create. It’s more of interconnection across government agencies versus networks. But that’s also a good thing, too, because you’re going to want to sync up and make sure that other parts of your system, your governmental governance system, are working well together. Also, I’m not going to touch on some of the data sovereignty issues because Verna hit on those, and that is not my expertise, but I would just take a moment also to say that from a funding perspective, these are expensive systems. So if you’re looking at working regionally or in your country, there’s some really good projects that have come to light recently. The ITU has something called the Digital Infrastructure Investment Initiative. I know a lot of the development financial institutions, which are the Islamic Development Bank, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank. Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and others, and the IFC and the World Bank, they’re all looking at how do you start to fund more of more infrastructures, speaking of redundancy and resiliency, so not just one, but what does it take to look at funding large ecosystemic projects? And it’s worth noting that you have a role to play on the ground when it comes to those sort of feasibility assessments yourselves of what can the country bear if it’s a loan or a grant? What can you take in? And also perception of risk. Jonah had talked about digital colonialization. There’s also the importance of debunking or sort of taking apart the concept of risk when you’re looking at investment. And this is something I was looking at a different life, different job, but you’ve got to take a look at what that means from your own perspective when you’re talking to investors and you have to have a lot of data. That is yet another reason for looking at all the great research that’s out there, doing your own research and educating yourselves, but also looking at the proceedings of other governments so that you can see the different resources they’ve used in order to create a better, more informed process in your own country. I’m gonna stop there so that we can take other questions, but I wanted to just say, I’m coming at this from a practical approach, but it’s a cumulative practical approach. And if you look at how connectivity and from a policy and regulatory perspective, successful programs look at that technical, economic, the legal policy and the practical. And we can’t forecast what all of what’s going to happen, but you can get very well informed and draw upon other data that you can bring into your own policy and regulatory ecosystem. So thank you very much. Over back to you, Roxana, for questions from the audience. You bet.

Roxana Radu: Thank you, Jane, for zooming in on the know-how, but also the know-when and know-with-whom, because these are equally important questions. And as Berna also outlined before, And there are so many different patterns that can be explored in this, so many different country experiences, so many different paths that we might be able to engage with. And it has, on the one hand, regulatory, legal implications, technical implications. But you brought into the conversation, Jen, the question of risk. And there are obviously financial risks, there are investment risks, there are also assessments of risk that you can do on the ground. But something that has been on my mind through all the conversation is the question of cyber security. So what do you do with the risk of cyber attacks and going beyond just establishing that baseline of sustainable funding and sustainable connectivity? What happens when there are disruptions to that? And I think we might just have into the room now just the right person to talk about this very briefly. Joanna Kulesza has been able to join us. Her name was mentioned since the beginning. She’s a convener of this session, but also co-wrote a number of papers with Berna on the topic. She’s a tenured professor of law and teaches international law, internet governance and media law at the University of Lodz in Poland. Joanna, are you able to jump in? We’ll see if she can be unmuted. We might need some technical assistance. Roxana, we’re just… Now we have her. We have her. Yeah. I see that she was able to unmute. Okay. Anna is working on that.

Kulesza Joanna: I think we have a mic and the camera has not yet been enabled, but I’m glad to speak. I also see we have a few questions, a question coming from the audience, which is amazing. I’m more than happy to use the camera once it’s enabled. It’s wonderful to see everyone. Thank you so much for all the presentations, and I apologize again for not being able to join you from the very beginning. Thank you so much, Roxana, for your skilled leadership. I always get very excited when cyber security… mentioned also with Joanna. Yes, you can turn on your camera. There you go. I can see you. Great stuff. That’s how excited I am to see you guys. Thank you so much again. So just to intervene briefly I am mindful of the time. Thank you, Dan. Thank you very much for your onsite assistance. Cybersecurity, I believe, is the flip side of everything that Berna kindly skillfully presented. We’ve been looking at data. Data in Europe primarily means personal data and it means privacy. It means GDPR compliance that Berna was kind to discuss in detail. But the flip side of data governance is cybersecurity. So I feel like it might make sense to put it on the table before we enter the Q&A session. Roxanna rightfully highlights risk assessment. That seems to be a deconsensus among states. We focus on risk assessments. We build them into legislative frameworks like the NIS and NIS2 in Europe that includes satellite connectivity. But there’s so much more to be said about cybersecurity. It is the question of investment. What equipment do we invest in? The conversation Berna and I have been having around Leo started with 5G. Are there lessons from 5G with regards to supply chain security we could apply? It seems as if 5G caught at least Europe, but not only Europe, a little bit by surprise. We knew we had to have it, but we had little policy with regards to how we select the providers. It seems these lessons are now being repeated with Leo’s. We know we want them. It’s just a question of who is going to provide them. There is heavy funding, both in Europe. Just the latest headlines indicate the budget allocated to Iris Square. And Europe is pushing hard towards, this was just mentioned by Jane, digital sovereignty. We call it technological autonomy here. We would like to have our own Leos. In the report that was kindly mentioned, we would think about this as our Leos. So Leos that are funded and controlled and the data access is exclusive to those who manage them. contemporary providers on the market, they are bound by national laws on data access. This could be the national cybersecurity policy that obliges service providers to store data locally and enables governments to have a peak into those databases. So particularly when developing countries are thinking about using LIOS, these are definitely policy considerations to be included. And one theme that I believe is coming to the foreground of these discussions is also quantum computing. It seems as if China is investing heavily into the quantum to make sure that the provision of LIOS services is more efficient. This might be the cutting edge of innovation that will be added to the heavy investment in LIOS and the services that will follow. They are a part of the Belt One Road Initiative. So we just might see the discussion around LIOS sustainable development and data, including data access, have a very strong cybersecurity component. Again, mindful of the time, noting the questions already from the floor. Thank you again so much, Roxanna, for your skillful readership. Let me know if I can assist with the Q&A, but I’m more than happy to follow your lead here. And thank you everyone for contributing and for joining the session. Thank you.

Roxana Radu: Absolutely. I think we’ll move right into the questions part. So let’s go to the room and Dan might need to help us with passing around the microphone so we can hear online, but let’s start a conversation. Please feel free to also put your hands up online so we can see the questions coming in.

Dan York: Is there a question here? Okay, yeah.

Vladislav Ivanets: Yeah, hello everyone. My name is Vlad Ivanets. I’m this year Internet Society Youth Ambassador. So I think just yesterday, Europe has announced its IRIS program and they plan to invest like 10.5 billion. billion euros into launching their own satellites but there will be like 290 of them in comparison to 7 000 that Elon Musk has and China has like thousands of them and this program will it is like aimed at six following years so with this amount of satellites do they really able to compete with the private sector and with the agency they have like to create the regulations and like to prevent the private companies to be presented in Europe do you think that the sphere they can it can be regulated to that much that private company will be kind of limited from being presented in Europe for example yeah and what do you think can has more potential to win this space war I would say private companies or governments at the end

Dan York: anybody want to who wants to take that or should I say a few words or Joanna

Berna Akcali Gur: okay go ahead okay so I’ll just say a few words and maybe Joanna would like to add another point so the iris square project started as the motivation for the iris square project was to also have a secure space-based connectivity for the European governments but then when we saw the regulation proposed at the commission they also talked the regulation also talks about the the competitiveness in the commercial global commercial of the global market of the European Union companies. And so you mentioned, how do we choose, how does the European Union choose these companies that it will work with? There’s a strong security component as to how these companies are selected. So for example, one European company, one French company, it became a shareholder in OneWeb, which is a UK, India venture. And so the European Union was skeptical as to whether it should work with that company because it compromised, they thought there could be a compromise as to their security requirements. So when you look at the U.S., there’s a, I mean, I’m not an expert in U.S. law, but from what I’ve been reading, the U.S. also have very strong security measures as to space sector. So there are import restrictions, there are export restrictions, and there’s a lot of secrecy around the Starlink technology and there’s a lot of secrecy around any type of space technology. So if you, this is a competitive market, but the competitive market is very much divided between along the borders of the states. And so I think the implication of this would be the states that lack the technology, that lack the expertise, would be unfortunately left behind or they would remain on the user side of the LEO technology. But there may be different opinions on this, but this is what I have been observing throughout our research.

Kulesza Joanna: If I may, two cents. I would strongly agree, whereas I think there’s an analogy to be drawn between this sector of the market and the discussion we’ve had in Europe around platforms, where there was also the question of whether we can regulate companies. Europe takes this challenge through, we call it co-regulation. So we invite platforms to the table, we have codes of conduct, you could call it social responsibility of business, but it’s a little bit more than that. You could compare it to that scenario, but I think as Berna rightfully mentioned, the governments will likely want to have the upper hand on this, particularly because of the cybersecurity component or cybersecurity. security angle. In Europe, through regulation, it is NIS2, but it’s so much more. But if you look at China, which will likely have a very attractive offer, particularly for developing countries, the government is having the upper hand on all of these technologies. So as much as I like the European co-regulatory approach to making, building consensus around internet-related policies, I think the governments might want to have the final say here. And one component, which I have not heard yet mentioned, but I’m just going to bring back to the discussion, is multi-stakeholderism. It seems like we have had this platform, like the IGF, developed to make those decisions. Because of cybersecurity concerns, I don’t think there is a multi-stakeholder platform for the specific component of infrastructure that is being decided upon right now. So that is an interesting path to follow. I think it just complements your question. How should we make these decisions? Is the multi-stakeholder model appropriate? Is there a place for multi-stakeholders to chime into the debate around LIOS? Or will it indeed be handled exclusively by governments? And if not, even international law, but probably more national law, with Europe as the exception, with a strong EU framework. Thank you so much.

Dan York: I think there is also an interesting element with the IRIS-2, the announcement that was there, in that it will be interesting to see what the business model is and what they do, because the reality is their satellites, in the plan announced yesterday, are not going to launch until 2030, or the first parts of that. Now, there are a bunch of open questions, because the winning consortium included two companies, Eutelsat, which has the OneWeb constellation, and SES, which has its own constellation in the medium Earth orbit, and also has some geo-satellites and and is in the process of purchasing IntelSat that also has a number of geo-satellites. And so it’s a consortium of companies that already operate in there. So there’s a lot of unknowns as to what they’ll use. Can they use some of the OneWeb satellites to get some of this connectivity up quickly? I don’t know. I mean, it’ll be interesting to see where this goes because it will take them at least through 2030, so another five years. And in that time, you’re gonna have Starlink continue to launch thousands upon thousands of satellites. You should have Kuiper launching, Project Kuiper out of Amazon and more. So there’ll be a lot of competition in there. Now, on the other hand, as you mentioned, Joanna, and there, this is a lot to do with European security and European sovereignty of control of this. And so it may be that a lot of the business model is funding through the government entities and the other folks who are using it in some form. So we’ll have to see. I think there’s a lot of questions still to be known. I mean, I welcome more competitors in this space. I think part of what we’ve seen that’s made the internet so successful over the 30 years is that it’s a network of networks with a lot of competition and pieces in there. So I would welcome in the space-based space as well. We’ll have to see. I don’t have any other questions in the room. Oh, I have one more, but I also know you do have somebody online if you want.

Roxana Radu: Yeah, maybe we can go to the question in the room and ask for technical assistance to unmute the participant online. Like that, we get a continuity of questions and we address them together.

Dan York: Okay, let me, I’ll give this to you here.

Alan Veloso: Well, hello everyone. Okay, hello everyone. First of all, thank you very much for this panel. My name is Alan Veloso and I’m actually from the Brazilian Space Agency. So I’ve been following up these discussions. I’m a technical advisor there of international cooperation. I’ve been participating of some UN forums as well. And maybe my point of speech here it’s just a intervention to say that I’m as a researcher, I totally agree that we need a multistakeholder. holder platform to discuss all these questions, all these points. From a government perspective, however, we have just approved our new bill in Brazil that is addressing some concerns in space sustainability. And this is a point that, in the end, make in the middle of a dilemma. How can we assure the university of connection, of connectivity, and at the same time guarantee that we are not polluting our atmosphere, that we are following some guidelines that are addressing sustainability issues. And this is a concern that we have there in Brazil, and our policy that will be regulating this matter is still under development. But it’s nice to see that forums like this, the IGF, are maybe the main arena that we must have in pursuit to discuss all that. And that’s it. Thank you very much for this panel. And yes.

Roxana Radu: Thank you so much. I said we’re going to couple two questions. So we have one more that will come from the online space. And we have Advocate Nosifu Nandipa, who might be able to unmute now.

Dan York: Actually, Roxana, I was just informed that I guess we are not unmuting remote speakers. They are to type their questions in the chat, and then we can read them from there.

Roxana Radu: We will do that. Okay. Thank you very much. That was not clear from the beginning. We do have another question that came in the chat. And this time it’s from Chennai, India. Professor Gopal is asking the following. In the internet world, much of the action is not felt, remains invisible. Is there any methods to make one conscious? of potential risks, I guess at the intersection of privacy and cyber security from what we can’t really see and touch as such. Who would like to address any of the two questions?

Kulesza Joanna: I’m glad to start us off letting our panelists thank you so much. First, I think it was more of a comment from the Brazilian participant than a question, but I do strongly feel about the point you were making, sir, in terms of this being the time to have the discussions and having them in the multi-stakeholder format as the IGF, also having them at the ITU. But I think the point of this specific session, the idea that has guided us in this work is to raise awareness also among the individual users of the internet. Usually, particularly the younger generation does not really care where the internet comes from, they just kind of want it quick and efficient. This might be also the default thinking of some governments, so I strongly identify with your point highlighting the need to have these informed discussions now before the space is over-polluted or polluted as a result of the new space race that we are witnessing. With regards to the question from Gopal, I’m going to go back to the multi-stakeholder model again. I see some of our ICANN colleagues both in the room and in the chat. Maybe the answer to make this efficient is to go back to the one world, one internet motto that Dan mentioned and go back to the technical community to make sure that they handle all the data according to the same principles and standards. I don’t think I have a good answer legally other than saying, well, you know, Europe solved it with GDPR. We’ve invented this brilliant piece of legislation that’s now implemented worldwide and protects data, particularly of individual end users. But I know that that might be a statement that resonates very well in Europe and not so well outside of the EU. That would be my immediate response. I’m more than happy to hear what Gopal and Michael… panelists and our distinguished moderator have to ask. Thank you.

Roxana Radu: We just received a question from Advocate Nsifo Ndipa. Can I ask it now and then we collect other thoughts on all the different comments and questions we received. So this is a question that refers to Africa. What are the implications of this development for Africa? What will be the criteria for African service providers to participate in the platform? Is this not further disintegrating the internet and its infrastructure to the detriment of the deep rural that are still unconnected?

Jane Roberts Coffin: So I would just put out that there are quite a few African governments that have already taken a look and licensed certain Leo Constellation service, Nigeria being one of them, Rwanda, Kenya, and so on. And there’s data out there where you can find that information. But there’s a great opportunity with, as I had mentioned earlier, taking a feasibility assessment across countries and regions. You could even work through the African Union or the African Telecommunion, the Internet Society, the Association for Progressive Communications. They’re all taking a look at connectivity on the ground. And there are a lot of other multi-stakeholder organizations, as Joanna has mentioned, from the civil society and other side, they’re very interested in connectivity infrastructure in general. And so in particular for certain countries that have geographic challenges, there are quite a few. If you think of the DRC or you’re looking at a desert country like Namibia or Algeria, there’s lots of opportunity for looking at how to bring in more redundancy and resiliency in your infrastructure. So it would be a potential mix of different connectivities because you don’t want single points of failure. The other thing I would highlight is that many African countries, I’m on the board of a non-profit called the African Internet Exchange Association. Many countries have internet exchange points in Africa across the islands and across the entire continent. Those are very important parts of internet infrastructure that can connect up with, say, LEO systems or fiber. But I would just say there’s lots out there. There are a lot of people looking at this and the other governments that have licensed the LEO constellations that are currently active would have information. And I would strongly promote the notice of inquiry approach from a governmental or regional perspective to pull in more data. on any of the questions that have been asked, but in particular on the importance of infrastructure, regulatory policy, sort of confluence and multi-stakeholder.

Dan York: Yeah, I was just gonna say that to the question around Africa, I mean, right now, if you look at the map that’s deployments, Africa is still unconnected. And it’s the part that it’s not available. And that has a lot to do with that whole regulatory, the licensing of spectrum that I mentioned at the beginning. They have to go through all of that to get it licensed, the ground stations, the consumer equipment, the spectrum allocations, the uplink and downlink. So it’s a lot of work to get it licensed for each country. And so that is a lot of the work that they’re doing. And so I think if somebody wants to see what’s the opportunity for telecom operators in there, part of it is working with the country to the regulators to see what can be done to get the licensings accelerated. And then I do think this whole direct to dial is a whole new area. And I would expect to see that not only SpaceX, but also AST Space Mobile and some of the others will all be looking to partner with telecom companies to give them this added access. And so that creates a whole new layer of interesting policies and things that have to be thought through. But that would be one opportunity as that all comes online. Roxana, we did get a message here that we do need to wrap up in this session. So we do need to go to some-

Roxana Radu: Yeah, indeed. We see a few more questions coming in online, but I think this will be for a follow-up discussion. And I’ll hand over to Joanna just for the wrap up and conclusion.

Kulesza Joanna: Thank you. Thank you very much, Roxana. And thank you everyone. I believe that the last two interventions are a great wrap up to the session. I’m thankful to all the participants online in the room, particularly to our panelists and our moderator for gathering around this round table in a multi-stakeholder format, sharing their expertise. I feel like we have a lot of potential and capacity in the room. The last messages focused on Africa and the potential it brings to the table with regards to connectivity are the perfect takeaway message in terms of the capacity being there, being built. I’m certain I speak on behalf of all of us. The questions can be- directly addressed to any of the panellists. Do feel free to reach out. All the contact information is on the IGF website. We’re easily reachable online and offline. So thank you very much for being a part of this discussion. We’ve designed this session as a conversation. We would like for this to be carried on among different stakeholders. So please treat this as an invitation to a conversation to be carried on. As Jane indicated, having an assessment of regulatory capacity in a country, in a region, the potential of technologies with regards to data. I’m thrilled we have Roxana with us who’s an ANISA expert on cybersecurity. So all the aspects that were just merely flagged during the session are conversation starters. So my message would be to invite everyone to keep this conversation going in a multi-stakeholder format, but also on the ground locally with your governments, with your regulators and with civil society. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to the panellists and to our moderator. Enjoy the IGF and let’s keep in touch. It’s a wrap. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye.

Dan York: Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Agreement Points

LEO satellites offer connectivity to remote areas

speakers

Dan York

Jane Roberts Coffin

arguments

LEO satellites provide connectivity to remote areas

LEO could provide connectivity options for Africa

summary

Both speakers highlight the potential of LEO satellites to provide internet access to remote and underserved areas, particularly in developing regions.

Regulatory challenges for LEO satellite providers

speakers

Dan York

Berna Akcali Gur

Jane Roberts Coffin

arguments

National regulators allocate LEO orbits and frequencies

Licensing requirements vary by country and business model

A holistic, collaborative approach across stakeholders is needed

summary

The speakers agree that LEO satellite providers face complex regulatory challenges, with requirements varying by country and necessitating a collaborative approach.

Data governance and cybersecurity concerns

speakers

Berna Akcali Gur

Kulesza Joanna

arguments

Data localization and privacy regulations impact LEO providers

Cybersecurity is a key concern for LEO networks

summary

Both speakers emphasize the importance of addressing data governance and cybersecurity issues in LEO satellite networks.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers acknowledge the scale of LEO satellite constellations and the competitive landscape between private and government-backed initiatives.

speakers

Dan York

Berna Akcali Gur

arguments

LEO constellations require thousands of satellites in orbit

Competition exists between private companies and government initiatives

Both speakers express concerns about the potential concentration of power and decision-making in LEO satellite technology, potentially excluding some stakeholders.

speakers

Berna Akcali Gur

Kulesza Joanna

arguments

LEO technology could worsen digital colonialism

The multi-stakeholder model may not apply fully to LEO decisions

Unexpected Consensus

Environmental concerns of LEO satellites

speakers

Dan York

Alan Veloso

arguments

Environmental concerns exist around space debris and satellite de-orbiting

Balancing universal connectivity with space sustainability is challenging

explanation

Despite coming from different backgrounds (technical and governmental), both speakers raise concerns about the environmental impact of LEO satellites, highlighting an unexpected area of consensus.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement include the potential of LEO satellites for remote connectivity, regulatory challenges, data governance and cybersecurity concerns, and environmental considerations.

Consensus level

There is a moderate level of consensus among the speakers on the key challenges and opportunities presented by LEO satellite technology. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of the complex issues surrounding LEO deployment, which could facilitate more coordinated approaches to addressing these challenges. However, there are still areas of divergence, particularly regarding the balance between government control and multi-stakeholder governance in LEO decision-making.

Different Viewpoints

Role of government vs private sector in LEO satellite development

speakers

Berna Akcali Gur

Vladislav Ivanets

arguments

Competition exists between private companies and government initiatives

Europe is investing in its own LEO constellation for autonomy

summary

Berna Akcali Gur highlighted the competition between private companies and government-backed initiatives, while Vladislav Ivanets emphasized Europe’s investment in its own LEO constellation for autonomy. This reflects different perspectives on the role of government versus private sector in LEO satellite development.

Approach to data governance and cybersecurity

speakers

Berna Akcali Gur

Kulesza Joanna

arguments

Data localization and privacy regulations impact LEO providers

Cybersecurity is a key concern for LEO networks

summary

While Berna Akcali Gur focused on data localization and privacy regulations, Kulesza Joanna emphasized cybersecurity as a key concern. This suggests different priorities in addressing data-related challenges in LEO networks.

Unexpected Differences

Environmental concerns vs connectivity benefits

speakers

Dan York

Alan Veloso

arguments

Environmental concerns exist around space debris and satellite de-orbiting

Balancing universal connectivity with space sustainability is challenging

explanation

While Dan York briefly mentioned environmental concerns as one of several issues, Alan Veloso unexpectedly highlighted this as a major dilemma, emphasizing the challenge of balancing connectivity benefits with space sustainability. This suggests a more prominent role for environmental considerations in LEO satellite discussions than initially apparent.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the role of government vs private sector in LEO satellite development, approaches to data governance and cybersecurity, and the balance between connectivity benefits and environmental concerns.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers is moderate. While there are clear differences in focus and priorities, there is also significant common ground, particularly regarding the potential benefits of LEO satellites for connectivity. These disagreements reflect the complex and multifaceted nature of LEO satellite technology and its implications, suggesting that a comprehensive, multi-stakeholder approach to policy and regulation will be necessary to address all concerns effectively.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agree on the potential of LEO satellites to provide connectivity to underserved areas, but they differ in their focus. Dan York discusses the general potential for remote areas, while Jane Roberts Coffin specifically addresses the opportunities for Africa.

speakers

Dan York

Jane Roberts Coffin

arguments

LEO satellites provide connectivity to remote areas

LEO could provide connectivity options for Africa

All three speakers recognize the need for a comprehensive approach to LEO satellite regulation, but they differ in their views on how this should be implemented. Berna Akcali Gur highlights the variability of licensing requirements, Kulesza Joanna suggests limitations of the multi-stakeholder model, while Jane Roberts Coffin advocates for a holistic, collaborative approach.

speakers

Berna Akcali Gur

Kulesza Joanna

Jane Roberts Coffin

arguments

Licensing requirements vary by country and business model

The multi-stakeholder model may not apply fully to LEO decisions

A holistic, collaborative approach across stakeholders is needed

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers acknowledge the scale of LEO satellite constellations and the competitive landscape between private and government-backed initiatives.

speakers

Dan York

Berna Akcali Gur

arguments

LEO constellations require thousands of satellites in orbit

Competition exists between private companies and government initiatives

Both speakers express concerns about the potential concentration of power and decision-making in LEO satellite technology, potentially excluding some stakeholders.

speakers

Berna Akcali Gur

Kulesza Joanna

arguments

LEO technology could worsen digital colonialism

The multi-stakeholder model may not apply fully to LEO decisions

Key Takeaways

LEO satellite technology offers significant potential for expanding global connectivity, especially to remote areas

There are major regulatory and policy challenges around LEO satellites, including licensing, data governance, and cybersecurity

A multi-stakeholder, collaborative approach is needed to address the complex issues around LEO satellite deployment

Environmental concerns exist around space debris and the sustainability of large satellite constellations

There is global competition between private companies and government initiatives in developing LEO satellite networks

LEO technology could potentially exacerbate digital inequality and raise concerns about digital colonialism

Resolutions and Action Items

Continue discussions on LEO satellite issues in multi-stakeholder forums like the IGF

Countries should conduct feasibility assessments when considering LEO satellite adoption

More research and dialogue needed on balancing connectivity goals with space sustainability

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively regulate LEO satellite networks at a global level

Long-term environmental impacts of large satellite constellations

How to ensure equitable access to LEO technology for developing countries

Addressing cybersecurity risks associated with LEO networks

Balancing national security/sovereignty concerns with open internet principles for LEO

Business models and economic viability of different LEO initiatives

Suggested Compromises

Using a co-regulatory approach involving both governments and private sector for LEO governance

Combining LEO satellites with other connectivity solutions for redundancy and resilience

Balancing open access principles with national security requirements for LEO networks

It’s all a grand experiment.

speaker

Dan York

reason

This concisely captures the pioneering and uncertain nature of LEO satellite technology and its governance.

impact

It set the tone for the discussion, emphasizing the need for flexible and evolving approaches to regulation and policy.

We argue that if a common understanding of data governance in the context of satellite broadband is to emerge, transparency in data use and flow patterns of this technology will be essential.

speaker

Berna Akcali Gur

reason

This highlights a key challenge and requirement for effective governance of LEO satellite systems.

impact

It shifted the discussion towards the importance of transparency and multi-stakeholder involvement in shaping policies.

There’s a huge dynamic here with respect to the need for a holistic collaborative approach across the multi-stakeholder ecosystem

speaker

Jane Roberts Coffin

reason

This emphasizes the complexity of LEO satellite governance and the need for diverse perspectives.

impact

It broadened the conversation to consider practical policy and regulatory approaches involving multiple stakeholders.

The flip side of data governance is cybersecurity.

speaker

Joanna Kulesza

reason

This introduces an important dimension that had not been fully addressed.

impact

It expanded the discussion to include cybersecurity concerns and their implications for LEO satellite governance.

How can we assure the universality of connection, of connectivity, and at the same time guarantee that we are not polluting our atmosphere, that we are following some guidelines that are addressing sustainability issues.

speaker

Alan Veloso

reason

This raises a crucial dilemma between expanding connectivity and ensuring environmental sustainability.

impact

It introduced environmental concerns into the discussion, highlighting the need to balance multiple objectives in LEO satellite deployment.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by highlighting the experimental nature of LEO satellite technology, emphasizing the need for transparency and multi-stakeholder involvement, introducing cybersecurity and environmental concerns, and underscoring the complexity of balancing various objectives in governance. The conversation evolved from technical aspects to broader policy implications, regulatory challenges, and the need for collaborative approaches across different stakeholders and regions.

How can we balance the need for universal connectivity with space sustainability concerns?

speaker

Alan Veloso

explanation

This highlights the tension between expanding satellite internet coverage and potential environmental impacts in space.

Are there methods to make users more conscious of potential privacy and cybersecurity risks in satellite internet that are not immediately visible?

speaker

Professor Gopal

explanation

This addresses the challenge of raising awareness about hidden risks in new internet infrastructure.

What are the implications of satellite internet development for Africa?

speaker

Advocate Nsifo Ndipa

explanation

This explores how new satellite technologies might impact connectivity and development in Africa specifically.

What will be the criteria for African service providers to participate in satellite internet platforms?

speaker

Advocate Nsifo Ndipa

explanation

This addresses concerns about access and participation for African companies in the emerging satellite internet market.

Is satellite internet further disintegrating internet infrastructure to the detriment of deep rural areas that are still unconnected?

speaker

Advocate Nsifo Ndipa

explanation

This raises concerns about potential negative impacts of satellite internet on existing efforts to connect rural areas.

How can we create a multi-stakeholder platform to discuss satellite internet governance issues?

speaker

Joanna Kulesza

explanation

This suggests the need for a more inclusive approach to decision-making around satellite internet regulation and deployment.

What are the cybersecurity implications of satellite internet, particularly regarding data access and control?

speaker

Joanna Kulesza

explanation

This highlights the need to explore security concerns specific to satellite-based internet infrastructure.

How will quantum computing impact the efficiency and security of satellite internet services?

speaker

Joanna Kulesza

explanation

This points to the need to consider emerging technologies in the development of satellite internet systems.

Can private companies compete effectively with government-backed satellite internet initiatives?

speaker

Vladislav Ivanets

explanation

This raises questions about the future competitive landscape of the satellite internet market.