Can Digital Economy Agreements Limit Internet Fragmentation? | IGF 2023 Day 0 Event #76

William J. Drake

Digital Economy Agreements (DEAs) have primarily emerged in the Asia Pacific region, with Singapore playing a central role. These agreements aim to promote policy convergence on a wide array of digital issues such as data flows, data localisation, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. DEAs follow a modular architecture, enabling the addressing of various issues under different bespoke modalities. The European Union has also launched digital partnerships, embracing a similar modular approach with countries like Japan, Korea, and Singapore. DEAs have the potential to limit internet fragmentation, which is caused by divergent national policies and regulations.

The discussions on institutional innovation in internet governance have often been divisive, focusing on multi-stakeholder versus multilateral frameworks and hard law versus soft law responses. These traditional approaches have not been very effective in addressing key issues relevant to fragmentation, such as data flows and data localisation. DEAs, with their modular architecture and adaptable nature, provide a potentially more innovative and responsive approach to address these issues.

Models such as the Digital Partnership Framework and Digital Investment and Partnership Agreement (DIPA) have emerged as responses to the inability of traditional trade agreements to keep up with rapid technological progress, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The potential impact of AI goes beyond just trade and the economy, potentially affecting all aspects of society profoundly. There is a growing recognition of the need for better stakeholder involvement in negotiations to address concerns raised by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society about the inclusion of AI in trade agreements.

Digital Economy Agreements and Digital Partnership Frameworks facilitate multi-stakeholder cooperation and foster institutionalised dialogues between countries. These models recognise the importance of involving various actors from civil society, business, and other parts of society in shaping digital governance frameworks.

It is crucial to ensure that flows of data are without obstruction. Digital trade agreements have the potential to strengthen binding commitments against forced data localisation or barriers to the flow of data. By including language pertaining to cross-border data flows, data localisation, and mandatory disclosure of source code in trade agreements, the stakes are raised, forcing all parties involved to reach an agreement.

Digital Economy Frameworks have emerged as a potential solution to address internet fragmentation. These frameworks work through institutionalised dialogue and ongoing interaction between parties, incrementally bringing them closer together on various issues.

In conclusion, DEAs offer a modular and adaptable approach to promote policy convergence on digital issues, ultimately helping to limit internet fragmentation. They provide an innovative and responsive mechanism for internet governance, addressing concerns related to data flows, data localisation, AI, and cybersecurity. Involving stakeholders from various sectors is essential for effective dialogue and decision-making, and digital trade agreements can play a role in ensuring the free flow of data. Digital Economy Frameworks have the potential to bridge the gaps between countries and foster cooperation in dealing with challenges related to internet fragmentation.

Richard Samans

Digital economy agreements are seen as a promising development for international economic cooperation, moving away from a purely market access approach. These agreements recognize the need for a comprehensive approach to address issues related to the digital economy. This shift is considered a positive step, indicating a deeper understanding of the complexities and challenges involved.

However, the impact of these agreements on internet fragmentation is still uncertain. Differences between countries and agreements may lead to fragmentation, as there are varying perspectives on fundamental issues. The presence of standard exceptions in agreements also highlights the potential for fragmentation. While digital economy agreements aim to tackle this issue, their effectiveness is yet to be determined.

The success of these agreements depends on regulatory cooperation. While the agreements lay out principles and commitments, true effectiveness lies in the actual cooperation and coordination of regulations between countries. The extent to which countries can work together will determine if these agreements can reduce fragmentation effectively.

It should be noted that existing agreements cannot solve internet fragmentation globally. Complete elimination is not realistic due to the nature of the issue. However, aligning policies and regulatory approaches among economically significant governments can promote coherence in the world economy. This alignment can create momentum for greater coordination and cooperation, enhancing overall stability.

Labour-related considerations, such as employee surveillance, performance evaluation, bias, and worker data protection, are not fully covered by digital economy agreements. These agreements have mainly focused on procedural matters, potentially overlooking important labour-related concerns. Norms surrounding employee surveillance, fair performance evaluation, bias prevention, and worker data protection are crucial and should be addressed in future agreements.

Trade agreements should also consider the varying levels of capacity among different countries. The Trade Facilitation Agreement by the World Trade Organization provides an example of an approach that acknowledges and supports countries with differing capacities. By doing so, trade agreements can facilitate shared participation and the development and implementation of norms.

There is increasing advocacy for multifaceted and interdisciplinary forms of international economic cooperation. This perspective recognizes the need for a holistic approach that considers diverse stakeholders and incorporates advancements in AI and algorithmic automation. Adopting this multifaceted approach can make international economic cooperation more inclusive, effective, and responsive to the challenges and opportunities of the digital era.

In summary, digital economy agreements signal a shift towards a more comprehensive approach to international economic cooperation. While they offer promise, their impact on internet fragmentation remains uncertain. The success of these agreements depends on regulatory cooperation between nations. Existing agreements may not fully address labour-related concerns, and trade agreements should consider varying capacity levels among countries. Advocacy for a multifaceted approach reflects a growing understanding of the complexities of the digital economy.

Chris Riley

The analysis revolves around the advantages of adopting a modular approach in the governance of digital platforms. This approach aims to address disparities in regulatory regimes and prevent the fragmentation of laws. The speakers argue that modularity can align operational processes, fostering consistency and coherence, and mitigate risks associated with different regulatory lenses, promoting equality and protecting fundamental human rights. Modularity is also seen as a means to bridge gaps between national and regional frameworks, ensuring a harmonized and effective digital platform governance.

Transparency plays a key role, as adhering to global best practices helps digital platforms meet legislative expectations and build trust with stakeholders. The modular approach enables the creation of a transnational knowledge base, guiding risk assessments and audits, and facilitating the implementation of effective governance measures.

The analysis highlights the importance of multi-stakeholder engagement in finding solutions to complex questions. Various stakeholders, including governments, industry, civil society, and international organizations, are considered essential in shaping digital governance frameworks. The speakers observe that international agreements are increasingly recognizing the value of this inclusive approach.

Despite acknowledging the tension between agreement and disagreement on international platforms, the speakers support the creation of more digital economy agreements based on alignment. Such agreements would counter negative forces and foster a more cohesive and cooperative digital governance landscape.

In summary, the analysis emphasizes that a modular approach can bridge regulatory disparities, prevent fragmentation, and protect fundamental human rights. Transparency, adherence to global best practices, and multi-stakeholder engagement are considered crucial in effective digital platform governance. The tension between agreement and disagreement on international platforms is acknowledged, but the overall support is for creating more agreements based on alignment to address digital economy challenges.

Marta Soprana

Digital economy agreements, such as the Digital Economy Agreement (DIPA), have emerged in response to the transformative impact of the internet age on trade and production. These agreements seek to establish new rules and regulations for the previously unregulated digital space. DIPA introduces a modular structure, allowing for the separate negotiation and treatment of key issues, which is a defining feature of these agreements.

One area of focus for digital economy agreements is the inclusion of provisions for emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI). DIPA is the first agreement to specifically address AI, recognizing its importance in shaping future trade and economic dynamics. However, concerns exist regarding the binding nature of including AI under a trade agreement.

Digital economy agreements primarily involve developed economies or countries with high levels of digital readiness. This suggests that countries with lower levels of digital readiness may be less interested in joining these agreements. To make these agreements more inclusive, explicit provisions for capacity building should be incorporated, attracting a diverse range of countries.

The establishment of DIPA and the Digital Economy Agreement (DEA) was necessary to keep pace with technological progress and overcome challenges in multilateral negotiations. These agreements acknowledge the significant impact of certain technologies, such as AI, on trade and extend beyond the economic realm.

Involving civil society and businesses in the negotiation process, especially for emerging technologies like AI, is crucial. This inclusive approach ensures diverse perspectives are considered and addresses societal concerns. Updating the negotiation process of digital economy agreements by expanding civil society participation is recommended, particularly for matters related to emerging technologies.

In conclusion, digital economy agreements, including DIPA, aim to establish new rules for the digital space in response to the impact of the internet age on trade and production. The modular structure of DIPA is a significant aspect of these agreements. The recognition of AI’s influence in future trends is crucial, despite concerns about its binding nature. Explicit provisions for capacity building can make these agreements more inclusive. The establishment of DIPA and DEA reflects the need to keep up with technological progress and overcome challenges in multilateral negotiations. Involving civil society and businesses in the negotiation process is essential for addressing concerns and considering diverse perspectives.

Neha Mishra

Digital Economy Agreements (DEAs) challenge the traditional boundaries of trade law in terms of scope and institutional mechanisms. Unlike e-commerce chapters of Free Trade Agreements, DEAs cover a wide range of issues. They go beyond government and regulatory bodies by establishing mechanisms for multi-stakeholder dialogues. DEAs focus on interoperability and trust-based solutions. They aim to foster innovation and growth by promoting collaboration and information exchange among different stakeholders. DEAs also address topics relevant to internet governance, such as net neutrality, AI, and data sharing principles, and emphasize the importance of a global, open architecture of the internet.

The effectiveness of DEAs is highly dependent on political will. While they offer promising opportunities for international cooperation in digital policy, challenges arise when they interfere with domestic regulations. Striking a balance between international cooperation and national interests is crucial.

Neha Mishra, an optimistic commentator, believes that DEAs have the potential to create trust-based regulatory frameworks and foster dialogue among stakeholders. However, the success of DEAs relies on political will. Mishra sees DEAs as a means to address the challenges faced by the digital economy.

DEAs also aim to reduce internet fragmentation and build trust. They do this by adopting common standards for e-invoicing and promoting open standards and licensing practices. The goal is to prevent the establishment of digital “walled gardens” and create an environment of collaboration and openness.

However, concerns exist regarding the impact of DEAs on governmental fragmentation, sovereignty, and national security. Trade exceptions within DEAs can be broadly interpreted, and there is a lack of clarity on how they would be adjudicated by trade tribunals. Balancing the interests of countries and navigating national security agendas pose challenges.

In conclusion, DEAs challenge traditional trade law and offer potential for cooperation and innovation. They cover a wide range of issues, foster multi-stakeholder dialogues, and prioritize interoperability and trust. However, their success depends on political will, and concerns exist regarding governmental fragmentation and national security. DEAs provide an opportunity to address these challenges but require careful consideration and stakeholder cooperation to reach their full potential.

Eli Noam

Eli Noam raises concerns about the new system, suggesting that it will inevitably lead to increased fragmentation. He argues that groups of countries with similar perspectives and interests are forming their own treaties, formalising a fragmentation process that is already underway. Noam also sees the potential for restrictive coalitions against digital platforms as a negative consequence of the new system. He highlights the aim of certain coalitions to tax, restrict, and control content moderation on these platforms, which is considered an inevitable result of countries cooperating to address platform-related issues.

Furthermore, Noam raises the issue of the constitutional implications of the new system. He believes that AI policy should be determined by elected officials rather than trade negotiators. Currently, a significant amount of digital policy-setting is delegated to trade officials, bypassing democratic processes and raising concerns about constitutional issues.

Despite these concerns, Noam recognises the positive aspects of the new system. He sees it as an opportunity for experimentation and flexibility, allowing for the testing of different approaches. The modularity of the new system also allows for flexibility in negotiations. Noam also proposes the creation of an intelligent databank that would contain curated proposals and analytical literature, promoting best practices in the digital economy.

When comparing the old system with the new one, Noam acknowledges that sacrifices were necessary to achieve certain goals. In the IT sector, obtaining desired outcomes often meant making concessions in agriculture. However, the sectoral approach in the new system enables countries to select the measures that best suit their interests without the need for sacrifices. This departure from the old system could potentially lead to more favourable outcomes for individual countries.

One notable drawback of the new system, as identified by Noam, is the lack of political cover for difficult decisions. In the past, it was possible to explain to certain sectors, such as agriculture, the necessity of certain decisions for the greater good of the country. However, the new system no longer provides such cover, making it more challenging to make difficult decisions.

Notably, Noam has shifted his perspective from a reactive ‘data bank’ proposal to a proactive model of the Digital Economy Agreement (DEA). He suggests recommending the proposed DEA to countries as a way to justify their decisions to their constituents. This implies a shift from skepticism towards a cautious value-seeking approach to internet regulation.

In summary, Eli Noam’s analysis examines the positive and negative aspects of the new system. While expressing concerns about fragmentation, restrictive coalitions, and constitutional implications, Noam also recognises the benefits of experimentation, flexibility, and the potential for more favourable outcomes for countries. To address these issues, Noam proposes the creation of an intelligent databank for best practices and a shift towards a proactive model of the Digital Economy Agreement. He advocates for a cautious, value-seeking approach to internet regulation that takes into account the importance of a global perspective.

Stephanie Honey

The summary has been revised to correct grammatical errors, sentence formation issues, and typos. UK spelling and grammar have been used in the text. The revised summary accurately reflects the main analysis text and includes relevant long-tail keywords without compromising the quality of the summary.

Maiko Meguro

The complexities surrounding the cross-border transfer of data necessitate the creation of a new governance mechanism. This mechanism should involve collaboration among multiple stakeholders beyond government-to-government forums and aim to establish a single rule that cuts across different sovereignties. Efficient policy coordination and the establishment of trust-building mechanisms are crucial for successful data transferral processes. The concept of “data free flow with trust” emphasizes the need to find a balance between privacy and security aspects. Modularity is seen as a sensible approach to address issues in policy coordination, particularly in intermingled concerns between trade and privacy. The “Institutional Arrangement for Partnership” serves as an effective mechanism for enhancing policy coordination, providing a multi-stakeholder platform for policy discussions. The G7 is developing the Institutional Arrangement for Partnership (IAP), which will have a permanent secretariat within an existing international organization. Prior to the implementation of the new governance mechanism and institutional arrangements, it is suggested to start with working groups that operate at different paces. International agreements should interact with existing domestic regulations, taking into account the challenges of changing domestic regulations. Discussions, cooperation, and pragmatic problem-solving approaches are crucial in finding comprehensive solutions. The goal is to achieve policy coordination and rule convergence, recognizing the importance of coordinated policies in addressing data transfer challenges. Multi-stakeholder involvement is essential in developing effective policies and mechanisms, including stakeholders with technological expertise.

Audience

The analysis identifies several key themes and arguments regarding digital trade agreements. One such theme is the concern that the modular approach to these agreements leads to fragmentation and inconsistent user experience. This is seen as a problem due to the sheer number of standards involved. It is argued that such fragmentation may result in users having different experiences when interacting with digital platforms. The supporting facts mention challenges faced in ensuring a smooth user experience due to optional attributes in the modular approach.

Another theme that emerges is the need for agreements to incorporate a sense of agency and ownership and to allow for mechanisms of evolution. It is highlighted that for others to join the agreement, they need to have a sense of agency and ownership. There is also a call for these agreements to think about what happens next after the current agreement expires, as well as the importance of openness to evolution and improvement. This involves creating mechanisms that allow for disagreements and the inclusion of multiple stakeholders.

The analysis also points out the political and geopolitical drivers of fragmentation in digital trade agreements. It is argued that these drivers will continue to exist and may even intensify over time. Political events underline the fragility of cooperation, and it is suggested that changes in government resulting from elections could impact governance cooperation.

Considering social, political, and economic realities in different countries is another important aspect discussed. The analysis highlights that countries operate at different levels and have different beliefs. There is concern that standardisation and agreement may exacerbate disparities rather than addressing them. Additionally, challenges in making data interoperable and harmonising financial system rules are recognised.

Concerns are raised over the influence of digital economy agreements on the regulatory space. It is mentioned that some agreements, such as the DIPA, have a lot of non-binding commitments. There is a call for making trade agreements more inclusive by involving multiple stakeholders.

On the other hand, it is acknowledged that digital economy agreements may help limit the risk of internet fragmentation. The analysis highlights the potential of the DIPA to attract countries with different perspectives and interests, thereby promoting cooperation and reducing fragmentation.

The potential risks of an international digital divide in digital economy agreements are also a topic of discussion. Past experience has shown that pushing developing nations to open up to developed nations has resulted in an international digital divide. It is suggested that entering into agreements might lead to retaliation by some countries and perpetuate this divide.

Finally, criticism of the necessity of these agreements is mentioned. Doubts are raised about the need for these agreements, as the internet is not seen as being broken or fragmented. Implementing agreements may actually contribute to fragmentation rather than protecting against it.

In conclusion, the analysis highlights various concerns and arguments regarding digital trade agreements. These include the risk of fragmentation and inconsistent user experience, the need for agency, ownership, and evolution in agreements, the impact of political and geopolitical drivers on fragmentation, the importance of considering social, political, and economic realities, concerns over the influence on the regulatory space, and the potential risks of an international digital divide. It is evident that there are multiple perspectives and challenges in formulating and implementing effective digital trade agreements.

William J. Drake:
There’s a lot of competing events, so it’s good that you’re with us. We appreciate it. I’m Bill Drake from Columbia Institute for Teleinformation at Columbia University in New York City. And this is the session on can digital economy agreements limit internet fragmentation? At last year’s IGF in 2022, I organized a day zero event on understanding internet fragmentation concepts and their implications for action where we tried to talk through some of the definitional issues that have plagued the discussion of internet governance over the past decade in order to try to get some greater clarity and try to set up discussions about how we might move towards policy responses to some of the main challenges posed by fragmentation. And I said at the time that that would be the first of two sessions that were linked. This is that second session that’s linked that’s attempting to begin to look at policy responses using more innovative and interesting mechanisms that have not necessarily been discussed a lot in the IGF context to date. You know, there’s been a long running, for those of you who’ve been around internet governance discussions over the past 25 years, you know that there’s been long running discussions around the question of institutional innovation and how do we create new mechanisms to respond to new internet governance and digital policy challenges as they arise. And the discussions around that question have been often very divisive and tended to polarize around questions like multi-stakeholder versus multilateral frameworks or when to have hard law versus soft law kinds of responses, the relative merits of treaties versus guidelines, declarations, MOUs, other kinds of mechanisms, et cetera. And none of these have proven in recent years to be terribly helpful in responding to some of the issues that are most directly relevant to fragmentation that people have been talking about a lot in recent years around data flows, data localization, things like that. So it’s in that context then of the larger discussion of institutional fragmentation and the question of how do we respond to internet fragmentation challenges that this topic becomes interesting. We’re gonna talk today about digital economy agreements, digital economy agreements or DEAs are new kinds of approaches to international cooperation and policy convergence that have emerged alongside and been informed by the laborious and difficult digital trade negotiations of the past decade. The center of gravity on these DEAs has been mostly in the Asia Pacific region with Singapore being very centrally involved in many of them. The most widely discussed examples of DEA is the 2020 Digital Economy Partnership Agreement or DIPA between Chile, Singapore and New Zealand which Korea just joined and Canada, China and Peru are seeking to join and that will get the particular attention in this context but there’ve been a variety of other DEAs formed as well between Singapore, Australia, UK and Singapore, Korea and Singapore and now the 10 member ASEAN, Association of Southeast Asian Nations has launched negotiations to try to come up with a DEA framework for the 10 countries and the DEAs that have been reached have tried to promote policy convergence on a broad range of digital issues from data flows and forced data localizations to online customs duties, trade treatment of digital products, source protection of source codes, e-invoicing and certificates, supply chains, digital identities, digital inclusion, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, consumer protection, you name it. The whole range of issues that are out there on the international agenda, many of them have been addressed in these DEAs and many will be addressed in DEAs to come and what’s interesting in particular about the DEAs is that they follow a modular architecture. That’s to say each set of issues that is addressed under a DEA is treated on a kind of standalone basis within an overarching umbrella framework which means that these different issues can be, different issue streams can all be addressed in different ways. You can have different formulations of interests and move faster or slower depending on how mature an issue is, et cetera. You can have variable commitments in terms of hard versus soft law kinds of commitments. You can try to institutionalize dialogue through a variety of different modalities that are bespoke to the particular issues in question. You can use this kind of architecture to be much more agile and adaptive to changing environments because they’re not, the modules can be evolved separately in different ways. So there are very interesting kinds of approaches from an institutional standpoint to trying to figure out how do we establish ongoing institutionalized cooperation between countries around digital issues and the European Union has begun to do something similar. It’s launched a series of what it calls digital partnerships and it’s cut a series of these last year with Japan, Korea, Singapore and is planning to do more. And these two follow this kind of like decentralized modular architecture where you have a range of different issues being addressed in different ways as part of an ongoing umbrella framework. And their DPs have covered a wide range of issues including 5G questions and quantum, everything else. So all of this has been interesting kind of institutional innovation that we thought is interesting in particular here in the IGF context because we’ve had an ongoing concern over the past years around internet fragmentation and some of what’s been attempted through the DEAs and DPs is directly relevant to internet fragmentation. So we wanna explore the question of to what extent are these new kinds of institutional arrangements interesting? Do they provide possible avenues towards addressing fragmentation related issues in more creative ways that might overcome some of the barriers that have prevented effective cooperation between countries and so on. To do that we have a very interesting panel. Now I’m a little puzzled about how things are a little different here from previous. On the Zoom do we have our two other, we have two remote speakers but I’m not sure are we gonna see them on the screen here? Are you gonna be able to show the Zoom on here so that the other speakers, all right good. I see Stephanie and I see Rick, that’s fantastic. So let me, we have all our speakers, it’s fantastic. So online we have Stephanie Honey from the APEC Business Advisory Council. Stephanie was formerly in the government in New Zealand and was a WTO trade negotiator who was very directly involved in the DIPA negotiations and she’s joining us from New Zealand, different time zones, so welcome. We have Meiko Maguro here from the government of Japan. She’s the Director for International Data Strategy in the digital agency and she’s been centrally involved in the government’s data free flow with trust initiative in the G7 and other contexts. We have here to my left my co-conspirator in this event, Neha Mishra from the Graduate Institute in Geneva. She’s an Assistant Professor of International Economic Law. We have Elie Noem, the founding director of the Columbia Institute for Teleinformation where he’s been for 40 years and a Professor of Economics and Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility Emeritus at Columbia Business School in New York, my colleague. Online we have, I hope, Chris Reilly. Yes, okay, I can’t see in the little box. Chris Reilly is a distinguished research fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania in the US. Chris is also the Executive Director of the Nonprofit Data Transfer Initiative and he was previously at the US Department of State where he worked with Hillary Clinton and others on digital freedom initiatives. Rick Sammons is online joining us from Geneva, Switzerland. Rick is the Director of the International Labor Organization’s Research Department and has been a Sherpa to the G20, the G7 and BRICS processes. Previously, Rick was Founder and Chairman of the Climate Disclosure Standards Board and a Managing Director of the World Economic Forum. So he’s with us in Geneva and we have Marta Soprano, a Fellow in International Political Economy at the London School of Economics in the UK. So what we’re gonna do is that each of the speakers will talk three to five minutes to get started putting out some ideas relevant to the themes of this topic about how they see the importance of digital economy agreements as responses to the challenges that we have in terms of governance of the digital economy. Then we will have a little interactive discussion around the policy questions that are listed on the announcement for this event. And then when we get to the top of the hour, we have a half hour for open discussion among all participants when we very much hope that you will choose to join into the conversation. So that’s the game plan. So let’s start, which of you would like to start with giving us some overview on digital economy agreements and their relevance to fragmentation? Neha is the co-conspirator here. I think you could be the first victim.

Neha Mishra:
Okay, good afternoon everyone and a big thank you to the organizers. So what I’m going to do is to try to zoom out a bit and look at digital economy agreements and digital partnerships from a global digital policy, digital law perspective, and kind of tie in some of the ideas that a lot of people here might be interested in from an internet governance, internet regulation perspective. The larger point that I want to make is that because, and I think Bill already introduced the idea that these digital economy agreements and digital partnerships as a broader category offer several bright lines for involving a lot of people who are involved in internet policymaking because they defy a lot of traditional boundaries and architectural features of traditional trade agreements. But at the same time, while I offer a lot of promising prospects, I think it’s important for us to be cautious because these agreements have been agreed upon by a limited number of like-minded countries and a lot of provisions in these agreements and broadly in the partnership agreements that are not necessarily like trade treaties are soft disciplines, which means that there is political will necessary to take them further. So just in terms of characterizing, as I mentioned, they really challenge the traditional boundaries of trade law, and this is both in terms of scope and in terms of the institutional mechanism. So Bill already outlined the kind of provisions included in these agreements, provisions on digital inclusion or data innovation or creating trust-based regulatory frameworks, creating different kinds of avenues for multi-stakeholder participation, covering areas such as online safety, cybersecurity protection, technical standard setting. That’s quite unusual. So if you look at e-commerce chapters in FTS, you don’t see such a broad range of issues. But also in terms of the procedures and mechanisms that are available, these agreements are quite unique because they provide many avenues for broad-based dialogues between different groups of stakeholders and not just governments and regulatory bodies. There is a high focus on interoperability and trust-based solution making. And this to me as a trade lawyer is fascinating because the vocabulary has completely changed from binding rules and dispute settlement and market access to how to build regulatory cooperation and find trust-based solutions. The other point I’ll briefly point out is we’ve spoken about a range of agreements, digital economy agreements, digital partnership, and they all have very different legal characteristics, but I think it’s important to remember that the thrust of these agreements seem to be in the same direction, that they want to create more partnerships which are based on finding synergies in different areas of digital regulation. And they are also quite unusual because they only focus on the digital economy unlike trade agreements where you could be bargaining for automobiles in exchange of data flows, which doesn’t make any sense, I know, from an internet governance perspective. So quickly then for our discussion here at the IGF, I think I highlight a few possibilities of synergies or at least exchange of ideas between this trade and internet world. And one of them is, as I mentioned, because of these procedural or institutional mechanisms that are in place that allow for these dialogues, but also to keep in mind that these digital economy agreements cover a lot of areas that the internet market stakeholder community is really interested in. So this is also something, areas such as net neutrality, data innovation, AI, principles for data sharing. This is exactly what people at IGF, for instance, are interested in. I also want to briefly highlight that across these digital economy agreements and the digital partnerships, you will find language that supports the global open architecture of the internet, focuses on interconnectivity and highlights its role in creating more opportunities for innovation and growth in the digital economy. And what is remarkable is that, and perhaps this might be in the long run, we’ll see if it’s a successful experiment, but definitely a few small open economies who have started negotiating this are making a clear statement that they would rather have common standards and common consensus and global norms rather than to have to side with specific digital powers and build on this narrative of digital sovereignty, which has also taken over the trade world. I end by just drawing some points of caution here. While it’s good to be optimistic, it’s important to remember these are very new agreements. They have just started in the last couple of years and they have so far been between countries which will be seen as like-minded open economies. And while the softness, the flexibility, the modular structure is a blessing in many ways because it allows for these dialogues and trust-based mechanisms to develop, it is highly contingent on political will. So the real testing point might be when we see how countries are going to react when these agreements may interfere with their domestic regulations, especially on cross-border data flows which are contained in their privacy and cybersecurity laws, because that would be a testing point. And the worst-case scenario might be that a few years from now in some IGF session, we will be sitting and talking about DEAs and how it was such a great initiative to address some of the problems with multilateralism, but eventually because of lack of political will, it fizzled out. But this is the worst, worst-case scenario and certainly none of us on the panel are hoping for that. Maybe I’m speaking on behalf of the entire panel, but thank you.

William J. Drake:
Well, thank you, Neha. And that has certainly happened with many agreements in the internet space. So look, why don’t we go to some of the online folks to get them engaged too, because… So Stephanie, are you able to take the mic and speak to us?

Stephanie Honey:
Let’s see. Can you hear me? Yes, fantastic. Hi. Wonderful. Okay, well, thank you very much, Bill. And there’s so much to agree with in what Neha has said. In fact, I feel a little bit redundant, but let me try to add some other insights to her comments. I think it’s quite interesting to pick up on the point that she made about the fact that the authors of these new style of agreements are really very like-minded, particularly the first of these digital economy agreements, the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, or DIPA, was between New Zealand, Singapore, and Chile. And I guess if you had to make a generalization about them, they’re all small economies, very open economies, very trade-oriented. And I think, as Neha pointed out, the fact that those countries, why would they need an agreement? I think there’s a very important sort of modeling and demonstration effect that is very deliberately the purpose of these new style of agreements. In fact, very explicitly, the authors of the DIPA intended that it should be a model for others and a mechanism, if you like, for coherence in internet governance, and particularly when it comes to things like cross-border data flows and avoiding forced data localization. And this is reflected in the structure of the agreement. It has this modular structure that you mentioned in your own introduction. And I think the idea is that countries could either seek to join the DIPA so they could accede to the agreement. And as you mentioned, we have already seen quite a momentum building on that. But also, very explicitly, they could, if they liked what the DIPA has said on one particular element, e-invoicing, for example, or AI, or any of these other myriad of topics, they could choose to pluck out that module and put it into their own trade agreement. And in this way, I think the authors of the DIPA intended that it’s a model, a kind of a model agreement for how to develop good, coherent internet governance and seek to populate that around the world rather than necessarily everybody having to join the same agreement. Because from a business perspective, if the rules are largely homogeneous, that’s a good outcome for business, that enables better cybersecurity outcomes, and so on. So that’s a really important concept in the DIPA, that it’s a building block towards greater international coherence. And we have a parallel process going on in the WTO at the moment, the World Trade Organization, which is trying to develop, shall we say, global rules for digital trade. And I think the three countries that originated the DIPA also intended that this would be an influence on that. And I think, as you mentioned in your introduction, we’ve seen quite a number of these DEAs now being developed in digital partnerships, which very much are part of the same legacy of the DIPA. And I think in that sense, we can see that this concept of trying to develop a sort of model approach is in fact starting to gather some momentum. It’s being picked up by quite a number of other contexts. And in fact, in DIPA itself, as you mentioned, we have Korea that has exceeded, so there are four members. And in the queue to join, we have Canada, China, Costa Rica, Peru, and the UAE. So there’s quite a queue now forming of countries that would want to come on board this model. I think there’s one other really important concept. I know that Marta will pick up on many of these other issues as well, but I think it’s really important conceptually that the DIPA is about trade in the digital economy. This is a sort of a new approach to regulating economic activity in the data-driven economy, if you like, and very explicitly talks about trade in the digital economy rather than digital trade. And in the preamble of the DIPA, it talks about a lot of socio-technical and sort of civil rights and human rights and other issues that have a bearing on what happens in the digital economy. So just to touch on a few of the terms that are mentioned in the preamble, corporate social responsibility, cultural identity and diversity, environmental. protection and conservation, gender equality, indigenous rights, labor rights, inclusive trade, sustainable development, and traditional knowledge, as well as the importance of preserving their right to regulate in the public interest. And let me just close by saying, there are a number of specific provisions on that through the agreement, which I’m sure we can talk about later on in the conversation, but let me finish there.

William J. Drake:
Thanks, Stephanie. That was very helpful. And actually, I didn’t know about Costa Rica and the UAE, so that means there are four members now in the DIPA and five people, five countries waiting to join. So this is a growing kind of phenomenon, which is quite interesting. Let’s flip back to the panel here. And Marta, would you like to go next?

Marta Soprana:
Yes. So I will basically build on what Stephanie and Neha said, and I think it is important when we talk about digital economy agreement and DIPA, first of all, to understand the origins of these agreements and why, especially in the trade community, it is important to understand how different these agreements are. If you, for those who may be not incredibly familiar with trade, at the basis, the institutional framework, at the basis of the world trading system, is characterized by the World Trade Organization, which was founded in 1995. The multilateral trade agreements that govern trade in the world were negotiated between 1986 and 1994. So before or at the incipit of what we could define as the fourth industrial revolution. This means that already in 1998, when at the WTO, they launched a work program on e-commerce, there was an understanding that the internet that became publicly available in 1995 was going to revolutionize the way we will trade and we will produce and distribute goods and services. What has happened is that basically the rules of the game at multilateral level, so that apply to all WTO members, are rules that were negotiated over 30 years ago. And not much has been done in terms of negotiating new rules adapting to the 21st century. The first attempts to do this were preferential trade agreements. In 2000, with the U.S.-Jordan bilateral agreement and New Zealand and Singapore were the first agreements to include a provision on paperless trading or a chapter on e-commerce. So something started in the early 2000s and that was the approach that became basically the most typical to try to create new rules of the game for the digital economy up until 2020. In 2020, big things happened and that is the negotiation of DIPA and the negotiation of the first properly named digital economy agreement between Singapore and Australia. And that is because they realized that it was not enough. Multilateral negotiations at the WTO were not proceeding but technology was advancing. A lot was happening in that context. And therefore, this is why countries like Singapore, Chile and New Zealand were the first to basically open the gates for this new approach, modular approach to negotiating this topic. As Stephanie mentioned and Bill mentioned, one of the most important aspect of these agreements is the modular structure. So the fact that we are no longer negotiating all the issues together related to e-commerce but all the key issues are negotiated already separately, they have separate treatment. But also, DIPA was the first standalone agreement that was focused entirely on trading the digital economy. So completely de-linkages this issue from anything else that had been discussed from trade. One of the characteristics of this and this will be the other point that I want to make is, in terms of content, one of the key sort of novelties of these agreement is, for example, that DIPA is the first to ever mention a provision on artificial intelligence. This is how forward-looking these agreements are. With best endeavor language, they introduce topics that will become the dominant topics in the decades to come. The other important issue that I think we need to underline regards the membership of these agreements. As it was pointed out, we have the first countries were Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore. There are other countries that want to say DIPA. The United Kingdom has signed similar agreements with Ukraine and Singapore. The United States have done a digital partnership, digital trade agreement with Japan. We have something going on also at the European Union level. But what is interesting is that the vast majority of the countries that so far have been involved in the negotiation or signing of these agreements are developed economies or in cases of some developing economies like Chile and, for example, Costa Rica that is interested in exiting DIPA. These are countries that are high up in the index of digital readiness. Singapore ranks first, and it might explain why Singapore is heralding this new era of DIPA and digital economy agreements. But it means also that most likely, countries that are maybe not developed but less developed countries may be interested in these agreements at the moment if they have a higher level of digital readiness. So for the future, these agreements could be, of course, the basis for, for example, future negotiations and could lead the way for other countries. But probably the first to follow will be countries that are higher in digital readiness. One of the characteristics of some of these agreements is that they do not explicitly include provisions on capacity building. So maybe this is one thing that we need to keep in mind, that this model could be useful if we also start thinking of extending this module to other countries by attracting them, for example, by having a little bit more explicit provisions on capacity building. And I end here.

William J. Drake:
Thank you very much, Marta, that was excellent. Let’s go back to our online participants. We’ve been talking a lot about the modular nature of these agreements. Chris Riley has been thinking a lot about modularity as a way of trying to foster cooperation among countries on internet governance and digital economy kinds of issues. Chris, would you like to say a few words?

Chris Riley:
Happy to. Thanks for having me, Bill. Thanks for having me. Great to be able to connect virtually. Sorry, I can’t be there in person. This is gonna be a little bit different because this is not modularity. What I wanna talk about is not modularity in the context of international trade agreements, but rather modularity and how it can be useful as a tool to mediate disparate regulatory regimes coming online at the national and regional level. As my colleague Susan Ness and I use the term, modularity is a multi-stakeholder, multinational paradigm for digital platform governance. That part sounds the same. We start from the assumption that national and regional laws are expanding quite rapidly in their influence in the modern era. The EU’s Digital Service Act joins the e-safety law in Australia. On the horizon, we have the online safety bill in the United Kingdom, codes of practice developing around the world. Now, this thicket of forthcoming regulations is quite arguably necessary, but it comes at a cost. And in particular, it comes at a risk of fragmentation. It’s the same landscape that digital economy agreements are coming online to try to address by fostering substantive agreement. As Susan and I work on modularity, we propose a sort of parallel modular operational alignment to compliment that and try to foster alignment at that level. Regardless, we know we are at risk of heading for a future of disparate regulatory lenses, greater inequality, greater difficulty for the protection of fundamental human rights and other challenges if we don’t get this right. So let me be a little bit more specific about what I’m talking about. Transparency into platform practices is something that we sort of expect universally. It’s appearing in laws all around the world. And we see efforts like the Action Coalition on Transparency, I know there’s some representatives of that work here, building global best practices for transparency as a means of ensuring that platforms can meet these individual legislative expectations in an efficient way with internal development and reporting that can be shared across regions. There are two other operational challenges gaining in their popularity in digital governance laws as they are adopted around the world. And neither at the moment is on track for an effective multinational alignment. One of these is researcher access. So the DSA in Europe requires some platforms to make available internal data to independent researchers solely for the purposes of allowing those researchers to study whether the platforms are in compliance with the DSA. There are a lot of other proposed laws that would have parallel but slightly different researcher access obligations. Now, the work of the European Digital Media Observatory and Rebecca Tromble of George Washington University, this work has gone far to show the value of multi-stakeholder input into DSA compliance and implementation. They released a flagship report that proposes the use of an independent intermediary body that would handle some of the implementation necessary for the researcher access mandate within the DSA. They would propose a creation of a body that would accept requests from researchers for access to platform data under this law. They would vet the researchers. They would ensure that their proposal is consistent with the purposes of the statute that it has necessary safeguards and so forth in it. And then they would issue a recommendation. Now, the hesitation here is that this is solely within scope of the DSA. So it doesn’t get to this broader challenge that this conversation today is about, which is about how do we foster alignment across multiple jurisdictions as a means of discouraging the sort of splintering and disparate regulatory lenses across the world. So the question is, can you take that body, that concept and have it be multinational? The promise of modularity, it gets realized if you imagine that same body taking requests from researchers outside the EU and vetting them in the same way and working to make the same kinds of recommendations available on a multinational basis. And where we really see the promise of modularity is if future laws in the online platform governance space look to those same bodies and structures, that same researcher vetting body and say, if you say a researcher is okay, we’re going to give you a presumption of validity under our law as well. There’s a separate operational challenge, arguably even more important, it depends on your point of view, which is risk assessment and audit. And in the same way as researcher access, multiple laws and multiple jurisdictions are on track to require risk assessments and audits to be done by platforms to show that they are behaving in a responsible way. A modular process would see the development of a shared transnational knowledge base that can guide those assessments and can train those auditors against a common standard. That increases alignment in the outcomes of the operational steps necessary to implement these researcher access mandates. But at the end of the day, and this is important, it does not undermine sovereignty in the individual governments to take direct enforcement action where they see fit. Modularity in this sense offers three advantages over relying solely on government enforcement actions. First, it resists the development of inconsistent international norms and standards, very much like digital economy agreements in that way. Second, modularity reduces the effort needed for governments to implement and enforce their laws. They don’t have to vet every researcher request that comes in. They don’t have to set up their own frameworks for auditors and for risk assessment. They can rely on the shared multinational body. And yet at the same time, they would retain the right inability to do their own thing when push comes to shove when they need to as a means of understanding that their fundamental sovereignty is not being violated. Third and finally, modularity improves the process of enforcement for outside stakeholders. It encourages participation of more bodies in these mechanisms, in these implementation mechanisms rather than having them face a diversified environment. If you imagine dozens of countries around the world passing slightly distinct risk assessment and audit frameworks, you’re gonna cost price out any advocacy organization that’s trying to be influential here. And it will only be within the reach of large multinational corporations to be able to effectively engage on all of these frameworks all at the same time. So this is in many ways, I believe very complimentary to modularity as we see it in digital economy agreements. Modularity as Susan and I use the term is looking at operational alignment of implementation. The trade agreements are focused on substantive alignment either by themselves help reach this goal that we’re all working towards of increased international environment. And together, they can amplify each other and produce a stronger and more effective digital platform governance future.

William J. Drake:
Thanks, Chris. I actually think that there’s a great deal of synergy in terms of operational as well as substantive in that the DEA frameworks and the DP frameworks that you have are also consistent with that. Let’s, thank you very much. Let’s flip back to here. Mako, would you like to go next? Let me pass this down to you. Ellie, could you? Thank you.

Maiko Meguro:
Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Bill. And thank you for having me here. It’s quite a pleasure to join this sort of interesting interaction from the different perspective. And especially when I’m coming from the government, it’s very nice to be back to the point, square point that we used to have the trade rules, but now we’re really looking into new mechanism. So which means that we all coming from the different background, but we actually trying to find the answer to this question, which is how do we create a new mechanism in addressing digital? And of course, internet governance issues that everybody agreed that under sort of challenges, because obviously previously we thought that trade rule can solve something, but actually we are facing the boundaries, then what’s now? So it’s quite interesting to hear from the previous authors talking about modularity and how digital economic agreement are trying to address those new challenges and getting success. And actually I’m here, I’m not coming from the digital economic agreement background but I come from the data governance background. And on behalf of Japanese government, I’m in the team to develop the, what is called the institutional arrangement for partnership, which we’re trying to create a new governance mechanism in terms of enhancing the cross-border transfer of data under the banner of data free flow with trust. So data free flow with trust, it sounds slightly weird as an English, but excuse us, that has been issued by the late Prime Minister Abe, he’s also Japanese, not good at English. We have the reputation of not good at English. But you take the concept, which is when the data flows, we need a trust. And this trust actually pin down this particular element of governance. And for us, governance means that, of course, there can be the international rule that can strongly coordinate by the naval international law. But if you look at the field of data, particularly data from the privacy and data from the security, it’s very difficult to have one single rule comes in and start coordinating across the sovereignty, it’s not gonna happen. Which means that for the policy makers, the question is how we can have the effective policy coordination? What is the setting? So by tackling this question, of course, I mean, DPA, I see the similar challenges, and of course, modularity, this really provide a way for the policy makers to make the trouble smaller, which is when you’re trying to have the policy coordination on data, when it is mingled between the trade and privacy, and it’s important to solve this question. So separate the question into the modular, that really makes sense. But at the same time, even within the topic, like privacy, then how do you actually coordinate the different privacy regulation? That’s another question for the policy makers, because even though we understand each other super well, each other’s constitutional setting, still people cannot just have the one single rule. This is where the Institutional Arrangement for Partnership comes in as an idea. So this idea is basically, it’s a mechanism of multi-stakeholder to help the policy coordination in the existing G2G, government-to-government fora. So we are not creating a government-to-government fora from the beginning, which means that it’s almost like a world data organization. This is not what we are doing. We help the existing international organization, or existing regulatory conversation, which is on the privacy or security, already the modular. But the thing is, sometimes when you need the support from technology, for example, when you have some stuck in the privacy regulators talk, I mean, they’re doing great job, but we’re not gonna have the one single rule. Then, perhaps, for example, privacy-enhancing technology kicks in. But question is whether or not this privacy-enhancing technology is actually equivalent or good enough to overcome the difference or gaps. Then we need to have a way to cooperate the technology into those policy discussion paths, like a regulatory sandbox exercise make sense. But all these project idea often just comes in as ad hoc. But all these talk must be continuous, build upon one project after another. This is where we come from, this idea of institutional arrangement partnership, which is we host the different working groups, topic by topic, to support those existing government panels discussion on the policy coordination by the permanent secretary to project manage, you know, review, and make sure that those project are actually feeded into the policy talk. This way, it’s not an ad hoc, it’s multilateral, but also a multi-stakeholder. So I think this is more like a complimentary to the idea of the digital economic agreement and other also harder agreement. But yeah, but I think that this is everything is just happening at the same time and it’s all new. So I’m quite excited to see how these new mechanism are actually work together. Perhaps we might be talking about the same thing, we’re happy to also discuss on that, but I stop here now, thank you.

William J. Drake:
Thank you very much Mika, that’s very interesting. Just to clarify, the new mechanism that’s being developed under the G7, the acronym drives me crazy, IAP. Yeah. The timeframe for actually booting that up among the G7 countries is?

Maiko Meguro:
Actually, in the coming month. In the coming month. We promised to summit. And also, we kind of discussed this among the G7, but DFFD was actually a concept brought up to the G20, and what we are now trying to develop is not, of course, limited to the G7. Because I said this existing international organization, so we kind of connect the international organizations, government, the board. But first, we set up the permanent secretariat in the one international organization. now talking because we have to finish it within the coming month as I promised in April.

William J. Drake:
And it’ll have different work streams that have proceeded different paces depending on the issues and so on.

Maiko Meguro:
Of course but first we start from just having a several working groups set up then perhaps like a different working group have different pace and how it’s gonna proceed that’s how I perceive.

William J. Drake:
New international mechanism being born folks if you didn’t know about it. Let’s go back online to the last of our three online speakers Rick Sammons with the International Labor Organization in Geneva. Rick would you like to say a few

Richard Samans:
really helpful and useful points have been made. Maybe I’ll just add a couple of broader points or reflections. The first is that I I would submit that these digital economy types of agreements are are promising their salutary development from the standpoint of international economic cooperation and governance in my view. In in essence because they are a recognition that it’s critical to go beyond a purely or mainly market access approach to these issues which has really been a hallmark of the first say 10 or 15 years of the treatment of this issue particularly in international economic relations. So that alone at root offers significant promise here and I know that this should resonate with Internet Governance Forum community because I’ve certainly heard over the years quite a bit of frustration being expressed by those involved in Internet Governance and telecommunications policy about the somewhat siloed approach by their economic policy and trade policy counterparts to these issues and so I think that this provides an opportunity for better integration both substantively as well as notably procedurally. In other words you know the much more multi-stakeholder culture of policymaking in the internet government world is going to be needed if if these digital economy agreement approaches are to be successful. That’s that’s my first point. Second one is you know let me reflect on the big question that you posed Bill which is you know what’s the likely impact here on internet fragmentation and I would submit that it is as much as I think that that these agreements are very promising. I would argue for your consideration that their influence on internet fragmentation is very much an open question and in two respects in particular. One is you’ve got to go you know kind of below the surface to some of the primary expressed interests and indeed requirements of some of the key parties in the world on these issues and so for example in the regional comprehensive economic partnership which is sort of a broader framework where you’ve got a lot of Asian countries including China involved there is a treatment of a number of these issues but for example you know localization is explicitly allowed in that agreement. Forced disclosure of source code explicitly allow. Contrast that with approaches in in chapters of agreements or even even in you know other self-contained agreements in this area. For example the USMCA the United States Mexico Canada agreement and its chapter in this area or the CPTPP and whatnot you got a you had a different fundamental approach on some key issues there. For example platforms and USMCA are not to be liable for third-party content. Platforms are free to delete content. Digital service taxes should not be imposed in ways that de facto hit the big platform companies. You know source code is treated differently. So you know we have to be realistic here that there are significant differences on fundamental issues lest we get too excited about the potential for these being instruments to narrow internet fragmentation. The second dimension of this cautionary note is less political. It’s more it’s more you know substantive in a way and that is that if you look at these agreements and the chapters and trade agreements that treat these subjects they tend to have a lot of exceptions standard exceptions and that’s why I think what Neha said at the outset and in a more polite way is why quote-unquote political will is ultimately what’s going to be required here. These are much of these agreements are you know in terms of their specific language are principles based. They’re really principles or directionally oriented indications of normative direction if you will and commitment which is extremely important. Don’t mistake what I’m saying as undervaluing the significance of what’s in these agreements. But at the end of the day what’s really going to be important is what Chris Riley was talking about a few moments ago which is the actual regulatory cooperation that goes on. That’s going to be the ultimate test of how much these agreements actually do contribute to reducing fragmentation if not globally at least in big local chunks of of economic and internet activity in the world. So again I salute Chris for taking us through some very concrete examples of that. So we go from kind of the broad policy making a little tool really what’s going to make a difference. And so I’ll leave you with that. Thanks. Back to you Bill. Thanks Rick.

William J. Drake:
Actually we we view the question of their their utility for fragmentation as an open question too so don’t worry. You’re very much in sync with the rest of us on that. Okay last of our speakers is Ellie Nome last but not least. Ellie would you like to have some thoughts and then we’ll go to a little more open discussion. If you speak into it.

Eli Noam:
All right well I’m very very happy to be back at IGF. In fact I was I was in Tunis in 2005 when the IGF system was set up and there there was a very stellar cast of characters there. There were about 20 national presidents most of whom by now have been overthrown and and so every communications minister in the world was there and and so we talked about big picture type issues kind of the the forest not the trees. So the it is important as we discuss these things here now the DEA is not to be just in the trees and in the leaves in fact but also see and think about what are we doing here? Where is this leading to? What are the dynamics? And so let me suggest then three problems and three advantages of this new system or emerging system and then make a little proposal. So the first problem that I see here is fragmentation and while I appreciate the being the previous speaker talking about this being an open question I think to me it’s a kind of a totally clear question. It enhances fragmentation. How can it not? You have groups of countries that come together with a certain shared perspective and certain shared interests and economic philosophy and whatever and they will form some kind of treaty as we have here now with New Zealand etc. And then there were countries that have a different perspective and they will in fact since the this particular agreement is almost kind of open-ended they will recruit members into their coalition others will recruit to the other coalition. The only positive thing that you can say is so clearly it’s going to enhance fragmentation. What you can say is it’s happening anyway so positive on the positive side well it at least formalizes the fragmentation process that is emerging anyway it puts it into some documents it makes it a little bit more transparent. All right so that was problem number one. Problem number two is that some of these coalitions will be clearly with the aim of being restrictive so things that the country say against platforms cannot do by itself it will then kind of establish coalitions of like-minded countries to deal with with problems of the platforms partly to tax them partly to restrict them partly to require them to kind of do content moderation in certain ways it’s totally inevitable that these things will happen. Thirdly is that that’s a more of a constitutional issue that it delegates functions that should be more legislative to administrative trade officials so take for example AI. AI those are complicated issues and people around the world are thinking about them and there should be and I don’t think that for example the United States you should right now pass any law that would find a majority partly because we don’t quite know exactly what to do so if you make this into a trade negotiation issue the trade negotiators then come back and say well we now are bound our country to some form of a treatment of AI because we’ve signed this trade document. This is for people in the NGO world should be give them a pause because it basically takes it away from a from a democratic elected parliamentary type arrangement into one or people who are kind of market-oriented from a market perspective it puts it into the hands hands of trade officials to set policies that are in effect digital policies of quite significance. Now so those are my three problems the briefly the fragmentations are the on the positive I said already fragmentation is inevitable second is second one it’s it’s a good experimentation process you can figure out what works what doesn’t work ideally and thirdly it well it’s it’s a much more flexible instrument you don’t have to have everything the modularity the flexibility the ability to go in and go out creates create much more of a mechanism rather than these kind of huge trade negotiations where in effect at the end internationally you might kind of come up with a bunch of platitudes and people go home and then they do what they want to do anyway so here you have a bit more for concreteness so so therefore you hear my skepticism about the about the approach but I also will say it’s kind of inevitable because fragmentation is inevitable and people kind of deny that and they’re kind of a certain platitudes here too about kind of the importance of international arrangements it’s never been quite clear to me why these things are so sacrosanct a kind of commonality of interest does not exist the United States has a different perspective than Iran and there’s nothing wrong with that so any compromise of kind of some kind of global arrangements is neither going to satisfy Iran or going to satisfy the United States and so so so why even try so lastly my proposal here slight but it’s a small one as a researcher I would say let’s at least kind of if you have a lemon make a lemonade if you got going to have 25 different arrangements around the world let’s have a curated databank of these proposals together with kind of an analytic literature that will emerge so we know kind of how people analyze this so we could figure out best practices worst practices etc etc so there should be some kind of an intelligent databank database with research that’s done outside or inside I already know who should do that he’s sitting right next to me so that’s the that’s my my final proposal.

William J. Drake:
thanks Ellie for being provocative and helping to juice the conversation a little bit of course we have to remember the the language issues that we get into fragmentation of the policy environment versus fragmentation of the internet in an operational sense different dimensions interrelated and so on and both very very quickly important would before I pose a couple questions to you from the the policy questions that we have on the program can I ask if any of the panelists would like to respond to anything each other said to get a is there online folks Rick you wanna I see Rick and Stephanie both raising their hands that’s good because you know actually it’s easier if you raise your hand because you’re in a tiny little box and that I’m looking at on the screen far away so that’s helpful Rick go ahead

Richard Samans:
just to extend the discussion here on the fragmentation question you know I think clearly these agreements are not going to solve fragmentation in either of those dimensions bill on a global basis that’s clear but what I do think we shouldn’t underestimate is that to the extent that a significant and expanding subset of governments that matter economically are are beginning to align their policies and particularly the regulatory approaches on the main parameters here that will create a momentum for a significant improvement in coherence in the world economy it won’t it will not eliminate fragmentation by at a global level by those by no stretch but I do think we should you know have a textured view of this and recognize the potential even if it is not a for a complete win which I think is unrealistic as professor Nova saying on fragmentation it could still make an enormous difference for a very significant subset of the world economy

Stephanie Honey:
on a similar theme I guess responding to professor Noam I think we need to take a step back and ask why should we care about fragmentation you know avoiding fragmentation is not an end in itself I come from a business background and a former negotiator so obviously I bring that perspective to the conversation but if you look at it from a sort of an economic growth perspective or an inclusive economic growth perspective you know how can business utilize the digital economy to you know raise living standards and improve lives and in their own countries and and for people in other countries that’s why fragmentation matters because if we see massive regulatory heterogeneity you know huge constraints on cross-border data flows or force data localization that makes it very hard to do business across borders to supply the services that consumers in other countries might want to you know grow your own economy through trade and I think professor Noam as you sort of mentioned yourself you know this is happening anyway well since the start of the pandemic the global trade alert the digital trade alert based in Geneva has calculated that there have been about 3,000 regulatory interventions in digital trade by you know sort of global governments so if we do nothing what we’re seeing is this you know fragmentation the the patchwork of different approaches and for business that makes it incredibly expensive and difficult or impossible to do business across borders so you know it’s an imperfect science of course and there are important different perspectives that will never be reconciled but equally you know if we see a value in sort of achieving inclusive growth I think there’s there’s a really important job of work to do to try to increase coherence and minimize the fragmentation which I think this sort of model is designed to do by creating a platform for countries and policymakers and regulators and and other stakeholders to actually have those conversations about well we’re never going to agree on everything but is there a kind of a sweet spot where we can you know have data flowing we can have trade flowing and we can all benefit from that.

Marta Soprana:
point on on AI. One of the things that I need we need to two things to keep in mind when we think about these new models DIPA and DEA. One was definitely the fact that it was a response to the fact that multilateral negotiations were stalling and what was negotiated so far in bilateral agreements in traditional FTA was not enough to keep up with technological progress. So one of the reasons why we have AI included in these agreements is kind of like the understanding and recognition that there are some technologies that are about to or bound to have a massive effect on trade but not only trade in the years to come. I agree with your point of there is concern of including AI under a trade agreement especially because one of the characteristics of international trade law is that it is probably one branch of international public law that is the most binding. Once you get it into agreement it’s much easier to enforce these rules than maybe other agreements but I think that potentially a solution to maybe address some of the concerns maybe of NGOs and the civil society about including provisions on AI is maybe to involve civil society and not only the civil society but maybe businesses and other parts of society in the negotiations beforehand. I think that one of the aspects of especially these newest topics such as AI is that this is a technology that has an impact that goes way beyond trade, way beyond the economy and therefore it’s very important to include a lot of other stakeholders in these sort of conversations. Probably in the same way as these DIPA and DIAs are new models to approach the negotiations of the rules in digital trade we could also start thinking about having new approaches to the negotiating process itself by expanding or ameliorating the participation of civil society especially when dealing with certain issues related to emerging technologies.

William J. Drake:
Thanks, Marta. Yeah I think one of the things that has to be emphasised is that indeed both the digital economy agreement agreement like DIPA and the digital partnership frameworks being done by the EU explicitly build in the possibility of multistakeholder cooperation within the different modules, which also sounds like something that you intend to do with the new mechanism you folks are building. So this is interesting for people in the Internet governance world who have always argued that, you know, one needs to take a more multistakeholder approach and that some of the purely intergovernmental approach may not be sufficiently democratic, inclusive, and so on. This would seem to be a positive development in terms of bringing people into engagement on AI and so on in structured, ongoing, institutionalized dialogues between countries. But let’s go back to the issue of fragmentation a little bit more tightly and then we’ll open it up to everybody because we have a lot of interesting people in the room here with us who have thoughts on these issues, I’m sure. There’s been reference made to how the digital economy agreements sort of compare to traditional digital trade kinds of approaches. The digital trade agreements, as Rick Samuels was pointing out, do have language pertaining to questions of cross-border data flow, data localization, mandatory disclosure of source code, all these other kinds of issues that many in the private sector view as potential forms of digital protectionism and as creating barriers to the flow of data over the internet. Putting these into the trade environment, because you’re entering into binding kinds of agreements, raises the stakes, makes everybody sit up straight, and tightens the nature of the discussions, and makes it hard for people to actually agree. So you get then outcomes where you have agreements like the RCEP, which China’s a member of. China will not sign off on a framework that makes strong binding commitments against forced data localization or barriers to data flow because that’s fundamental to its policy framework. So if you’re going to have a digital trade agreement between parties who are fundamentally on different sides of the table on this, you end up with a weak agreement or no agreement at all. The idea of the digital economy frameworks is that you can institutionalize dialogue and ongoing interaction between the parties to try to incrementally move them closer together on some of these issues and allow side developments and discussions. So let’s talk a little bit more about the relationship specifically between these kinds of frameworks and fragmentation of the internet. Not just fragmentation of whether or not policy makers around the world all have harmonized approaches or different approaches, but the internet fragmentation itself. What are the linkages we see in terms of how these agreements have been tried, how they’ve tried to address fragmentation issues, and how they might be able to address fragmentation issues? Neha, would you like to say something about that? You’ve worked on those issues? Thank you.

Neha Mishra:
Thanks, Bill. So I think when you think of internet fragmentation, and Bill, I’m borrowing from your work, where you kind of put it down to technical fragmentation, commercial fragmentation, and governmental fragmentation, and I think the best way to look at these new agreements and their potential to reduce fragmentation would be to start with more modest ideas of how that’s possible. So I think one thing which we emphasize is that these agreements have different building blocks, and the fact that you can look at interoperability, let’s say, in an area of low politics, such as e-payments or e-invoicing, can then lead to more incremental trust building in areas which are more difficult and which involve more high politics. And just to give you an example, e-invoicing was – so the format, the standard for e-invoicing was a big contentious issue for countries for a long time, and all – so with the introduction of the DPA and then subsequent DEAs, they adopted a common standard. So if you look at the later DEAs, the language is clear that you will use the PEPAL standard. And this would have been very hard in the WTO context, because the PEPAL standard doesn’t come from an intergovernmental body, but it comes from a private not-for-profit organization. So that itself, the fact that some of that trade vocabulary is missing made it very easy to adopt such a standard. And Marta mentioned about the provision on AI. Again, there is nothing in that that prevents these governments to consider principles and norms that are developed in transnational bodies and multi-stakeholder bodies and incorporate them by reference in trade agreements. And the language is already quite open that they would do so. And some of the later DEAs, for instance, talk about the global partnership on artificial intelligence or the OECD principle. So the entry points are all in there. And I think, again, on technical fragmentation, I’ll highlight the focus on open standards and open licensing practices in several of these DEAs, which would, in effect, mean that the digital, using proprietary technologies which can create these digital walled gardens is going to be prevented. So it is not a dramatic effect on internet fragmentation, but I think it is gradually building into the smaller blocks, which eventually can help in internet fragmentation. Where I am most doubtful is governmental fragmentation. And I think many of us have already discussed that because that’s where sovereignty is concerned. Their governments might be a lot more reluctant because it’s not only perhaps it’s protectionism as well, but often these things get very easily tied to national security agendas. And the exceptions, as Rick mentioned, they can be quite broad in many of these agreements. And they can, even if they are tightly worded, the interpretation is still we don’t know how that will go before trade tribunals. And actually, that’s not the purpose of these DEAs, to go to the exceptions, because that’s when something goes wrong. The purpose of these DEAs is to focus on cooperation and trying to avoid the point where we have to figure out what these exceptions, how these exceptions might apply. Thanks.

Maiko Meguro:
On the topic of internet fragmentation or fragmentation in general, I think it’s quite important to think about, I mean, particularly I’m coming from the policymaker’s aspect. We are always thinking about how these international agreements would interact with those domestic regulations which are already there, because often the change in the domestic regulation is a painful process for many policymakers, but also the constituencies, because regulations are often tied to the existing culture, interest, et cetera, et cetera. But out there, the situations are already changing, so we need to change the regulation, which means this is not something like you have the regulation, and you have to change. It’s not like that. It has to be incremental. It always has to be processed. That is why I definitely agree with the discussion here that we need to have the place for them where relevant people, not only the government, but also multi-stakeholder people have the solution outside of government to work together and gradually, in less painful way, to change the domestic regulation if necessary. But we have to think about it. We’re not going to have this single rule. So when we talk about fragmentation, we tend to think like we have to have one single international rules, like the way of the trade agreement, but this is not something that would work nowadays. So we have to think about the certain project base that we talk about, we identify what are the bottlenecks in those questions, and we one by one, we talk or we kind of come up with a project to have more pragmatic way to solve the solutions. This kind of pragmatic way is also very necessary and important from the aspect of the regulators and also policymakers, because often when you talk about data flow, people are going to say, oh, from the free trade aspect, data should flow, that’s the requirement of the digital, et cetera, et cetera, whereas the privacy regulators, they’re not going to think in that way. So we need a time process. So that’s something I can add from that aspect.

William J. Drake:
Absolutely. And both what you’re building and what these frameworks are building is that kind of institutionalized framework for incremental kind of … All right, Ellie? Well, I think you’re on. Did you push it up? There you go. All right. Here. There was a time when it made a lot of sense to have a unified approach around the world. It was led by the United States, et cetera, in its companies and its NSF, et cetera, et cetera. So that was the past. And in a growth situation, it probably made sense to have a certain kind of harmonization and internationalization of all this. But now kind of the internet has become, and digital economy has become so complex and so fast moving and so successful and so permeating every aspect of society and people’s lives and work and economy. And the international arrangements simply have not kept up with the acceleration. In fact, if anything, they’ve kind of become slower because there are more countries, more interests involved. The interests are larger than before. So just because something was important in the past doesn’t mean that it will be important now or in the future. And so when we talk about harmonizing and trying to integrate and overcome, it’s all great. But kind of first, there’s always the implicit idea that we have everybody will come around to our position because our position makes so much sense, right? That’s why we have that position. But in fact, in the real world, that doesn’t happen that way. People have different interests. It’s not just information they don’t know better. No, they do know, and they have concluded that that doesn’t work for them. And so the harmonization aspect of all this is actually has become a roadblock, I think, because it retards innovation, it retards policy experimentation, it retards an awful lot of things. And so if we embrace it and channel it and do this in an intelligent way, and maybe some DEAs will kind of do that, although I predict that some of them will do exactly the opposite, but I can’t win them all. Thanks, Elie. Well, it’s true. And that’s, harmonization is tough, and that’s why there’s been more and more focus on interoperability of different policy frameworks. So you get efforts to make the GDPR interoperable with the APEC privacy rules and so on. Any of our people online want to get in on this point? Stephanie? Yes, go ahead. Yes.

Stephanie Honey:
Thanks, Bill. Look, just to add, I think your last comment about interoperability is a really key one. I think a lot of these digital economy agreements aren’t actually trying to achieve the same approach. They’re trying to achieve interoperable outcomes through a sort of a variety of different mechanisms, whether by reference to international standards or open standards, whether through regulatory sandboxes to see where there’s common ground and so on. So I think that that’s a really important innovation in this style of agreement. Most trade agreements that have gone before have been about setting, binding, essentially rules for how things are done to get an agreed outcome, but this is a very different model. And I think it’s also really important to bear in mind, as you’ve characterized it, these different layers that are needed to work harmoniously, whether the technical or the commercial or the governmental. And in that connection, this is not necessarily an act of deliberate difference of view. It’s simply a sort of byproduct of countries coming up with their own approaches, or commercial actors coming up with their own sort of technical approaches, which creates friction because they’re not the same. So I think the mechanism of these agreements helps to provide a chance to discuss that and see if there’s not a way that those systems can work together with less friction rather than it being a philosophical difference that could never be bridged. And I think something quite interesting that they’ve been able to achieve, I mean, there are clearly some basic questions of philosophy about individual and national sovereignty and so on that may never be bridged, whether you’re the United States or China or Iran or whoever, there are very clearly different philosophies at play there. But just to give one very concrete example, one of the areas of great sensitivity is around financial services data. Countries are very allergic to allowing that cross borders because there are obviously really important considerations, sort of prudential considerations and others. The Australia-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement has come up with quite an interesting way to address that. The agreements that had gone before said you can have forced data localisation for financial services data. Essentially, you can require that to be kept in the country, the market in question. But in the Singapore-Australia DEA, they tried to find a way through that by saying, well, the data doesn’t have to be kept just in the market. There’s no forced data localisation, but it has to be accessible to the relevant officials should it be needed. So in that way, trying to come up with a very practical solution to how do you, on the one hand, satisfy the policy objective of good, sound prudential regulation, while also allowing trade to happen, business to take place, and that financial services data to flow across borders. So I think there are innovative ideas that these DEAs can come up with. On the other hand, though, I’m pretty cynical about whether some of those core issues around some of the national security, let’s say, or fundamental human rights issues may be bridged. I think we see the model that a lot of the DEAs use is very similar to the CPTPP model for cross-border data flows, which says the default is that data can flow, but there are these exceptions. If there’s a legitimate public policy objective, governments can prevent that data from flowing. And despite that, which sounds very open and is really sort of pro-cross-border data flows, in fact, we can see that one CPTPP party, Vietnam, for example, has a number of sort of cybersecurity regulations which require data localization. CPTPP would seem to be at odds with that, but Vietnam is a member. So I think the idea is there, but whether in reality we see how these regulations actually apply, that’s a whole other story. But let me leave it there.

William J. Drake:
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, no, it’s true. The trade agreements all have these kind of exceptions clauses where you have to say something’s a legitimate public policy issue and the restrictions that are in place are no more restrictive than necessary, et cetera. And of course, that opens the door to exactly what counts within that. But let’s open it up to the floor because we have folks here that I’d like to engage in the conversation and we’re past the top of the hour and we can draw in the folks online more later. There may be not speakers, but participants online. You have a question in the chat? OK, why don’t we take that then? They can type that? OK, sorry. Neha’s pointing out that anybody who’s listening online can type a question in the chat or you can ask for the floor, I believe. So let’s start with the people in the room here. I see Marco has his hand up. OK, so let’s go. And there’s a mic over there, if you could just pass it around and just push up the button and you’re all good to go. Please say who you are, where you come from, et cetera. And people behind me, let me know if you don’t have eyes in the back of my head, I

Audience:
think. I think I’m on it. It is Marco Afwening, Dutch government thesis. And my first intervention kind of was already stolen because I do concur with sort of the concerns raised by Eli earlier about sort of the modeler approach. And I am I can now say I’m a recovering engineer. And the joke used to be is the problem with standards is there are too many. And I sense that we have a similar problem with with policies. And while I do like the approach to DIPA and like, yes, you can get a modular approach or some optional attributes, it also leads to challenges in the end for the user experience. It might it might not be fragmented in a true sense, but it might also not lead to having similar experiences. But I’ll try to keep this short. And where I’m going to is what I’m a bit missing here. And I often see that is that we talk about agreements and you kind of said like, yes, they’re binding and yes, OK, these new economic partnerships sense to be less binding, but still often. And Eli said it’s right. It’s like at some point you have a small group that sort of partners up and the trick is to convince others to join. And I think what we’re overlooking there is that in order for them to join, they also need a sense of agency and a sense of ownership. And I think what’s particularly missing from a lot of these frameworks is a mechanism to evolve that framework and looking back to where we are here with the Internet. I think, yes, it’s very modular and layered and that’s part of a success story. But I think also a huge part of that success is that very early on the Internet, we found a common way of working and evolving it. And basic agreement is this is what we currently do. This is what we think is the best solution, but we’re happy for you to convince us there is a better way forward. And we might also agree to disagree and do something different. And I think from a lot of these trade and economic frameworks, what I miss is actually sort of thinking about what are we going to do next? OK, we’ve got 15 people. What if the 16th want to join but has a particular concern? How can we accommodate that? And that’s what I like to give back to the floor. And of course, happy for the panelists to reflect on that idea. Thank you, Marco. It’s very helpful. Yes, go ahead. Please introduce yourself. Hello, Ewan Lusty from Flink Global. Thank you for the interesting discussion on the question of whether digital economy agreements can limit fragmentation. I would say yes, but I’d be cautious about overstating this. I was really interested to see the exam, hear the examples of institutional cooperation discussed by Chris Riley and Mako Maguro. and I think there’s real potential here, but we should be clear that the political and geopolitical drivers of fragmentation will continue to exist and will, in all likelihood, intensify, and that in a more politically insecure and uncertain world, governments of all kinds will continue to pursue sovereignty, resilience, national security, and that that will limit their inclination to reach agreements that conflict with those objectives. I would also add that some of the political events that we’ve seen, even in the last month, have underlined how fragile cooperation is, even amongst supposedly like-minded countries. And then finally, I’d say that cooperation in digital governance seems particularly fragile when we consider the changes of government that could take place in elections next year. Okay, Armando Manzuela from the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development of the Dominican Republic. Okay, I find this is a very interesting topic, and something that has been discussed at many levels, not with this name, because in Latin America and in the Caribbean, a few years ago, with ECLAC, we’ve been discussing the possibility and exploring the possibility to establish a regional digital market, which covers most of the things that are put into the proposals of the digital economy agreements. But there are many realities, political, economic, and social realities in many of our countries, that even though we wanted, for example, to reach an agreement on those kind of topics, we have the reality that most of our countries don’t operate at the same level as others. So instead of tightening the integration and adoption of similar standards and similar way of doing things, what we’re seeing is that we’re exacerbating many of the barriers and many of the gaps that most of our country have, mostly because of political reasons, because like the person that was behind me said, we have many geopolitical aspects to have to take into consideration. We have cybersecurity aspects. Not all the countries have the same belief or the same way of thinking regarding data protection, privacy, or data sovereignty in the context of how make that data interoperable so we can interchange that information safely from country to country. So that’s just one thing. Regarding payments, it’s the same thing. Not all the financial systems operate the same or have the same set of rules. So even though I understand that standards and that can be a hindrance to innovation, especially in a world that we must be moving quickly, the reality is they’re quite important if you want to have some level of standardization to reach these kinds of agreements. In that sense, for countries that are not as advanced as others in regarding these subjects, how we can better apply the recommendations to reach these sort of agreements with other nations that are more advanced than us?

William J. Drake:
That is absolutely a crucial question. And one of the things that I put on the description of the session was, you know, these agreements have been so far formed by countries of fairly comparable levels with like-minded kind of orientations. What are the possibilities for expanding in terms of global South participation and so on? That’s three questions. Why don’t we try and see if we get some responses to some of these from the panelists, and then we can hopefully come back around. If there’s a couple more, then wrap that up because it’s after six o’clock and people are undoubtedly thinking of the gala and the sushi. So if any of the people on the remote would like to, Chris, go ahead.

Chris Riley:
There, so I’ll take the middle one, which is the fundamental note of skepticism driven by the political environment. Obviously I am sympathetic. I think that there is a really interesting tension that was raised between Mako’s point, which Ellie echoed, that the old assumption of one set of international rules can’t be the goal. That point I think is universally agreed by us all and resonates with the political environment that we’re operating in. But there’s a tension between that and Rick’s point, which I think we also all share and agree with, which is that we’re operating with an increased baseline of alignment in perspective among many countries in how we approach digital platform governance. So I think that we’re in this really weird place where we’re not all going to agree. We can’t agree out of principle, and yet we’re also kind of agreeing a little bit, at least on certain matters. Now I take Stephanie’s point as well, national security issues, human rights issues, Marta’s point, AI. These are places where we’re all far apart. In that second, human rights were probably always going to be far apart. Mako also referenced privacy earlier, which is another issue that despite decades of negotiations, we’re all kind of collectively far apart on the international stage. But there are those places like transparency, like risk assessment and audit, where we’re starting to see alignment. And my sort of perhaps overly optimistic hope is that building shared operational structures, more digital economy agreements that lean in on those points where we are seeing some alignment will help be a positive counterweight to some of the negative forces that are going. And layering into all of that and giving us something that we can build towards to try to advance this hope is Bill’s point about increased space for multi-stakeholder engagement. More and more of these frameworks, more and more of these international agreements are recognizing the value of multi-stakeholder engagement as a fundamental process of figuring out answers to these hard questions. And I think there too, we can not only find some ground for optimism, but also additional hooks into building transnational substantive alignment.

William J. Drake:
Thanks, Chris. Absolutely, I think the procedural agreements around transparency, these other kinds of things can be building blocks towards greater convergence incrementally on some of the substantive points. Rick, were you waving at me? Yeah, go ahead.

Richard Samans:
Let me try to build on Chris’s point and in doing so respond a bit to the point raised by our Dominican Republic colleague. So as I said at the very beginning, one of the salutary things about this modality of cooperation and governance is that it’s multifaceted, it’s interdisciplinary, it’s multi-stakeholder potentially as Chris has just indicated and gets us beyond the sort of narrow market access corporate driven genesis of so much of trade policy in many countries, at least until recent years. And let me extend that point a little bit here that one disciplinary access aspect that has not really been well picked up yet by these agreements is our labor related considerations, which is, and perhaps this gets to some of the aspects of AI or algorithmic automation, but what are some norms about employee surveillance, performance evaluation, bias and performance evaluation, the use of these tools for recruitment, protection of worker personal data, whether it be health or financial or otherwise. The transparency aspects are very important and they’re beginning to be worked on as mentioned, but there’s a series of realms of very important considerations that breaking open this beyond market access into wider considerations of regular cooperation shows potential promise. Now it’s a complex landscape, but the point I wanna make to come to the Dominican Republic colleagues point is that we need to think in more multifaceted ways of international economic cooperation. And it’s not only in terms of the multidisciplinarity of it, but it’s also in the way that we deal with countries at different levels of capacity. And there’s a potential opportunity for these agreements to pioneer a trail, not only in the former dimension, but also in this latter dimension about adapting and getting adherence and involvement in these by countries that have much more limited legal and regulatory capacity, norms and capacity. And by that, the WTO found a way out of its longstanding box of not being able to get major agreements a few years ago by constructing a different approach on in its trade facilitation agreement, which basically allowed for levels of commitment to be a function of how much capacity and development assistance and support that capacity existed in the system for that country. So it was not a one size fit all, fits all type of approach to things. And it deliberately envisioned and tried to encourage not only setting a norm, but also in investing in capacity in countries so that there can be a shared participation in the development of those norms but also in implementing them. And I would submit that we have some practitioners in the room on these agreements that this is a potentially additional facet that would be very useful for many countries in the world that are not necessarily the leaders in the platform economy, but that have obviously a growing economic stake in the outcome of these issues. Thanks.

William J. Drake:
Thanks, Rick. And I think the fact that as we’ve noted, Costa Rica and Peru are both trying to join DIPA indicates that there’s a belief among some that these mechanisms can be useful in this regard. Do any of the panelists have response to the other aspects of the questions that have been asked so far that we haven’t picked up on, or should I go around and get some new questions? Do you wanna come back on something, Ellie? Sure, go ahead. We’ve got like 10 minutes left or seven minutes left. Something, I don’t know. Go ahead. Yeah, just speak. Yeah, I speak and it doesn’t look, but you know, this one works. All right.

Eli Noam:
Well, I never thought I would say something in favor of the old system, but there was kind of a certain built-in need to make sacrifices in the old arrangement. If you wanted to get your way in IT, say, you had to give something up in potatoes, say, and now you kind of make it sectoral, and within the sector, you kind of can drop, pick and choose whatever you want to, and you make exceptions, et cetera. So what’s the incentive to make sacrifices anymore, and what’s the political cover that you can tell the potato farmers, I’m sorry, but we just had to do something for the better good of the country with IT. That cover doesn’t exist anymore. So isn’t that really just kind of, therefore, going to become every country, every deal, everything for itself, and because you can pick and choose. It’s like a smorgasbord.

William J. Drake:
Thanks, Elie. The digital-only orientation is regarded by many people as a blessing, but you’re saying it has its downside, which, of course, we recognize. On the one hand, we don’t want to see internet open, just trade it off for bananas, and on the other hand, bananas may give incentives to parties to negotiate that might not otherwise. Let’s see if there’s a couple more questions before we do a last round. Desiree, go ahead, please. Where’s the mic on that side? Milton is the mic.

Audience:
Yes, Desiree Milosevic-Evans, a consultant in policy space. I would like to ask maybe our discussants here to give us a little bit of their vision of where it’s all going in terms of having this new digital economy agreements, especially because DIPA has a lot of non-binding commitments so, therefore, you could not necessarily sign it, but not necessarily do everything that’s in there. And with that in mind, I wonder whether these agreements are more influencing regulatory space or whether regulatory space that Chris talked about is more influencing DEAs, and where is that convergence that is happening, and how do we open trade agreements as being more multi-stakeholder in order to do the protection of data rights and privacy and so on? My name is Professor Xu Peixi from Communication University of China. Thank you. And I’m very much encouraged by the speeches. It seems to me the DIPA model as discussed previously can be really helpful to limit the risk can be really helpful to limit the internet fragmentation or reduce the fragmentation for the reason that it has attracted countries both like-minded and not like-minded. That is very much a dividing line for such a kind of agreement. So I would like to know more about the typical features or attributes of this DIPA model, but perhaps from Marta, since you have talked about this. Thank you. Thank you so much. I, sorry, it’s not like a question. I think- Can you say who you are? Yeah, my name is Shilpa. I’m a PhD candidate, University of Melbourne. I do cross-border data research, but from a political economy perspective and not the trade perspective, which is why my question is more like a criticism to this entire regime of international agreement. Because during my research, I found that, you know, in the 70s and the 80s, the 90s, that you know how ITU World Bank, they kind of pushed developing nations. I mean, of course, in support of developed nations is that, you know, they wanted to open in this kind of state partnership so that the developed, I mean, the telecom operators could enter into developing countries. And then there was a lot of criticism that, you know, which actually led to international digital divide that we saw. And that has continued for many decades. I would like to raise this kind of a concern, even if we do this at this point of time, it’s going to broaden that digital divide. Which is why I think that, you know, Deepa, and I was thinking that, you know, do we really need these kind of agreements? Because is internet fragmented? I mean, like, is the system broken that we need to protect it? It’s not. And I think it’s doing the other way around. You are fragmenting it. Because what’s gonna happen is that some of the countries, if they’re going to enter into the agreement, there is going to be a detaliation, let’s say by BRICS, BRICS Plus, that they’re going to have their own agreement. And they will not let other members to participate in it. So which is why I think we need to have, like, an above-eye view of the problem, that, you know, is there even a problem to fix it?

William J. Drake:
So that sort of echoes Ellie’s point before about policy fragmentation. All right, so let’s, are there no other, I just want to make sure, nobody else in the room wants to ask anything? Okay, because we’re getting towards the end of the time slot. Let’s just go around and see who on the panel would like to respond to any of the last three questions, starting with Marta, who was specifically called out. Go ahead.

Stephanie Honey:
Yes. And we have to be concerned. With the sort of sociotechnical benefits and impacts of the internet as well. So something like cybersecurity or misinformation, disinformation, those are not confined within national borders. They need to have a sort of a global flavor to them. And so I think, you know, it’s really important not to look at the regulation of these areas just in a national silo, but also in a sort of a global context, which I think these agreements enable. I’ll leave it there.

Eli Noam:
Yeah, really, really concise. One thing that I have concluded listening here is that my earlier proposal was a reactive, there should be some kind of a data bank of what exists or what will exist. I think I’m kind of now moving to the notion of proactive, which is a yardstick, a model D, E, A type arrangement that one can kind of in a way look at, recommend it to countries, and for them to justify in some ways to their own constituencies why they move away from that particular model. So we end not only with existentialism, but evolution away from skepticism towards cautious, possible, maybe a value. I’m skeptic, but it’s going to happen. So it may as well kind of be based on some kind of a rational model.

Maiko Meguro:
Quickly, anything, or, okay. Just about the existential point about those discussion, perhaps like expanding the gaps. But if you look at from the aspect of the mechanism, perhaps it looks like it, but if you just look at the result, which is we are aiming at the policy coordination, right? I mean, if not, we’re going for the convergence of rules. And we are all making the same effort from a different angle to have the policy coordinated in some way or the other. It’s all experimental. Yes, she mentioned the right part, which is we need to keep talking because we don’t even know where the gap is. That’s the state of the world, so we need to talk. But also from my aspect, we also need to have the solution already start building up because talking, yes, we see the gap, but we also have to have this pragmatic solution there. If not, we don’t have the convergence. Then that’s why I think people are talking about bringing in a multi-stakeholder where people can bring the technological aspect or some other aspect. So it’s solution plus talk. That is where we are going ahead. I think that’s how we can put it.

William J. Drake:
I think that’s a great point to finish on unless there is. Okay, I think we really should stop because we are now five minutes over. I wanna thank everybody. I wanna especially thank the three speakers who are around the world in different time zones for hanging in there with us and joining us. Contributions were really valuable. We really appreciate it. We thank everybody here for participating. And now let’s go to the gala and enjoy the rest of the evening. So thanks, everybody, and good night. Thank you. Thank you. That’s why I asked for somebody else to do it because I find it impossible to be a remote moderator and a moderator.