IGF2024

Summary

This discussion focused on the evolution and future of National, Regional, and Youth Internet Governance Forums (NRIs) in the context of the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and the upcoming 20-year review of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS+20). Participants from various NRIs shared their experiences, challenges, and strategies for engaging stakeholders and influencing policy. Many highlighted the importance of involving government officials, parliamentarians, and youth in their processes. Several NRIs reported success in gaining credibility and having input into national policies.

Key challenges discussed included raising awareness about Internet governance, securing funding, and measuring outcomes. Participants emphasized the need for capacity building, especially for newcomers and government stakeholders. The importance of documentation and follow-up between events was stressed to maintain momentum. Several speakers noted the value of collaboration between NRIs, particularly on regional issues.

Looking ahead to WSIS+20, participants discussed how NRIs could contribute to shaping the future mandate of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). There were calls to use upcoming NRI events to gather input on what the next 20 years of the IGF should look like. The discussion concluded with a suggestion to advocate for a working group to be established after WSIS+20 to draft a new charter for the IGF, building on input from NRIs worldwide.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Evolution and growth of national, regional and youth IGFs over the past 10-20 years

– Role of IGFs in implementing the Global Digital Compact and WSIS+20 review process

– Importance of engaging governments, parliamentarians and other stakeholders in IGF processes

– Need for concrete outputs, recommendations and impact assessment from IGF events

– Suggestions for the future mandate and structure of the IGF system

Overall purpose:

The purpose of this discussion was for representatives of various national, regional and youth Internet Governance Forums (IGFs) to share updates on their activities, discuss challenges and opportunities, and explore how IGFs can contribute to major global internet governance processes like the Global Digital Compact and WSIS+20 review.

Tone:

The overall tone was collaborative, forward-looking and action-oriented. Participants were eager to share their experiences and learn from each other. There was a sense of pride in the growth of the IGF ecosystem, but also recognition of ongoing challenges. The tone became more focused and strategic towards the end as participants discussed concrete ways IGFs could contribute to global processes and shape the future of internet governance.

Speakers

– Anja Gengo – IGF Secretariat, focal point for national, regional, sub-regional and youth IGFs

– Canada NRI – Dana Kramer from Youth IGF Canada

– Caribbean IGF – Nigel Casimir from Caribbean Telecommunications Union, coordinator of Caribbean IGF

– Myanmar IGF – Pyo from Myanmar IGF

– North African IGF – Ahmed Farag, Chair of North African IGF

– LACA IGF – Lilian from LACA IGF and Colombian IGF

– Chad Youth IGF – Dr. Kouzeifi Saka, coordinator of Chad Youth IGF

– Italian Youth IGF – Daniela Tura from Italian Youth IGF

– Benin IGF – Kossi, from Ministry of Economy and Finance in Benin, member of Benin IGF

– Jennifer Chung – Part of Secretariat for APR IGF (Asia-Pacific Regional IGF)

– Sandra Hoferichter – From EuroDIG

– Mary Uduma – From Nigerian IGF and West African IGF

– Benin Youth IGF – Yao Susu, coordinator of IGF Youth Benin

– Gambia IGF – Mariam Job, youth coordinator for The Gambia IGF and Africa Youth IGF

– Jacques Beglinger – Co-chair of Swiss IGF, board member of European IGF

– Bolivia IGF – Roberto Zambrana, facilitator of Bolivia IGF process

– Czech IGF – Natalia from Czech IGF

– Tanzania IGF – Nazar from Tanzania IGF

– Maldives IGF – Aisha from Maldives IGF

– Japan IGF – Masanobu Kato from IGF Japan

– Iraq IGF – As, coordinator of Iraq IGF

– Zambia Youth IGF – Levi Sianseke from Zambia Youth IGF

– Liberia IGF – Peter King, Liberia IGF coordinator

– West Africa IGF – Osei Keja from Ghana, from West Africa IGF and Ghana IGF

– Hong Kong Youth IGF – Jasmine Eman from Hong Kong Youth IGF

– Bertrand de La Chapelle – Executive director of Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network

Additional speakers:

– Dr. Eliamani Lal Taika – Judge from High Court of Tanzania

Evolution and Impact of National, Regional, and Youth Internet Governance Forums (NRIs)

This discussion brought together representatives from numerous National, Regional, and Youth Internet Governance Forums (NRIs) to share updates on their activities, discuss challenges and opportunities, and explore how NRIs can contribute to major global internet governance processes like the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and the World Summit on Information Society 20-year review (WSIS+20).

Growth and Development of NRIs

Anja Gengo from the IGF Secretariat noted that NRIs have grown significantly in both quantity and quality since 2011, with recent additions including Saudi Arabia and Ireland. The Caribbean IGF, represented by Nigel Casimir, highlighted its role as the first regional IGF, having started in 2005. This growth has led to a diverse ecosystem of NRIs addressing various local and regional internet governance issues.

Many NRIs reported on their efforts to engage stakeholders and influence policy:

1. The Myanmar IGF provides a platform to discuss internet issues despite challenges such as internet shutdowns and online harassment.

2. The North African IGF focused on the Global Digital Compact in its recent meeting.

3. The Colombian IGF, part of LACA IGF, engages the government in monthly meetings.

4. The Chad Youth IGF promotes multi-stakeholder collaboration.

5. The Asia-Pacific Regional IGF (APR IGF) creates a synthesis document with stakeholder calls to action.

6. The Nigerian IGF engages youth and parliamentarians.

7. The Gambia IGF and Liberia IGF have gained credibility with government involvement over time.

8. The Swiss IGF issues consensus messages after each meeting.

9. The Bolivia IGF relaunched with regulator engagement.

10. The Tanzania IGF engages judges in the process and plans to organize a national WSIS+20 workshop.

11. The Japan IGF holds regular information exchange meetings and plans study sessions on specific topics.

12. The Iraq IGF, recently established, is addressing internet shutdown and privacy issues.

Challenges and Strategies

Several NRIs reported facing challenges in their work:

1. The Italian Youth IGF faces difficulties with a government-nominated committee.

2. The Czech IGF struggles with awareness but collaborates regionally.

3. The Maldives IGF focuses on inclusivity and raising awareness, seeking to collaborate with other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) on the GDC.

4. The Zambia Youth IGF is working on media engagement to amplify their message.

A common theme among many NRIs was the importance of engaging government officials, parliamentarians, and youth in their processes. The Benin Youth IGF, for instance, supports other African youth NRIs, while the Hong Kong Youth IGF has restarted after a hiatus.

Engagement with Global Processes

Many NRIs are actively engaging with the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and WSIS+20 processes:

1. The Canada Youth IGF focused on WSIS+20 and GDC in recent discussions.

2. The Caribbean IGF used its network to disseminate GDC information.

3. The APR IGF held town halls on GDC and WSIS+20.

Jennifer Chung from the APR IGF suggested that NRIs should create input for the WSIS+20 process, emphasising the importance of concrete written contributions.

Measuring Impact and Outcomes

An unexpected point of consensus emerged around the need to evaluate and measure the outcomes of IGF events. Yao Susu from the Benin Youth IGF mentioned their efforts to evaluate recommendations made each year, while Osei Keja from the West Africa IGF raised questions about measuring outcomes. This focus on assessment and accountability was echoed by Mariam Job from the Gambia IGF, who called for a community-wide evaluation of the impacts made by national IGFs since their establishment.

Future Directions and Strategic Considerations

Towards the end of the discussion, several thought-provoking comments shifted the focus towards more strategic considerations:

1. Levi Sianseke from the Zambia Youth IGF suggested leveraging media partnerships to advance IGF goals and make the internet more accessible. This highlighted the importance of engaging media to amplify NRI messages and increase public awareness.

2. Bertrand de La Chapelle, Executive Director of the Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network, proposed that all NRIs contribute to shaping the next mandate for the IGF by discussing “What are the next 20 years?” in their respective forums. This suggestion emphasized the critical role NRIs can play in defining the future of global internet governance.

3. Jasmine Eman from the Hong Kong Youth IGF emphasised the importance of documentation to capture learning and enable year-on-year progress.

These comments broadened the discussion to consider new strategies for outreach, long-term planning for the IGF’s future, and the critical role of documentation in tracking progress and identifying gaps in IGF initiatives over time.

Support and Collaboration

The discussion also highlighted the support provided by the Internet Society Foundation for NRIs, as mentioned by Roberto from Bolivia and acknowledged by Anja Gengo. This support has been crucial for many NRIs in organizing their events and activities.

Additionally, the establishment of new regional initiatives like the MRE IGF (Mano River Union IGF), mentioned by the Liberia IGF representative, demonstrates the ongoing expansion and collaboration within the NRI ecosystem.

Conclusion

The discussion highlighted the growth and diversity of the NRI ecosystem, with many forums actively contributing to national and regional internet governance dialogues. While challenges remain, particularly in engaging stakeholders and measuring outcomes, there is a clear commitment to addressing these issues and enhancing the impact of NRIs.

Looking ahead to WSIS+20, participants discussed how NRIs could contribute to shaping the future mandate of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The conversation concluded with a call for NRIs to use their upcoming events to gather input on what the next 20 years of the IGF should look like, potentially advocating for a working group to be established after WSIS+20 to draft a new charter for the IGF based on input from NRIs worldwide. This approach underscores the vital role of NRIs in shaping the future of global internet governance and ensuring that diverse perspectives are incorporated into the IGF’s long-term vision.

Anja Gengo: Once again greetings to everyone, good morning to everyone here in Riyadh, good afternoon or good evening depending where our colleagues in zoom are joining us from. My name is Anja Gengo from the IGF Secretariat in my role as the focal point for national, regional, sub-regional and youth IGFs and it’s a it’s a great pleasure to see so many dear colleagues finally in person. We do see each other from time to time on some of the regional or national IGFs but unfortunately we only have I think once in a year opportunity for the majority of the NRIs to meet in person at the annual IGF meeting. Last year this type of traditional NRIs coordination session was hosted in Kyoto at the 18th annual IGF meeting and now we’re meeting more than one year after here in in Riyadh in this really impressive setup. So it’s a pleasure to see you. Let me see just to introduce quickly the agenda while we’re still waiting for zoom to be set up. So the NRIs coordination session as you know is a traditional annual meeting of all the NRIs with the global community. We take stock in terms of what’s been done so far and we primarily focus on what we want to achieve in the time to come and because we are in a very important momentum in terms of the processes that are around us impacting us and I think representing potentially a good opportunity. In a bottom-up consultative manner the NRIs decided that this session will address the matters related to the implementation of global digital compact and the preparatory process for the 20 years review of the World Summit on Information Society in terms of the implications of the NRIs. What the NRIs could do for the GDC and WSIS plus 20 and vice versa. What these processes could do for the NRIs, how can they support better these already very successful platforms. Looking now by the faces in this room I think we have the majority of the NRIs represented be it through the regional, national or youth IGFs and we did agree. So we’re going to start very quickly by the Secretariat just introducing them the records on the NRIs, how many have been recognized so far. We’re going to focus on the evolution of the NRIs. We’re going to hear a little bit about how do you see the NRIs as an ecosystem has changed in the past couple of years. I know that there are some NRIs, the sub-regional IGFs that even predate the annual IGF meeting which is the Caribbean IGF. But I think the official recognition of the NRIs started in 2011 when the NRIs entrusted the Secretariat to run the recognition based on the agreed procedures and principles. And since then the NRIs have been growing both in quality and quantity and it would be good to hear from the first hand from you how do you see this in terms of what has changed and especially where are the challenges now. Then we’re going to move primarily on speaking about the role of the NRIs in the context of Swiss Plus 20 and the GDC. How is Swiss Plus 20 and GDC impacting the NRIs? What is the role of the NRIs in the IGF Plus 20 mandate review? What are the relationships with stakeholders in your countries within this context especially with the member states? Because let us not forget the GDC although informed by multi-stakeholder consultations was agreed through a process of the member states and therefore multi-stakeholder input can be channeled through the NRIs to the member states so that the decision making is informed in that way, which I think in so many cases was really, thanks to you, successfully done in the past two years. And then finally, we’re going to speak about the overall implications of the World Summit on Information Society. What do you see the WSIS resolution that is expected to be adopted in the last quarter of the next year should look like? How the action line should change with respect to the NRI? So those are some of the questions that are on the table. And without further ado, I understand we have the Zoom. Soon it will be on the screen. Let me maybe not go into sharing the slides. I’m going to just confirm to you, we have now 175 officially recognized NRIs. Among the latest NRIs we recognized is the National IGF of Saudi Arabia and also of Ireland. So indeed, it deserves an applause, and I join it. I will remind that one of the objectives that the NRIs set in their work plan at the beginning of the year was to support the community of the 2024 host country to establish a national IGF as a long-term form of engagement in the IGF processes of this respective community. And therefore, I think a portion of congratulation and that applause goes to all of you because you really called for it, and you put yourself at the disposal to colleagues who are organizing it. I hope that soon we will probably, maybe even in this week, hear about recognition of the national IGF in Singapore. And that I’m also very happy because Singapore as a community has been very active in the digital sphere, and I’m happy that we reached the stage where they have the national IGF as well. So these are the records, what the Secretariat can share now with you. I’m not sure if we have colleagues from Bhutan in this room. We have been working with colleagues, community from Bhutan for more than a year now, and I’m hoping that soon the national IGF will be established there. With that, I would like to open the floor. I think it’s important that we go into the open discussion. I’ll just, before you raise your hand, and before I repeat the question that’s at your disposal, you will raise your hand, and I will help to bring you the microphone. We have, I think, three or four microphones, so we will manage to do that. You have to keep your headset on. When you speak, I suggest that you take off your headset so you don’t hear yourself twice. So with that, the question for you is, how do you see the evolution of your NRI looking back into the past 20 years? What’s the biggest achievement? How do you see the Global Digital Compact implementation and the WSIS Plus 20 supporting your NRI, but also how do you think your NRI can support these processes? It would be good to be action-oriented. We are aiming to have an action-oriented output document from this session that will inform the WSIS Plus 20 preparatory process, as well as the GDC implementation. So with that question on the table, I invite you, please, to sign up and speak. I still don’t see the Zoom, yes, even on my laptop, but I hope that soon colleagues will be joining us. In the meantime, you can raise your hand to speak, and I will approach you to give you the microphone.

Canada NRI: Hello, Dana Kramer from Youth IGF Canada, for the record. I want to speak on behalf of Canada’s NRI, both the Canadian IGF, as well as the Canada Youth IGF. So one thing that we’ve been doing in Canada quite extensively, and I need to say a big thank you to the Secretariat for the Canada Youth IGF, being the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, is leading on significant WSIS Plus 20 talks. And at our Canadian IGF, we did have a large focus on WSIS Plus 20 and the GDC. And so I think that when there are NRIs to really specify that and ensure that these spaces do have that consideration at the national level. On the youth level, we’ve been having quite a bit of discussions on the Global Digital Compact as well, and so trying to bring in a national focus on these two key pieces of documents. So I just wanted to make that intervention on behalf of my country. Thank you. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much, Dana, and. Congratulations to you for an excellent job done with the U.S.-Canadian IGF and good cooperation with the national IGF. Yes, we have here the Caribbean IGF. Let’s go to Nigel, and then we’re going to go to Guinea.

Caribbean IGF: Yes, Nigel Casimir from the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, and I coordinate the Caribbean IGF, which we are always happy to point out was the first regional IGF. We started in 2005. In terms of recent achievements, I think we’ve also started a Caribbean Youth IGF. We had the third session this year, and we had our 20th Caribbean IGF also this year. I think we were maybe first as well to create what we call a policy framework around Internet Governance as an output of our IGF process. Having the job to coordinate 20 member countries around the Caribbean and try to build capacity in Internet Governance in particular, we found that the CIGF was a very good tool in terms of building capacity around the Caribbean. What we do is we try to move the venue of the event around to the different islands so that in each event, we can engage with the local community in particular. That has been a strategy of ours in the past, and going forward, I think that’s what we’ll do as well. Specifically related to the GDC and WSIS Plus 20 upcoming, for the GDC, we’ve used our network to mostly disseminate information about and… and solicit comments on as well. So the event that we had in August, our 20th CIGF, had some specific focus on the GDC. And going forward, we’ll use our network and our events as well to continue to engage the Caribbean input and actions coming out of the GDC. So I’ll stop there, thanks.

Anja Gengo: The Secretariat will be in touch with you and explain the process. I hope that you were able to hear me. So yes, we will definitely connect with you. The question for those that maybe did not catch everything was about the National IGF in Guinea and the way it can join the network. And I really commend our dear colleague for being here. That’s already a huge step. So we look forward to working with you. Thank you very much. Anyone else? We would like to hear about how do you see the NRI’s work has evolved in the past 20 years? Is there anything more that can be done, including from this side of the Secretariat or of the global community? And especially in the context of the Global Digital Compact and WSIS Plus 20 as our maybe key opportunity we should really use to leverage the work of the NRIs and to elevate the real year it was

Myanmar IGF: For a country like Myanmar, it’s quite far away from, you know, global level, but IGF has become like a platform for us to discuss about what is happening there and also how we can contribute and how we can feed the import at the global level as well. That is what we observed during these three years. It has been the three years we try to organize the forum and hopefully we can do the next year as well. As you may notice that Myanmar is a very chaotic situation right now and even there are lots of cases are happening in our internet ecosystem and infrastructure. Sometimes we cannot even identify who are the actors behind the scenes of the internet shutdown and the online harassment event, the failures of the different kinds of pillars is also challenging for us to figure out what is happening in certain regions, but having the IGF like a youth one or the national one, it was kind of like a chance for us to discuss more about the internet related issues. On one hand, I feel like multi-stakeholder model is a kind of a guideline for us how to bring the young people from the different stakeholders. Unfortunately, in this stage, it is difficult to identify for us to, for us like a government, who is a government of Myanmar, that was always questioning whatever we are trying to organize the forum, but so far we try our best to be the neutral way to raise the issue from the ground level, like western part of the Myanmar, eastern part of the Myanmar. We try our best to engage with the young people from the different part of Myanmar and to raise So, in conclusion, I might say that IGF is a good way to express ourselves and give information to the global and also regional level, initiatives related to the Internet issue, and also to think about how we should bring more opportunity and also engage with the young people who are from the Vanderbilt community. So that’s all from my area. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much, Pyo. It always reminds us that the realities around the world are different. I think colleagues from Afghanistan are still in their session, but we spoke about the position of women and girls in Afghanistan and what the National IGF can do for them, which is, I think, a very important topic. I want to give the floor to Ahmed, please.

North African IGF: Thank you, Anya. Ahmed Farag, Chair of the North African IGF. Actually, we hosted the 8th North African IGF meeting last October, and we focused on one of our sessions focused on the GDC to give a better understanding to the process that happened during the past months. Also, we believe in the collaboration efforts the North African IGF has organized a joint webinar with Arab IGF and Lebanese IGF to give a better understanding to the GDC and WSIS plus 20 process through our community in the Arab world. We want to ensure that the multistakeholder perspective is still improvement. We are focusing on how to engage how to bring new people to engage in the IGF process, new players to join, how to enhance the main parties already in the process. This is the main point that we want to focus on the Arab region. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Thank you. Thank you so much Ahmed. You know all regions are important but in the Arab region presently probably is at the center of global attention. I’m happy that there are developments to hold the Arab sub-regional IGF very soon which complements well the North African IGF to cover that important part of the world and I hope that we can all kind of unite to support these two sub-regional IGFs further. Any other comments? I especially am also curious I have to say to understand a little bit more about how do you see, because we’re on time, how do you see we can use this time to prepare better for the World Summit on Information Society when the member states will be discussing the WSIS outcomes including the IGF, everything that’s been done in the past 20 years and especially when our future in terms of everything that we are doing, the vision we are sharing, jobs we are working on, will be also part of those discussions. How do you see the role of the NRIs in that sense? Are lessons learned from the GDC consultations as we expect that the WSIS also will be informed through multi-stakeholder consultations? Some of you recall the WSIS plus 10 for example, so very similar approach. Lilian please.

LACA IGF: Hello, can you hear me? Well I’m Lilian from LACA IGF, Latin American Forum and also from the Colombian IGF. We especially, I’m going to speak about Colombian IGF because we have meetings every month with many people from different sectors. Some people from the government, from the ICT ministry, and the communication, and other organizations from the government, and what we are trying to do right now is to ask to the government officially that we, as part of the multi-stakeholder committee in Colombia, want to be part of the discussion, sort of the delegation for discussing the GDC, and just like not only send our comments as we have been until now, but also being part of the delegation. I think at least we can try that the government, that each government invite us as multi-stakeholder committees to be part of the discussions and to comment, but also maybe participate in some of the meetings, participate as audience, I don’t know, but then maybe this is an opportunity. And for LACAJF, we are trying to, the next year we are trying to make some webinars or some discussions maybe, where we can talk also about how to participate, not only as countries, but also like region.

Anja Gengo: Thank you so much Lilian, Kouzeifi, and then we’re going to go to Daniel.

Chad Youth IGF: Thank you Anja, good morning, my name is Dr. Kouzeifi Saka, I come from Chad, I coordinate the Chad Youth IGF, thank you once again Anja and the IGF Secretariat for your support to bring youth voices here. I think it’s important now to promote multi-stakeholder approach to promote a very sustainable internet governance. I think we just adopted in New York during the General Assembly the Declaration on Future Generations, the Pact for the Future and the Global Digital Compact. So I think to make a very effective achievement we need to promote, I mean, multi-stakeholder collaboration, how they can promote like a very sustainable cooperation between developing countries and least developed countries, create the program of capacity building to make sure that skills are transferred into countries where people needed more in terms of internet accessibility, internet governance, in terms of digitalization, etc. So it’s quite important today to reflect our realities that, I mean, are in Africa for instance and we need also to provide more resources to support, I mean, academic institutions where people can go and learn about digitalizations and especially the rural communities where it is essential today with digital literacy we can also promote, I mean, local languages through this kind of programs. So thank you once again for coming here and I think it’s important to resolve these issues together.

Italian Youth IGF: Good morning. Can you hear me? This is Daniela Tura from Italian Youth IGF. So we had the Italian IGF last week and unfortunately the OASIS and the GDC didn’t really step into the discussion. We have currently a unique situation in Europe, that is a committee that is 100% nominated from the government, and this in a sense requires a different approach. We need to, I believe, find different connections, especially as a youth IGF Italian community, and one thing that we noticed in terms of actual potential steps to bring forward is capacity building, education, and cooperation. This, we believe, will be a key point, especially to make parliamentarians and members of the actual committee to understand the role that Internet governance has worldwide, and not just focus on digital matters, but also on other critical resources of the Internet. This is something that is not really discussed, but right now what I’m trying to say is that we need more community, and this can be done through an active collaboration between the youth and this committee that, again, it was not really multi-stakeholder. So yeah, local initiatives, and one last thing I would like to highlight is the importance of coordination with other national and regional initiatives that possibly share the same issues, that is key decision-makers not fully understanding how the Internet governance ecosystem works. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Now we have a queue. We have here Kossi, Jennifer, then Mary, then Sandra, then we’re gonna come to this side with Miriam. So let’s go to Kossi.

Benin IGF: Hello, good morning. Do you hear me? I’m Kossi, I’m a senior from Benin. I’m from the Ministry of Economy and Finance in Benin, also a member of Benin IGF. The IGF process we have now is very good because we have understood the point of view of each stakeholder. The next step now is to know how it’s possible to evaluate the recommendation we make each year. It’s important for us now to evaluate. How can we do it?

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much, Kossi. That’s actually a very good point we could maybe feed into our work plan. Jennifer, please. Thank you, Anya.

Jennifer Chung: My name is Jennifer Chung, so I’m part of the Secretariat for the APR IGF, which is the Asia-Pacific Regional IGF. Just really briefly, looking back for the, I guess, 15 years, we’re a little younger than some of the IGFs, like Caribbean IGF, which predates the IGF, which is really great. But the evolution of good practices is really important. For APR IGF, in particular, the way we structure our multi-stakeholder steering group, it is open as long as you adhere to our code of conduct. And also, one of the key innovations is creating an output document, which is called a synthesis document, where we aggregate all the important topics and issues coming out of the APEC region to do with Internet governance, and now digital processes as well. That’s been 10 years that we’ve had this document. Particularly this year, we had innovation to actually have concrete calls to action for each stakeholder group. I’m just going to read the very first one for government, which is strengthen multi-stakeholder cooperation and collaboration, and consider input on all issues and policies that could affect the governance and development of the Internet and digital policy processes. I think that’s a really central question that a lot of us are grappling with right now. For the GDC and WSIS Plus 20, we had town hall sessions during our annual meeting to take in the input, not only to capacity-build, to actually take in substantive input from the voices we hear in the APEC region, and all of them are captured in our synthesis document. Another concrete suggestion and proposal I have for the NRI network is to leverage each and every one of our meetings, first to take up the capacity-building to understand what actually… the WSIS Plus 20 process looks like for non-governmental stakeholders, and then also create the tools, materials, opportunities for each of our meetings, each of our NRIs, to be able to consult with our communities and stakeholders. And then finally, as a global NRI network, I wish that we would be able to create an actual input opportunity, be it a paper, be it some kind of concrete written input that we can put into the WSIS Plus 20 process. I think this would be really good suggestions for us to be able to take up in the upcoming year. Even starting now, I think, would be really important for us to do. Thanks.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much, Jennifer. Sandra, would that microphone work? Can you try? And then Mary.

Sandra Hoferichter: Seems to work. Hello, everyone. I stand up so that you see me. Many of you mentioned already that your initiatives are trying to warrant and guarantee the multi-stakeholder model in your country. And we all know, also in Europe, that this is sometimes not really understood by all stakeholders, particularly looking at governments. And because we identified that issue, that basically also parliamentarians, governmental representatives, need to understand why the multi-stakeholder model for the internet is so important to continue, we, together with ISOC, made a brochure. It’s called 50 Years of Internet, How It Works, and How We Can Protect It. Don’t be afraid that this is a very European perspective. It’s about the global internet, of course. And it’s, so the main context comes from ISOC, from Internet Society. And in addition, we put together what the discussion have been on the European level. But maybe this brochure is also interesting and useful for your countries and for your initiatives to use. It’s rather short. It’s not a long book to read, but it may be something for your stakeholder to be aware of, so that they really, particular parliamentarians, governmenters, understand what it needs to know before making any legislation, before discussing what multi-stakeholder is about, so that they really understand it. The Honorable Winsor was willing to write a foreword for this brochure, so we are very happy. He’s not here, unfortunately, at the IGF, but he wrote the foreword. I don’t have many of the paper copies with me, but you find it on the Eurodic website, eurodic.org, and you also can find the QR code at the Eurodic booth. But if you would like to have paper copies, let me know, and I’m sure we can, we’ve printed like a small edition, and if there is a big need on this, we can possibly print many more. But let me know if you’re interested in this, but I think that is something that is useful for the entire global community.

Anja Gengo: Thank you. Thank you very much, Sandra. Mary, please.

Mary Uduma: Thank you. Let me stand as well. I don’t know where that Sorin is, yeah? Sorin, are you here? For Africa IGF, but let me start from my Nigerian IGF. Since 2009, we started the Nigerian IGF, 2012, sorry, 2012. It had been there, but we re-established it in 2012, and since 2013, we have had the youth, Nigerian youth IGF, and there’s none of the IGFs we hold in Nigeria that we don’t have the youth IGF. And one of the things that has come out from this, some of them are players, big players in the space, and one of the ones that rings bell is Joshua Joshua. He came from the Nigerian youth IGF and he has been doing well at the global level. So that’s one for us. Secondly is that with the parliamentarian track that started, we had to invite the parliamentarian into our multi-stakeholder advisory committee. Even when they’re doing policy or legislation or open consultation, we are contacted to make input into whatever program that is being done by the caucus, the parliamentarian ICT caucus. So when they are doing any of the piece of legislation, they want our opinion and then we’ll have to add that to them. And again, the School on Internet Governance cooperating with ISOC had been on, and so many youth had gone through the school. And some of them have found expression of their desired career through that meeting. Because when we are done, we give them little certificates and some of them use it for other things. And they are also playing right or great in this piece. And at the West African level, we started the GDC process since 2022. So during West Africa Internet Governance Forum, we had a full program of three hours talking about the GDC and our contribution. We made our contribution to the GDC. And the WSIS also, we are sensitizing our people to know that it is very important. And our ministers are being informed about it. And let me just talk about, again, the youth. I think they are here, some of them. Some of our youths are here. The West African Youth IGF, they have continued to make sure that it’s working very well. That’s her. So I’m proud of them. And they are making a lot of contribution, even at the global level. And some of them made contribution to the GDC. For the Africa, at the Africa level, we now have the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, supporting the process, the Africa IGF process. And the parliamentarians also are coming up strong. We started in 2002, and just like the Tanzanian group mentioned, we are seeing them stronger. And we are seeing them now aware and getting involved in what the IGF is all about. So my suggestion is that, at your multi-stakeholder level, please let the government be part. Let me to your legislators, let them be part of it. Because whatever we say, whatever policy brief we come up with, like in my country Nigeria, the agency that is in charge of ICT had to call us to prepare what we call white paper on IGF, and what it’s all about. So with that contribution, it would also strengthen the policy process, and also we see results coming out. So I want to share with you that we’re not only, I like what they are doing in, I think, is it in Afghanistan you do monthly? Somebody said they do monthly meeting, or is it, okay, all right. So I think we shouldn’t just do the, run our program and go sit back. We should follow up, whether we are collaborating with ISOC, or we’re collaborating with any of the stakeholders, make sure we hold them responsible, that they listened to our recommendations, and also they are doing something, coming up with policies that will involve, and they understand the multi-stakeholder process is important. When they buy in, today I have somebody represent, the PAMSEC of my nation, representing the minister is here, the senator, my senator is here, and somebody, okay, okay, okay, okay, thank you. All right. The senator is here. The agency, the National Information Development Agency, the director general is here. They are now interested, they want to know what we are, what the IGF is all about, and when they get back, I don’t think it will remain the same. because they had to understand what the multi-stakeholder issue is. For Africa, we have what we call WSIS Africa. I think some of you attended WSIS Africa, and Dr. Seck is very, very passionate about it, and we have our paper already. We have our contribution from Africa, so we have contributed, so if you can also organize that. So be strong with your government, the legislator, and the other stakeholders to be able to come out to contribute too. And, I mean, it legitimizes the IGF. When your NRI is strong, and you are making impact, you know, the government can’t go there and say, no, no, no, let’s close, no, no, IGF is not important. So our input into it, our participation, and getting them involved would strengthen what will happen at WSIS point two, I mean, point 20, WSIS plus 20, yes. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Ach, I’m gonna ask you to pass the microphone, I think, firstly, here on your left, and then we’re gonna go back, well, to Mariam, and then to Jacques. And then to Roberto, yes.

Benin Youth IGF: Hello, can you, okay, you can hear me, right? Thank you very much. I am Yao Susu from the IGF Youth Benin, coordinator of the IGF Youth Benin. I think we are very young in the process, we are only on our second edition of the IGF Youth in Benin, and I want to take this opportunity to commend the work and support we got from Dr. Kossi in this process in Benin, and this is something we personally are also continuing the African regional space, supporting other NRI, youth NRI initiative in Africa, mainly supporting the Burundi Youth IGF who is going to take place on the 21st of December. I think Dr. Kossi mentioned something that I want to mention already is we have data available already on key issues we address during our different NRI events and we have recommendations from those events. I think now it’s time to make a kind of repertoire, if I can say, a collection of those recommendations and build upon those a clear guideline on how we assess the impact of the recommendations and one of the KPI could be how many parliamentarians are engaged in the process, how many government officials are ready to support youth initiatives, are ready to support the national IJF initiatives and how many policy implementations are really actually coming out of our recommendation during our different IJF processes. And one of going also pragmatically, I will also say we have currently a toolkit available on the NRI processes. Why not updating the toolkit and including specifically the five objectives of the GDC and at the national and even the youth NRI events, we need to ask the coordinator of the events to highlight which of the objectives the national IJF is going to tackle so that we have clear contribution to those objectives and in the end give a clear calendar of when we want to contribute. to consolidate all the recommendations regarding these key issues. Thank you very much.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much. Let’s hear from Mariam, then we’ll go back to Jacques, Roberto, and then we have a couple more. All right.

Gambia IGF: Thank you. Can everyone hear me? Good? All right. Good morning. My name is Mariam Job, and I am from The Gambia. I serve as the youth coordinator for The Gambia IGF and the youth coordinator for The Africa IGF as well. Africa Youth IGF, sorry. And my contribution really is to answer to Anja’s question about what can we do ahead of the recess. And it is along the lines of what Dr. Kosi, Jennifer, and Yao here mentioned. I think it’s high time we go back to the community, we go back to the multi-stakeholder approach, and go back to the people who have been involved in the IGF since the establishment of the national IGFs, and assess and evaluate what are the impacts that have been made. Because I believe that at the end of every IGF, there are recommendations, policy recommendations, or actionable steps that are often recommended to happen moving forward. And it’s time to reassess what has been done, what went right, what went wrong, what sometimes organizations or youth make position papers that are often presented to governments or international development agencies on certain issues, say, for instance, on data protection or so. So I’m going to share some of the recommendations from those position papers that have actually been taken into action, and what worked and what didn’t work ahead of the recess. Because this is next year, and a year goes by really fast. So I think my recommendation from this conversation that’s been happening would be for each of the NRIs to kind of go back to the community in their individual countries and reassess with them what went right, what went wrong. And because in the recess, we will need to defend the IGF. We need to provide concrete evidence in order to defend it. And I think it’s very important that we’re able to… provide concrete evidence and able to provide this is why the IGF must stay.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much Mariam. Jacques please you have the floor.

Jacques Beglinger: Hello, can you hear me? Yes, hello everybody my name is Jacques Beglinger. I’m from Switzerland. I serve on the board of the European IGF, but I’m speaking now in the capacity of the co-chair of the Swiss IGF and what I would like to share with you, besides that I am very happy to be among so many friends from all over the world here, what we discovered in our IGF is that to have most impact did we have something to distribute afterwards, distribute to government, to associations, to just other stakeholder groups as in the Asian Pacific area. We always issue, we call it messages, after each IGF and there’s some rough consensus in it. We just approve it on the spot and this has a huge impact. Something else I’d like to share with you, what we achieved over the past years in Switzerland was the buy-in also of business and recognizing that large, small, medium enterprises are also corporate citizens and are usually affected by whatever happens to the Internet. We also found their engagement and will now also use this to leverage the impact of the GDC. Thank you.

Bolivia IGF: Thank you. Hello everyone. It’s great to be here with so many friends and so new friends as well that are joining this great community. I wanted to comment on two things. One, some of us mentioned before about government participations in this process in our countries. In the case of Bolivia, actually we had a very extended relationship with the government. From our first IGF, we are young as well, our first IGF was in 2017, and from the beginning the government was always actively involved. This last time, actually after two years, because we also need to talk about bad things and in our case we had to stop the IGF for two years. The last one we did was in 2021. Actually we managed to relaunch the IGF in Bolivia this year, but with a full engagement from the regulator’s office. Actually he was supposed to come here to Riyadh, but he couldn’t make it because of different agenda issues. But what I want to say regarding this is we need to keep trying to involve, because when we talk about multistakeholderism, usually most of the stakeholders participate in our processes, but the government usually takes more time or sometimes it’s very difficult to involve them. But I think it’s important from the people that are supporting the processes in each of our countries to keep trying, to keep inviting them, and hopefully to finally make them part of the process. Because finally at the end, the ones that can provide the public policy are the governments, the parliamentarians, of course with the inputs that we can provide from the different actors. That’s about my capacity as facilitator of the process in Bolivia. But I also want to comment in my capacity of Internet Society Foundation member. I am working the training and e-learning team, and the experience that we have last year is that we were requested by many chapters around the world. In our case in LAC, we had three countries, three ISOC chapters that asked support from us to provide training in Internet governance, and also from many countries in Africa. So what I meant to mention about is that this is, I think, a very good point. This is an important contribution to prepare the newcomers in our countries in order to make them active in this process. So I also want to offer this support. You can reach us directly or through our chapters. You know that we have working many chapters in all of the world, so we will be happy to support this kind of process to you. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much, Alberto. Indeed, these type of processes are valuable, but they do come with a cost, and budgets are important, and I know funding has been an issue ongoing, but things have changed to a good extent. I think over the past couple of years we have now entities who established the grants process for the NRI, so Roberto actually reminded me of a very important point, and I’m glad to see Brian here from ISOC Foundation. ISOC has been a great champion and supporter of the NRIs, including through a grants program. Indeed, it deserves applause, such as the IGF Support Association as well. I’m not sure if Amrita is here, but Jennifer is here as a secretariat. The IGF secretariat was also this year giving a limited number of grants to the developing country NRIs, and with that in mind, I know we have here a couple of requests for the If you agree, it would be good to hear later from Brian a few words about the ISOC Foundation plans for supporting the NRIs long term. I would like to give the floor now to Lillian, chair of the African IGF. She is with us online, then we’re going to go to Umut, and we’re going to come back to the room. Lillian, you have the floor. Technicians will unmute you. Umut, maybe it’s on Lillian’s side, and then we’re going to go back to Lillian. Can we try this one? Am I speaking? I’m having some technical issues with channeling the audio back in the room, but I know that our online participants can hear us. Colleagues from the technical team are working on it to fix. I think it’s just an output issue. But while you’re working on it, I would like us to come back to the room. I know there was a request for the floor. I think somewhere here. And then from the side. Thank you.

Czech IGF: Can you hear me well? Thank you. This is Natalia from the Czech IGF. We were established very recently and earlier this year we had our first meeting. And I just wanted to share how it went. Because it is quite challenging in our country to even spread the awareness why the Internet governance is even important and why we should talk about it. And we wanted to make this first event more in the traditional fashion to bring various stakeholders, bring members from the civil society, from academia, from high schools. But we struggled with even… And yeah. Is it? Okay. Excuse me. We understand that their voice can really matter and they can take part in the conversation. So we had to change the approach and start by forming like a roundtable with people who are already interested to share, okay, how we can actually mobilize the people more, what we know about these issues, what worked well in the past, what can be probably made better. Because we still struggle also with regard to the ministry and government to really make a point that the multi-stakeholder model is very needed. And it should not just happen behind closed doors. and we should provide this platform when we know it can be done. So, going back to even sharing the knowledge, sharing the awareness was found to be crucial in our nation. Very briefly, I would like to highlight also something that Daniela Tura already said, that we should try and help each other out. When we start forming and arise from our countries, is to work together for the GDC consultations. I feel like I’m cracking. Okay, I will soon finish. Hopefully, it will be fine. So, as for the GDC consultations, we joined forces with also the German Youth IGF. We had a representative, Paolo Glovacki, and we formed a statement together with Czech Republic and youth representatives from Germany. And then we submitted and talked at the GDC consultations, and we found that this approach was also very valuable, and we managed to deliver something more elaborate when we joined forces. So, I would also like to highlight this approach, in case anyone feels like their voice is not as loud as they maybe need at the beginning, to not be afraid and just reach out to others and arise, that already are more in the system and they know their way around, as it was very effective in our case. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much, Natalia. Can I ask you to pass on the microphone to Nazar in front of you, Natalia? And then we’re going to go back to Brian. You just reminded me, I don’t think our colleagues from the National IGF of Greece are here yet, but I recently met them at the Southeastern European IGF. Last year they changed the name of the IGF into World Digital Summit or Digital Forum. I mean, it has a background, of course. But what they reported is that it was just easier, easier to communicate, to pass on the information, to translate into their national language. And perhaps what you’re saying now is something that could be considered to at least elaborate a little bit more about the concept of the internet governance being basically inclusive of everything that’s digital. So Nazar, please.

Tanzania IGF: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Anya. And for now, I have two interventions. Number one, just one minute, we have a judge from Tanzania. So that if you want to speak, you just have to say hi. I know the IGF now in session in terms of bringing the chairing space. Hello? Can you hear me now? Oh, sorry. Sorry. I said I have two interventions. Number one, I wanted to yield just one minute to the Honorable Dr. Lal Taika from the High Court of Tanzania just to say hi. Because what we are doing is just to make sure that we drag as many judges to the IGF space as we can possibly do. Welcome, judge. Thank you very much, Nazar. This is a big surprise. I didn’t expect this. But hi, everyone. My name is Eliamani Lal Taika. I think I saw some of you in Kyoto last year. I can remember a few faces. And I really am. I want to congratulate each one of you, you are doing a great job, you are building the future. Since I came to this room, I’ve heard the word future at least 20 times. So if you find individuals like you, passionate about global issues and thinking about the future, you cannot be in a better place. Thank you very much. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you because he won’t, I didn’t know if he would speak but I wanted to make sure that he speaks, even say hi. Number two, number two is that in Tanzania, because if you look at the fundamental principles of the GDC and what the IGF is and also the WSIS, you can conclude simply that these are just triplets. And what we are doing in Tanzania next year, I think for the first time, is to organize a national workshop on WSIS plus 20 before the WSIS forum in Geneva. So we are using this opportunity as a national IGF to organize the WSIS plus 20 national forum so that we can begin to do the input in terms of reviewing the actions, the WSIS action lines and what it has been able to achieve for the last 20 years. So I just wanted to inform you guys that the IGF is at the grassroots in Tanzania doing just that and we will send out the Zoom link for everyone to be able to participate. Thank you so much.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much Nazar. I’ll use a little bit of my discretion to jump the queue because colleagues are still trying to fix the technical issues so we can hear from Lilian, Umut and any other colleague online. There are some NRIs who have joined us not that long ago and they have done amazing work. I’ve seen it in person as well. So I want to give floor firstly to Aisha from the Maldives IGF.

Maldives IGF: Hello everyone and it’s great to be here and great to connect with the community here. As Anja mentioned, we recently joined the IGF and we started our second IGF this year, the forum. I would say the first one was more like creating awareness among people that internet belongs to them. It’s not only the voice of the technical people because when you talk about internet governance it comes in a way that only technical people can talk about it. So our first job was that. And secondly this year our focus was mostly on inclusivity because there are some communities who don’t have access to these platforms to communicate about internet. And then of course bringing in the legislators. We had a new parliament election this year and then we had new parliamentarians coming in. So that means like internet governance and these discussions become completely new thing for them. And this process is difficult. And I wish we had something like IGF 101 for parliamentarians. Some sort of book or tutorial that we can share with them. But going forward what we see is that we are yet trying to find out what Maldives is trying to do for the GDC and being part of a SIDS country I think for mentioning about the challenges that we have within the SIDS countries and how like IGF have supported empowering people and talking about these platforms will be a good point. to come as a statement as joined SIDS countries and those are some of the things that I would like to see in it and I haven’t met anybody like from the SIDS countries but I would love to collaborate and communicate and see how we can do this together. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Thank you so much Aisha. Can we try with Lillian online? And then maybe you can remind me of the hands we have Anu here. I want to ask Brian to speak at the end because all this vision comes with the budget and you be addressing that. Yes and then we’re gonna come here Kato-san. Okay good. Can we try with Lillian online? Lillian. Okay Lillian left. Is Umut here? Yes. No Lillian is here. Now welcome. You can unmute. Lillian can you try to speak? I think you are unmuted now. He still cannot hear Lillian. Lillian apologies maybe you and Umut can type your comment in the chat. I’m gonna go to Kato-san and then I’m gonna come back to this side.

Japan IGF: Thank you Anja and nice to see you all here. Masanobu Kato from IGF Japan. After we hosted IGF last year in October we are continuing our activities and becoming more active. For instance we are having every almost three weeks of kind of information exchange meetings where we are inviting government private sector. civil society and so on and in addition to that we are now planning to have a kind of study you know sessions many IGF every month or so to pick up some interesting topics for general public instead of the really IGF you know groups but something like well probably SNS and election or but you know more you know specifically we are probably you know doing something on digital public goods as a first session in addition to those activities we are trying to recruit more youth and using some of the published you know documents reporting Kyoto IGF we are having a series of webinars inviting you know young students at the universities and so on that’s a short report from Japan. Thank you

Iraq IGF: from Iraq we are recently from September that should become IGF in Iraq as a coordinator and okay okay and yeah it’s like we hadn’t and like three meetings from September until now and we are planning for the first IGF this will be in Iraq we find a lot of things issues in Iraq especially for example internet shut down the government they stop internet in any like if there is exams if there is demonstration if there is anything that they just turn it off the internet shut down and there is also for the privacy about telecom company We did a research recently, we found it like their score according to the RDR criteria research. We found that they scored everything like zero. So we have a lot of issues, we need to work on it. And also we would love to learn from you. Because you have the experience, that you work on the idea for the last few years. So I’m open to discuss with anyone from you. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much, As. So let me just finish this queue and then I’m gonna come here. It was Levi here.

Zambia Youth IGF: Greetings everyone. Levi Sianseke from Zambia Youth IGF. And also part of the organizing committee for the National IGF. But I mainly also represent the Internet Society Zambia chapter. With regard to the way forward, I think from an observation. We rely on the media so much for election updates, campaigns and so on and so forth. Which for me the media then becomes critical in being a kingmaker. How about focusing on these workshop efforts. In terms of the GDC, the WSIS. Working with the media to help amplify the agenda. In terms of making the Internet more accessible for many people. The reason for this in my view is. If the media can be powerful to influence policy and who wins the elections. How about using the media to also inform and influence. How then the Internet is adopted by our people. But also pushing government to be more accountable. Ensuring that the Internet is open and more inclusive and accessible to our own people. I think this is some of the things that I think we’ve been thinking about. For this year in Zambia we decided not to have the Youth IGF. Mainly because we observed most people are only active when there is an event. And afterwards they sit back. So we did an approach where we are raising more awareness on why youth should be involved in the IGF. So that after each event or main activity, you have more stakeholders actively engaged improving internet access in our community and more, for lack of a better term, keeping their government and other stakeholders accountable. Unlike just having an event and then everyone goes quiet and then we meet again at the next event. So there’s been more engagement and training for media personnels on how they can actively report on internet governance related issues. That way we feel it’s more impactful unlike always having to wait for an event, gather after the event, then we sit quiet and still wait for the next event. Thank you.

Anja Gengo: Thank you very much, Levi. Let’s Peter.

Liberia IGF: Good day to everyone. My name is Peter King, I’m from Liberia. I’m the Liberia IGF coordinator. And then I’m happy to say that for the past five years since 2020, thanks so much to the ISOF Foundation, RIME, and for supporting Liberia IGF at the time. We believe that this is a process and we’ve been visible enough that the government of the day now invites us to policy issues and make sure that we contribute towards it from the multistakeholder dimension. And we have been able to build a solid community where we have all the structures that is in the system contributing towards the event. And this year, we’re happy to see that the new minister was even involved in our process that shows that we’ve gained a level of credibility and stability in the system and working together with ISOC, Chapter Liberia, and all the LTA regulator who have made way to Saudi Arabia means that we are crossing the message over to the level of involvement of the multistakeholder in our system as well. So we also are working very well to get parliamentarians in Liberia to be part of the process because some of the policies that are being stuck on the table of legislation, we need to enhance their understanding. For example, we do not have a cyber security strategy in Liberia. We do not have a data protection policy in Liberia. All these things are key instruments that we believe that when proper education through our platform and through collaboration with the ministries and other line agencies will help to enhance it. And then, in recent times, we’ve been able to initiate the newly sub-sub-regional IGF, which is the MRE IGF, and we’re happy to say that we’ve made tremendous progress to bring together, not in the name of fragmentation, but in the name of inclusiveness, because we believe that the Internet issues on Internet governance needs to go across the whole country and across other countries in Africa, especially in West Africa. We’ve been able to bring Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and Ivory Coast together to have an NRI that speaks to issues that are the larger level of the West Africa IGF. We believe that these are all contributions that can fit into it and, as well, transcend to the Africa level. So we’re so happy to say that we’re very, very happy to appreciate the work that IGFSA and Internet Society, Internet Foundation, has continually do to help to host this event at this level, and it’s making a lot of impact, because for the MRE IGF, we go to a regional consultative forum that looks at going to key countries and collecting issues that we can fit into the main agenda and select a particular country that we host. We are happy to say that we are in negotiation with Guinea, which has been very, very much on the level side, to be able to come into the system to help to host for the 2025 edition. Thank you so much, and we believe that there will be more work to be done.

West Africa IGF: Hello. My name is Osei Keja from Ghana, from West Africa UFIGF and the Ghana UFIGF. So quick question. It’s very refreshing listening to the various strategies put in place by the various NRIs, but my question is, how are we retooling in terms of measured outcomes from the various discussions that we have periodically? Thank you.

Anja Gengo: I put this very good question on the floor. Somebody hopefully will respond. I think you… waiting for a long time so I want to give floor here and then we’re going to go back.

Hong Kong Youth IGF: Thank you very much. Hi, this is Jasmine Eman from Hong Kong Youth IGF. So we’ve been stopped having Hong Kong YIGF for some years due to COVID and due to political unrest, etc. But this year we successfully started the HKYIGF and there have been challenges for organizing it, resources, etc. But then unfortunately we do not have a dedicated session for WSIS plus 20 or GDC but we have close relationship with the NetMission plus network that the youth from Asia Pacific group have been actively engaged in during the GDC consultations. When there’s opportunities for inputting comments we do and actively engage on it. And actually from national to regional level, the way we participate is we have a fellowship for the Hong Kong youth, so people who have passions and commitments to follow up what have been written on. We have our own Hong Kong youth IGF statements and we move forward and we go to the regional APYL IGF, Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum, and we send some youth from Hong Kong there. And then we also take part in the synthesis document process and the town hall. So if you’re interested, please go to the APYLIGF.asia website to look into the documentation process that we’ve been into. I want to emphasize that documentation is very important because this is how we capture our learning and weight forward. And because having this kind of process that enables us to progress year by year, to see what have we done in the past few years, and so that what is the gap and how can we move forward. So, I think that’s something that I would love to share, but yeah, thank you very much for having me. Thank you very much.

Anja Gengo: And I invite you to share also your records through the authorized mailing list.

Bertrand de La Chapelle: Hello, everyone. My name is Bertrand Lachapelle, I’m the executive director of the Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network. I just want to take the opportunity to say the following. We have here the occasion to have the representatives of a lot of national and regional IGFs. Next year, there’s the whole WSIS plus 20 process, there was the GDC. In the WSIS plus 20 process, there will be a lot of issues, but there is one that is clearly of interest for everybody, which is the future of the IGF. I do not expect, with all due respect to the governments, that the discussions in the UN, even the agenda of the UN in general and the state of the world, will be focused extensively on what the future of the IGF is going to be. It will be 20 years since the first IGF, and I probably here bring back the bag from the 2006 IGF, which is a nice memory. There’s one thing that we could all contribute as national and regional IGFs, which is to have a discussion in all of them on the one question, which is, what is going to be the next mandate for the IGF? What are the next 20 years? Is the mandate of Tunis sufficient? Are the institutions of WSIS and what we’ve built since then sufficient, or do we need a constitutional moment for the IGF, a moment where we establish a charter for the IGF with the appropriate funding for the Secretariat and all the resources that it needs? If all the national and regional IGFs could dedicate one session at one moment, either the global IGF in Norway or afterwards to feed into the UN discussion, that would be amazing if we could bring that together. I believe, to finish, that we will not set the result by the end of 2025. What we need, I suppose, is the equivalent of what was the Working Group on Internet Governance in 2004, i.e. something that after the UN General Assembly in 2025 is established to draft the Charter of the IGF for the next 20 years. And so the only thing that we need is one paragraph in the United Nations Resolution at the end of 2025 that says, we ask the Secretary General or whoever else to establish a Working Group to design…

Anja Gengo: Thank you for watching!

Agreement Points

Importance of multi-stakeholder engagement

speakers

Chad Youth IGF

Italian Youth IGF

Gambia IGF

Liberia IGF

arguments

Chad Youth IGF promotes multi-stakeholder collaboration

Italian Youth IGF faces challenges with government-nominated committee

Gambia IGF gained credibility with government involvement

Liberia IGF gained government credibility over time

summary

Multiple NRIs emphasized the importance of engaging various stakeholders, particularly government entities, in the IGF process to enhance credibility and impact.

Focus on youth engagement

speakers

Mary Uduma

Benin Youth IGF

Hong Kong Youth IGF

arguments

Nigerian IGF engages youth and parliamentarians

Benin Youth IGF supports other African youth NRIs

Hong Kong Youth IGF restarted after hiatus

summary

Several NRIs highlighted their efforts to engage youth in internet governance discussions and support youth-focused initiatives.

Engagement with GDC and WSIS+20

speakers

Caribbean IGF

North African IGF

Jennifer Chung

Canada NRI

Tanzania IGF

arguments

Caribbean IGF used network to disseminate GDC information

North African IGF focused on GDC in recent meeting

APR IGF held town halls on GDC and WSIS+20

Canadian IGF focused on WSIS+20 and GDC

Tanzania organizing national WSIS+20 workshop

summary

Many NRIs are actively engaging with the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and WSIS+20 processes, organizing discussions and disseminating information at national and regional levels.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the importance of producing concrete outputs from IGF meetings, such as consensus messages or synthesis documents, to increase the impact of discussions.

speakers

Jacques Beglinger

Jennifer Chung

arguments

Swiss IGF issues consensus messages after each meeting

APR IGF creates synthesis document with stakeholder calls to action

Both NRIs are addressing critical internet governance challenges in their respective countries, particularly focusing on issues related to internet shutdowns and online freedoms.

speakers

Myanmar IGF

Iraq IGF

arguments

Myanmar IGF provides platform to discuss internet issues despite challenges

Iraq IGF addressing internet shutdown and privacy issues

Unexpected Consensus

Need for evaluation and measurement of IGF outcomes

speakers

Benin IGF

West Africa IGF

arguments

Benin IGF seeks to evaluate recommendations made each year

West Africa IGF asks about measuring outcomes

explanation

Despite coming from different regions, both IGFs raised the important question of how to measure and evaluate the outcomes of IGF discussions, highlighting a shared concern for demonstrating impact.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement among NRIs include the importance of multi-stakeholder engagement, focus on youth participation, active involvement in GDC and WSIS+20 processes, and the need for concrete outputs from IGF meetings.

Consensus level

There is a moderate to high level of consensus among the speakers on these key issues. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of the challenges and priorities facing NRIs, which could lead to more coordinated efforts in addressing internet governance issues at national, regional, and global levels. However, the diversity of contexts and specific challenges faced by different NRIs indicates that implementation strategies may vary significantly across regions.

Different Viewpoints

Unexpected Differences

Evaluation of IGF outcomes

speakers

Benin IGF

West Africa IGF

arguments

Benin IGF seeks to evaluate recommendations made each year

West Africa IGF asks about measuring outcomes

explanation

While most IGFs focused on their activities and engagement, Benin and West Africa IGFs unexpectedly raised questions about evaluating the impact and outcomes of IGF discussions, highlighting a potential gap in the overall IGF process.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around approaches to government engagement, methods of raising awareness, and the focus on evaluating IGF outcomes.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers is relatively low. Most differences stem from varying local contexts and stages of development rather than fundamental disagreements on principles. This suggests that while NRIs face diverse challenges, they generally align on the importance of multi-stakeholder engagement and the role of IGFs in addressing internet governance issues.

Partial Agreements

All three IGFs agree on the importance of raising awareness about internet governance issues, but they differ in their specific approaches and focus areas based on their local contexts.

speakers

Czech IGF

Maldives IGF

Iraq IGF

arguments

Czech IGF struggles with awareness but collaborates regionally

Maldives IGF focuses on inclusivity and awareness

Iraq IGF addressing internet shutdown and privacy issues

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the importance of producing concrete outputs from IGF meetings, such as consensus messages or synthesis documents, to increase the impact of discussions.

speakers

Jacques Beglinger

Jennifer Chung

arguments

Swiss IGF issues consensus messages after each meeting

APR IGF creates synthesis document with stakeholder calls to action

Both NRIs are addressing critical internet governance challenges in their respective countries, particularly focusing on issues related to internet shutdowns and online freedoms.

speakers

Myanmar IGF

Iraq IGF

arguments

Myanmar IGF provides platform to discuss internet issues despite challenges

Iraq IGF addressing internet shutdown and privacy issues

Key Takeaways

Resolutions and Action Items

Unresolved Issues

Suggested Compromises

I think it’s high time we go back to the community, we go back to the multi-stakeholder approach, and go back to the people who have been involved in the IGF since the establishment of the national IGFs, and assess and evaluate what are the impacts that have been made.

speaker

Mariam Job

reason

This comment highlights the importance of evaluating the real-world impact of IGF initiatives, rather than just continuing to hold discussions without assessing outcomes.

impact

It shifted the conversation towards considering concrete ways to measure the effectiveness of IGF recommendations and actions. Several subsequent speakers picked up on this theme of assessment and accountability.

How about focusing on these workshop efforts. In terms of the GDC, the WSIS. Working with the media to help amplify the agenda. In terms of making the Internet more accessible for many people.

speaker

Levi Sianseke

reason

This comment introduced a novel idea of leveraging media partnerships to advance IGF goals, recognizing the media’s power to shape public opinion and policy.

impact

It broadened the discussion to consider new strategies for outreach and influence beyond the usual IGF community. It highlighted the importance of public communication in achieving IGF objectives.

There’s one thing that we could all contribute as national and regional IGFs, which is to have a discussion in all of them on the one question, which is, what is going to be the next mandate for the IGF? What are the next 20 years?

speaker

Bertrand de La Chapelle

reason

This comment refocused the discussion on the long-term future of the IGF itself, proposing a coordinated effort across all NRIs to shape the IGF’s next mandate.

impact

It elevated the conversation from operational concerns to strategic planning for the IGF’s future. It proposed a concrete action item for all NRIs to contribute to this process.

We rely on the media so much for election updates, campaigns and so on and so forth. Which for me the media then becomes critical in being a kingmaker. How about focusing on these workshop efforts. In terms of the GDC, the WSIS. Working with the media to help amplify the agenda.

speaker

Levi Sianseke

reason

This comment introduced a novel perspective on leveraging media partnerships to advance IGF goals, recognizing the media’s power to shape public opinion and policy.

impact

It broadened the discussion to consider new strategies for outreach and influence beyond the usual IGF community. It highlighted the importance of public communication in achieving IGF objectives.

I want to emphasize that documentation is very important because this is how we capture our learning and weight forward. And because having this kind of process that enables us to progress year by year, to see what have we done in the past few years, and so that what is the gap and how can we move forward.

speaker

Jasmine Eman

reason

This comment emphasized the critical role of documentation in tracking progress and identifying gaps in IGF initiatives over time.

impact

It reinforced the earlier points about assessment and accountability, while also providing a practical suggestion for how to implement such evaluations through thorough documentation.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by shifting focus from general updates on NRI activities to more strategic considerations about the future of IGF. They introduced themes of impact assessment, media engagement, long-term planning, and documentation that were picked up by subsequent speakers. The discussion evolved from reporting on past activities to proposing concrete actions for improving IGF’s effectiveness and relevance in the coming years. There was a noticeable shift towards more action-oriented and forward-looking dialogue as a result of these interventions.

How can we evaluate the recommendations made each year at IGF events?

speaker

Kossi from Benin

explanation

This is important to assess the impact and effectiveness of IGF discussions and outputs.

How can NRIs create concrete written input for the WSIS+20 process?

speaker

Jennifer Chung from APR IGF

explanation

This would allow the NRI network to have a more formal and substantial contribution to the WSIS+20 review.

How can we create an ‘IGF 101’ resource for parliamentarians?

speaker

Aisha from Maldives IGF

explanation

This would help educate new legislators about internet governance and increase their engagement with IGF processes.

How can we better leverage media to amplify IGF, GDC, and WSIS agendas?

speaker

Levi Sianseke from Zambia Youth IGF

explanation

Using media more effectively could help increase public awareness and influence on internet governance issues.

How are we measuring outcomes from the various NRI discussions?

speaker

Osei Keja from West Africa IGF

explanation

This is crucial for assessing the impact and effectiveness of NRI activities.

What should be the next mandate for the IGF for the coming 20 years?

speaker

Bertrand de La Chapelle from Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network

explanation

This is critical for shaping the future of the IGF and ensuring it remains relevant and effective.

Summary

This discussion focused on explaining the fundamental structure and functioning of the Internet, particularly its addressing systems. The speakers described the Internet as a network of networks, comprising around 70,000 independently operated networks that provide global connectivity. They emphasized that this system relies on open standards and interoperability.

The discussion covered two key components of Internet addressing: IP addresses and domain names. IP addresses, managed by Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), are unique identifiers assigned to devices on the network. The speakers explained how RIRs allocate IP addresses hierarchically and highlighted their community-driven, bottom-up policy development process.

Domain names, coordinated by ICANN, were described as human-readable alternatives to IP addresses. The speakers detailed the Domain Name System (DNS) structure and resolution process, emphasizing its globally distributed nature. They stressed that no single entity controls or maintains the entire DNS infrastructure.

The discussion also touched on the challenges of maintaining security and accountability in this decentralized system. Speakers addressed issues such as tracing malicious activities and balancing privacy concerns with the need for transparency.

Throughout the presentation, the speakers emphasized the importance of multi-stakeholder governance in Internet infrastructure. They highlighted how technical communities, academia, civil society, governments, and the private sector all play roles in shaping Internet policies and standards.

In conclusion, the discussion provided a comprehensive overview of Internet addressing systems, their governance structures, and the challenges faced in maintaining a secure and accessible global network.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The Internet is a network of networks (around 70,000) that provides global connectivity

– IP addresses and domain names are critical resources for the Internet to function

– Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) manage the allocation of IP addresses in different regions

– The Domain Name System (DNS) translates domain names to IP addresses

– Internet governance involves multiple stakeholders and bottom-up policy development

Overall purpose:

The goal of this discussion was to provide an overview of how the Internet functions at a technical level, explaining the roles of IP addresses, domain names, and the organizations that manage these critical resources. The speakers aimed to demystify Internet infrastructure and governance for the audience.

Tone:

The tone was primarily educational and informative. The speakers tried to explain complex technical concepts in an accessible way, often using analogies and visual aids. There was a collaborative atmosphere, with speakers building on each other’s points. Towards the end, the tone shifted slightly to address more challenging issues around accountability and security on the Internet.

Speakers

– Theresa Swinehart: Moderator

– Olaf Christoph: Expert on Internet infrastructure and protocols

– Ulka Athale: Works at RIPE NCC, one of the five regional Internet registries

– Fahd Batayneh: Works for ICANN, covers the Middle East

Additional speakers:

– AUDIENCE: Attendees asking questions

Internet Infrastructure and Governance: A Comprehensive Overview

This discussion provided an in-depth exploration of the fundamental structure and functioning of the Internet, with a particular focus on its addressing systems and governance mechanisms. The speakers, representing various organizations involved in Internet management, offered complementary perspectives on the complex ecosystem that enables global connectivity.

Structure and Functioning of the Internet

The discussion began with Olaf Christoph’s foundational explanation of the Internet as a “network of networks”. He emphasized that the Internet comprises approximately 70,000 independently operated networks that collectively provide global connectivity. This decentralized structure relies on open standards and interoperability to function effectively, with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) playing a crucial role in developing these standards.

Two key components of Internet addressing were examined in detail: IP addresses and domain names. Ulka Athale, representing RIPE NCC (one of the five Regional Internet Registries), explained the critical role of IP addresses as unique identifiers assigned to devices on the network. She described how RIRs manage the allocation of IP addresses to large organizations like ISPs through a hierarchical system, emphasizing the community-driven, bottom-up policy development process that governs this allocation.

The discussion also covered technical aspects of IP addressing, including the use of private addresses and Network Address Translation (NAT) for IPv4. These techniques have helped extend the lifespan of IPv4 addresses despite the limited address space.

Fahd Batayneh, from ICANN, elaborated on domain names, describing them as human-readable alternatives to IP addresses. He detailed the structure and resolution process of the Domain Name System (DNS), highlighting its globally distributed nature. Using the example of www.example.com, Batayneh explained the step-by-step process of DNS resolution, from the root servers to the authoritative name servers for the specific domain.

Christoph reinforced this point, stressing that “There is not one domain name resolver. There is not one authoritative server. There is not one database that maintains all the information of the DNS. That is globally distributed.”

Governance of Internet Resources

A significant portion of the discussion focused on the governance structures that maintain the Internet’s critical resources. Athale explained that RIRs operate as not-for-profit organizations, funded by membership fees for services rather than selling IP addresses directly. This model underscores the service-oriented nature of Internet resource management.

Batayneh described ICANN’s role in coordinating domain names through a multi-stakeholder model. This approach involves various stakeholders, including technical communities, academia, civil society, governments, and the private sector, in shaping Internet policies and standards.

All speakers agreed on the importance of coordination to maintain interoperability and uniqueness in the Internet ecosystem. They emphasized that the Internet’s governance model is characterized by community-driven, bottom-up processes that ensure diverse stakeholder input.

Challenges in Internet Management

The discussion also addressed several challenges inherent in managing a globally distributed system. Theresa Swinehart, the moderator, raised the issue of balancing decentralization and security in domain registrations. This led to a broader conversation about accountability and traceability in the Internet ecosystem.

An audience member from the Bangladesh cyber team posed a question about tracing domain names using dynamic or shared IPs, particularly in cases of cyberbullying. This highlighted the complexities of maintaining security and addressing abuse in a system designed for openness and accessibility.

The speakers discussed various tools and methods for tracing domain names and addressing cyberbullying, including the use of WHOIS databases and cooperation with law enforcement agencies. However, they also noted the impact of GDPR on WHOIS data availability, which has made some investigative processes more challenging.

Christoph acknowledged the difficulty of establishing accountability on the Internet, describing it as “one of the more wicked issues”. He noted the challenge of identifying responsible parties and holding them accountable across different jurisdictions with varying privacy laws.

Future Considerations

The discussion highlighted several unresolved issues that warrant further consideration:

1. Effectively tracing and addressing cyberbullying through IP/domain information, especially with dynamic or shared IPs.

2. Balancing the decentralization of domain registrations with robust security measures to prevent abuses such as domain squatting.

3. Improving accountability and transparency in a globally distributed system with varying privacy laws across jurisdictions.

4. Adapting to the challenges posed by GDPR and similar regulations on data availability and investigative processes.

These challenges underscore the ongoing need for collaboration and innovation in Internet governance to ensure a secure, accessible, and accountable global network.

In conclusion, this discussion provided a comprehensive overview of Internet addressing systems, their governance structures, and the technical intricacies of IP addressing and DNS resolution. It highlighted the complex interplay between technical infrastructure, policy development, and global cooperation that underpins the modern Internet, while emphasizing the persistent challenges in maintaining a secure and accessible global network.

Theresa Swinehart: … … … … … … … … … Okay. Can everybody hear me okay? … … Okay. Can everybody hear me okay? No? Yes? … No? Maybe? … … … … … … … … … … … So, let’s give this a try. Is that working? Yes? Excellent. Very good. Okay. I can’t hear myself though. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Olaf Christoph: … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … network of networks that gives you a perceived notion of global interconnectivity. So you could see this as my phone connects to, when I connect to that big cloud, I have all the services that live in that cloud. But how does that cloud work? How does that work? In fact, when I connect to a network, to the Internet, I connect to this room. You connect to a Wi-Fi network, you have to fill in your telephone number, and there you are. Suddenly, well, not completely. You are connected to the network that is maintained here at the ITF. And when you connect to the network, you get a unique address that works, that is unique on the whole of the Internet, so that you can communicate to any other thing that is connected to the Internet. And you will talk about how those addresses are connected. You can’t hear me? Okay, good. However, the network that we have here has handed you an IP address and will know how to connect to other networks that are near to it. And the networks that are near to it will connect to other networks. And so we have 70,000 networks that independently operate to give us global connectivity. And the magic of all of that is open standards. The magic that makes that work are open standards and interoperability. Those standards and interoperability are created by a number of standards or organizations, of which one is the ITF. Ah, beautiful. I can take a sketch and start sketching. So, normally we would conceive the Internet as one big cloud to which I, as a user, with a thing. It is the headsets. Okay. Day zero, people, day zero. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. So, normally you would conceive as connecting to the Internet through, you know, it’s a big cloud to which other people are connected. For instance, WhatsApp or Facebook. But internally, there is a number of networks, and there are 70,000 of them, that all are interconnected and give you the perception of a global connectivity. Now, all these networks make their own business choices. The network here has chosen to connect you through Wi-Fi and has a captive portal. But they connect probably to a network that provides a connectivity to the rest of the Internet, provides what we call as transit. They might be connecting to, for instance, a network that provides transatlantic fibers. So, all these networks make their own decisions about how to connect. And what they ship are very tiny envelopes of information called datagrams or packets. Basically, when you connect to the Internet and you use a service, your device, at the end, splits up whatever you use in tiny little datagrams or packets. And those are shipped over the Internet. Just like you would have a book, you tear up the pages, you put them in envelopes, and hand them over to the postal system. And the Saudi postal system would hand it over to the next postal system that transfers it over the ocean, that gives it to the postal office in, say, the U.S., and there the book gets delivered page by page. The standards by which that is done are globally agreed upon. How you tear up the book and put it in envelopes, that’s a global standard. And all these networks make their own business decisions, as I already said. Together, they provide us the image of global connectivity. And there are many users of that global network. Facebook is an application that uses that global network. WhatsApp is an application that uses the global network. The World Wide Web itself is an application that uses that network. There are a few functions that you need in order to interoperate here, and that’s what my colleagues will talk about. You need every device that is connected to this Internet to have a unique address. Just as in the postal system, if you want to deliver an envelope to somebody, a piece of mail to somebody, you need to have a unique address of that person. The Internet works the same. There are organizations that provide you unique addresses, and they will be talked about. But we don’t think in addresses, we think in names. So we also need a sort of a name system, a naming system, that provides us that connectivity. And I think you will talk about the naming system. So this gives you, I hope, in sufficient time, a little bit of context. The Internet is built out of a network of networks that provides you global connectivity, in addition to a number of global services that you need to hook that up. And once you’ve got that running, you can provide the things that we interact as humans with. Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, Amazon, your local government website, all those types of things. And with that, I’m going to hand back the mic.

Theresa Swinehart: Thank you. Thank you so much. And also, I’m so glad that the visual worked. And everybody, thank you for your patience as we’re doing the run through this. I’m now going to turn it over to Ulke, who’s going to talk about the processes connecting to this network of the Internet and the role of the Internet protocol addresses and other resources. So with that, we’ll turn it over to Ulke.

Ulka Athale: Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ulke Ahte, and I work at the RIPE NCC, one of the five regional Internet registries. I’m just waiting to get my slides up on the board, please. Well, I can start talking a little bit about what I’m going to explain in my presentation. I luckily have my slides here, but you’ll see them in a minute. Day zero, people, as we’re hearing. So as Olaf mentioned, the Internet is a foundational network of networks. And from the regional Internet registry or technical community perspective, the Internet is something that’s distinct from the World Wide Web. In our daily experience as users, as, you know, if you can’t get a message on WhatsApp, you say the Internet is down, but it could just be WhatsApp that’s not working or you can’t connect to your website. And again, it’s not the Internet that’s down, but your access to a part of it. So… Can you hear me? Great. Then it’s just my headset that’s dropping out. So as you can see in what will be my first slide, the Internet and the Web are two different things. And from the RIR perspective, the Web is one of many different applications that runs on this foundational network of networks, one of the 70,000. So let me explain. Now that we’re a bit clear on what we mean by Internet and we don’t mean the Web, because you’re going to keep hearing this with regional Internet registries, RIRs, Internet Number Resources, let me explain what it is we do as a regional Internet registry. If you’ve decided you want to be a part of these 70,000 network of networks and you decide that now you want to get yourself onto this big global thing called the Internet, how would you go about it? Your first port of call would be to contact your local regional Internet registry. And RIR manages the allocation, administration, and registration of Internet Number Resources in a particular part of the world. So which RIR you go to would depend on where in the world you’re based. It’s five regional Internet registries, one for each continent. So there’s ARIN if you were in North America, and parts of the Caribbean, LACNIC for Latin America, and the other part of the Caribbean, RIPE NCC, that’s us, for Europe, Middle East, and parts of Central Asia, AFRINIC, the African continent, and APNIC for South Asia and Asia Pacific. So how did the RR system come into being? So many of you might already know that in the 1980s, the Internet was essentially a project from the U.S. Department of Defense, and it was chiefly universities and physics departments from these universities who were collaborating on this thing called Internet Protocol Networking. The web hadn’t been invented yet, there were no PCs yet, people didn’t know where this was going. So it was just chiefly universities trying to figure out what this IP thing could be. The U.S. Department of Defense handed over the management of this to, well, one of the universities saying, well, it’s chiefly universities working on it, you guys look after this yourself, please stop bothering us about this. And so it was someone who in the RR world is very, very famous, a man called John Postel. And if anyone talks to you about John Postel, they will talk to you about John Postel’s notebook. And I would love to know if anyone in the room has actually seen this famous notebook. This notebook is famous because when John Postel was approached by universities and other groups asking for IP addresses, this new IP thing, he would write down, ah, lovely, we have slides. So here you see the map of the five RIRs, and that’s us, RIPE NCC, Saudi Arabia is also part of our service region. And here we are, John, with John Postel. So John, I don’t hear myself anymore, it could be my headset, but if you hear me, perfect. So John handed out IP addresses, and he would write down in his notebook who he gave the IP addresses to. This was in the 1980s, I would say. But then this IP networking thing just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and at some point, it was too much. So he stopped using just one notebook, and he formalized it in the form of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, IANA, which still exists today. And gradually, the RIR system came into being. RIPE NCC was the first RIR, which was set up in 1992, and then they spun off the management of domain names, away from the management of IP addresses, and Fahd will be talking about that. So what is it that RIRs actually do? We manage the distribution of Internet number resources, and by that, we mean IP addresses and autonomous system numbers. We maintain the registry of directory services, including WHOIS, the routing registries, and we provide reverse DNS, but that’s not all the RIRs do. We support Internet infrastructure through technical coordination, and this is super important, right? Think five continents, 70,000 networks, all of which need to keep talking to each other, otherwise the system starts to fall apart. We also provide some security features, like public key infrastructure, and above all, when we work, we work with the support of our local communities. Local means, well, a continent, in our terminology. So we have community-driven processes for policy development, and community management is a very important role, and also training and capacity building in the areas in which we work. Here we go. Let me give it a second. Could I have the next slide, please? Well, we have it up on this slide anyway. Is this going to work? Yeah. Okay. I’m just going to keep going and not hold us up. I was just going to give you a quick overview of an IPv4 and an IPv6 address. Great. We have the next slide. Could I have the next one as well, please? There we go. So when we talk about Internet number resources in the RIR world, we’re chiefly referring to IP addresses. There are two kinds, IPv4, IPv6, or an autonomous system number. So when Olaf was drawing his circles that are connecting to one another, that is usually referring to an autonomous system, which contains IP addresses or prefixes within it. So these are the Internet number resources that an RIR registers. So where would you get, how are these resources registered? So IP addresses are registered hierarchically. And by that, we mean that IANA manages all the IPv4 space and a part of the IPv6 space and IANA hands over a block of IPv4 or IPv6 addresses to a regional Internet registry. And on my slide, you see RIPE NCC being used as an example. RIPE NCC then further allocates these IP addresses to what we, in our terminology, call a local Internet registry. But that would be any company to run its own independent Internet network. A telecom provider, an Internet service provider, a media provider, a content network. So these are our members. And then your Internet service provider finally allocates your IP address to you as the end user. So we don’t do that directly. We give the addresses to an Internet service provider, also governments, also universities. I think Fahd will be going into this a bit more and Olaf mentioned this. I just wanted to refer to this that IP addresses and domain names interact with one another but they’re not the same thing. So here you just see a screenshot of the RIPE NCC website. So what you see, www.ripe.net, that’s the website. And if you go to our website and just click on the search button, you will see your IP address. The unique address that your device is connecting to our website with. And in my case, you can see that it was an IPv6 address that I connected to the website with when I made this screenshot. But this is actually what I would like to focus on a little bit in this talk. That all the RIRs are not-for-profit membership-based organizations. We are all independent bodies. That is, we are not governmental entities. We are all membership-based organizations. So the way the RIRs work is anyone that wants to run an independent internet network, that wants to get resources from us, signs up, becomes a member, signs a contract with us, and then we give them the IP addresses. We are all not-for-profits. So we are funded by our membership fees. And the fees are for services, so you’re not buying IP addresses or ASMs from us. You are getting services from us and you get the right to use the IP addresses. And finally, we are community-driven. Our governing boards are elected by our members. And as organizations, we are all committed to being open and transparent. And each RIR operates in accordance with three factors. The community policies. So each RIR’s communities, that is the technical stakeholders involved, our members, the people running these networks, the actual internet service providers, the people using the IP address, they set the policies, we implement the policies. And this is something very important. We are all established in whichever jurisdiction we’re established in, the national legal framework applies to the RIR. And finally, we fulfill a specific function in the global internet governance system. There are different bodies, like the IETF that Olaf referenced, the ICANN, which manages domain names, and then the RIRs that manage IP addresses. And our approach to governance is multi-stakeholder. The RIRs have been doing this right from their inception, so starting from 1992, so multi-stakeholderism is not new. It is written into the definition of how the RIRs operate. And our stakeholders are the technical community, academia, academia were actually the founders of the internet in a sense, civil society and internet users, this is who we do this for, governments and national organizations, keep in mind governments also run their own networks, governments are also members of the RIRs, and the private sector, of course. Each RIR has its own version of this policy development process, but there are some common elements. Anyone can participate in developing policies at RIRs, including you. The policies are set in a bottom-up manner, the communities propose and approve the policies, and finally, all our decisions and policies are documented and published. Discussions on policies take place on public mailing lists. So if there is a particular topic that’s of interest to you, you can go to our RIR websites and see what’s under discussion. And policies are developed through a consensus-based process. And I’m just going to wrap up, I know we’re running behind here. So if you want to participate, I’ve given a couple of examples from RIPE NCC, you’re thinking, okay, this looks interesting, how would I even get started? I might not have a technical background. We have an online academy, this is free, you just need to make an account. We publish a lot of research and articles on our website, on labs.ripe.net. And if you have any questions, we have a booth, we’ll be there all week, and you can find your local internet registry. Thank you.

Olaf Christoph: I have a small two-finger. The notebooks of John Postel. John Postel was a modern guy. He used to maintain his stuff in computer files. So there are no physical notebooks. I think it’s metaphorical.

Ulka Athale: I thought that was an actual notebook. I’ve heard so much about John Postel’s notebooks. I’ve been misinformed.

Theresa Swinehart: Yes, I’ve had the same visual of just some books that were there, so absolutely. Okay. Thank you so much. You’ve really highlighted an important aspect also to this conversation, that the inclusive nature, which we call multi-stakeholder, is inherent to the IETF. It’s inherent to the RIR community and the governance around that. And I think that’s an important aspect on how one operationalizes things in a reality and make it function. With that, I’m going to turn it over to my colleague, Bhad, to talk about the domain name system, the other element of this addressing system. And Bhad, over to you.

Fahd Batayneh: Thank you, Theresa. And good afternoon, everyone. I hope I’m audible. So my name is Fahad Bataine. I am from the region. I’m from Jordan. I work for ICANN. I cover the Middle East. I’ll be presenting today about the domain name system. But just maybe I need my slides.

Olaf Christoph: In the meantime, you might have noticed the word governance and so on and so forth. But the reason why we do this is to maintain interoperability. We need coordination on IP addresses so that they are unique. And that coordination is done in a bottom-up fashion by the stakeholders that coordinate to make this network run. The standards development is done bottom-up by the stakeholders who need this to get stuff working. And I think that what Bhad will say is that we need coordination to make sure that those nest names that he will be talking about are unique. Sorry for filling up the time with some additional.

Fahd Batayneh: Thank you, Olaf. So my slides are up now. So ICANN stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Can you hear me? We play a coordination role. So we don’t regulate. We don’t run the Internet. Of course, there is no one organization that runs the Internet. We play a coordination role. We coordinate with many active players in the domain name industry, whether technical or non-technical. Sorry, so my presentation involves a lot of visuals, really. Can you hear me? Okay. It’s working. Thank you. So ICANN plays a coordination role. We are into the coordination of mostly domain names. Of course, my colleague Olga spoke about coordination in the numbering world. Olof spoke about protocol development at the IETF and others. So there are technical organizations, and ICANN is considered one of the technical organizations that are into the Internet governance ecosystem. But then also the Internet is not just technical. There are many other non-technical players who are responsible for different elements of the Internet. ICANN has a very unique model of governance that consists of three key entities or components. So at the heart of the ICANN ecosystem is the ICANN community. The ICANN community is a group of volunteers from across the world, thousands of volunteers, who are really keen and eager to drive policy development of the Internet Unique Identifier Systems forward. We also have the ICANN board of directors, and inside this room we have a number of esteemed board members whom you can talk to. And then, of course, there is ICANN the organization. We are a little bit over 400 staff members working on different elements of ICANN’s work. Our multi-stakeholder model is bottom-up in a sense that when policies are developed, it’s really the community who puts these policies. And once they are final and approved, they are executed and implemented. It’s very different to the top-down approach where a policy is developed and then it’s enforced on its citizens. Now, what’s the role of domain names? Why do we use domain names? So domain names really… So an IP address is always behind a domain name. And, of course, if I ask anybody in the room, do you know what’s the IP address of your website? I’m sure very few of us, if maybe none of us, knows what’s the IP address of any website, whether google.com or intgovforum.org or whatever. And that’s why we use domain names. So domain names are easier for us to remember. We can remember names. It’s even tougher for us to remember numbers. And the good thing is that behind one name, you can have several IP addresses, whether IPv4 or IPv6, and I’m not going to get into those details. This is how a fully qualified domain name looks like. So we start at the top, which is the dot. So this is called the root server system. This is where all DNS translation starts. And I’ll be explaining in a while really quickly, using cartoons, how the domain name system actually functions. Now, below the dot is a top-level domain, com, net, sa, you name it. Of course, there are thousands of top-level domains, whether generic or country codes. And under a top-level domain that we select, we can register a domain name under it, according to the policy of that top-level domain. And of course, once we have the domain name, we can register as many subdomains as we wish. Of course, there has been an expansion to the top-level domain namespace. So today you can find top-level domains of more than three characters. You can find top-level domains in local languages. So here in Saudi Arabia, they have dot as Saudi and Arabic. Of course, you can find top-level domains in Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese, you name it. And now I’m really getting a little bit technical, but I’ll try to keep it extremely easy to understand. So these are the different components of the domain name system. And maybe I’ll take a pause here and inform everybody in the room that there is a difference between a domain name and the domain name system. So the domain name system is really the technical part of things, whereas we as human beings, we register a domain name. So google.com or maybe igf2024.sa. So these are domain names. Now, the different components of the domain name system include authoritative name servers. And they have the authority to provide answers. We have the recursive resolvers. And I’ll explain in a while what recursive resolvers are all about. We have caching resolvers. So like in any other system or any other IT system, the DNS also has this caching facility. So rather than going through an entire process, you might find an answer to a domain name within the cache. And then we have the stub resolver or the client resolver. And this is actually the starting point of any domain name inquiry. So I’ll show a really quick demonstration in a very easy manner on really how a domain name resolution starts. So if you look at the bottom left, we have a stub resolver. So every device has a stub resolver. Your laptop has a stub resolver. Your phone has a stub resolver. You fire up a web browser and you type in a URL, example.com, www.example.com. Now, what happens is that the stub resolver would send this query to the nearest recursive resolver. So probably your ISP has a recursive resolver in-house, or maybe they have it through one of the other providers. But your stub resolver would send your query to the nearest recursive resolver, which is maybe for your ISP. And it asks the question, what’s the IP address of www.example.com? Now, the stub resolver would say, well, I don’t know, and I don’t have it in my cache. So let me go and ask the root server system. And so it goes and says to the root server system, what’s the IP address of www.example.com? The answer comes back where it says, I don’t know. But here is the name server of the .com server. So the recursive resolver sends the same question to the .com server, which is named here c.gtldservers.net. And it says, what’s the IP address of www.example.com? Now, the .com server says, I don’t know. But here is the name server of example.com. And by the way, there is a difference in this example between example.com and www.example.com, just to be clear here. Now, the query goes again. So the recursive resolver sends the same question to the example.com server, to the name server. And it says, what’s the IP address of www.example.com? And actually, ns1.example.com has the answer. So it sends back the IP address to the recursive resolver. And the recursive resolver sends it back to the stub resolver. And we actually have the IP address of www.example.com. So as you can see, the recursive resolver is at the center of this entire domain name query thing. Now, of course, if you have a cache, the stub resolver would send the question to the recursive resolver. The recursive resolver would find it inside the cache. And then the cache just sends back the answer. So that was really quickly how the DNS functions from a governance. standpoint and from a technical standpoint. Thank you. Back to you, Christophe.

Olaf Christoph: If I may, what is important in this context is that you saw three servers on the screen, but in reality, the domain name system has millions of servers providing this service of translating names into numbers. That is not the thing that is maintained in one place. No, it is globally distributed. One of the things about the internet, that 70,000 networks and the services that make the internet connect, they are global and distributed. I think that is an important takeaway. There is not one domain name resolver. There is not one authoritative server. There is not one database that maintains all the information of the DNS. That is globally distributed. I think that is an important takeaway. Globally distributed and locally maintained.

Theresa Swinehart: issue is not whether the system is working, the addressing system. It is actually about whether you have access to that system itself where the challenges are. I think it is a great observation. I am cognizant of time. We have about another 10 minutes. I realize that we had some glitches to start with. But first, I think maybe I turn it over to the floor or to the virtual participants to see if we have any questions. Otherwise, I have some questions for the panelists. Any questions?

AUDIENCE: I would like to ask one question about the IPs. You say each one should be a unique IP address. How is it managed when we are using our private network? How does the translation be made?

Olaf Christoph: Yes. The easy answer is every computer has one address and it is unique. But there are nuances to that. What we usually see is that, for instance, in your house, when you have a house network, you are using so-called private addresses, which are unique within your house, but not unique within the system. Your neighbor might be using the same addresses. Those addresses are, within your router, translated to the IP address of your router. And your IP address of the router in your house, the thing that is on your access network, that does the translation to a unique global address. That is a hack. That is a hack to make IPv4 work with the amount of devices that we have on earth. With IPv6, that is strictly not necessary. With IPv6, the story is that you all have unique addresses, no matter whether you are in a house or outside a house. It is basically all connected. There are many nuances to that, but on the first level, that is the case.

Ulka Athale: Okay. Did you want to add anything to that? No. Thank you, Olaf. I think that is a pretty clear explanation. I was going to say that most Internet service providers give their customers private addresses, as Olaf mentioned, but with your Internet service provider, they connect you to the big network of networks. That is when the unique address is used. Thank you.

Theresa Swinehart: Any other questions? I understand there’s none in the remote participants, but any other questions from the floor at all? Yes, sir.

AUDIENCE: We are from cyber team from Bangladesh. We have a phone number, which is 13 to 19 of teenagers, and it’s a handshake domain. We are now working for cyber bullying to protect from Bangladesh, and now we are working for global. I have a question, which is actually how can we protect from cyber bullying? I have a question, which is actually how can we trace in the domain, in case if they are using a dynamic IP or something, how can we solve the issues where we are tracing any kind of victims or something? Somehow, we are seeing that IP, V6, that are not actually properly traced, if they are sharing the IP.

Olaf Christoph: I think that’s a question for the person maintaining IP address, who is systems.

Fahd Batayneh: Thanks for your question. That’s a very important question, and actually within ICANN, there is a lot of work within the ICANN community and the contracted parties to combat and really mitigate and even reduce DNS abuse and misuse, which we call DNS security. Now, to your specific questions, there are several tools out there that can actually help get more information on any domain name. There is, for example, the Whois. The Whois can give you some data about the domain name itself. Of course, before GDPR, you could get much more data. Now, after GDPR, it’s much more limited, but then there is still a mechanism where you can actually ask the registrar for that information, and it’s a longer discussion, really. Now, the other part about knowing about the technical aspects of a domain name, you can always look at the zone file of a domain name. So if you do a simple NS lookup, it gives you more information about the domain name. So there are many times in the time to live and start of authority and when was the last time a domain name was updated and so on and so forth. Sometimes by analyzing that data, you can get some sense of what the domain name is. Now, there are also reputation block lists that actually solicit bad domain names, of course, in addition to many other things. So those are good places also where you can maybe obtain some information about a domain name. Talking to your local law enforcement agency can help you. Of course, when it comes to the domain name aspect, you can always talk to ICANN, and we can maybe get you in touch with one of our experts who can maybe help you or even point you on what you can do, actually. Yeah, that’s a question that we do get, particularly when there is, when people want to find who the holder of a particular IP address is. As I mentioned in my presentation, as the registry, we maintain a database of all the IP addresses that we allocate. But in the diagram that I showed, that we allocate IP addresses usually to big organizations like an internet service provider. So when there is a case of abuse within the RIPE database or the registry, we have a contact called an abuse contact. So every network operator that has IP addresses from us is supposed to maintain an up-to-date email address on which you can contact them when there is abuse originating from a particular IP address. In our databases, our visibility stops at the organization that we give the IP addresses to. So if you’re on a particular Wi-Fi network, a big company, imagine a big telecom company and that’s who your internet service provider is. When you query the database, when you query the IP address in our database, you will see that RIPE NCC, or if you’re in Bangladesh it’s more likely to be APNIC, gave those IP addresses to X company. And you will be able to see the abuse contact information of that company. And that is who you would need to get in touch with. Because if you contact one of the RIRs, we’ll say, we know these IP addresses are being held by this telecom company or that internet service provider, but we don’t know who every single customer is. That would be pretty much every person on earth whose records we need to maintain. So that’s not what we have visibility in this.

Olaf Christoph: I feel your pain. You are operating, getting accountability and transparency in a globally distributed world where there are different laws pertaining to privacy, where there are requirements or even approaches to responding to requests of organizations that you don’t know. And I think it’s fair to say that this is one of the more wicked issues in the internet. How do you find who is responsible for something in the internet and people accountable?

Theresa Swinehart: Thank you. We have one question from a virtual remote participant, which I’ll read out. In the context of maintaining a secure and accessible internet, what are the current challenges ICANN faces in balancing the decentralization of domain registrations with the need for robust security measures, particularly in addressing abuse such as domain squatting? Thank you. Thank you.

Agreement Points

Internet is a globally distributed network of networks

speakers

Olaf Christoph

Ulka Athale

Fahd Batayneh

arguments

Internet is a network of networks providing global connectivity

Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) manage allocation of IP addresses

Domain Name System translates domain names to IP addresses

summary

All speakers agree that the Internet is a complex, globally distributed system composed of interconnected networks, managed by various organizations like RIRs and ICANN.

Internet governance involves multi-stakeholder, bottom-up processes

speakers

Ulka Athale

Fahd Batayneh

arguments

RIRs use community-driven, bottom-up policy development processes

ICANN coordinates domain names through multi-stakeholder model

summary

Both speakers emphasize the importance of community-driven, bottom-up processes in Internet governance, whether for IP address allocation or domain name management.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers highlight the importance of coordination among stakeholders to maintain the Internet’s functionality, emphasizing bottom-up processes.

speakers

Olaf Christoph

Ulka Athale

arguments

Coordination is needed to maintain interoperability and uniqueness

RIRs use community-driven, bottom-up policy development processes

Unexpected Consensus

Challenges in maintaining accountability in a globally distributed system

speakers

Olaf Christoph

Ulka Athale

Fahd Batayneh

arguments

Maintaining accountability in a globally distributed system

Tracing and addressing cyberbullying through IP/domain information

Balancing decentralization and security in domain registrations

explanation

All speakers, despite their different areas of expertise, acknowledge the complexities and challenges in maintaining accountability and security in the globally distributed Internet system.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers generally agree on the distributed nature of the Internet, the importance of multi-stakeholder governance, and the challenges in maintaining security and accountability in such a system.

Consensus level

High level of consensus on the fundamental structure and governance of the Internet, with shared recognition of common challenges. This implies a unified understanding of the Internet’s core principles among technical experts, which could facilitate collaborative problem-solving in addressing global Internet issues.

Different Viewpoints

No significant disagreements identified

speakers

arguments

summary

The speakers largely presented complementary information about different aspects of Internet infrastructure and governance without notable disagreements.

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

No significant areas of disagreement were identified among the speakers.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers was minimal to non-existent. The speakers presented complementary information about different aspects of Internet infrastructure and governance, focusing on their respective areas of expertise. This lack of disagreement suggests a cohesive understanding of the Internet’s technical foundations and governance structures among the presenters, which could contribute to a more unified approach to addressing Internet-related challenges and policy development.

Partial Agreements

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers highlight the importance of coordination among stakeholders to maintain the Internet’s functionality, emphasizing bottom-up processes.

speakers

Olaf Christoph

Ulka Athale

arguments

Coordination is needed to maintain interoperability and uniqueness

RIRs use community-driven, bottom-up policy development processes

Key Takeaways

The Internet is a globally distributed network of networks that provides connectivity through open standards and interoperability

Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) manage the allocation of IP addresses using community-driven, bottom-up policy processes

The Domain Name System (DNS) translates domain names to IP addresses and is also globally distributed

Internet governance involves multiple stakeholders and uses bottom-up policy development approaches

Maintaining accountability and addressing abuse in a globally distributed system remains a challenge

Resolutions and Action Items

None identified

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively trace and address cyberbullying through IP/domain information

Balancing decentralization of domain registrations with robust security measures

Improving accountability and transparency in a globally distributed system with varying privacy laws

Suggested Compromises

None identified

The Internet is built out of a network of networks that provides you global connectivity, in addition to a number of global services that you need to hook that up.

speaker

Olaf Christoph

reason

This comment provides a foundational understanding of how the Internet functions as an interconnected system rather than a single entity.

impact

It set the stage for the rest of the discussion by establishing a shared understanding of the Internet’s structure. Subsequent speakers built on this concept to explain their specific areas of expertise.

We are all not-for-profits. So we are funded by our membership fees. And the fees are for services, so you’re not buying IP addresses or ASMs from us. You are getting services from us and you get the right to use the IP addresses.

speaker

Ulka Athale

reason

This insight challenges common misconceptions about how IP addresses are distributed and highlights the service-oriented nature of RIRs.

impact

It shifted the conversation towards the governance and operational aspects of Internet infrastructure, leading to discussions about community-driven processes and multi-stakeholder models.

There is not one domain name resolver. There is not one authoritative server. There is not one database that maintains all the information of the DNS. That is globally distributed.

speaker

Olaf Christoph

reason

This comment emphasizes the decentralized nature of the DNS, which is a crucial aspect of Internet resilience and global accessibility.

impact

It deepened the technical discussion and highlighted the importance of distributed systems in Internet architecture, leading to questions about security and traceability.

I think it’s fair to say that this is one of the more wicked issues in the internet. How do you find who is responsible for something in the internet and people accountable?

speaker

Olaf Christoph

reason

This comment acknowledges the complex challenges in Internet governance, particularly regarding accountability and traceability.

impact

It brought the discussion to a higher level, addressing the real-world implications of the technical systems discussed earlier, and opened up considerations of legal and ethical issues in Internet governance.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by progressively building a comprehensive picture of Internet infrastructure, from its basic network structure to the complexities of its governance. The conversation evolved from technical explanations to broader considerations of accountability and global coordination. The speakers effectively linked their specialized knowledge to overarching themes, providing a multi-faceted view of Internet operations and challenges.

How can we trace domain names using dynamic IPs or shared IPs, particularly in cases of cyberbullying?

speaker

Audience member from Bangladesh cyber team

explanation

This is important for addressing cyberbullying and tracing victims in cases where traditional IP tracing methods may be ineffective.

How can we balance the decentralization of domain registrations with the need for robust security measures, particularly in addressing abuse such as domain squatting?

speaker

Virtual remote participant

explanation

This is crucial for maintaining a secure and accessible internet while addressing potential abuses in the domain name system.

How can we improve accountability and transparency in identifying responsible parties for internet-related issues across different jurisdictions with varying privacy laws?

speaker

Olaf Christoph

explanation

This is a complex challenge in the globally distributed internet ecosystem, affecting how abuse and accountability are handled across borders.

Summary

This discussion at the Internet Governance Forum in Saudi Arabia focused on navigating risks and innovation in the digital realm. Participants explored the challenges and opportunities associated with digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI).

Key risks identified included cybersecurity threats, data privacy concerns, and over-dependence on technology. Dr. Maha Abdel Nasser highlighted how technological failures can severely disrupt daily life and business operations. The discussion also addressed the risks of AI bias, with Hadia Elminiawi noting how AI systems can perpetuate unfair treatment if trained on biased data.

Participants emphasized the need for robust reporting mechanisms for online abuse and cyberbullying. Dr. Maha and others noted the lack of unified platforms for reporting such incidents in many countries. The discussion touched on the challenges of holding tech platforms accountable for abusive content while balancing innovation.

Caleb Ogundele stressed the importance of cross-border collaboration and public-private partnerships in managing digital risks. He also highlighted the need for more support for women entrepreneurs in the tech sector.

While acknowledging the risks, participants like Amr Hashem cautioned against allowing fear to stifle innovation, drawing parallels to historical resistance to new technologies. The discussion concluded with a recognition that while digital technologies pose challenges, they are now an integral part of modern life, necessitating a balanced approach to risk management and innovation.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Risks and challenges associated with digital innovation, including cybersecurity threats, privacy concerns, and technological dependency

– The need for frameworks, strategies and collaboration to mitigate online risks and abuse

– Challenges in reporting and addressing online harassment, especially for women and vulnerable groups

– The impact of AI and deepfakes on online safety and content authenticity

– Balancing innovation opportunities with associated risks in the digital realm

The overall purpose of the discussion was to explore the risks that accompany digital innovation and discuss strategies for harnessing innovation while effectively managing and mitigating associated risks.

The tone of the discussion was generally serious and concerned when discussing risks and challenges, but became more optimistic and solution-oriented as speakers discussed potential frameworks, collaborations, and opportunities. There was a shift towards the end to emphasize not letting risks completely stifle innovation and progress.

Speakers

– HADIA ELMINIAWI: Chief expert at the National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt, member of ISOC Egypt, chair of the Africa Regional At-Large Organization (AFRALO) at ICANN, member of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee

– DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: Member of the Egyptian Parliament, vice president of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, executive member in the Salvation Front, member of the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Syndicate of Engineers

– CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE: Internet public policy expert, member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society, chair of the Nigerian School on Internet Governance

– NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Support engineer at Dell, member of ISOC Egypt, instructor at the Pan-African Youth Ambassador IG

Additional speakers:

– MARIAM FAYEZ:

– LISA VERMEER: Policymaker from the Netherlands working on the European AI Act

– AMRA HASHEM: Member of Internet Master

– MOUSSA: Student from Nigeria studying in Malaysia

– RAZAN ZAKARIA: VIAG ambassador and content creator from Egypt

Expanded Summary of Discussion on Navigating Risks and Innovation in the Digital Realm

This discussion at the Internet Governance Forum in Saudi Arabia brought together experts to explore the challenges and opportunities associated with digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI). The conversation covered a wide range of topics, from cybersecurity threats to the potential of AI, highlighting the complex landscape of digital innovation.

Key Risks and Challenges

Participants identified several major risks associated with digital innovation:

1. Cybersecurity and Data Privacy: Dr. Maha Abdel Nasser, a cybersecurity expert, and Caleb Olumuyiwa Ogundele emphasised the critical nature of cybersecurity threats and data privacy concerns. They agreed on the need for robust measures to protect individuals and organisations from these risks.

2. Technological Dependency: Dr. Maha Abdel Nasser highlighted the growing dependence on technology as a significant threat, noting how technological failures can severely disrupt daily life and business operations.

3. AI Bias and Transparency: Hadia Elminiawi raised concerns about bias in AI systems, explaining how AI applications can perpetuate unfair treatment if trained on biased data. This point broadened the conversation to include ethical considerations in AI development, including risks such as deepfakes and non-consensual porn.

4. Digital Divide: Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky, a digital rights advocate, drew attention to the gap between privileged and less privileged users in accessing and benefiting from digital technologies.

5. Regulatory Challenges: Caleb Olumuyiwa Ogundele pointed out the potential for abuse of regulatory frameworks by those in power, while Lisa Vermeer highlighted the difficulties in implementing consistent AI regulations across different countries, mentioning the European AI Act as an example.

Strategies for Mitigating Risks

The discussion then shifted to potential strategies for managing these risks:

1. Government-led Initiatives: Caleb Olumuyiwa Ogundele advocated for government-led initiatives, including regulatory sandboxes, to allow companies to test innovations safely.

2. Cross-border Collaboration: There was a consensus on the importance of international cooperation and data sharing to address global digital challenges effectively. Dr. Maha Abdel Nasser emphasized the need for political will in establishing collaborative platforms for digital innovation.

3. Alternative Solutions: Dr. Maha Abdel Nasser stressed the need to develop backup systems and alternative solutions to mitigate the risks of technological failures.

4. Responsible AI Principles: Hadia Elminiawi suggested establishing clear principles for responsible AI use by organisations to address issues of bias and transparency. Caleb Ogundele proposed using meta tags to indicate AI-generated content.

5. Improved Reporting Mechanisms: Several speakers emphasised the need for better reporting systems for online abuse and cyberbullying. Dr. Maha highlighted the lack of a unified platform for reporting such incidents in many countries.

6. Digital Literacy: Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky stressed the importance of raising awareness and improving digital literacy among vulnerable groups.

Challenges in Addressing Online Abuse

The discussion revealed several obstacles in effectively tackling online abuse:

1. Lack of Trust: Dr. Maha Abdel Nasser pointed out that many victims do not trust existing reporting mechanisms.

2. Cultural Barriers: Noha Ashraf Abdel Baky noted that cultural factors often prevent victims from reporting incidents.

3. Anonymity: Audience members raised concerns about the difficulty in tracing anonymous online actors.

4. Platform Accountability: Dr. Maha Abdel Nasser highlighted the challenges in holding tech platforms accountable for abusive content while balancing innovation. Razan Zakaria discussed the complexities of content moderation on social media platforms.

5. Need for Collaboration: Razan Zakaria emphasized the importance of collaboration between governments and tech platform owners in addressing online abuse.

6. Role of Civil Society: Mariam Fayez highlighted the importance of civil society initiatives in addressing online abuse.

Balancing Innovation and Risk Management

The conversation also explored the delicate balance between fostering innovation and managing risks:

1. Embracing Innovation: Amr Hashem cautioned against allowing fear to stifle innovation, drawing parallels to historical resistance to printing technology.

2. Inclusive Funding: Caleb Olumuyiwa Ogundele stressed the need for more support for women entrepreneurs in the tech sector through inclusive funding strategies, highlighting challenges such as limited access to capital and networking opportunities.

3. Regulatory Challenges: Lisa Vermeer highlighted the difficulties in implementing AI regulations consistently across different countries, citing the European AI Act as an example of ongoing efforts.

4. Freedom of Expression: Audience members raised concerns about bias in social media algorithms affecting freedom of expression.

Conclusion

The discussion concluded with a recognition that while digital technologies pose significant challenges, they are now an integral part of modern life. This necessitates a balanced approach to risk management and innovation. Key takeaways included the need for better frameworks and strategies to manage online risks, the importance of collaboration between governments, tech platforms, and civil society, and the ongoing challenge of balancing innovation with risk management.

Unresolved issues remain, such as effectively holding tech platforms accountable for abusive content, addressing anonymity online, and implementing consistent AI regulations across different countries. These topics provide fertile ground for future discussions and policy development in the realm of digital governance.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: So, okay, so I’m starting. Welcome, everyone, to the Internet Mosque session at the IGF in Saudi Arabia, navigating risks and innovation in the digital realm. First, I would like to thank the forum and our host for their excellent organization and welcoming atmosphere. My name is Hadia Elminiaoui, chief expert at the National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt. However, I am here today in my capacity as a member of ISOC Egypt and chair of the Africa Regional At-Large Organization, AFRALO, at ICANN. I’m also a member of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee. I’m an engineer by training and hold a Master of Science in Management and Leadership. Today, I will be speaking and co-moderating this session with my colleague, Mrs. Noha Ashraf Abdel-Baey, who is on site in Saudi Arabia. Mrs. Noha Ashraf is a support engineer at Dell, member of ISOC Egypt, and an instructor at the Pan-African Youth Ambassador IG. In today’s session, we will be exploring the risks that accompany digital innovation, including cybersecurity threats, ethical dilemmas, and other emerging challenges. Our discussion will focus on strategies and frameworks for harnessing innovation while effectively managing and mitigating associated risks. We are honored to have with us today Dr. Maha Abdel-Nasser, a distinguished member of the Egyptian Parliament. Dr. Maha is vice president of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party and one of the founding members. She has been an executive member in the Salvation Front and has been elected as a member of the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Syndicate of Engineers. Dr. Maha holds an engineering degree, an MBA, and a PhD degree in political marketing. She is also a certified instructor at the American University in Cairo, the Arab Academy for Science and Technology, and the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt. We are honored as well to have with us online today Mr. Caleb Ogundel, an accomplished internet public policy expert. Caleb is a dedicated volunteer with ISOC Nigeria and the Manitoba chapters and currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society. Caleb chairs and coordinates the Nigerian School on Internet Governance and was a former management lead of the Information Technology Unit for the University of Ibadan Distance Learning Center and a project director at the African Academic Network on Internet Policy. He is also an instructor at the African Network Operating Group. Caleb holds two master’s degrees in computer systems and information science. science. Engineer Noha will be managing the queue, both on site and online. We look forward to an engaging and insightful discussion. Thank you for joining us today. Without further delay, let me start with my first question to Dr. Maha Abdul-Nasir. Dr. Maha, it’s an honor to have you on site with us today on this session. And thank you for your time and effort and shared thoughts. My first question to you is, in your opinion, what are the primary risks accompanying digital innovation?

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: Well, thank you very much for ISOC and for Internet Egypt. I’m glad to be here. I’m honored to be with all of you. And thank you for the audience for being here. Actually, when we are talking about the threats for the digital transformation or digital era, the first thing definitely we will get in our minds is the cybersecurity, which is the most important thing and the most aspect that a lot of people are thinking about. And again, the data privacy, we are all worried about our data and how we are visible to the world. Our data is now almost everywhere, and we cannot do anything about it. But there is another threat that I think people may be not thinking about it a lot, which is the dependency on the digital transformation or having this technological dependency, which actually may. cause things to be completely stopped if something happened which we already have seen in the airports across the world. We couldn’t think that a small bug can actually do all this harm to the people who are traveling and made them delayed to the work and got people to think really about what we are going to do if there is a shutdown in electricity, a shutdown in anything. We are so dependent on the technology now and I think this is one of the major threats, risk and challenge at the same time.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you so much Dr. Meher for this insight and actually pointing out the dependency on technology and how a small bug as you mentioned could like put the world on a halt. So I will follow up with a question. So in your opinion how could we mitigate this?

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: It’s very difficult to say but of course if you are talking about cyber security, all of us knows about the firewalls taking all the precautions which actually will not stop still the cyber attacks that we are seeing every day everywhere across the world. It is just a matter of who is racing who, who can take the lead and somehow be able to avoid or attack. So it’s kind of… mouse and cat scenario because all of the governments, all of the corporates, all of the organizations are just trying to avoid the cyber attacks and at the same time the attackers are trying to do the cyber attacks. So it’s, I don’t think that there is something that can be done or there is a legislation for anything that can help in that. For the data privacy, I guess we all know that we have the GDPR and most of the countries are trying to follow or to do some legislations or acts similar to the GDPR, despite the fact that some of them are not really successful in that. For the technological dependence, I don’t think that we can, we cannot be dependent on technology anymore, but we have to find ways, we have to find some kind of alternative solutions if the technology fails us. We’ve been working without technology, we’ve been living without technology for centuries, but now we are so dependent when we find that there is a problem with our phone, we just, we panic, we feel that as if the world stopped. We cannot even remember how the life was before that. If the internet goes down, we feel that we are in threat. So I don’t think that we can really help it because it’s more of a feeling or lifestyle that we cannot get away from it. But for the corporates, they have to find a way, they have to find alternative solutions. So when the technology fails, they have to mitigate it somehow, they have to have the traditional way as a backup. if there is a problem. So you will not get everything stopped. This is how I see it.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you so much, Dr. Maha. And indeed, as you mentioned, maybe diversifying and and maybe also depending on local or community systems or applications. I’m not sure, but maybe also there could be a role here for frameworks or developed maybe by governments or incentives provided by governments. But I will stop here and move to Kalib. Kalib, I would like to also ask you the same question. In your opinion, what are the risks accompanying digital innovation?

CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Aria and Dr. Maha. Very interesting perspective from Dr. Maha. I must say that I do admire the way she approached the question. But first, one of the few things I did pick from our conversation was basically the fact that we can no longer do it without technology these days, right? And so because we can no longer do it without technology these days, that means that we are stuck with it, right? And if we are stuck with it, we need to really find solutions basically to some of those innovations and the risk that will follow. So one of the few things I did think while preparing for this panel session was, first, we need to first of all start having what we call government-led initiatives. Some of those initiatives could also be based on legislation, regulatory frameworks, sandboxes, where a company can also test innovation safely. Take for example, we are now in the age of the AI, and people need to get some regulatory assurances that AI is not going to take over their lives. So government needs to start having regulatory sandboxes that can help them safely test some of the AI systems. I’m aware that the Singapore government has a testing framework that allows companies to test AI systems while sharing insight into some risk and solutions as well, and we need to start having what I call cross-border collaboration mechanism across different spectrums. Now basically, the entire idea of having open standards is because we want to have collaborations from different perspectives of technology and innovation, and so it’s good that the government, and not just the government, the civil society, as well as the academia, start encouraging what we call cross-border collaboration mechanisms. There will be a lot of international data sharing agreements for risk assessment, global standards for risk assessment, and also trying to standardize frameworks for sharing some of the threats, cyber threats, and intelligence that we have across the board. I’m also aware that you also works in Egypt, where you guys take a lot of cyber threat intelligence very seriously. However, we cannot remove the fact that there are different types of cyber actors. Bad actors, that I will say, even when we look at the geopolitics of cyber threats, that are also interested in sabotaging some of the efforts of this open standards cross-border collaboration just for their own benefit. So my encouragement basically at this point is that we should continue to have a lot of public-private partnerships. We should continue to have joint research initiatives between governments, private sectors, to manage some of this innovative risk that we do have. More importantly is to also have a very good funding model that supports even private organizations that are into some of this risk assessment. The reason why I’m saying this is, trust me, people will definitely go out of funding, but when they are doing some important work that has to deal with, take for example national security, global security, and when it comes to some of these things, it’s always good that we have government supporting them. We also have cyber security framework knowledge base that also tries to support some of the things that they do as well. So I just want to stop here so that I don’t take so much of our time, and we can allow other speakers also contribute some of the inputs into what their thoughts are about innovation and risk assessment. Thank you.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you Caleb, and I move to Noha, and I know that Noha also would like to speak about her thoughts about risks accompanying digital innovation. So Noha, the floor is yours.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Thank you Hadia. So I believe the digital innovation race is way faster than building national strategies, than acquiring new digital skills, than drafting policies and good frameworks. So I believe that the primary risks that will have a bigger digital divide, a bigger digital gap between the privileged and less privileged technology users, because we already half of the world population are still offline. So the more privileged people who are well-educated, who have

HADIA ELMINIAWI: And that many stories are just made up and are not real. Also, those women wouldn’t have cared much about what has been. That people do not know where or how to report. And of course I’m aware of those incidents where we have. Yes, awareness of course is crucial, but awareness is mainly crucial for people to understand. And we don’t want to get into the cases of the women who actually took their lives. But honestly, when I heard about those incidents, I thought if those ladies knew a little bit, like if they knew better, they would have never done so. And if the community also and the society was well aware that cyber bullying exists and that many stories are just made up and are not real. Also, those women wouldn’t have cared much about what has been posted about them and made them take their lives. However, again, the question is, do we have a place to which if someone is exposed to, is bullied online, they can go online and report it? Like how easy is it to report abuse? And what channels can they report that abuse through?

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: Well, actually, if you’re talking about Egypt, because I don’t know about other countries, but in Egypt, there is a phone number you can call. Unfortunately, there isn’t a portal to report on. This actually one of the suggestions I made in the parliament, but it didn’t go through. In each police station you can do so, and there is a hotline in the Women’s Council. They take the reports of violence too, against women specifically, but the Ministry of Interior has another hotline for reporting all the abuses over the Internet for women, for children, for men, for anyone, because anyone can get actually hacked or blackmailed online. It doesn’t have to be a woman. Women are more vulnerable, but a lot of people actually have these issues. So there are ways to report, and I guess there are a lot of places now, or organizations from civil society, who are trying to spread the message, because as you said, if those women knew better, they wouldn’t commit suicide, and this is extremely sad. We have this burden on our shoulders that we didn’t let them know, but we have to work all together to spread this information and to do the awareness in every country, not just in Egypt, because it’s happening everywhere.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: We can also report to the social media platforms themselves, so they can suspend the account or take it off, in parallel with the government reporters. So Hadia, now I have some questions for you. What are the primary risks and challenges associated with the quality bias and security of AI training data? And second question is, how do these factors impact the ethical deployment and effectiveness of AI systems?

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you, Noha. So again, privacy and data protection are among the key risks accompanying digital innovation. Services and applications using IoT and AI depend mainly on collecting and processing huge amounts of personal data, which raises privacy concerns, but it also, in addition of course, failure to comply with data protection regulations could result in large legal penalties. So it’s both ways, you know, but let me speak specifically about the risks associated with the quality of data. So bias in AI applications and systems happens when outcomes of AI systems favor or disadvantage a certain group, or favor certain outcomes, or favors certain individuals. This bias can result in decisions and unfair treatment, depending on the field in which the AI system is deployed. So examples could include random security screenings, and a lot of us, you know, face this at airports where, you know, a specific ethical group are always selected for this random security screening. It affects employment opportunities, even job search results, unequal treatment in legal or medical systems. And this is all because of the data that is used in training the AI systems. So data used in training AI systems, or many AI systems, let’s not say all, but many AI systems use historical data that reflects past human decisions, behaviors. So if the data contains some kind of prejudice, or biases, or is taken only based on a, is not diversified, the AI will inherit and replicate those biases in the decision-making process. And the other thing also that comes to my mind here is, so after the decision also is made, how do you know what this decision was made on? And what data was used for that? So it’s also about transparency and accountability, right? And this human prejudice can be intentional or unintentional. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s intentional or unintentional, but there should be a way in which we do not have those flawed training data, and there should be some kind of transparency and accountability also associated with this. So addressing those issues, of course, are crucial for fairness, accountability, and transparency in AI applications. If we talk about security risks associated with AI, so AI usually uses vast data sets that may contain sensitive personal information, so improper handling of this data can lead to harmful consequences. Also data could be, from a security point of view, harmful or misleading data could be injected into the training process, corrupting the AI models and performance and causing unintended behaviors. So those are all risks associated with the bias and quality of data. Noha, the floor is yours.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Thank you, Hadi. I would like to ask our audience if they have any questions to any of the speakers. I don’t see any questions from the online audience. Okay, I guess we can move on and leave the Q&A section at the end of the session.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Okay, thank you. I wanted to ask Dr. Maha about, so she was, Dr. Maha was speaking about reporting cyber bullying, and I was wondering if there is like a single platform at a national level that people could report cyber bullying through, and I know that there are some countries have those like platforms or single platform to report cyber bullying, that’s one of the questions, and the other is to all the speakers, and the same question will go also to Caleb, and then the other question is related to like international frameworks, and through which also people can report online incidents, and maybe if we take, for example, DNS abuse, you know, and online security of users, do we have like sites through which we could report this? And of course we have, we can report directly to the services, directly, as Noha mentioned. So I will give the floor to Dr. Maha, and then Caleb, and then Noha to discuss this. Thank you.

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: Thank you, Hedy, as I said earlier, there is no platform, single platform, as I said, I suggested that to have something like that, and the reporting should be online, as it is all online crimes, but it didn’t go through, so unfortunately in Egypt we don’t have this single platform to report, and the reporting is a process as I explained earlier, and internationally I think there is nothing except what Noha said, than reporting to Facebook specifically, or Instagram specifically, to mainly specific, not platforms, but the applications itself, you can just report what happened to you, or report the account, or report a specific person, or something like that, but I’m not aware of anything else, unfortunately.

CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE: Thank you very much. So one of the ways I’m thinking about this is, first of all, every human right that is physical is also the same thing online, which means that if I harass you, just in context, not that I’m harassing anyone, take for example, if Mr. A harasses someone, harasses Mrs. B, when they are not online, the same rule should apply to when they are online, therefore, if you look at it, that what platforms, or how should the reporting be done? The first instance is, does the person being harassed know their right? Do they know that they are being harassed? Do they know how they can be protected if they report some of these issues? So one of the issues that I have with the online reporting is the anonymity, is the fact that most people who report online are not even sure that if they report online, they will get the necessary protection that they deserve. Some of them also do not know that if they report online, actions will be taken, right? So that fear is also there, despite the fact that some of them might even have the information, they have the training, the digital literacy like Noah and Dr. mentioned, right? Now, the question now leads us to how do we start all of this reporting and all of that? I will give you an example of some of the context in my own country, Nigeria, and some of the abuses that has happened with regulatory frameworks, even though there are regulatory frameworks that protect women, that protect the vulnerable, or those who are exploited online. We realize that the political class is beginning to exploit the Cyber Crime Act, which encompasses some of the laws and acts that need to protect those vulnerable people. Take for example, someone who feels that he has so much power, instead of saying that they want to protect the vulnerable, they will rather tell the vulnerable person who is complaining and not really harassing them online, and say that, you are harassing me online, and then they use the powers of the police to get that person arrested, thrown in jail, and all of that. So we’ve seen a lot of abuses, even by some of our political classes, and I feel that these are issues that we need to bring to the forefront, these are conversations that we should not stop talking about, even at this political sense that the vulnerable needs to be protected by the law, not the political class only. And then we find out that even our police are, in a way, respectfully to our law enforcement agencies, are trying to choose who they prosecute when some of those issues are reported. So do we have justice for those who are vulnerable? Do we have justice for those women that we are talking about? So these are questions that I would probably want us to go back and have a second thought about, as I see that we have someone who has raised his or her hand to ask a question. So I would just let the floor over to you, online moderators.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: And Noha, over to you, Noha.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Yeah, thank you, Hadia. I guess there is, as mentioned by Dr. Maha and Caleb, there is a lack of trust with the reporting mechanisms, and also a culture barrier when it comes to, like, victims can sometimes feel ashamed of reporting the incidents or the attacks, and instead they go silent about it. They are ashamed of their communities or how people talk about them or whatever, but we need to break this barrier, this culture barrier, and stop victimizing the attackers. I guess we saw many incidents. Egypt, as Dr. Ma highlighted, where young women and even teenagers took their lives and suicided. So we need to stand in solidarity with all victims or online victims of cyber attacks and stop attacking them again online because sometimes when you report an incident, people will start to comment with hate speech or share their negative comments. So sometimes even victims, they took back their reports to avoid all of this hassle. So yeah, we need to look at it from a 360 view, putting the good legislation, trust the process, awareness, civil society to lead the awareness part and internet users to be more responsible when using the technology because technology is here to help us. So we need to use the good part of it and report the bad part of it. And that’s it for me. Thank you. Back to you, Hadia.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you. And I see Mariam has her hand up. So Mariam, do you want to take the floor?

MARIAM FAYEZ: Yes. Hello, Hadia. Hello, everyone. I like how the conversation is really going because it boils out to the human rights and what each and every person has to feel comfortable, safe and empowered online and offline. I second what Noha and MP Vaha have been saying and I really think the civil society should be moving this concern forward. In Egypt, we have multiple successful initiatives, whether initiated for the betterment or for the safety of women or vulnerable women to address their issues or just the different groups and different rights. We have many, from women harassment, for example, to even first responders in terms of crisis, like the e-SIM card and all the e-SIM activity and even women harassment. We have very, very successful initiatives and all those initiatives have attracted the politics or the government. They looked closely at those initiatives and they let them grow or those initiatives had the opportunity to grow because they had the people’s support and the people’s momentum. People in Egypt were lacking, for example, women in Egypt lacked the opportunity to feel safe and to feel safe in reporting and to speak up when any sort of abuse happens and the trust was not there, but the trust started building when those campaigns and when those initiatives took momentum and they did not take momentum on the ground. Social media was a very strong tool. WhatsApp, for example, chatting tools were very strong that supported such mechanisms. So when it starts in the grassroots organizations or with civil society and then it will move forward, I think this is a good thing to start the momentum. So civil society, I think, comes first at this stage. Thank you.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you so much, Mariam. Indeed, civil society has a big role in leading the way when it comes to online awareness, when it comes to online awareness processes. I would like to turn to Dr. Mahanao and ask her about, first, are there practical strategies and frameworks for effectively managing and mitigating the risks that we have been talking about? And is it doable to have practical strategies and frameworks for that? And do we have such frameworks to mitigate online risks? And not necessarily rules or regulations? Well, actually, if we’re talking about frameworks.

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: I’m not the person who should be answering this. this should be the government or the executive body. We have a lot of strategies in Egypt. We have a strategy for the cyber security, we have a strategy for the digital innovation, we have a strategy for AI. I still don’t see the real implementation of those strategies. Strategy is a very nice word, you can write very nice things, but when it comes to implementation, it needs a lot to be seen actually on the ground. We are still far behind in a lot of things, especially if you are talking about cyber security. I know that the government is taking it very seriously, but still, we don’t have the on-ground activities that needed to deal with cyber security. For the AI, we are definitely, definitely far behind. There are no incentives for SMEs or startups or any innovators who could work in the AI, which is extremely important and needed. You can find fragmented initiatives and people are working on themselves, but there is no structured work concerning these things. And I think it’s extremely needed now. This is my point of view. Thank you.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you, Dr. Meha. And you mentioned AI, so I will go back to AI. And indeed, artificial intelligence has the power to transform businesses and is important for governments to perform more effective and to be more effective and perform more efficiently. And that applies not only to governments, but to all forms of businesses. And that gets me back to the question of frameworks. And maybe what’s required is for organizations and entities to establish clear principles for their responsible use of AI. So any organization or entity that’s using AI will need to define guiding principles for using AI and commit and adhere to those principles defined. So those could be principles related to accuracy, accountability, fairness, safety, ethical responsibilities that would be established and published by organizations or entities using artificial intelligence. And again, we go back. back to as we started that, as you started, Dr. Maha, by saying that we cannot, technology is now part of our life. And we have this dependency that’s not going away. It will only increase. And humans and machines have always been working together. And moving forward with AI, this is also what’s going to happen, or is supposed maybe to happen. And so since the very early human history, I would say, so people were using carts. And then they’re using machines in agriculture. And then this keeps on moving. And then computers, and then mobiles. And then so it has always been humans and machines. But it’s again, how do we do that? And I. Hadia, we have one intervention from the on-site audience and another one from the online audience. So yeah, please. Go ahead. So thank you so much. It’s a very insightful discussion.

AUDIENCE: Thank you, Dr. Maha. Thank you, Noha, and particularly Hadia. Actually, I’m coming from a technical community. So I’m a security researcher. I actually know the other side problems, the one who is creating these problems. So I can actually give some insights on that. So I’m running this organization, Secure Purple. And we are doing, our focus was actually on the end users’ safety, so particularly women and kids. We have been very active in that. We arrange workshops, trainings, awareness in different regions in Pakistan. I’m from Pakistan, basically. But you know, normally in our trainings and workshop, what we used to do is to train the women and kids because they’re the most vulnerable part of the internet. particularly on image-based abuse, particularly on cyberbullying and stuff like that. So what we used to do was to train them how to stay protected from these kind of threats. And one of the recommendations we used to do was never share different or questionable or maybe indecent pictures of yours, maybe if you’re in an online relationship or normally or anywhere over the internet, because that was the main cause of creating or maybe give a rise to image-based abuse. But no, I’m actually in doubt of that recommendation because with AI now, you can create any sort of content with just a singular image. So now I’m thinking, what’s the next step, you know? And I’ll give you statistics, actually. There is an organization, Sensity AI, and they have been tracking the defects since 2015. And they have given the statistic that 95% of the defects are actually non-consensual porn. So imagine the defect, a huge technology coming up, and the 95% of its consumption is actually on the non-consensual porn. I mean, what would be the amount of the image-based abuse? What would be the morality and the social structure of the society if there is so much content, questionable content, producing daily just using AI? So I mean, it’s a lot of discussion. I mean, I can’t quite add up to every insights the speakers have shared, but due to time limitation, I would just say, you know, we just need to identify every single stakeholders of the internet, and we just need to reach them out. For example, on reporting, even if I report, the reputation damage it caused to me, the virility the video gets, I mean, the damage has been done, you know? I know, yeah, accountability is necessary, but still, particularly for a moment, reputation is gone, the damage has been done, they might not get able to get a job. You know, there have been cases we dealt with where actually, you know, people get divorces just because of a single image being getting public. That might be an indecent picture, but still, you know, the impact is too much. Legislations or rules, I mean, coming from a technical side, I can get away with these stuff. You know, the anonymity internet gives me. I can create a fake Facebook account with a fake email, with a fake phone number. Who are you gonna trace me? So, I mean, there’s a lot more, you know, to still consider in the internet space. And I’m still, I mean, we even from the technical end, we still confuse, I mean, how do we deal with it? And it may take time to evolve. So, yeah. Thank you.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Thank you. Thank you for the very realistic and on-ground intervention. Hadia, I guess we have Toray, Moussa Toray has a raised hand, as well as Caleb. And we need to conclude people are waiting outside, by the way. We have till 1245, so

CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE: Let me just quickly jump in because of time. Okay. So, back to the last speaker. One of the few things that I think I observed is he asked a question about the conscious effort of even the technology organizations, such as that own AI infrastructures, right? What are the conscious efforts that they are putting in into making sure that there are no abuses on some of this AI generated items that come online that could become viral? Now, one of the things I know that Meta does is that Meta allows you to be able to flag AI generated contents. And because you’re able to flag that, it kind of, in a way, reduces the virality. But one of the things that I am not sure of is that if other social media platforms are beginning to follow or toe in line and have some form of governance board, accountability board, that also helps review some of these things and some of the accounts that they have. At least I’m aware that Facebook is making conscious efforts on that. I’m not sure about X. I’m not sure about BlueSky. I’m not sure about other ones. But it would be a very interesting thing to see that they are taking conscious efforts to make sure that they are able to flag AI-generated contents such that those AI-generated contents do not become viral. And one of the things that I also like to see is that for AI-generated content, there should be meta tags that indicate within the images that are generated within those contents to indicate that these are AI content. And there should be a global standard that allows for those kind of meta tagging of AI-generated contents, even from any platform. Yeah. Thanks. That’s my quick intervention to the last speaker. Thanks. Thank you, Caleb. We had a raised hand from Musa.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: OK. Thank you, Musa. Hadi, are you still there? OK. You’re muted. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I was disconnected for a few moments, but I’m back again. And I wanted to ask Dr. Moussa to talk a little bit I wanted to ask Dr. Maha after hearing what Caleb said. How could we require tech platforms to take responsibility for abusive content? So is this possible? And how could we actually put it in action?

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: Well, yes. Definitely, yes. We have to put them responsible for abusive content. And actually, they can do that. They have the resources. They have the tools. And we’ve been seeing what they have been doing for an instant during the what was. what was happening in Gaza and the conflict, they could have taken down all the content that they thought it’s not right from their point of view, they were biased, they were not neutral, so they can do whatever they want, so they should be responsible for taking any abusive content, hate speech, all these kind of things. And again I didn’t answer your question about the framework for AI, it’s ongoing debate between having an AI framework or legislation, I think we all know that the EU already has or had an act and it’s not working, most of the countries from the European Union are not working with this act and I guess mainly France who tried to work with the act and it didn’t work out, so we’ve been thinking that a framework could be more realistic, taking into consideration the huge action and speed in the AI which is moving almost every day and changing every day, so a legislation could be a little bit not good for this, but we are still, because we have actually proposed legislation in the parliament for the AI and we are waiting to see what will happen in that. But still either legislation or framework, we have to have something to the ethics, what should be done, the responsibility, and it’s extremely, extremely difficult if something happened with a self-driving car with the software and it killed a person. Who is responsible? And I’m a policymaker or legislator. I cannot say who could be responsible. Am I going to put the man who made the program in prison or the car? You can do nothing about that. You will just try to make as much as precautions, but it will be never, ever enough. And we will always have these kind of things. And I’m talking about the self-driving car because it’s already there. It’s happening. And we are hearing about the avatars, so you can have your avatar go and do a murder somewhere and no one can go back on you, and the VR, and a lot, a lot. Actually, thank you very much for what you said because it’s almost impossible. I think, well, the ones from you who saw Black Mirror, I think we are in the Black Mirror era and we don’t know what will happen after that. Thank you, Haji.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you so much. And if no one from the ground wants to make an intervention now or Noha, if you want to make it. Yeah, we have a raised hand here. Okay. Can you hear me? We hear you.

LISA VERMEER: Thank you so much. My name is Lisa Vermeer. I’m from the Netherlands. I work as a policymaker in Holland. Thank you so much for this interesting discussion. I wanted to share one thing with you and also ask a question related to the innovation part of this session. The first thing I wanted to share is that I work on the European AI Act in the Netherlands. It’s quite a new law. And at the moment, all the member states are working to really transform it, transition it into their own legislative systems. So this is quite a challenge, but I’m still hopeful that it will work. And maybe related to the discussion about abusive content and about deepfakes and the problems that are arised in that, there are provisions in the European AI Act that try to address this issue. And personally, I find it very exciting to see whether it’s going to work or not, because there are provisions that state that it has to be made clear by the developer of, for example, deepfakes, that it is AI generated and manipulated. And it also needs… to be machine readable and also for users of the internet it needs to be recognizable that it’s that it’s generated or manipulated content so maybe that can help but on the other hand of course there’s lots of actors who make this content and their intention is to do harm so in that sense the law is always limited to what extent it will help but at least it gives some kind of power to legislators in the EU to enforce and address when things are going wrong so and I wanted to ask in what kind maybe to you dr. Ma and to the speaker online Caleb to what extent do you think that the risk that you mentioned in your presentations hamper the entrepreneurial spirit of people of SMEs for example in your countries I’m very eager to learn whether for example female entrepreneurs are really stopped by the abusive practices they experience online or whether they still have for example in Nigeria that SMEs are still going on and not being being limited too much by this abuse of the law for example so thank you in advance for shedding some light on the innovation I can ecosystems in your countries thanks so much

HADIA ELMINIAWI: dr. Maha and then Caleb if but the initial shall we take the other question or I think be all the questions yeah thank you Caleb and thank you for the

AUDIENCE: excellent interventions I really enjoyed it much my name is Amra Hashem I I am a member of internet master and it was quite enlightening listening to all those interventions but let me share with you because we are we have always been thinking of the risks but let me share with you a story that happens maybe five centuries ago and it has costed this part of the world that we are living in, the Arab world, a lot over those 500 years because they were afraid to adopt innovation that was coming up at this point in time which was printing. They were afraid that through printers and through printing the Quran which is the holy book for the Muslims worldwide could be forged and it could not be accurate as the handwritten Quran. So actually the Sultan back then, Bayezid II, decided that he is not, he is forbidding printing to be deployed throughout the Islamic world that was controlled by the Ottoman Empire back then because they were afraid of the challenges and the risks associated with printing. So if we are reflecting today on what is happening with technology and innovation, let us please not consider the risks as much as we are considering the opportunities that could be, that could AI be opening to us. And if we are afraid of deep fakes or something that happened, let us instead of thinking about forbidding it because at the end of the day we cannot forbid it. The people who want to do deep faking or something like that will have access to the resources and will do it anyways. But let us think about counter technologies that would help us to make this a reality and to actually get the good part without the bad part. Thank you and looking forward to hear your comments on that.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you Amr for the positive note. Thank you. I also wanted to say something about what Amr, yeah this is Hadi. So I wanted to just point out something about what Amr just said. So what happened really that is Quran spread faster with the printing and instead more people could read it. And also now with the internet and having everything online you can just go on your mobile and read it. So it turned out that it was even better for the spreading of the holy book. And I just before the, I know you had a question with regard to innovation and I had one also with in regard to innovation. So I would pose the question so that you can answer both together. And the question is related to the establishment of collaborative platforms like how How can policy makers facilitate the establishment of collaborative platform for the exchange of insights among peers and experts in the field of digital innovation and risk management, of course? So I will stop here. And Noha, do you want to give the floor to Dr. Meha and then maybe Caleb? Yeah, sure, Dr. Meha.

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: OK, I will start by answering your question. Well, actually, the female entrepreneurs, no, they are still working. And the innovators, the female innovators, I don’t think that they can be stopped easily by any cyber bullying or cyber attacks or things like that, because they are entrepreneurs and they are in the innovation business. And there are measures, actually, and there are things that they can use or they can get them to help them. And as Mariam said in her intervention, actually, there are still problems, but there are a lot of initiatives, actually, which is somehow helping, especially women in this area. Commenting on what you said, Amr, there is nothing can be stopped anywhere. We are not talking about stopping anything. If we are a bit worried or afraid or seeing the risks, we definitely see the opportunities and what AI can be helpful in. It is just. we need to be careful, we need to see the challenges and to address the challenges and as you said go to the find counter technologies to work with that but it’s moving extremely fast and I think this is what is frightening it’s not just worrying it’s even for us who are working in the technology field and in the digital field but we think this is it’s moving extremely fast that’s all what I can say as for your question Hadia it is not again the policy makers who can do or who can work with collaborative platforms it’s the executive bodies and there is nothing that can prevent this from happening it is just the problem of collaboration anyway any kind of collaboration and and unfortunately we are talking about digital collaboration but everything goes back to politics and as one who is working in politics I can tell you that it’s not easy because to get the data flow in Africa it has to have a political will to do this to to have a platform joint platform to to work with between countries it has to have political will and it is a political decision it’s not it’s not a digital decision and it’s not from the policy makers or from the legislators it’s from the executive bodies and the governments I guess and and we can give them our ideas our thoughts and try to push them to do so because I think we need to do this especially in Africa, in the Middle East, in the Arab world, we need to collaborate together, we need to cooperate together, and to work together to get things done, as I think that no country can do it on its own. It’s now beyond the countries. We need really to work together. Thank you.

HADIA ELMINIAWI: Thank you, Dr. Maha and Noha. I see a hand from the floor. I just had a follow-up for Dr. Maha, but maybe I can just post the question and move to Noha, and then Dr. Maha can answer later. And the question is, how do those bodies, executive bodies, work together in order to exchange insights in the field of digital innovation and risk management? How do they coordinate? And I will pause here, Noha, and give you the floor to manage the queue.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Thank you, Hadia. We have a raised hand from our online audience. Moussa, do you want to take the floor? Or maybe share your questions in the chat? Will you raise your voice a bit, please? Yeah, we can hear you. Please go ahead.

AUDIENCE: My name is Moussa from Nigeria. I’m a student here in Malusia, in Al-Baghdadi National University. I would like to make a contribution regarding what the former speaker has said about collaboration between the bodies. I think that’s the strongest way to do it. Sorry, Moussa, the voice quality is not good. Can you try to raise your voice, please, or post your questions in the chat? Are you listening now? Yeah, yeah, okay. Okay, please proceed. Yeah, I want to make a suggestion and contribution to what the former speaker has said about the collaboration between the bodies. I think that is the perfect way to change life to do our own security in Africa. Because back there in my country, there is an incident that’s just going on. Whenever you like, you post something bad about a government personnel like a politician in the country, it is very easy for the government to press you and get you and like, they’ll press you and get you and deal with you regarding the issue you caused. But like for the institutions, I don’t know what the kind of technology are they using to press the person that post on the social media against a politician. And the kind of technology they use to press like the bandit and the other people that post on social media. So I think there must be a collaboration between the government and the leg to come together and put, that we should come together and talk to each other so that we get to do our own policy and security. That’s what I want to do.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: So Musa was emphasizing on the importance of collaboration between the government and other bodies to facilitate the reporting mechanism or finding the attackers. Yeah, Maha, you have a comment? No, no, I guess he was talking about

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: anyone who can post anything against the government or against someone from the politicians can be easily caught. And trust me, Moussa, it’s not just Nigeria, it’s in a lot of places, yeah. It’s, I guess, yes, all across Africa and some other countries too. We don’t want to specify. And I don’t think that this is what we need the governments to be collaborating in. We need the governments to be collaborating in doing, in trying to make the internet a safer place. And for the, what, your question, Hadia, it’s, I don’t know how they can do that. It’s their job to cooperate. They can easily, in a place like this, in the IJF, in other forums, the officials from different countries, they can sit together and agree on a way of cooperation. They can agree on having a unified platform for reporting the abuse, for instance, or doing things, helping each other in approaching a safer place in the internet for all vulnerable groups. So it’s doable. It is just, as I mentioned before, it needs a political web. It needs them to be really wanting that and feeling the importance of this cooperation and collaboration, which I don’t think is happening right now across Africa so far. Thank you.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Thank you, Dr. Maha. Caleb, I saw your hand raised.

CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE: Yeah, so I just wanted to comment on the lady who did ask a direct question to me about how we encourage women-owned SMEs when it comes to innovation and risk management. So I just wanted to mention something that, first of all, with respect to my male gender, I would say that women are the best money managers, right? And we need to give them their flowers when it comes to that. So why am I saying that? It means that women are actually the ones who power the underground of the economy that we have even globally. Trust me, women are always the ones at the marketplace, which makes them even more exposed and vulnerable. And I’ll take it back to how we can encourage women SMEs when it comes to around innovation and risk. First thing that I see is that the system itself is very biased against them when it comes to funding and supporting women such that they can innovate, such that they can expand businesses, make it more scalable. They are even more exposed to risk than even the male gender themselves. So I would say that they don’t have the same access to funding like their male counterpart. And so it limits their ability to want to scale and innovate. I haven’t seen so many female innovators when it comes to AI. I’ve always seen a lot of male, right? Why is it that the percentage of women are lower than those of men? So I’d like to see, in my own view, responding to the question that was thrown directly at me earlier on, to see that more women are actually supported when it comes to networking, funding, mentorship, and even risk management, as well as capacity training to help them have that. And then government should be conscious about having inclusive funding strategy or procurement to support women and those who are disabled, at least have a certain percentage for them. I’m aware of that, that that is being done in Kenya, that at least about 30% of government procurement are given to us women. men, those with disability, and a couple of other criteria. But I feel that more can be done. So that’s just my little intervention to the question that was thrown by the lady in red. I couldn’t pick her name when she asked the question. My apologies on that, please.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Thank you, Caleb, for responding and for being a good ally for women empowerment. We need to wrap up, but there is one raised hand here from the on-site audience. Razan, you have, please, in less than one minute.

AUDIENCE: I’m Razan Zakaria from Egypt. I’m a VIAG ambassador, and I’m a content creator. So you talked about the collaboration with the government, and I saw that the most important to collaborate with the platform owners, like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, because they already have a social media platform that you can say that control on our minds and use algorithm sometimes to control in our point of view. As a content creator, when I want to share my point of view, especially in the politics topics, I see that algorithm that’s forbidding me to share my point of view and consider it as a hated speech or something like this, especially that’s related to the war in Gaza, and we said it at the last year, and we already have some tricks like symbols like watermelon or dots between the words, but we don’t have a freedom to share our point of view, and it’s a foreign platform, and the owners have a background with politics thoughts, and they manage on our sharing of our point of view. So this is my issue, actually.

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY: Thank you, Razan. So yeah, everyone has a hidden agenda, and it’s good that we’re trying to trick the algorithms. Dr. Maha, do you have any comments? And please add your closing remarks, because we need to wrap up.

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER: Okay, thank you, Razan. As I said earlier, you can do nothing about it, because they own these platforms, and whatever we tell them, they own it. them, actually we talked to them directly and they claim that they don’t do that, but we know very well that they are doing that and there is nothing we can do about it, except tricking them as you said, and they couldn’t do anything about it, so we could manage somehow. As a closing remark, I think I will close with the positive note from Amr that the technology, despite of all the facts that we’ve been talking about, about the threats, the risks, the challenges, but we should look at the opportunities and we should think what could be the world without technology. It’s a completely different world and I don’t think that we can do anything without technology anymore, so this is the end of it, we have to live with it, even if we had to sacrifice some of our resources.

Agreement Points

Cybersecurity and data privacy are major risks in digital innovation

speakers

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER

CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE

arguments

Cybersecurity threats and data privacy concerns

Need for government-led initiatives and regulatory sandboxes

summary

Both speakers emphasize the importance of addressing cybersecurity threats and data privacy concerns in the digital era, suggesting the need for government initiatives and regulatory measures.

Need for improved reporting mechanisms for online abuse

speakers

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY

arguments

Improving reporting mechanisms for online abuse

Cultural barriers preventing victims from reporting incidents

summary

Both speakers highlight the importance of enhancing reporting mechanisms for online abuse and addressing cultural barriers that prevent victims from reporting incidents.

Similar Viewpoints

All three speakers express concerns about the challenges in regulating and holding accountable tech platforms and those in power for online content and expression.

speakers

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER

CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY

arguments

Challenges in holding tech platforms accountable for abusive content

Abuse of regulatory frameworks by those in power

Bias in social media algorithms affecting freedom of expression

Unexpected Consensus

Importance of balancing innovation and risk management

speakers

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER

AUDIENCE

arguments

Developing alternative solutions and backups for technology failures

Importance of not hindering innovation due to fear of risks

explanation

Despite discussing risks, both Dr. Maha and an audience member unexpectedly agree on the importance of not letting fear of risks hinder innovation, suggesting a balanced approach to digital transformation.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The speakers generally agree on the importance of addressing cybersecurity threats, improving reporting mechanisms for online abuse, and the need for better regulation of tech platforms. There is also a shared recognition of the challenges in balancing innovation with risk management.

Consensus level

Moderate consensus on major issues, with some variations in proposed solutions and emphasis. This level of agreement suggests a common understanding of the challenges in digital innovation and online safety, which could facilitate collaborative efforts in developing strategies to address these issues.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to mitigating technological dependency risks

speakers

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER

CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE

arguments

Developing alternative solutions and backups for technology failures

Need for government-led initiatives and regulatory sandboxes

summary

Dr. Maha emphasizes developing alternative solutions and backups, while Caleb focuses on government-led initiatives and regulatory sandboxes to address technological risks.

Focus on primary risks in digital innovation

speakers

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY

arguments

Cybersecurity threats and data privacy concerns

Digital divide between privileged and less privileged users

summary

Dr. Maha prioritizes cybersecurity and data privacy risks, while Noha emphasizes the risk of a growing digital divide between privileged and less privileged users.

Unexpected Differences

Perspective on technological dependency

speakers

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER

AUDIENCE

arguments

Technological dependency and potential for system failures

Importance of not hindering innovation due to fear of risks

explanation

While Dr. Maha expresses concern about technological dependency and its risks, an audience member unexpectedly argues for embracing innovation despite potential risks, citing historical examples. This difference highlights the tension between risk mitigation and fostering innovation.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around prioritizing different risks in digital innovation, approaches to mitigating these risks, and the balance between risk management and fostering innovation.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers is moderate. While there is general consensus on the existence of various risks in digital innovation, speakers differ in their prioritization of these risks and proposed solutions. These differences reflect the complexity of managing digital innovation risks and highlight the need for multifaceted approaches that consider various perspectives and stakeholder needs.

Partial Agreements

All speakers agree on the need to address online abuse, but they propose different approaches. Dr. Maha focuses on improving reporting mechanisms, Caleb emphasizes cross-border collaboration, and Noha stresses the importance of raising awareness and digital literacy.

speakers

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER

CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY

arguments

Improving reporting mechanisms for online abuse

Need for cross-border collaboration and data sharing

Raising awareness and digital literacy among vulnerable groups

Similar Viewpoints

All three speakers express concerns about the challenges in regulating and holding accountable tech platforms and those in power for online content and expression.

speakers

DR. MAHA ABDEL NASSER

CALEB OLUMUYIWA OGUNDELE

NOHA ASHRAF ABDEL BAKY

arguments

Challenges in holding tech platforms accountable for abusive content

Abuse of regulatory frameworks by those in power

Bias in social media algorithms affecting freedom of expression

Key Takeaways

Digital innovation brings significant risks like cybersecurity threats, data privacy concerns, and technological dependency

There is a need for better frameworks and strategies to manage online risks while fostering innovation

Collaboration between governments, tech platforms, and civil society is crucial for addressing online abuse and risks

Women and vulnerable groups face disproportionate challenges in the digital realm and need targeted support

Balancing innovation with risk management is an ongoing challenge that requires flexible approaches

Resolutions and Action Items

Establish clear principles for responsible AI use by organizations

Develop alternative solutions and backups for technology failures

Improve reporting mechanisms for online abuse

Raise awareness and digital literacy among vulnerable groups

Create more inclusive funding strategies to support women entrepreneurs in tech

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively hold tech platforms accountable for abusive content

How to address anonymity and traceability of bad actors online

How to implement AI regulations consistently across different countries

How to balance freedom of expression with content moderation on social media platforms

How to bridge the digital divide between privileged and less privileged users

Suggested Compromises

Using regulatory sandboxes to test AI systems while allowing for innovation

Balancing government oversight with industry self-regulation for tech platforms

Focusing on frameworks rather than strict legislation to allow flexibility for rapidly changing technology

We are so dependent on the technology now and I think this is one of the major threats, risk and challenge at the same time.

speaker

Dr. Maha Abdel Nasser

reason

This comment highlighted a less obvious but critical risk of digital innovation – over-dependence on technology. It shifted the focus from more commonly discussed risks like cybersecurity to a broader societal challenge.

impact

This led to further discussion on the need for backup systems and alternative solutions when technology fails, deepening the conversation on risk mitigation strategies.

We need to first of all start having what we call government-led initiatives. Some of those initiatives could also be based on legislation, regulatory frameworks, sandboxes, where a company can also test innovation safely.

speaker

Caleb Olumuyiwa Ogundele

reason

This comment introduced concrete ideas for managing innovation risks through policy and regulatory approaches. It provided a practical perspective on how to balance innovation and risk.

impact

It sparked discussion on the role of government in facilitating safe innovation, leading to conversations about cross-border collaboration and public-private partnerships.

So bias in AI applications and systems happens when outcomes of AI systems favor or disadvantage a certain group, or favor certain outcomes, or favors certain individuals.

speaker

Hadia Elminiawi

reason

This comment brought attention to the critical issue of bias in AI systems, highlighting the ethical implications of digital innovation.

impact

It led to a deeper exploration of the challenges in ensuring fairness and accountability in AI applications, broadening the discussion beyond just technical risks to include social and ethical considerations.

There is no platform, single platform, as I said, I suggested that to have something like that, and the reporting should be online, as it is all online crimes, but it didn’t go through

speaker

Dr. Maha Abdel Nasser

reason

This comment highlighted a practical gap in addressing online abuse and cybercrime, pointing out the lack of a unified reporting system.

impact

It sparked discussion on the need for better reporting mechanisms and the challenges in implementing such systems, leading to considerations of both technical and political barriers.

Let us please not consider the risks as much as we are considering the opportunities that could be, that could AI be opening to us.

speaker

Amr Hashem

reason

This comment provided a counterpoint to the risk-focused discussion, reminding participants of the potential benefits of digital innovation.

impact

It shifted the tone of the conversation towards a more balanced view of digital innovation, encouraging participants to consider both risks and opportunities.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by broadening its scope from specific technical risks to wider societal, ethical, and policy considerations. They encouraged a more nuanced and multifaceted examination of digital innovation, balancing concerns about risks with recognition of opportunities. The comments also highlighted practical challenges in implementing safeguards and reporting systems, leading to a more grounded discussion of real-world implementation issues. Overall, these insights deepened the level of analysis and introduced greater complexity to the conversation, moving it beyond surface-level concerns to more systemic and forward-looking considerations.

How can we establish a single national platform for reporting cyber bullying?

speaker

Hadia Elminiawi

explanation

A centralized reporting system could improve response to online abuse and make it easier for victims to seek help

What international frameworks exist for reporting online incidents like DNS abuse?

speaker

Hadia Elminiawi

explanation

Understanding existing global mechanisms could help improve coordination in addressing online security issues

How can we require tech platforms to take responsibility for abusive content?

speaker

Hadia Elminiawi

explanation

Holding platforms accountable could reduce the spread of harmful content and protect users

To what extent do online risks hamper the entrepreneurial spirit of SMEs, particularly female entrepreneurs?

speaker

Lisa Vermeer

explanation

Understanding the impact of online risks on business innovation could inform policies to support entrepreneurs

How can policymakers facilitate the establishment of collaborative platforms for exchanging insights on digital innovation and risk management?

speaker

Hadia Elminiawi

explanation

Improved collaboration could lead to more effective strategies for managing digital risks

How do executive bodies work together to exchange insights in the field of digital innovation and risk management?

speaker

Hadia Elminiawi

explanation

Understanding current coordination efforts could identify areas for improvement in addressing digital challenges

How can we develop counter-technologies to address issues like deep fakes while preserving the benefits of AI?

speaker

Amr Hashem

explanation

Balancing innovation with risk mitigation is crucial for responsible technological advancement

Summary

This presentation focused on artificial intelligence (AI) readiness, particularly in the context of generative AI and its impact on organizations. The speaker, Alaa Zaher from Gartner, discussed the evolution of AI from traditional machine learning to generative AI, highlighting the revolutionary capabilities of large language models like ChatGPT. He emphasized that while generative AI has made AI more accessible to individuals, organizations face challenges in implementing it safely and effectively.

Zaher introduced the concept of a “technology sandwich” to describe the evolving AI landscape in enterprises. This framework includes layers for data sources, AI platforms, and governance structures. He stressed the importance of data management, semantics, and fine-tuning in preparing for AI implementation. The speaker also highlighted the shift from centralized, structured data to decentralized, unstructured data in AI applications.

The presentation addressed the risks associated with AI adoption, including data interpretation errors, security concerns, and the phenomenon of “bring your own AI.” Zaher emphasized the need for organizations to develop robust governance structures and risk management practices to mitigate these challenges. He noted that while AI vendors are racing to embed AI in their products, organizations should take a measured approach to AI adoption, focusing on productivity improvements unless their industry is being disrupted.

The discussion concluded with questions from the audience, touching on topics such as successful implementations of the technology sandwich concept, the role of major AI labs in ensuring AI safety, and the trend of organizations developing their own generative AI models. Overall, the presentation provided a comprehensive overview of the current state of AI readiness and the considerations organizations must address as they navigate this rapidly evolving landscape.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Overview of AI history and recent developments in generative AI

– Components needed for AI readiness in organizations (data, talent, infrastructure)

– New AI paradigm emerging with unstructured data and decentralized applications

– Importance of data management, semantics, and fine-tuning for AI

– Concept of the “technology sandwich” for managing AI in organizations

Overall purpose:

The purpose of this discussion was to provide an overview of AI developments, particularly generative AI, and discuss what organizations need to do to prepare for and effectively implement AI technologies. The speaker aimed to highlight both the opportunities and challenges of AI adoption.

Tone:

The overall tone was informative and educational, with the speaker taking on the role of an expert explaining complex topics to an audience. The tone remained consistent throughout, with occasional moments of humor or lightheartedness to keep the audience engaged. The speaker maintained a balance between enthusiasm for AI’s potential and caution about its risks and implementation challenges.

Speakers

– Alaa Zaher: Senior Executive Partner at Gartner, technology research and digital expert

– Audience: Multiple unnamed audience members asking questions

Additional speakers:

– Amal: Audience member who asked a question about successful applications of the “technology sandwich” concept

– Mohamed: Audience member who asked about organizations developing their own generative AI models

– Martina Legal-Malakova: Audience member from GAIAxApp Slovakia, focusing on data spaces and data sharing

AI Readiness and Implementation: A Comprehensive Overview

This detailed summary expands on a presentation by Alaa Zaher, Senior Executive Partner at Gartner, focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) readiness and its impact on organisations, particularly in the context of generative AI.

Evolution and Impact of AI

The discussion began by tracing the evolution of AI from traditional machine learning to the current era of generative AI. Zaher emphasised the revolutionary capabilities of large language models like ChatGPT, which have made AI more accessible to individuals. This democratisation of AI technology is changing how people interact with and utilise AI in their daily lives.

The impact of AI on industries was highlighted, with Zaher noting that an increasing percentage of CEOs believe generative AI will have a significant impact on their sector over the coming years. This underscores the urgency for organisations to consider their AI readiness and strategy. Zaher further illustrated the rapid pace of AI development by stating that new foundation models are being created at an unprecedented rate, emphasising the intense competition in the field.

Data Requirements and Management for AI

A crucial point in the discussion was the importance of data for AI systems. Zaher emphasised that without data, there can be no AI, highlighting the critical importance of data in a relatable way. This led to an explanation of different data types and sources needed for various AI applications.

The presentation highlighted a shift in data requirements from traditional machine learning, which relied on structured, centralised data, to generative AI, which can work with unstructured data from various sources. Despite this evolution, Zaher stressed that data management and governance remain necessary for effective AI use. Organisations need to focus on data semantics and fine-tuning for AI implementation.

The concept of data sharing was also discussed, touching on its implications for both social and economic spheres, particularly in sectors like manufacturing and energy.

Enterprise AI Readiness and the “Technology Sandwich”

Zaher introduced the concept of a “technology sandwich” to describe the evolving AI landscape in enterprises. This framework includes layers for data sources, AI platforms, and governance structures. The bottom layer consists of various data sources, including structured and unstructured data. The middle layer comprises AI platforms and tools, such as large language models and other AI technologies. The top layer focuses on governance, including security measures, access controls, and risk management practices.

He emphasised that organisations need to prepare for a new AI paradigm with decentralised applications and develop this “technology sandwich” approach to manage AI risks and implementation. This framework helps organisations understand the components necessary for successful AI integration and the potential challenges they may face.

The discussion touched on the trade-off between using third-party AI services and developing in-house capabilities. Zaher used a metaphor to communicate the risks associated with giving AI systems access to unstructured organisational data, comparing it to letting someone into a messy room. This led to a discussion about the importance of data management, access rights, and security considerations when implementing AI systems in organisations.

Challenges and Considerations for AI Adoption

The presentation addressed several challenges associated with AI adoption, including data interpretation errors, security concerns, and the phenomenon of “bring your own AI.” This refers to employees using personal AI tools for work purposes, potentially exposing company data to external systems. Zaher emphasised the need for organisations to develop robust governance structures and risk management practices to mitigate these challenges.

There was agreement on the importance of strong security practices and governance for successful AI implementation. The discussion also touched on the need to balance the push from AI vendors with organisational readiness. Zaher noted that while AI vendors are racing to embed AI in their products, organisations should take a measured approach to AI adoption, focusing on productivity improvements unless their industry is being disrupted.

Cost implications of AI implementation were also discussed, with Zaher highlighting the potential for significant expenses related to data preparation, model training, and ongoing maintenance of AI systems.

Audience Questions and Future Considerations

The presentation concluded with several thought-provoking questions from the audience:

1. An audience member asked about successful applications of the “technology sandwich” concept, seeking real-world implementation examples.

2. Another inquiry focused on the role of major AI labs like Google DeepMind and OpenAI in ensuring AI safety within the technology sandwich framework.

3. A question was raised about whether enterprises are expected to develop their own generative AI models to protect their data, or if big tech companies will dominate this space.

4. An audience member questioned the categorisation of data sharing in the context of data analytics and AI, exploring its implications for both social and business initiatives.

These questions highlighted unresolved issues in AI implementation, including the full extent of generative AI’s impact on various industries, best practices for balancing vendor pressure with organisational readiness, optimal strategies for cost management in AI deployment, and the role and implications of data sharing across different sectors.

In conclusion, the presentation provided a comprehensive overview of the current state of AI readiness and the considerations organisations must address as they navigate this rapidly evolving landscape. It emphasised the need for a measured approach to AI adoption, strong data management practices, and robust security and governance frameworks to ensure successful and responsible AI implementation.

Alaa Zaher: you You You You That’s me You Okay Can everyone hear me Hello, yes, okay great So I’ll I’ll be raising my voice like this in case you’re not actually using the headset You can still hopefully hear me. I think it makes for a more natural interaction So where you like and then because my voice is also probably quite loud You can if you’re using the headset, you can turn down the volume So first of all, thank you for coming and welcome Like to introduce myself. I’m a let’s say her a senior executive partner at Gartner Gartner is a research technology research and digital Any And we have of being here today in the IGF digital government agency event To talk about a number of things. My colleagues have been talking about and I’ll be talking specifically about readiness when it comes to artificial intelligence and specifically on data, but I’ll also expand the discussion beyond the data aspect of the readiness. So, I’ll basically be looking at a little bit of history of AI, the impact of generative AI, and then what that means for consumers, what it means for enterprises, and then we’re going to zoom in on the enterprise part to really look at what it takes for you to build the right capability in your organization in order to harness the power of artificial intelligence. How does that sound? All good? All right, let’s get going. So, I’d like to start with this quote from this gentleman over there, Sir Arthur Clark. You may not know him, but he is a British futurist, screenplay writer, somebody who’s really embedded into innovation, and he said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, right? Come to think of it, two years ago, 2023, end of 2022, 2023, I think what we saw with this thing, ChatGPT, is nothing short of magic, right? I think we all agree, the world was stunned by what this chatbot can do, right? And you would think, we’ve had chatbots for ages, yeah? So, if you break down the word ChatGPT, we’ve had chatbots, they weren’t as magical, they weren’t as spectacular. So, what is this that makes it so magical? It’s the other part of the name, the GPT. And what is GPT? Well, it’s short for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. Never mind, we’ll just call it a large-language model. Never mind. So what is a large-language model? It is one derivative of artificial intelligence, right? Intelligence has been around for decades, right? But it is the large-language models, the generative AI, basically. So if you kind of look at the landscape of artificial intelligence… Sorry, just before that. So in case you were hiding under a rock over the past two years, let me show you what ChatGPT can do, right? So when I first laid my hands on technology, I asked it this question. I wanted to test it. I said, summarize the story of Cinderella in 100 words. That’s this chatbot. And it went in a split of a second and generated for me this wonderful summary in a split of a second, in 100 words. Cinderella recounts the story of a kind-hearted, mistreated young woman living with her wicked stepmother and said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Brilliant. I couldn’t have summarized it this way in two hours, maybe even half a day, right? Incredible. Now I challenged it a little bit further. So I asked it, now, can you summarize it for me in 50 words? And again, bang, in a split of a second, it did it in 50 words. In fact, it was 51, to be honest, so just a little bit over. Nonetheless, it’s incredible. Now I really wanted to test it even further, so I kind of pushed the boundaries. And I said, what if I ask it in a different language, in Arabic? Mind you, this was ChatGPT 3, not even 3.5, right? So I asked it, I gave it a really big challenge. Give me a piece of poetry in Arabic. So this is the question I asked it for us, for those of us who are Arabic speakers. speakers that’s what I asked it okay now that that’s quite a challenge for for a computer right and there you go that’s what it gave me behold the mulukhiyah tia fatah nama to an adobe tune for Tommy Tata Rojo fill maklouba Tosca buff and I’ll add three or four huddle Tahi Tata Raqqa so I slam Wow incredible isn’t it and then it goes on and on all right so it might not be the perfect poetry but it’s incredible you know and again it generated in seconds so that is what Chad GPT is capable of that’s what large language models are capable of and this is just the tip of the iceberg because now we have not just 3.5 not for not for but 4.5 for oh that is so what let’s go back and to the technical discussion so the large language models they are a subset of generous AI right there are different types of generative AI models and large language models happen to be the one that Chad GPT uses because it’s for words and for verbal communication but generative AI itself is a subset of machine learning right and that is basically the foundation of most artificial intelligence applications it’s not the only one but it’s the most common one it’s delivering for the more than 15 years so let’s think about you know let’s talk about machine learning for a moment what you know what does it work machine learning basically we’ll take the example the classic example of what machine learning does classification right this is you know the basic function that a machine learning algorithm can actually perform classification so let’s say we want the machine learning model to to classify a picture of a dog when it sees one, right, sees one, when we introduce it to it. So what do we do? We give it the training data set, as many pictures of dogs as we possibly can, right, as many as we can. Training data. Now, go ahead, examine those pictures, and we run it through a statistical model. There are many different statistical models that are used for predictive analysis of the model. Some of the most common are linear regression. You might have heard of decision trees. So these ones, essentially what they do is basically this. They examine each picture. They look for patterns in the pictures, and through the pattern, create a set of rules. And once it has the rules embedded, typically the rules are embedded in a black box, so it doesn’t expose the rules to us, right? We only can judge it by the result. So we present to it the picture, another picture that it hadn’t seen in the past, of a dog. And if the rules are correct, it will identify that this is indeed a dog. And then another one. Oh, it says, that doesn’t conform to my rules. That is not a dog. We present it with a third picture, which happens to be of a dog, doesn’t quite fit the training data, and it gets confused. And so what do we do? We take that picture, feed it back to the model as part of the training data set, and it keeps learning. So this is what we call supervised learning, right? So supervised learning includes this kind of reinforcement, and it also includes what we call feature engineering. So as we were giving it the pictures of the dogs, we might have given it a little help with labeling. Like, this is what a nose of a dog typically looks like. We call it feature engineering, right? So that’s the essential mechanism through which machines. learning models work. Now, let’s project that on what’s happening in the generative AI world, in the large language models. How does that differ? You’ve got the training data. The training data, what do you think is the training data for ChatGPT? It’s text, right? What kind of text? Is it some text that some company gave it to ChatGPT? It’s from the web. You’re absolutely right. It’s not just from the web. It’s the entire World Wide Web. It literally is the entire World Wide Web. 500 billion words. And you might think, how on earth did it ingest the entire World Wide Web? There are tools to do that. You can do it, yeah? You can actually download the entire World Wide Web. So, 500 billion words. It was trained on that. We ran it through that statistical model. And here’s where it gets a bit different. So, remember that GPT part? That generative pre-trained transformer? It’s a transformer architecture. And that transformer architecture is really good at identifying context. If you really want to think about it, it is like an autocomplete on steroids. That’s really what it is. So, you think, when you’re typing on your iPhone a message and it kind of goes… Like I always tell my wife, I’m going to be… And then it says late, right? So, how does it know that? Because it’s just found out that I’ve said it so often. And then it autocompletes. That’s exactly what the pre-trained transformer does. It’s a great autocomplete. So, it gets the context without us having to label for it that feature engineering that I was referring to in the classic machine learning. So, this autocomplete is what allows it then to summarize the story of Cinderella so quickly and without supervision. Because it’s learned the patterns and the context from the training data happens to be the entire worldwide web. And so we get this wonderful summary that we were just looking at. So that’s as far as the large language models and generative AI is concerned. So undoubtedly, generative AI is a revolutionary milestone in the world of artificial intelligence. But we need to remember that artificial intelligence is more than generative AI, and it has been delivering. Let’s remind ourselves of what it has been delivering for us. Some of the things we take for granted, your face ID on your iPhone, that’s computer vision, which is a form of machine learning. If you think of, on top of that, what it does in terms of identifying our friends and family members from our photo albums, et cetera, that is also machine learning, computer vision. Now, take something, again, that never probably crosses our minds in terms of we watch a football game or a sports, and we can see all that is going on in the screen. It’s identified that there’s a player that’s moving there. The shot’s going through that way. All of that is happening in real time, and that is artificial intelligence. Not just that, and specifically in sports, a lot of clubs are using artificial intelligence, have been using artificial intelligence, to actually inform them of the right team formation. So they study the opponent beforehand, and it informs the coach of what kind of formation, who they need to put on the field, et cetera. Liverpool is topping the Premier League this season, and they have been in many past years. And they have a reputation for having one of the strongest AI teams in the Premier League. They’re really leveraging that in a way that allows them to choose the players, so they don’t often get the best stars, right? You can see that they’re getting the right players to allow Liverpool to win. Right, but they’re not necessarily paying the big bucks for the biggest stars So so that’s that’s another Implementation of AI something else that’s been happening and is happening to us right now Through all the social media apps, you know Your Facebook’s your Twitter’s your Instagram’s etc your tick tocks. And again, that’s all happening in the back doing it’s looking at our behaviors and Basically analyzing it in order for it either to suggest to us what post we should look at who we should follow or actually deliver to us a an ad right an ad that that that it predicts is going to be of Interest to us based on our individual behaviors, right? So that’s been going on for at least the past decade hasn’t it right and we’re all bombarded by social media in many different ways That’s artificial intelligence is machine learning Now we move on to the enterprise world in the world of business, right one industry that has been benefiting from AI has been the insurance industry, so it typically you make an insurance claim and You know, it either gets approved or rejected based on the kind of damage the analysis of the accident, etc Assessing the actual cost of the repair that used to be done by humans today It’s it’s supervised by humans But essentially a lot of the effort that goes into this analysis is cut through artificial intelligence So you run the pictures through an AI model that machine learning model and it’s able to tell To give you a recommendation on what to do with the claim whether to approve it or not Now I come from a telecoms background um, we used to use artificial to our network planning So, you know when you’re handling 40 million customers as my company was, you’re basically looking at a very fluid environment of usage, right? So you have certain times of the year where there’s going to be a lot of demand in a particular area, then less demand elsewhere, and you need to be in that dynamic position to predict the usage. We used artificial intelligence to tell us by looking at thousands and petabytes of data, basically, to allow us to predict where the demand is going to come from, where we’re going to have the shortages, et cetera. And not just that, we also used it for understanding the customer behavior. If certain customers were likely to leave our network to the favor of a competitor, then we’d be able to, it would be able to give us early warning signals that we need to save that, rescue that customer by giving them some compelling offer. Another machine learning application, predictive maintenance, given the manufacturing industry, you don’t want to wait till a piece of equipment it stops your production line to anticipate that early enough, and machine learning has been helping manufacturers do that, preemptive maintenance. Right, so as we’re talking about AI for enterprises, what does it take to enable machine learning in your enterprise, is the question. The first element is data, right? No data, no AI, sounds like a song from Bob Marley, right? So no data, no AI, but it’s data, and actually so much data. So I was just telling you about the example from telecoms, we literally were processing petabytes of data on a daily basis, right? So the more data you have, the more opportunities you have for your machine learning models to learn, right? Take the example of the World Wide Web, or when we talk about the dogs. So the more data you provide, the more reliable it’s going to be. So the first element is data. The other element is the geek. A key component of any machine learning environment, of any AI environment, is a data scientist. So when we talked about those complicated models, you will like decision trees, regression analysis, et cetera. You need somebody who knows how to program. So they need to actually have a combination of two skills. They need to be someone who understands statistics and also someone who’s good at programming, typically Python, for example, or R. So you’ve got that combination of very rare skillset of a data scientist. And there’s been a race to hire those people. I can tell you, we were hiring them in my company. And they would stay with us for a year. And they were off to double their salary or something. So it’s a very competitive market. And that’s what makes it difficult for companies to grow that AI capability within the organization impediments. And what else do you need? Well, if you want to process the petabytes of data, you need a huge data center, right? So you need a lot of storage, you need a lot of compute. So that is something that actually is now not absolutely necessary to own, because we have cloud, right? And I think that’s a great thing about the fact that we have cloud. So cloud saves us to invest in huge data centers, and especially that you don’t need all that capacity on an ongoing basis. You need it when you run a model at a particular point in time. So if you get that elasticity from a cloud, then you just use it when you need it. And you’re not paying for a full-scale data center in that manner. So if we were to summarize the components, so you’ve got the computing and the algorithms, they’re pretty much something that are accessible to any organization today. Why? Because the likes of AWS or Google, they will provide those to you and you can pay as you go, so you don’t, so it’s not, there’s no real obstacle there. I mean the obstacle it might be that you, you know, if you do it a lot then the bill might go a little bit high, but at least it is accessible, right? So the models, you know, they exist on platforms like AWS and Google and Microsoft and the compute likewise. The challenge is here, right? The data and the talent, so that, and I think that’s what has held back organizations from progressing on AI over the past years. Only those who have been able to capture the data and the talent are the ones that have been able to make a difference through AI in the core of their business, right? So that, that’s as far as the classic AI, the machine learning is concerned, but that paradigm is changing because generative AI is imposing a new paradigm, right? Specifically what is changing? AI is becoming everyone’s business. It’s becoming accessible to everyone. You don’t need to invest in the data scientist and the data in order to actually have some generative AI capability, right? So think of this. How many of us are able in our day-to-day work to leverage generative AI to help us with our writing? Show of hands, please. Okay, that’s the majority. Maybe PowerPoint? Less? Yeah, okay, that’s great. So it is accessible to us because it is, it’s just so easy. You don’t need to actually… buy anything you just you know pay pennies and sometimes even free tools and likewise for illustration creative work you know the other these are some of the people who have you know leveraged AI and maximize the use of it you know whether it’s artists whether it’s composers etc so that is something that is becoming accessible now of course developers software developers you know systems very much a commonplace today many developers are leveraging AI to help them with that and finally I think last but not least is learning right so and that learning can start from instead of googling I’ll just ask you know the like of a chat GPT and it’ll give me an answer or it could actually be an actual learning but like we have in Khan Academy for example if you’re familiar with that so there’s an actual tutor that helps you and has that discussion with you until you feel that you’ve actually grasped the topic so really generative AI is allowing artificial intelligence to become ubiquitous accessible at the consumer level right at the individual level of the personal level and so what’s it that now do it necessary the geek in every use case of AI do we need the data scientist the examples that I mentioned we don’t know they know this is sitting in the background somewhere in open AI or in Microsoft but on a day-to-day basis we don’t need them in an hour in our own organization and so there’s it’s out with the geek and in with what in with natural language conversation you ask the AI you know I please generate for me a PowerPoint presentation about bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum and it got it you got it I’m very impressive tool that I had a look at recently it’s called builder dot AI so this is basically a piece of software that allows anybody to have a conversation with a chatbot verbally and tell them I want to build a web page for a marketplace where and you give them a description of the marketplace that you have. Goes in the background, generates for you the website. It’s that incredible. So really we’ve kind of, we’re using natural language conversation and that’s what makes it so compelling. And the list goes on and on I mentioned Builder AI but you know look at the hundreds of startups that are coming into this space. Startups every day. In fact you know we have a statistic from Gartner as you know the number of generative AI foundational models that are created. How often do you think we’re seeing a new foundation model? I’ll give you some choices right so that’s once a month new foundational new generative AI model. Once a month? Once a week? Once a week sounds reasonable. Yeah well it’s actually two and a half days. Every two and a half days a new foundation model is created. Now that is the race. There’s a race for a land grab on AI specifically driven by generative AI. Now so here comes the question of this presentation. So is your organization ready? Well I’ll give you another statistic. This is a survey also from Gartner in the past few years. That’s before 2023. We were typically asked our clients who are technology leaders about what they think of AI. Whether they think AI will significantly impact their industry. This is a survey with CEOs. And so the question I asked them was, do you think AI will significantly impact your industry? A lot of CEOs kind of felt that this was, you know, a bit distant from their business, from their industry, like AI, you know, what do I think of when I hear the word AI? So it wasn’t, only 20% said they did, only 20%. Until in 2023, that changed to 59% of CEOs believing 59% of CEOs believing it will make a difference in their industry. And then last, this year, in 2024, this jumped up to 74%, right? 74% of CEOs that we have surveyed believe generative AI will have a profound impact on their industry, right? Now, what this tells us is that there is certainly a big appetite for AI as far as leadership is concerned. So we work with a lot of clients, and we’re seeing that pressure with the technology leaders that we work with. Now, they are asked to do something with AI. There’s a fear of missing out. There’s something we need to do here. How can we just watch there and miss the boat? So that’s a reality. Also, if you look at Gartner’s hype cycle, Gartner’s hype cycle is basically a reflection of the different emerging technologies and looking at their state of adoption and maturity. So generative AI is at the peak of inflated expectations, and now it’s kind of normalizing. It’s kind of normalizing now. But generally, what you’re seeing there is, there is a wide adoption of generative AI. So when I ask the question, is your organization ready for AI? I think the simple answer is, organizations have expectations from AI. Right? So that is certainly a fact. Well, that’s good news, right? That’s good news. So there’s this eagerness. There’s this hunger for AI. But now comes the question, is your data ready for AI? Now, the data discussion on AI is a bit nuanced, because we talked about machine learning, and we talked about generative AI. So they’re not exactly the same animal. Let’s have a look at that. So typically, this is what a data and analytics landscape would look like in terms of its components. So you’ve got different data sources, operational systems, mobile applications, websites, et cetera. And then you’ve got some infrastructure there related to analytics, whether you’ve got a data warehouse, a data lake, or smart. And then you’ve got integration mechanisms like data streaming, batches, ETLs. And you’ve got then data governance, which is basically more of a management activity. And then you’ve got virtualization layers. And then you’ve got the actual presentation and analysis layers related to data science, machine learning. You’ve got business intelligence, which has been the mainstay in the past decades. And then you can actually build on top of that some external services. So that’s kind of the overall ecosystem, if you will. If we simplify it a little bit and think of a data warehouse, because this is really where this all originated. A data warehouse, basically, it tries to capture all the data that you have in your organization and centralize it into a central repository that can then serve the organization in terms of insights. The insights don’t necessarily have to be AI. They could be just analysis through Power BI reports, for example. So typically, what you have there is a what we call a… call an ETL, extract, transform, and load transaction. So you’re trying to collect the data for all those different operational databases and put them in a staging environment, structure them in a way. The key word here is structure. So we really, the big effort we made there was all about structuring the data, preparing the data for consumability, right? So we had to do that through the transform and load. And then we put it into the data warehouse. And once it’s in the data warehouse, let’s build a little data mart for our marketing guys, another one for our finance guys, another one for our operations guys. So where they can actually consume the data through reports from things like Power BI, et cetera. So that is the classic way of going about your data and analytics environment. The key words there were two. There’s data, there’s structured data. All of that is based on structured data. And there’s centralized data, right? We’re trying to centralize the data as much as we can, and we’re trying to structure it. And we’ve got centralized technology. Now, when you think of generative AI, it’s, like I said, it creates a new paradigm. You don’t have to have structured data. You don’t have to have centralized databases or even centralized technology. So that is changing. And let’s have a look at what that means. If you think of the use cases, we’ve been asking our clients, you know, using generative AI, where has it delivered for them? And in most cases, like we’ve got 21% saying that in software development, it’s been most effective, right? 19% saying in call center and help desk, it’s been very effective. And 19% in marketing content creation, and HR self-service, 4%. Right? So these are kind of the use cases that are developing. They’re changing by the day. But these ones have kind of proven themselves in a way more than others. But let’s think about those use cases. Take a moment to kind of zoom in on each one of them and look at what it really means in terms of data. So if you think of a call center agent, they take the call. And very much like what’s happening with me now, the call is being transcribed in real time, right? So the generative AI is playing in the background. It’s listening to the agent, listening to the customer. And it starts interpreting what’s going on. And through the intelligence that it has, through the access it has to corporate policies, our customer care portfolio, et cetera, it’s actually recommending to the agent what they need to do, what to advise the customer on the call, right? So not just that. After the call is over, it’s able to assess the agent and actually do the work of what a supervisor would typically do in a back office. So that is a compelling use case. And it’s working very well. We haven’t yet reached the stage where we’re saying we’re replacing the customer service agent. It’s probably going to happen maybe two years from now, five. I don’t know. But it’s probably going to happen. At the rate of acceleration that we’re seeing with the maturity of the technology, it will be good enough. Right now, it’s about assisting a customer service agent. But when you think of what that means in terms of data, what key data item have we used there? Data asset have we used there? It’s an audio file. It’s not even an audio file. It’s live audio, right? And perhaps also combined with our policies and our regulations and service portfolio. And again, that is something that’s probably in a PDF document. or something. Another use case that’s quite common, AI for resume screening. That’s being extensively used by the HR folks. And that’s basically the data asset there is email. So that’s unstructured data. Think of an advisor on legal. That’s another use case that’s also picking up. So use AI to advise you on legal by lawyers, basically. Likewise for HR also, when it comes to your HR policies. So what are we looking at here? We’re looking at a PDF repository. And a PDF repository is also a form of unstructured data. It’s not tabular. It’s not something that you can put into a database. And if you think of programming and software development, the data source there is a Git repository. It’s a code repository. So as you can see, the theme that we’re building here is that the data is very much unstructured. And when you think of unstructured data, you need to think of a messy room. So imagine yourself walking into a messy room. And there’s data everywhere. I mean, there’s data. We can’t even see it. But the beauty of generative AI, before generative AI, if you think of this analogy, we would have to clean up every inch of that room in order for us to use the data. But with generative AI, you don’t need to clean it anymore. You just leave it up to generative AI. And you’re able to pick up the data lying on the floor, the data on the sofa, the data in the pot, and even the data that we’re not seeing. It will figure out that there is a pair of running shoes under that cupboard. They’re size nine, and their color is pink. So it’s actually identifying the data that you’re seeing. And you can think, wow, that’s amazing. I don’t need to structure my data anymore. I don’t need to do the housekeeping. I can be lazy. Quite, to some extent, but not quite. Why? Because first of all, it’s expensive. So if you’re going to fully rely on generative AI to do the housekeeping, it’s an expensive housekeeper. But there’s another big reason why. Because of the risk. Right? So think of who you are going to let into your room. Who are you going to allow to touch your stuff? Right? So access rights is an extremely important part. You let it in, you will basically to vacuum everything that it can. It will label everything. It will capture all the data. And that might not go well for you. Think of your corporate presentations, your payroll, your organization chart, et cetera. So all of that, you need to be careful. Don’t want to leave the door open without control. So access rights, basically what we’re saying is, get the data, structure data. Your data will not be ready for AI until you do that. Get the data access rights for unstructured data. The other risk that we need to manage is data interpretation. Now we’ve all heard about AI hallucinations. Yes? AI hallucinations. Basically when it interprets things incorrectly. So large language models can sometimes get it wrong. Sometimes they can get it dramatically wrong. Now I’ll give you a simple example. Actually it might not be a large language model example, but it just shows how AI can be wrong. You see these pictures? These are pictures of what? Oh, bagels, right? But within the bagels, what else do we have there? We have dogs, right? AI doesn’t see that. You know, that’s something that wasn’t, it classified them all as being bagels. Another one, muffins, right? You see the dogs there? OK, I’m sure you do, because you’re human, right? Because AI builds up from the details. Humans fill in the missing details with their experience. So we need to be careful with what the AI gives of misinterpretation. And if we rely on it blindly, then we can really go astray. The second aspect of data, the risk of readiness, is that we need to guide the model. Our context. And that is basically two things, semantics and fine tuning, right? Semantics is basically where you tell it, what does revenue mean? So remember, if we talk about, you know, ChatGPT has the knowledge from the world. So it knows what revenue means in general. It doesn’t know what revenue means for my organization, right? A good example, a client of mine, you know, they were basically, they provide citizen services. But they provide citizen services within a specific jurisdiction, right? And they were trialing this generative AI chatbot with the citizens, where basically the citizen would come in, ask for the service, but they weren’t entitled for it, right? So the AI had to know that this person doesn’t live within that jurisdiction of services, and it had to tell them, I’m sorry, you’re not a resident of this particular county. Now, it didn’t do that. It was actually offering them the service. And that’s a problem, because the semantics weren’t actually done in the way that told them what it means by a citizen, right? The citizen of this particular service. So that’s the semantics. You need to work a lot on your data dictionary, and you need to fine tune the model. That’s true. So we talked about generative AI not needing the supervised learning. Well, I wasn’t 100% accurate when I said that. Generally, it doesn’t. But then when you want it to be useful for a particular use case, you need to fine tune the model. So that’s the other aspect of AI readiness, which is semantics and fine tuning. So when I talked about the housekeeper and we can be lazy, all right, I was only joking. Data management actually continues to be a necessary practice for taming the generative AI. That’s absolutely necessary. In fact, it’s even more important today. But perhaps we’re focusing on some of the less laborious efforts of structuring the data and more on the contextual efforts in what the data means. So we said there’s a new AI paradigm for enterprises. The data is unstructured. The data is no longer centralized. And the other thing is that applications are no longer centralized. So think of today, Gartner estimates that application providers, your software companies, only 5% of them today have a software provider. They have embedded AI in their software, only 5%. Now, in 2026, we believe 80% of all software providers will have a form of embedded AI. Now, 2026 is just around the corner, right? So that’s going to happen very soon, meaning that the AI you will leverage and utilize is not just the AI that you built. It’s actually the AI that will come to you with your software, right? And again, that’s good news, but it could be bad news. Remember when we talked about, who are you going to let into your messy room? So actually, this is a fact from Gartner. the Magic Quadrant, and this is one of the more recent Magic Quadrants that we have, which we’ve built specifically for the generative AI emerging markets for knowledge management applications. As you can see there, look at the number of players there, a lot of them would be familiar to you, all in a race to add AI features and functionality into their software, right? And this Magic Quadrant, we update every quarter. Typically, we update Magic Quadrants every year. For this one, we update it every quarter because the pace is phenomenal, right? So it changes from quarter to quarter. So that’s what’s happening. It’s a reality, you’re gonna get embedded AI, not just the AI that you build. And then, there’s another phenomenon which is even more dangerous. It’s what we call, bring your own AI, right? Right? Remember, bring your own device? Now it’s bring your own AI, because you know what? You’ve got your HR folks who say, we have this nice tool, our colleagues in company X are using it, and it’s fantastic. It makes our lives so much easier. We don’t need to read all the CVs or whatever. You’ve got your marketing folks already using so many stuff that’s creating their artifacts for them, and they never even ask for permission, right? So there’s this phenomenon of bring your own AI that is being progressively introduced to our organizations. And so if we look at the landscape, the evolution of the AI tech stack, this is a classic, this is the classic AI tech stack. Remember when I was showing you the diagram of the data warehouse, et cetera? So this is what you used to have, yeah? All data was centralized and structured. You’ve got an AI platform that you built, right? You’ve got your built AI. And then you serve different functions in your organization, right? How’s that changing? First thing, the data is. centralized, we have some data centralized, like you know, we talked about our policies, our customer records, et cetera. Yeah, that’s cool, we have it, it’s centralized. But now the data is coming from everywhere and every kind. You know, we talked about bring your own AI, talked about the embedded AI. And you’re going to have your AI platform, you’re going to build a lot of blended AI at the moment. Meaning that, for example, you can learn from open AI or from Microsoft and leverage them within an application of yours in order to not to reinvent the wheel, right? So you’ve got the blended AI, but on the top, you’ve also got the embedded AI where you have no control whatsoever in terms of what the AI does. It’s embedded in the software. And you’ve got your bring your own AI efforts that are completely wild and out of control. And in order for us to make sure that it doesn’t get wild and out of control, here comes this middle layer, the trust, risk, and security management. So we alluded to that when we were talking about semantics, when we were talking about access rights. So that’s extremely important. But it’s a conceptual layer there that every organization will need to build in order to mitigate the risk of generative AI. And then in the middle, on top of that, you’re going to have to have some governance, some actual committees. So you’re going to have a central AI committee that looks at, what are we going to allow in the organization, and what can we not permit? You’re going to have communities of practice where people are exchanging knowledge and experiences about their AI. And you’re going to have the trust, risk, security, and oversight. This, my friends, is what Gartner calls the technology sandwich, right? So this is our technology, AI technology sandwich that basically describes how. the AI landscape is evolving. And in fact, it’s a paradigm shift in how it has existed in the past years. And so we invite every company, every organization to really understand what Sandwich means for their organization. And look at what do they need to introduce. And it’s very much a learning curve. So I don’t think any organization we’ve seen has actually figured it out. This is a conceptual framework, and we need to make sure that we’re learning how to apply it. And so, let me conclude. First point, I need to emphasize that we are at the cusp of an AI revolution. And it’s triggered by the AI that was started by ChatGPT, but it’s not going to end there. The other take out is that at the individual level, we’re already feeling the impact. It’s making us much more productive. Each one of us is using it in different ways. And really, suddenly, I see emails that are so proficient that were maybe one year ago, were very different. So that is a reality. For enterprises, it will take longer than individuals because of the risks and the challenges of actually safely introducing AI. And in order to introduce AI safely, you need practices. So that’s a key input. And which basically two of them, access rights and fine tuning and semantics. And for IT leaders, technology leaders, you need to be prepared that you will not have everything centralized and fully under control. You will have to accept that there will be an ecosystem around you, but you just need to put the guardrails around it and not actually own every aspect and every piece of AI in your organization. And that basically means that you need to prepare and customize your own. technology sandwich. Bon appétit. Thank you. So thank you very much for your time. Please take some time to fill the survey of what you think of this session. So the QR code will take you to a landing page, and you’re going to see the title of the presentation. We have a question, please.

Audience: What are the, I would say, successful stories that you’ve had to apply to the max level and what were their experiences?

Alaa Zaher: OK. You’ve already asked your question. I’ll just summarize. So Amal, right? Amal. Amal. So Amal was asking, when it comes to the technology sandwich, what experiences have we seen in terms of fulfilling it successfully, right? Well, it’s a tricky question, because like I said, technology sandwich is a concept we just came up with a month ago. But if you break it down into its components, what we’re seeing are organizations that are fulfilling bits and parts, bits and pieces of it. So we’re seeing organizations that are actually introducing very strong security management practices. We’re seeing organizations that have committees for governance. We’re seeing organizations that are introducing data management and really harnessing, trying things out. So I was telling you about this example of the organization that was serving its citizens with this pilot chatbot. Interestingly enough, another instance where it went wrong was when somebody said, I’m unhappy with the service, right, and the chatbot was responding to them, the degenerative AI model, it said, OK, if you’re unhappy, you can escalate to the office of the minister, right? So this is. that you would never get your call center agent asking you to escalate to the office of the visitor. They should be proposing some solutions. And so what they learned on the back of that exercise is that they really need to double down on the semantics and the fine tuning. So there we see a lot of organizations that are now, that have actually made those trials and they’re learning how to master the art of fine tuning because it’s not easy. You need to look at all the consequences, all the possibilities and feed the model back with the learnings. So it’s an evolving landscape. And I think we’re all in that journey to learn together about it. Thank you very much for your question. Any other questions? Yes, please. Can you pass the mic?

Audience: So, oh yeah, so it is a nice presentation and I really like the technology sandwich thing you showed.

Alaa Zaher: I can hear you. Can you turn the volume up? Okay, because that goes straight to the headset. Oh, nevermind, I’ll just come closer. Everybody else can hear, it’s just me.

Audience: Hopefully. Yeah, so I really like the technology sandwich bit. How do you think these big AI labs like Google DeepMind and OpenAI, they have certain frameworks. So I think OpenAI has their preparedness framework and DeepMind has the frontier safety frameworks. What would you like those labs to do in the line of your technology sandwich to make safer AI and so on?

Alaa Zaher: Thank you, that’s an excellent question. So the question is about the big tech giants, the people who actually produce the generative AI. You remember we said most of us will not create generative AI, we’ll just leverage it, right? We’ll just leverage it from Google, from Amazon, from OpenAI, et cetera. Now, in Gartner, we also talk about two AI races, right? There’s the tech vendor race, the Googles of the world, and there is end user. The tech vendor race is an accelerated race, as we saw in those embedded AI functionality. So they’re going full on, wanting to capture land and be first. For us, in our organizations, we can take our time and slow down. And especially if our industry is not being disrupted by AI. So we’re still kind of very much, most organizations are in this improvement of productivity. So there’s no sense of urgency in terms of, I need to do this very quickly. So my advice is that, as an organization, if you’re not being disrupted, then maybe you have the leverage to actually start installing those practices and looking at what the vendors are providing and deciding safely what matters to you. Now for them, obviously, they’re gonna push. You know, I’ve had customers where they’ve deployed Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI on Azure, and they came back with huge bill shocks to start with, right? The cost of the tokens is incredible, right? And so we just need to slow down. We don’t, we should not be following the vendors because they will try to sell us as much as we can, as they can. And the business case for generative AI is still very much under development, yeah? So what you spend is not necessarily gonna give you an immediate return. So we say there’s a steady pace. For most organizations, it’s the steady pace. For other organizations, it might be an accelerated pace, but then there’ll have to be some, yeah? I hope, all right. Thank you very much. We’ve got two more questions in five minutes. I’ll take this one first.

Audience: From your experience with different, from your experience with different customers, it is expected that to increase the generative AI with enterprise and a lot of entities will start to develop their own generative AI models to protect their data. Or it is expected to dominate from the big guys.

Alaa Zaher: Yeah. Again, a brilliant question. So Mohamed is asking whether we should, are we seeing organizations developing their own generative AI large language models? Not necessarily large language models, but are we building it in-house rather than using it directly from a provider? For example, you can use open source large language models on Hugging Face, et cetera, or Lama, for example. So we’re seeing organizations leverage those open source models. Why? Because they want to host them internally. They don’t want them to be on the cloud. But that then requires a lot of skill in terms of being able to leverage that model internally in-house. So there’s more effort there. And also, less maintainability. You’ll have to take care of it, just like any open source piece of software. So you’re going to own it. And so you’re going to have to have the skill sets to maintain it in the future. We’re seeing that being a driver for many organizations that don’t want to be exposed. So they get the large language model. It’s hosted. And then they need to invest in GPUs. That’s another limitation. So they need to actually start investing. When I talked about cloud, it takes away the hassle and the investment in your infrastructure. Well, you’re going to have to invest in it if you’re going to host it internally. So really, I think it’s a trade-off. We’re seeing some organizations, typically those that have good software engineering capability, they tend to go down that route. They want to try things out for themselves. But many of the organizations that are typically dependent on third parties and outsource, very difficult for them to do that. So they just go down the route of third parties. And one final question from you, please.

Audience: Thank you very much for the presentation.

Alaa Zaher: Very nice. I’ll have to come closer.

Audience: Yes. My name is Martina Legal-Malakova. I am from GAIAxApp Slovakia, which is focusing on data spaces and data sharing. And I have a question to your presentation, because on the slide, data analytics and NI landscape, you put data sharing as a social initiative. Why?

Alaa Zaher: Yeah. OK. Well, thank you, thank you for that. Yeah, so your question is on the slide where we had the ecosystem of data and analytics, you said data sharing part of the social. Yes, so many organizations are looking to leverage some data assets and some data components that they have to the benefit of external parties.

Audience: Yes, but I ask you, for example, for example, as I am focusing on data spaces, but the most important data spaces is for the… Sorry. For the most important data sharing is for the, for example, manufacturing sector, energy sector, circular economy, and this is why I asked you the question, why you put on this social initiative? Right. It is really business initiatives.

Alaa Zaher: It could be a mix of business and social. I’ll give you an example. When I worked for a telecoms company, like I said, we sat on vast amounts of data, and the data was about, a big part of it was about consumer behavior, right? We knew where everybody lived, where they go, who they called, and we created models to basically profile consumers. And that model could be interesting, in the same way that the social media companies do, like Facebook, they do targeted advertising. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you

Agreement Points

AI has evolved significantly and is becoming more accessible

speakers

Alaa Zaher

arguments

AI has progressed from traditional machine learning to generative AI

Generative AI like ChatGPT has created a revolutionary milestone in AI capabilities

AI is becoming ubiquitous and accessible at the consumer/individual level

summary

There is a consensus that AI has evolved from traditional machine learning to more advanced generative AI, creating a revolutionary milestone in capabilities and becoming more accessible to individuals and consumers.

Data management remains crucial for AI implementation

speakers

Alaa Zaher

arguments

Traditional machine learning required structured, centralized data

Generative AI can work with unstructured data from various sources

Data management and governance are still necessary for effective AI use

Organizations need to focus on data semantics and fine-tuning for AI

summary

While AI has evolved to work with unstructured data, there is agreement that proper data management, governance, semantics, and fine-tuning remain crucial for effective AI implementation.

Similar Viewpoints

Organizations need to adapt to a new AI paradigm by implementing strong security practices, governance, and risk management approaches like the ‘technology sandwich’ model.

speakers

Alaa Zaher

Audience

arguments

Organizations need to prepare for a new AI paradigm with decentralized applications

Companies should develop a ‘technology sandwich’ approach to manage AI risks

Successful AI implementation requires strong security practices and governance

Unexpected Consensus

Balancing AI vendor push with organizational readiness

speakers

Alaa Zaher

Audience

arguments

There’s a trade-off between using third-party AI services and developing in-house capabilities

There’s a need to balance the push from AI vendors with organizational readiness

explanation

Both the speaker and audience unexpectedly agreed on the need for organizations to carefully balance the aggressive marketing from AI vendors with their actual readiness and capabilities for AI adoption. This consensus highlights the importance of thoughtful and measured AI implementation strategies.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement include the significant evolution and increasing accessibility of AI, the continued importance of data management in AI implementation, and the need for organizations to adapt to a new AI paradigm with proper security and governance measures.

Consensus level

There is a moderate level of consensus among the speakers, primarily focused on the technical aspects and organizational challenges of AI adoption. This consensus implies a shared understanding of the current state and future direction of AI in enterprises, which could lead to more focused discussions on implementation strategies and risk management in AI adoption.

Different Viewpoints

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of subtle disagreement or different emphasis were on the implications of data sharing and the specific focus areas for AI governance and security.

difference_level

The level of disagreement was minimal, with most differences being in emphasis rather than fundamental disagreement. This suggests a general consensus on the importance and challenges of AI implementation, with slight variations in focus areas based on individual perspectives and experiences.

Partial Agreements

Both Alaa Zaher and the audience member agree on the importance of governance and security practices in AI implementation. However, Zaher focuses more on data management aspects, while the audience member emphasizes overall security practices.

speakers

Alaa Zaher

Audience

arguments

Alaa Zaher emphasizes that despite advancements in AI’s ability to work with unstructured data, organizations still need robust data management and governance practices. These practices are crucial for ensuring the responsible and effective use of AI.

An audience member highlights the importance of robust security practices and governance in successful AI implementation. This point underscores the need for organizations to have proper safeguards and oversight in place when adopting AI technologies.

Similar Viewpoints

Organizations need to adapt to a new AI paradigm by implementing strong security practices, governance, and risk management approaches like the ‘technology sandwich’ model.

speakers

Alaa Zaher

Audience

arguments

Organizations need to prepare for a new AI paradigm with decentralized applications

Companies should develop a ‘technology sandwich’ approach to manage AI risks

Successful AI implementation requires strong security practices and governance

Key Takeaways

AI has evolved from traditional machine learning to more advanced generative AI capabilities

Generative AI is becoming ubiquitous and accessible at the individual/consumer level

74% of CEOs believe generative AI will have a profound impact on their industry

Organizations need to prepare for a new AI paradigm with decentralized data and applications

Data management and governance remain crucial for effective AI implementation

Companies should develop a ‘technology sandwich’ approach to manage AI risks and implementation

There’s a trade-off between using third-party AI services and developing in-house capabilities

Resolutions and Action Items

Organizations should focus on data semantics and fine-tuning for AI implementation

Companies need to install strong security practices and governance for AI adoption

Enterprises should take a measured approach to AI adoption if their industry is not being disrupted

Unresolved Issues

The full extent of generative AI’s impact on various industries

Best practices for balancing the push from AI vendors with organizational readiness

Optimal strategies for cost management when deploying AI solutions

The role and implications of data sharing in AI development across different sectors

Suggested Compromises

Organizations can leverage open-source AI models to host internally while balancing the need for specialized skills and infrastructure investment

Companies can adopt a steady pace for AI implementation instead of rushing to match the accelerated pace of tech vendors

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

speaker

Alaa Zaher (quoting Arthur C. Clarke)

reason

This quote sets the stage for discussing AI as a revolutionary technology that seems magical to many people. It frames the subsequent discussion of AI capabilities in an intriguing way.

impact

It led to examples of AI capabilities that seem magical, like ChatGPT’s ability to summarize stories or generate poetry in different languages. This framed AI as something extraordinary and captured the audience’s attention.

No data, no AI, sounds like a song from Bob Marley, right?

speaker

Alaa Zaher

reason

This catchy phrase emphasizes the critical importance of data for AI in a memorable way. It distills a complex concept into a simple, relatable idea.

impact

It transitioned the discussion into the importance of data for AI systems, leading to an explanation of different data types and sources needed for various AI applications.

AI is becoming everyone’s business. It’s becoming accessible to everyone.

speaker

Alaa Zaher

reason

This statement highlights a key shift in AI adoption and accessibility, moving from specialized applications to widespread use.

impact

It shifted the conversation to discuss how individuals and organizations are using AI tools in their daily work, emphasizing the democratization of AI technology.

Every two and a half days a new foundation model is created.

speaker

Alaa Zaher

reason

This statistic vividly illustrates the rapid pace of AI development and the intense competition in the field.

impact

It underscored the urgency for organizations to consider their AI readiness and strategy, leading to a discussion about CEO perceptions of AI’s impact on their industries.

Remember when we talked about, who are you going to let into your messy room?

speaker

Alaa Zaher

reason

This metaphor effectively communicates the risks associated with giving AI systems access to unstructured organizational data.

impact

It led to a discussion about the importance of data management, access rights, and security considerations when implementing AI systems in organizations.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by guiding it through several important aspects of AI adoption and implementation. They moved from the initial ‘wow factor’ of AI capabilities to practical considerations of data requirements, accessibility, rapid development, and security concerns. The speaker used relatable metaphors and striking statistics to make complex concepts more digestible, which likely helped maintain audience engagement throughout the presentation. The comments also facilitated a progression from general AI concepts to specific organizational challenges and strategies, providing a comprehensive overview of the AI landscape for enterprises.

What are the successful stories of organizations applying the technology sandwich concept?

speaker

Audience member (Amal)

explanation

This question seeks to understand real-world implementations and experiences with the newly introduced technology sandwich concept, which could provide valuable insights for other organizations.

What should big AI labs like Google DeepMind and OpenAI do in line with the technology sandwich concept to make safer AI?

speaker

Audience member

explanation

This question explores how major AI developers can contribute to safer AI development and implementation, which is crucial for the responsible advancement of AI technology.

Is it expected that enterprises will develop their own generative AI models to protect their data, or will the big tech companies dominate?

speaker

Audience member (Mohamed)

explanation

This question addresses the future direction of generative AI development in enterprises, which has significant implications for data security and the AI market landscape.

Why is data sharing categorized as a social initiative rather than a business initiative in the data analytics and AI landscape?

speaker

Audience member (Martina Legal-Malakova)

explanation

This question challenges the categorization of data sharing, highlighting the need to clarify the business aspects of data sharing in various sectors.

Summary

This discussion focused on the impact of multi-stakeholder collaboration on IPv6 deployment, particularly in the Middle East region. Participants from regulatory bodies, technical communities, and international organizations shared their experiences and insights.

The conversation highlighted successful IPv6 deployment strategies in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where collaboration between regulators, service providers, and technical experts led to significant progress. Both countries emphasized the importance of awareness-raising, capacity building, and giving stakeholders time to transition smoothly.

Speakers stressed that regulation alone was not the best approach. Instead, fostering collaboration, understanding technical needs, and aligning with business refresh cycles proved more effective. The ITU representative noted a shift in interest from governments to operators in recent years, driven by changing business models and increased digitization needs.

The discussion touched on challenges faced by countries lagging in IPv6 adoption, often due to a lack of understanding of its importance or poorly implemented strategies. Speakers emphasized the need for a collaborative approach involving all stakeholders to drive successful IPv6 deployment.

A key point raised was the distinction between regulating the Internet itself and regulating applications that run on it. Participants cautioned against conflating Internet infrastructure issues with platform-specific problems.

The conversation concluded by highlighting the importance of leadership in driving innovation and competitive advantage in the digital space, with governments often taking the lead in the Middle East region. The need for continued multi-stakeholder collaboration was emphasized as crucial for addressing future technological challenges and opportunities.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration in driving IPv6 adoption

– Successful IPv6 deployment strategies in Saudi Arabia and UAE

– Challenges in getting stakeholders to adopt IPv6 and overcoming skepticism

– The role of government leadership vs. regulation in promoting IPv6

– Distinguishing between internet infrastructure issues and application/platform issues

Overall purpose:

The goal of this discussion was to highlight how collaboration between governments, regulators, the technical community and private sector can drive IPv6 deployment, using successful examples from the Middle East region. The speakers aimed to share best practices and lessons learned to encourage further IPv6 adoption.

Tone:

The overall tone was positive and collaborative. Speakers were enthusiastic about sharing their experiences and successes. There was a sense of pride in the region’s accomplishments with IPv6. The tone became slightly more serious when discussing challenges and the need for leadership, but remained constructive throughout. There was an emphasis on working together and avoiding a heavy-handed regulatory approach.

Speakers

– CHAFIC CHAYA: Moderator

– MUSAAB ALAMMAR: Director of Internet Technologies Development Department, CST, Saudi Arabia

– ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI: Director of Policy and Programs Department, Telecommunication and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TIDRA), UAE

– HISHAM IBRAHIM: Chief Community Officer, RIPE NCC

– ADEL DARWICH: Director of ITU Arab Regional Office

Additional speakers:

– KHALED FATTAL: Internet governance expert

IPv6 Deployment and Multi-stakeholder Collaboration in the Middle East

This summary is based on a panel discussion at an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) event, focusing on the impact of multi-stakeholder collaboration on IPv6 deployment in the Middle East region. Participants from regulatory bodies, technical communities, and international organisations shared their experiences and insights, highlighting successful strategies and addressing challenges in IPv6 adoption.

Key Achievements and Strategies

The conversation showcased notable successes in IPv6 deployment, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Saudi Arabia achieved a 65% IPv6 adoption rate through a comprehensive national strategy. Musaab Alammar, representing Saudi Arabia, emphasised their “secret recipe” of establishing an IPv6 task force that brought together operators and experts nationwide. This approach facilitated periodic discussions on the importance and challenges of IPv6, provided a safe environment for experimentation, and allowed stakeholders the necessary time to upgrade their equipment without premature reinvestment.

Alammar also highlighted their efforts on the enterprise side, creating a manual for IPv6 implementation. Additionally, he mentioned the Qiyas program, which measures the readiness of governmental entities for digital transformation, including IPv6 adoption.

The UAE increased its IPv6 adoption from 2% to 30% in one year (2019 to 2020), and then to around 55% later. Abdulrahman Almarzooqi, representing the UAE, highlighted their preference for collaboration over regulation. He noted that initially, there were internal discussions about implementing regulations to mandate IPv6 adoption. However, Almarzooqi opposed regulatory instruments, favouring a more collaborative approach that proved successful.

Both countries emphasised the importance of awareness-raising, capacity building, and allowing stakeholders time to transition smoothly. This gradual, planned approach, which considered equipment refresh cycles, was deemed more effective than strict mandates for IPv6 implementation.

Challenges and Solutions

Despite these successes, speakers acknowledged several challenges in IPv6 adoption. A key issue is that IPv6 is not directly revenue-generating for operators, which can lead to hesitation in adoption. Musaab Alammar noted that gradual equipment upgrades were necessary to support IPv6, highlighting the need for a measured approach to implementation.

Adel Darwich, representing the ITU, observed a shift in interest from governments to operators in recent years. This change is driven by evolving business models and increased digitisation needs. Darwich emphasised the importance of capacity building and awareness-raising to overcome these challenges. He also highlighted the ITU’s role in supporting IPv6 adoption, including their work with RIPE NCC on capacity building and their support for light-touch regulation.

The discussion also touched on the scepticism surrounding IPv6 adoption. Hisham Ibrahim pointed out that the anticipated crisis of IPv4 exhaustion in the 1990s never materialised, which has led to complacency in some quarters. However, he reframed this as a positive outcome, emphasising that IPv6 remains crucial for future innovation and connectivity. Ibrahim also stressed the importance of allowing for permissionless innovation in IPv6 adoption.

Khaled Fattal highlighted the need for leadership to drive adoption, especially when there isn’t a clear business case. He emphasised the importance of innovation and thinking outside the box to create competitive advantages for countries.

Regulation and Internet Governance

A significant portion of the discussion centred on the role of regulation and governance in IPv6 adoption and broader internet issues. Speakers stressed that regulation alone was not the best approach to encouraging IPv6 adoption. Instead, fostering collaboration, understanding technical needs, and aligning with business refresh cycles proved more effective.

Hisham Ibrahim raised a crucial point about the distinction between regulating the Internet itself and regulating applications that run on it. He used the example of his son playing Fortnite to illustrate the difference between internet infrastructure issues and platform-specific problems. Ibrahim cautioned against conflating these issues, noting that many governance discussions focus on “fixing the internet” when they are actually addressing platform issues. This observation highlighted the need for a nuanced understanding of internet technology layers when considering policy and regulation.

The Role of Leadership and Collaboration

The conversation concluded by emphasising the importance of leadership in driving innovation and competitive advantage in the digital space. In the Middle East region, governments often take the lead in this regard. Abdulrahman Almarzooqi noted that the UAE government is leading in mobile application development. However, speakers also stressed the need for continued multi-stakeholder collaboration as crucial for addressing future technological challenges and opportunities.

Adel Darwich highlighted the ITU’s role in supporting capacity building and policy development for IPv6. This support extends beyond individual countries, aiming to bridge the digital divide and connect the 2.6 billion people worldwide who remain unconnected. He also mentioned the establishment of an IPv6 ITU Center in Sudan to support regional efforts.

Unresolved Issues and Future Directions

While the discussion showcased significant progress, several unresolved issues emerged. These include how to accelerate IPv6 adoption in countries lagging behind in the region, creating compelling business cases for IPv6 adoption in certain contexts, and striking the right balance between regulation and collaboration in technology adoption.

The speakers suggested potential compromises, such as using ‘soft regulation’ and collaborative approaches rather than strict mandates for IPv6 adoption. They also advocated for allowing gradual equipment upgrades to support IPv6 rather than forcing immediate overhauls.

Looking forward, the discussion highlighted the need for continued efforts to increase IPv6 adoption above 70% in leading countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Additionally, there is a pressing need to support other countries in the region to catch up with IPv6 deployment, ensuring a more uniform digital landscape across the Middle East.

In conclusion, the discussion underscored the critical role of multi-stakeholder collaboration in driving IPv6 adoption. By sharing experiences and best practices, the speakers provided valuable insights into successful deployment strategies, challenges, and the importance of leadership in technological advancement. As the region continues to progress in its digital transformation, the lessons learned from these experiences will be crucial in shaping future approaches to internet infrastructure development and governance.

CHAFIC CHAYA: It’s an honour to welcome you in this session, Day Zero session about the impact of multi-stakeholder collaboration on IPv6 deployment. This Day Zero session is co-organised by RIPE NCC and Communication, Space and Technology Commission in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. So welcome and here today we will highlight how collaboration, trust and shared vision and goals between the governments, regulators, technical community and private sector can drive a real impact in IPv6 deployment. As you know the Middle East region is not strange or not far from the innovation. Through this collaboration and through this partnership we achieved a remarkable progress in IPv6. And IPv6 is not only an upgrade for the technology, as you know it’s a vital and critical tool for the future of the internet. IPv6 ensures scalability, ensures connectivity and helps the ITU efforts in bridging the 2.7 unconnected till now to be connected. Our multi-stakeholder approach with governments and regulators from across the region, CST in Saudi, TIDRA in UAE, TRAs in Bahrain, Oman, CITRA in Kuwait, collaboration with inter-governmental and regional organisations like ITU, SAMENA, ARISPA, ESCWA. So all these efforts really fostering our achievements and our efforts in the IPv6 deployment. Once again, I welcome you for this session. I welcome our online audience. My colleague, Vahan, will help as online moderator. And a big thank you, thanks for my colleague, Ulka, who will be the reporter for this session. So without further ado, let me introduce my colleagues and friends. I have with me today, Mr. Abdelrahman Al-Marzouki, director of ITU Arab regional office. I have with me today, Mr. Misab Al-Ammar, director of Internet Technologies Development Department, CST, Saudi Arabia. Mr. Abdelrahman Al-Marzouki, director of Policy and Program Department, TIDRA, United Arab Emirates. Mr. Hisham Rahim, Chief Community Officer, RIPE NCC. And I have with me today, Mr. Hisham Rahim, chief community officer, RIPE NCC, and we have here with us Mr. Hisham Rahim from RIPE NCC, who will give us a nice overview on the IPv6 status in the region. Hisham, the floor is yours.

HISHAM IBRAHIM: Hisham Rahim, Chief Community Officer, RIPE NCC. Hisham Rahim, Chief Community Officer, RIPE NCC. Hisham Rahim, Chief Community Officer, RIPE NCC. Hi, everyone. Pleasure to be here with you this afternoon. I’ve been at RIPE NCC for about a year and a half, I think over a decade, so it was well overdue. I’m very happy to be here in this session talking about something that’s very dear to the RIR systems, the organisations that distribute IP addresses, but also to mine, which is IPv6. So, I’m very happy to be here and to be connected through open standards that ensure interoperability. registration services that ensure uniqueness, and global structures that develop these protocols, standards, and frameworks for accountability. The underpinning technology that connects these thousands of devices, these thousands of networks. If you were in the session this morning, my colleague Ulka was on a panel that they were talking about how there are 70,000 different networks around the world that interconnect. The underlying, the underpinning technology is IP. So behind every connected device there needs to be an address that allows it to connect to the rest of the world. Now again, very quick historical view, the technology that was used since the beginning of the Internet was something called IP version 4, which allowed for a finite number of addresses to connect. Now it became very clear in the early 90s that we will not have enough IPv4 addresses to continue to grow the Internet, which is why IPv6, the successor protocol, was developed. Now Trawik wants me to talk about the success in the region, I think this session will mostly cover that, but I also want to address something early on. That there has been skepticism about the importance of IPv6, simply because the expected run out of IPv4, the crisis that people anticipated in the 90s, never really happened. And that’s a good thing, not necessarily a bad thing. The Internet continued to grow and evolve, people continue to find ways to introduce transition mechanisms that allowed v4 and v6 to continue to exist, other technologies. So we didn’t really hit any crisis points, which leads some skeptics to say, well, is IPv6 really needed? And the answer today is still, yes it is. And for one key purpose, which ties back to why the Internet exists in the first place, which is permissionless innovation, allowing more people to come up with new ideas and putting it on the internet. Just like we’ve seen in the past few decades where the web came on top of the internet, social media came on top of that, and now whatever new technologies and hypes we’re talking about in these meetings, blockchain, AI and other stuff. Now to Shafiq’s question and summing up quickly, in the region here we have seen the numbers growing up to the right, which also indicates a healthy IPv6 deployment. We’re seeing in many countries, and you’re going to hear examples from my colleagues about what they’ve been doing in their countries that have really driven up not just the number of resources of IPv6 resources in the country, but also how they’re being used, how they penetrate all the way to the end user, how the numbers from the content providers are going up, how they are securing these resources through RPKI, and they are actually putting them on the routing tables and de-aggregating them, meaning that they’re doing better routing. So in a very quick nutshell, the region here, the Middle East, is doing really well when it comes to IPv6, and we have a couple of countries that are actually leading the world, which we’re going to be talking about in a second. Shafiq, back to you.

CHAFIC CHAYA: Thank you, Hisham. Thank you so much. So this was the overview from the technical community. Today with us, to celebrate this successful multi-stakeholder approach, we have two shining examples from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. My question to Musab from CST in Saudi, how CST did manage to put all these players together and fostering this multi-stakeholder efforts in deploying IPv6 in the kingdom, now you are rating fourth globally and first regionally.

MUSAAB ALAMMAR: Hello everyone. Are you able to hear me? Okay, good. Thank you so much for giving us this question. It’s an opportunity to show what has been done so far by CST in the Kingdom. Our efforts started a long time ago. I believe it started since 2008. We started the idea of the collaboration that we need all of the stakeholders know the importance of the IPv6 and the risk that the IPv4 will have very soon because of the depletion. So, due to the fact, we started at that time as a national strategy with an objective of making sure that the IPv6, sorry, the IPv4 depletion will be not a risk for us, for the business community. Going through making sure that we have a smooth transition and awareness and capacity building. So, at that time, we had kind of a strategy of three focuses. One on the service providers and the second one on the enterprise, which represents the supply, let’s say. And lastly, the end users. So, having multiple focuses on those three main stakeholders gave us the leverage to be today one of the top countries in terms of adopting IPv6. And these stages, of course, we had support from the academia, the technical experts such as RIPE NCC and others to have, let’s say, more than 20 training programs and more than 500 participants to make sure that we have a community that knows the importance of IPv6 adoption and the real value of it in the near future for the digital transformation.

CHAFIC CHAYA: Thank you, Mustafa. Thank you so much. And I will not say a secret that your close collaboration as regulator with us, as RIPE NCC, was the main driver for this successful IPv6 deployment in Saudi Arabia. Thank you once again. We have another example. Our friend and colleague, Abdelrahman, here with us. So, you heard Meshab about the experience in Saudi Arabia. What was your experience as TIDRA in UAE? And how it differs from the experience from Saudi Arabia?

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI: Peace be upon you, everyone. Pleased to be here. My name is Abdelrahman Marzouki. I’m a Director of Policy and Programs Department within the Telecommunication and Digital Government Regulatory Authority in the UAE. IPv6 has been with me since I joined TIDRA in 2006. That was one of the first projects that I had. So, since 2006, we’re still working on IPv6. So, it’s very, very dear to my heart. I remember the first time I had a training about IPv6 in 2006. And everybody was saying that we have to move from IPv4 to IPv6. Depletion is coming sometime in the future. Of course, it happened. I mean, the depletion on the regional Internet registries, I think sometime in 2013. So, a few years later. And everybody was saying we have to move on. And then when reality is, the telecom operators who ultimately distribute IP addresses to users, basically say, where is the business case for it, what do I’m going to sell you know we don’t sell IP IPv6 we don’t we don’t sell IPv4 we sell you know connectivity we sell hosting services and now then later became cloud services but we don’t sell IP addresses so and but the engineers basically say well we need because our IPv6 v4 is not enough then the engineers are you know they think about solutions and they say well we can do nothing basically to reuse private IP addresses so we don’t need as much public IP addresses and that kept going on for many many years in the UAE we managed to get IPv6 from 2% in 2019 to 30% in 2020 within one year 18 months that jump happened because we realized enough is enough we have to change we have to you know we are talking about it we’re planning we’re testing we’re doing all of that for maybe over a decade but then there has to be a point where we shift and change and make it a reality and thankfully TDRA with the collaboration of all the stakeholders in a multi stakeholder approach we invited everybody from telecom operators to device manufacturers to network LIRs network operators with the support of RIPE NCC as well in 2019 we put a plan and we put certain targets but actually the benefits the benefits of moving from IPv4 to IPv6 less complexity in terms of networks, more efficiency, routing, security, all the benefits of and we had to get rid of all these NATing devices so that also a cost that could be saved and then in 2020 we managed to get around 30 percent IPv6 and now we reached around above 50 percent in regionally I think Saudi Arabia is leading the region and we learned from our brothers from Saudi Arabia they’re leading in the IPv6 and I think the steps that we took probably are identical to so your question was how different it is it’s not different it’s exactly the same we need to have a direction we have to have everybody in one table and then you know be serious about it then it will happen and thankfully today Saudi Arabia is over 60 I think 65 percent of IPv6 traffic and UAE is around 55 percent with the support of RIPE of course with the training with awareness I think we managed very well alhamdulillah.

CHAFIC CHAYA: Thank you Abdurrahman I will not tell you another secret because there is no secret now in this meeting room but when Abdurrahman talked about the jumping from 2 to 30 percent and now to 55 percent and the Saudi Arabia now 65 percent now we are working with both of them to see what is the bottleneck not to move above 70 percent so hopefully next year we meet we’ll see that both countries are more than 70 percent IPv6 and once again thank you for your cooperation so this was at the national level so let’s see how the multi-stakeholder works at the regional level we have with us here colleagues and friend Adel, the director of the Arab regional office at the ITU in Cairo. So Adel, based on what you heard from the two regulators and based on our successful collaboration in some countries doing some national IPv6 strategies, what you can tell us about your experience working in a multi-stakeholder approach with regulators, technical community, academic, private sector and other groups?

ADEL DARWICH: Thank you very much Shafiq, first of all allow me to thank RIPE NCC and our host Saudi Arabia for having this wonderful event of IGF here in the city of Riyadh in this fabulous arena if I may say. Talking about multi-stake collaboration you mentioned 2.7 it’s now 2.6 so we’re getting closer to connecting the unconnected. I believe multi-stakeholderism has been an advocate of our Secretary General Doreen Bogdan-Martin for quite a while now. At ITU we’ve been working together on setting standards in the standardization bureau, we’ve been working together on developing at the national levels jointly with the regional offices in the development bureau. We’ve seen that this effort and we’re proud to say that we have two very excellent examples in the region however the rest of the region is catching up. With the outcome of smart cities, IOTs in the marketplace more and more IPv6 need is required in the technical arena as well. What we’ve seen that the interest that was mainly from governments in the past decade has now shifted to the operators. We’ve seen more and more operators coming to the table discussing on that platform seeing how can they learn, how can they get more capacity building initiatives and that’s where ourselves and RIPE NCC have been working closely on that as well. We’ve launched a few training institutions as well, and courses around the region. This has been very successful. And we foresee that the region is going to lead globally the IPv6, if I may say, race in the coming few years. Thank you. Back to you, Shefi.

CHAFIC CHAYA: Thank you, Adel. Thank you. A third secret, that we are working with ITU on two or three IPv6 strategies for some countries that they are still lagging behind. And I looked towards Hisham. While we saw that there are some countries, especially in the Gulf region, they are progressing, and they are doing very successful in IPv6, why other countries in the region are still lagging behind? What reasons behind this, let’s say, not catching up with other countries?

HISHAM IBRAHIM: Thanks for the question, Shafiq. So I think there’s two really important things here. The first one was mentioned already in the successful engagements, which is getting everybody around the table, making sure that everybody understands the ultimate goal that we’re trying to achieve. It didn’t come down as a top-down, you have to do this, you have to implement by this time. It actually was trying to get everybody to buy in and understand, working together. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. There is no one organization or entity that can just get IPv6 deployed in a country. It really has to be a collaborative effort, which is why we’re having this session at an IGF, very appropriate. But the second one is, there was deep understanding from the countries that were mentioned and others that are doing IPv6 of what they want to achieve. They don’t just want to continue to run the internet. They don’t want to continue to run services. They want to be able to provide platforms to support, again, innovation. what comes next, future technologies, and not be limited by a technology that we already knew from the 90s is already dying out. And that mentality is really key. Now, because they understood this, they actually were able to sit down and work with the community on coming up with KPIs that made sense, coming up with action plans that made sense, and acting on them, and reacting if there was something not working. So I believe Abdurrahman mentioned like the vendors, if there is a vendor that they had an issue with, then bringing them over and understanding what the issue was. If there was an issue with a perception that IPv6 is more difficult or more costly, then explaining how this actually is not the case and doing the training and stuff. However, we have seen other examples that weren’t as successful in the region. That they would, all of a sudden, you would find overnight a national IPv6 roadmap being developed. And in X number of years, we’re going to have traffic of X number of things that is usually developed by external consultants without talking with the community, without having the understanding of the different dynamics that are in the country. And they’re just making impossible promises, which has also led some people to be skeptic. Because these deadlines, these flag days come and go, and nothing really changes. And the internet continues to run. So people then assume, well, it’s not really that big a deal. And I believe those approaches have hurt more than they have helped. Whereas, working together, understanding what we’re trying to do, allowing for that permissionless innovation, was really the key of the success all along.

CHAFIC CHAYA: Thank you, Hisham. Through the last few years, working with regulators, and especially with the CST and TIDRA, we noticed that the concept changed from regulation to collaboration. And this is really a big shift. So, Misab, can you tell us what challenges you tackled during gathering the whole stakeholders around one table? Because we know the operators, the ISPs, they have their own secrets. They don’t want to talk or discuss things between competitors. So, how did you manage to get all these players together around the table?

MUSAAB ALAMMAR: Thank you so much. First of all, as you all know and as mentioned by my colleague here, Dr. Rahman, that IPv6 is not revenue generating. So, operators and ISPs, they are not expecting to get money back from this, at least from, let’s say, direct revenue. So, it was a real challenge at the beginning. And on top of that, at 2008, as I mentioned earlier, that some ISPs and operators, they still have an equipment and devices in their networks not yet supporting the IPv6. So, our secret recipe is having like an IPv6 task force at the beginning, gathering all the operators and the experts all over the nation, having a periodic discussion about the importance and the challenges, providing them like a lab to do their experiments to make sure that they are doing something safe, not harming their network, and giving them the time needed to shift and change all of their equipment without reinvesting again on a network equipment that can still last for more years. So, this is what we have done to have a smooth, let’s say, transition from v4 to v6. And we didn’t have any issues, because we gave them the time, we raised the awareness, we did a lot of capacity building with partnerships, with experts all over the world. And thankfully, it was as smooth as you can see in the trend. So we did that very smoothly. For those countries who will start today, it will be challenging for them. There will be a cost of changing this equipment and putting a configuration. And even the devices in the network, some devices, phone devices, it requires a long time for testing. And these devices, it has to be certified for IPv6, then it will be enabled with IPv6 in that specific country. So I think this is how it should be. A point I would like to add is we didn’t work only on the test provider side. We worked on the enterprise side. We secured or we created a manual for them to understand or to do a full plan, including a technical aspect in that, let’s say, guideline. And through that, they will be able to make a good plan to provide their internet services supporting IPv6. And one of the things that I would like to celebrate with you today, we had just, they had just finished the DGA, the digital government, the authority. They just finished something called Qiyas. The Qiyas program is just to measure the readiness of the entities, the governmental entities for the digital transformation. With a collaboration with them, with DGA in specific, we had some kind of criteria that those entities, those governmental entities who enabled IPv6, they will gain higher score in terms of the readiness for the digital transformation. So we are not only focusing on the service provider. We’re also focusing on the supply, helping them to provide the needed services on IPv6 as well.

CHAFIC CHAYA: Thank you, Massab. It’s really interesting, you know, the steps and your activities that you take during these years. Once again, I will go to Tidra because, you know, even though your experiences have a lot of similarities, but different steps and different, let’s say, plans and projects. Because I know that, I don’t know if you remember, Abdurrahman, we talked about why we don’t regulate IPv6. You said, no, we’re not regulated. So, what is the strategy of Tidra? Why you didn’t go in this direction? And how you encouraged and, you know, give this opportunity for the operators to work with you and the soft regulation, let’s say, to achieve this successful result?

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI: Thank you, Dr. Shafiq, for this question. So, there was a discussion actually, internally, whether we should come up with a regulation or a policy to govern and mandate IPv6. And honestly, at the time, I was opposing any regulatory instrument toward that. In my opinion, the IPv6 is well understood by people who are in the technology and the technical aspects. Maybe it’s not well understood by business people. If we came up with a regulation, then that would go to regulatory departments, commercial departments, and they will start thinking about how to be defensive about it and perhaps drag it and delay it as much as possible. That’s their natural attitude toward regulation. say, let’s try to slow it down. Maybe this will create burden on us, cost on us, and things like that. We said, that’s not the right approach. Let’s talk to the technical people, to the engineering people. They understand this very well. And we talk to them. And we tell them, what do you need to empower you if you want to do changes? Of course, the engineers, they would think about, let’s draw a plan. Let’s try to do it as smooth as possible. There is a refresh cycle for all the systems. If you talk to anyone from engineering, they know what I’m talking about, refresh cycles. They know that this device has to live for five years, seven years. Then there will be a time where it has to be changed. What they’ve done is basically, early on when we were talking about IPv6, they put a plan in place that all devices that they will procure has to be, by default, compatible with IPv6. This is done years ahead. But when it comes to the action, the actual action where it will be deployed, and they will try to make it all IPv6, then, of course, they’ll have to do tests. They have to do all of these things. And when there is a device that needs to be changed, they’ll wait for the refresh cycle, and they will change that device so that it’s IPv6 compatible. So we came to them, and we told them, OK, what’s a reasonable time frame for you if you want to start providing IPv6? They said, well, for us, one of the operators said, we’re ready. We’ll start. We’ll start with a certain segment of our customers, with a certain segment of the network, and they will build an experience and then migrate slowly. slowly up until the entire network is IPv6 and then of course it will be dual stack meaning that IPv4 and IPv6 both of them will work it depends on the customer if everything is compatible with IPv6 he will he will get an IPv6 address and then the traffic will be IPv6 all the way natively from the source to the destination so they said the other operator said we need some time we have some core functions within the network still not fully IPv6 ready we need around a year to do it that’s fine a year is a reasonable time when we think about the decades of when IPv6 existed so we waited for a year and they’ve done their fresh and they started pushing IPv6 so that’s in a in a in a nutshell why we thought collaboration as you mentioned dr. Shafiq is a better approach when we talk about moving from IPv4 to IPv6

CHAFIC CHAYA: thank you yes and I totally agree with you other back to ITU we listen to the experts from the capacity building and policy perspective we know that these two activities capacity building and and standardization as you mentioned is at the heart of the ITU work and activity so how ITU once again your office in the Middle East region how you you can ensure that all the Arab countries in the region can catch up with this IPv6 adoption as a critical tool for development and and bridging the digital gap

ADEL DARWICH: Thank you very much, Shafiq. First of all, if you’ll allow me maybe to comment on what Abdulrahman mentioned, and I totally agree sometimes regulation is not the route to go, but we’ve also seen over the past few years that the business model and the business needs of telecom companies have changed. This has forced the community to now start focusing on other services, especially post-COVID, where now telecom industry has become a pillar for digitization of every other sector. So the need has grown dramatically and the focus and the business mindset has changed as well. Now, as ITU, of course, we can’t do it by ourselves. We’re just one player in the field, if I may say, again going back to multi-stakeholderism. What’s key for us is we support when it comes to capacity building. So that’s one thing we do jointly with RIPE NCC. We’ve worked with governments, whether it’s ministries or regulators, to set up strategies and policies. Light-touch regulation, we always encourage to allow for innovation. That’s very important for us. At the same time, we have established a center a few years back in Sudan, which is the IPv6 ITU Center. We’ve trained a few instructors from that center as well, high quality level of training as well. And they have been like ambassadors of IPv6 promotion, if you like, within the region. Now, we’ve done this not only in the Arab region, but globally as well. We promote IPv6 usage, especially within the work that is done in Study Group 20 as well in the ITU-T sector, which is related to smart cities and IOTs. But mainly that has been our focus for the past few years. Now, as I mentioned earlier on, because the business model has changed, in recent couple of years, we’ve seen requests coming in from operators without even the government. We’ve seen that operators now want to take the lead on moving to IPv6. Which again, that serves our joint purpose or aim in this field as well. Thank you.

CHAFIC CHAYA: Thank you, Adel. Before we take the questions from the floor, and if we have any online questions or feedback, Vahan. So, for Hisham, I will go back to the recent article you wrote about the Internet and what’s the Internet. Is what we are doing is regulating the Internet or we need to regulate the application who run over the Internet? Can you just share your thoughts why we should not regulate the Internet?

HISHAM IBRAHIM: Happy to answer the question. So, the word Internet is used on a daily base because it touches a lot of what we do. However, it doesn’t always mean the same thing to the same people, right? When somebody technical like myself talks about the Internet, we’re talking about that network of networks that are interconnected, that allow packets to go from point A to point B, regardless of what is built on top of it. Whether those packets are web traffic, whether they’re another application, that stuff that’s built on top of the Internet. Whereas, it became the word Internet because it became a big part of our lives. It became a shorthand for everything that is built on top of that network. Now, some of the things that are built on top of that network have issues that need to be dealt with. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the Internet has an issue. And a prime example of this is something that I usually say. I have a son that likes to play Fortnite. And he’s not even 10 years old yet, but he knows when the network is lagging, because he comes to the Internet. to me and says, it’s lagging, I cannot play, I cannot play. So he’s driving up the measurements and the demands like any good customer would. But then he comes and says, the internet is not working. Now, it’s very difficult to lecture a nine year old and say, actually the internet is working, the problem is with your application. Because that’s really the thing, he cannot connect to a server. It’s not like the internet around the world is not working. But it’s become such a shorthand that people are used to, if you cannot connect to your favorite app on your phone, the internet has an issue. If a service that you’re using has privacy issues or trust and safety issues, then we need to fix the internet. Whereas the internet works and functions. So really, it’s becoming to a point that it’s dangerous, especially when you see the amount of meetings and discussions in governance forums that are talking about fixing the internet, while indeed what they’re talking about is platform issues. So misinformation is not an internet issue, it’s a platform issue. Privacy issues, again, not the internet. Issues related to, like I was saying, trust and safety. There’s a lot of them that fall under the word internet. And the equivalent that I can give is saying, you need to fix the internet because your Windows machine that you’re using is not allowing you to connect. Being able to distinguish where the problem is and dealing with it in the right appropriate forums and talking with the right language about it is key, or else you end up trying to regulate a future technology by changing fundamentals that made the internet what it is in the first place. And that kills innovation.

CHAFIC CHAYA: Thank you, Hisham. Thanks so much for this. And I think this is a misconception that every day we see this during. our daily life. So I will open the floor for some questions and I believe Khaled you raised your hand. I will give you the floor, please.

KHALED FATTAL: Thank you. Can you hear me? Yep. Khaled Fattal. Many of you may know me. I’ve been involved, you know, we’re talking about internet governance. I was there when Kofi Annan convened the experts in 2004 and I was there. So that engagement led to the creation of IGF. The reason I’m bringing this to your attention here is the experiences that I heard from UAE and from Saudi about IPv6 moving from IPv4 to IPv6 and the reasons why it took such a long time is something I’m going to draw to for the benefit of the community. In addition to the examples that you mentioned earlier on as to why the uptake was not there and then all of a sudden now it jumped from 2% to 30% or something like this in UAE. This is where the community needs leadership because I think it was UAE example when you talked about needing to make the case, correct? Or was it Saudi? I can’t remember. Somebody was saying that the decision-makers, the telecom operators or whatever, were to make the case why we should go to IPv6. In certain areas the case cannot be made, it needs leadership and I cannot underscore this enough because today and I attend conferences all over the world from cyber to AI to whatever and for the last couple of years everything is about AI. I have news for you Kentucky Fried Chicken is doing AI now. You’re laughing. I’m joking, but the truth here is everybody’s jumping on the bandwagon, but nobody’s asking What can we do that is unique now? The uniqueness could be how you your country could develop a competitive advantage in that space How can it be the innovator not just the trendsetter because everybody’s following so my point here is I? Thank Shafiq for asking me to come here to listen in because you created this thought in my mind How can we learn from the examples that not everything can be made a Case for it requires leadership, and that comes from the government it comes from the Regulator, and I can share something else with you one of the partners clients. I can’t say who who we work with Had in in in a European country owns now more than 80% of the 5g towers Why I share this with you here is you think what are they doing with 5g towers? They’ve they figured a different business model So if you’re innovating, and if you’re thinking outside of the box, and you’re thinking how can I create a competitive advantage for my country? There are many ways to create competitive advantages, and it starts with leadership So I hope this compels the local actors to consider how they can take leadership roles Thank you, Shafiq. I’m sorry for taking too much time

CHAFIC CHAYA: Well said really well said Khaled, and I will take two words from his contribution to ask Your colleagues here. He talked about the leadership. Yes, we know that in in Europe private sector leads in This region and it’s not something negative at all government’s lead Without the collaboration With these guys without the cooperation with regulators and once again This is not because the government’s want to lead because they want to control everything no They want to lead because they have the authority they have the How we say it the best venue to get people around the same table and they have the expertise to deal with this. Alone as RIPE NCC we couldn’t get all the operators and ISPs. So this is one thing and the second thing is 5G and this is I will leave this the last question for Hisham because 5G Khaled is a hunger technology for IPv6. So I will leave two minutes per each speaker to give his thoughts and like closing remarks we still have 10 minutes and then we close. I will start with ITU.

ADEL DARWICH: Thank you very much Shafiq. I would say leadership should be at the multi-stakeholder level because if you have one entity pushing you have cost implications. So leadership should be like you said it has to be the whole of the community. It’s the operators, it’s the policy makers, it’s the regulators. They all have to agree that whatever they’re doing whether it’s IPv6 or anything else in the industry has to be to the benefit of the whole. So that’s very key and I also believe we need to continue collaborating with the different stakeholders and as Khaled mentioned the business model is not just 5G. The business model all together has changed a lot. We’re not talking the same technology and the same services as we did 10 years ago. It’s very different today. With Google Glasses coming into the play today and I heard that it’s become a you know reality people are using it today. With all these devices imagine you’re gonna have like 10-20 devices on you in the coming five years. So all these devices are going to be talking through the public network. There’s going to be needs for that. Are the telecom operators and the environment innovative enough to accompany all these services? So I think it’s a multi-stakeholderism. Everybody needs to come together and we need to look at the future.

CHAFIC CHAYA: Thank you. Thank you Adel. Hisham or I will leave Hisham to the end because he will take more than three minutes I know. Abdelrahman please go ahead. Or Musab, both of one of you.

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI: Khaled Fattah, well said. Leadership I think is is a key and of course you need leadership but you need also the stakeholders to co-own the problem with you as well so that they are because at the end of the day they are the one who will actually make the difference and take the actions. For us I think yes it needs a bit of convincing. We played the argument of telecom is not telecom anymore. They are digital. There is a lot on stake. You have IOTs, you have cloud computing, AI, you have all these emerging technologies. They’re all need robust and strong infrastructure. You need to develop your infrastructure to cope for all these changes. I think that’s a mindset shift that need to happen when when we when you talk about ISPs or telcos. They are not just telcos. They need to move to be digital companies that that they have to have a bigger role and of course they they need a stronger and more advanced networks. One more comment I have when when Dr. Shafiq talked about leadership in the in our region is is usually from the public sector and the government and I had this couple of times People talk to me, because I’m also from the digital government, they tell me I wish, sometimes I hear these comments, I wish some of our companies build good user experience and applications, digital applications like the government of the UAE. I’ve heard this a couple of times, and we’ve seen this. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, when he comes on stage in 2013, he came up and said, I want all the government to be mobile. All the government authorities in the UAE have actually built mobile applications well ahead of the rest of the private sector in our country.

Agreement Points

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is key to successful IPv6 deployment

speakers

CHAFIC CHAYA

MUSAAB ALAMMAR

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI

ADEL DARWICH

arguments

Multi-stakeholder collaboration key to success

Saudi Arabia achieved 65% IPv6 adoption through national strategy

UAE increased from 2% to 55% IPv6 adoption in 18 months

ITU supports capacity building and policy development for IPv6

summary

All speakers emphasized the importance of collaboration between various stakeholders, including governments, regulators, technical communities, and the private sector, in successfully deploying IPv6.

Challenges in IPv6 adoption

speakers

MUSAAB ALAMMAR

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI

ADEL DARWICH

arguments

IPv6 not directly revenue-generating for operators

Gradual equipment upgrades needed to support IPv6

Business models changing, increasing demand for IPv6

summary

Speakers acknowledged the challenges in IPv6 adoption, including the lack of immediate financial benefits for operators and the need for gradual equipment upgrades. However, they also noted that changing business models are increasing the demand for IPv6.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of collaboration and multi-stakeholder leadership over strict regulation in promoting IPv6 adoption and internet governance.

speakers

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI

ADEL DARWICH

arguments

Collaboration preferred over regulation for IPv6 adoption

Multi-stakeholder leadership needed for internet governance

Unexpected Consensus

Government leadership in digital transformation

speakers

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI

KHALED FATTAL

arguments

Government leadership important in Middle East region

Leadership needed to drive adoption without clear business case

explanation

Both speakers highlighted the importance of government leadership in driving digital transformation and IPv6 adoption, especially when there isn’t a clear business case. This consensus is unexpected as it challenges the common perception that the private sector usually leads in technological advancements.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement include the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration, the challenges and strategies for IPv6 adoption, and the role of leadership in driving technological changes.

Consensus level

There is a high level of consensus among the speakers on the key issues surrounding IPv6 deployment and internet governance. This consensus implies a shared understanding of the challenges and potential solutions, which could facilitate more effective implementation of IPv6 and related policies in the region.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to IPv6 adoption

speakers

MUSAAB ALAMMAR

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI

arguments

Saudi Arabia achieved 65% IPv6 adoption through national strategy

Collaboration preferred over regulation for IPv6 adoption

summary

While both countries achieved high IPv6 adoption rates, Saudi Arabia implemented a national strategy, whereas UAE preferred collaboration over regulation.

Unexpected Differences

Role of government leadership

speakers

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI

ADEL DARWICH

arguments

Government leadership important in Middle East region

Multi-stakeholder leadership needed for internet governance

explanation

While both speakers emphasized the importance of leadership, there was an unexpected difference in their views on the source of leadership. Almarzooqi highlighted the importance of government leadership, while Darwich advocated for multi-stakeholder leadership.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement centered around the approach to IPv6 adoption, the role of government versus multi-stakeholder leadership, and the balance between regulation and collaboration.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers was relatively low, with most differences being in approach rather than fundamental goals. This suggests a general consensus on the importance of IPv6 adoption, but varied strategies based on local contexts and experiences. These differences in approach could lead to valuable exchanges of best practices and potentially more effective strategies for global IPv6 adoption.

Partial Agreements

All speakers agreed on the importance of IPv6 adoption, but differed in their approaches to addressing the lack of immediate financial benefits for operators. Saudi Arabia used a national strategy, UAE focused on collaboration, and ITU emphasized changing business models.

speakers

MUSAAB ALAMMAR

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI

ADEL DARWICH

arguments

IPv6 not directly revenue-generating for operators

Collaboration preferred over regulation for IPv6 adoption

Business models changing, increasing demand for IPv6

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of collaboration and multi-stakeholder leadership over strict regulation in promoting IPv6 adoption and internet governance.

speakers

ABDULRAHMAN ALMARZOOQI

ADEL DARWICH

arguments

Collaboration preferred over regulation for IPv6 adoption

Multi-stakeholder leadership needed for internet governance

Key Takeaways

Multi-stakeholder collaboration was crucial for successful IPv6 deployment in countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE

Government leadership and regulatory support played an important role in driving IPv6 adoption in the Middle East region

Gradual, planned transitions and capacity building were more effective than mandates for IPv6 implementation

The business case for IPv6 is not always clear, requiring leadership to drive adoption

There is a need to distinguish between regulating internet infrastructure and regulating applications/services built on top of it

Resolutions and Action Items

Continue collaboration between regulators, technical community, and private sector to further increase IPv6 adoption

Work on increasing IPv6 adoption above 70% in Saudi Arabia and UAE

ITU to continue supporting capacity building and policy development for IPv6 in other countries

Unresolved Issues

How to accelerate IPv6 adoption in countries lagging behind in the region

How to create compelling business cases for IPv6 adoption in some contexts

Balancing regulation vs. collaboration approaches for technology adoption

Suggested Compromises

Using ‘soft regulation’ and collaborative approaches rather than strict mandates for IPv6 adoption

Allowing gradual equipment upgrades to support IPv6 rather than forcing immediate overhauls

IPv6 ensures scalability, ensures connectivity and helps the ITU efforts in bridging the 2.7 unconnected till now to be connected.

speaker

Chafic Chaya

reason

This comment frames IPv6 not just as a technical upgrade, but as a critical tool for expanding internet access globally. It connects the technical discussion to broader development goals.

impact

It set the tone for discussing IPv6 in terms of its societal impact rather than just technical details. This framing was echoed by other speakers throughout the discussion.

There has been skepticism about the importance of IPv6, simply because the expected run out of IPv4, the crisis that people anticipated in the 90s, never really happened. And that’s a good thing, not necessarily a bad thing.

speaker

Hisham Ibrahim

reason

This comment addresses a common misconception about IPv6 and reframes the lack of crisis as a positive outcome rather than a reason for complacency.

impact

It shifted the discussion from crisis-driven urgency to a more nuanced view of IPv6 as an enabler of future innovation. This perspective was reinforced by later comments about the need for IPv6 in emerging technologies.

Our secret recipe is having like an IPv6 task force at the beginning, gathering all the operators and the experts all over the nation, having a periodic discussion about the importance and the challenges, providing them like a lab to do their experiments to make sure that they are doing something safe, not harming their network, and giving them the time needed to shift and change all of their equipment without reinvesting again on a network equipment that can still last for more years.

speaker

Musaab Alammar

reason

This comment provides concrete, practical insights into how to successfully implement IPv6 at a national level. It emphasizes collaboration and gradual transition rather than top-down mandates.

impact

It sparked a more detailed discussion of implementation strategies, with other speakers sharing their own experiences and approaches. This shifted the conversation from theoretical benefits to practical execution.

There was a discussion actually, internally, whether we should come up with a regulation or a policy to govern and mandate IPv6. And honestly, at the time, I was opposing any regulatory instrument toward that.

speaker

Abdulrahman Almarzooqi

reason

This comment challenges the assumption that regulation is always the best approach for technological adoption. It introduces the idea that collaboration can be more effective than mandates.

impact

It led to a deeper discussion about the role of regulators in technological transitions, with other speakers echoing the importance of collaboration over regulation. This represented a shift in thinking about how to drive IPv6 adoption.

So really, it’s becoming to a point that it’s dangerous, especially when you see the amount of meetings and discussions in governance forums that are talking about fixing the internet, while indeed what they’re talking about is platform issues.

speaker

Hisham Ibrahim

reason

This comment highlights a crucial distinction between internet infrastructure and applications built on top of it. It warns against conflating these issues in policy discussions.

impact

It broadened the discussion beyond IPv6 to touch on larger issues of internet governance and regulation. This comment prompted reflection on the proper scope and targets of internet-related policies.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by moving it from a technical focus on IPv6 to a broader conversation about implementation strategies, the role of different stakeholders, and the relationship between internet infrastructure and applications. The speakers collectively built a narrative that emphasized collaboration, gradual transition, and the importance of distinguishing between different layers of internet technology when considering policy and regulation. This nuanced approach provided a more comprehensive view of the challenges and opportunities surrounding IPv6 adoption.

What are the bottlenecks preventing IPv6 adoption from moving above 70% in Saudi Arabia and UAE?

speaker

Chafic Chaya

explanation

Understanding these bottlenecks is crucial for achieving even higher IPv6 adoption rates in leading countries.

How can other countries in the region catch up with the successful IPv6 deployment seen in Gulf countries?

speaker

Chafic Chaya

explanation

Identifying strategies for lagging countries to accelerate their IPv6 adoption is important for regional progress.

How can the business model for IPv6 adoption be improved to incentivize telecom operators and ISPs?

speaker

Abdulrahman Almarzooqi

explanation

Addressing the lack of direct revenue from IPv6 is crucial for encouraging wider adoption among service providers.

What strategies can be employed to ensure smooth transitions from IPv4 to IPv6 for countries just starting the process?

speaker

Musaab Alammar

explanation

Developing effective transition strategies is important for countries that are behind in IPv6 adoption.

How can the ITU ensure that all Arab countries in the region catch up with IPv6 adoption?

speaker

Chafic Chaya

explanation

Identifying ways to support lagging countries in the region is crucial for bridging the digital gap.

How can countries develop unique competitive advantages in the IPv6 and emerging technology space?

speaker

Khaled Fattal

explanation

Exploring ways for countries to innovate and lead in technology adoption is important for economic development.

How can the telecom industry adapt to support the increasing number of connected devices and emerging technologies like AI and AR?

speaker

Adel Darwich

explanation

Understanding how to prepare network infrastructure for future technologies is crucial for long-term planning.