Session Type (Workshop, Open Forum, etc.): Roundtable

Title: WS #355 Empowering Change with Data:Measuring Youth Digital Mobility

Date & Time: 13 November 2018, 16:10 - 17:10 

Organizer(s):
Organizer 1: Yannis Li, DotAsia Organisation (Technical)
Organizer 2: Jenna Fung, NetMission.Asia (Civil Society/Youth)
Organizer 3: Xianhong Hu, UNESCO 
Organizer 4: Guy Berger, UNESCO

Chair/Moderator:
Edmon Chung, DotAsia Organisation (Technical) - In Person Moderator

Rapporteur/Notetaker:
Yannis Li, DotAsia Organisation (Technical)

List of speakers and their institutional affiliations (Indicate male/female/ transgender male/ transgender female/gender variant/prefer not to answer):

Speaker 1: Edmon Chung, Male, DotAsia Organisation, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 2: Chitat Chan, Male, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Academia, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 3: Sherry Shek, Female, Coordinator of Internet Society Hong Kong, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 4: Angel Ng, Female Youth Representative, HKYIGF, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 5: Faith Lee, Female Youth Representative, HKYIGF, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 6: Wathagi Joy Ndungu, Female, Co-Founder of Digital Grassroots/Google Policy Fellow, Civil Society, African Group

Theme (as listed here):
Development, Innovation & Economic Issues

Subtheme (as listed here):
INTERNET FOR DEVELOPMENT & SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Key issues raised (1-sentence per issue):

• The overall YMI rankings are closely correlated to traditional simple metrics that shows competitiveness, such as GDP per capita. This correlation reinforces that the YMI methodology is built on a sound basis; greatly deviating results would be a cause for concern.
• Open data and capacity building effort are important to stimulate more data-driven advocacy.
• A well-defined objective and goals of data collection is key to success in advocacy.
• While data-driven advocacy is an effective way to call for changes, the privacy and security of the data collected shall be handled with caution.
• Many YMI indicators stem from the socioeconomic environments and policies of a locality. It follows that policy makers and governments should use YMI indicators to advise policy change in making their locality more competitive for youth.
• Youth shall not be underestimated just because of their experience and it is believed that a group of like-minded passionate and determined youth together can bring a very significant change.
• There is a call for paradigm shift from concerning only Internet connectivity and access to how the Internet and digital mobility is actually supporting or not supporting young people and their development in terms of the competitiveness.

If there were presentations during the session, please provide a 1-paragraph summary for each presentation:

The organizer, Mr. Edmon Chung, has presented an overview of the Youth Mobility Index (YMI.asia) which takes into account the geographical, social and digital mobility across employment, education and entrepreneurship pillars. The index measures how easy it is for young people to move across the region physically and upwardly in social context as well as to mobilise resources and people online. Secondary data was mainly used for calucations such as the public data sets from local governments, UNESCO, World Bank, UNICEF, etc combining in total a 216 different social and econimic indicators as well as technical indicators. Weighing of each data point is also adjusted based on youth-driven mindsets considering that youth might have different priorites than senior professionals. Some interesting highlights of the results are:

• The overall YMI ranking correlates well with the GDP per capita
• Japan and Korea actually shows a lower GDP per capita because of their high digital mobility for young people in those regions. How that actually translates into the future competitiveness of those areas versus simply looking at the GDP and the GDP development would be an interesting area to look at.
• Hong Kong and Singapore have a huge migrant force yet only a small trunk is youth while Japan is the opposite with a large proportion of youth among the small migrants population
• Japan ranked high overall yet their outbound mobility is indeed relatively low and more investigation on the effect of future competitiveness is to be revealed.
• Taiwan faces similar situation of low youth outbound rate and raised the question on its influence on social tolerance and diversity.
• Vietnam has a very high start-up momentum yet low in general mobility indicating that the regulatory framework for allowing young people to move about may need to be opened up further
• Singapore and Hong Kong are usually very high on happiness index overall in Asia; however, when you divide it by the cost of living, i.e. cost of happiness, they fall to the bottom of the scale

Dr. Chitat Chan introduced the youth-mindsets comparative study as a stem of the YMI project which involves a survey to measure some psychological constructs, including close minded necessary, curiosity, self-esteem, ethnocentric tendency. The study will provide further evidence to policy makers on how socio-cultural conditions correlates and affect young people on their mobility and vice versa.

Please describe the Discussions that took place during the workshop session (3 paragraphs):

Two youth representatives from HKYIGF Angel and Faith of age 18 and 16 years-old respectively shared why mobility is important from their youth perspectives. Angel commented that digital mobility is especially important for education to help eliminate disparity and the anti-globalization movement with the increase access to information and learning materials via the Internet. People in developing countries will have more opportunities to quality education without travelling abroad. Faith agreed that youth nowadays are being brought up in a more international and global context where they are inclined to go abroad for life experience instead of owning tangible goods. Overall, youth mobility helps develop global citizenship and connect people of different parts of the world and help solve global problems.

The importance of data-driven advocacy was raised by Wathagi Ndungu where she had extensive experience with her work at Amnesty International and Digital Grassroots Program. She noted that a nice visualization of data can help to boost interests and tell better stories. She shared a successful case in Kenya which they asked citizens whether they will vote yes for the newly proposed data protection bill and presented the data collected to the government. The government was moved by the data and called for a collaboration with the civil society to improve the bill. It was echoed by another youth representative Faith Lee which she shared about her student-led advocacy work on refugee rights with the data gathered by an NGO showing the astonishingly low refugee acceptance rate of 0.6% in Hong Kong compare to the highest 75% elsewhere. She added that data provides a kind of background and knowledge to public on the need for change.

External factors such as open data availability; capacity building effort; data relevance will affect the ability to empower change with data as suggested by various speakers. For instance, Wathagi reminded that trainings for advocates are required to build their capacity in dealing with a vast number of data as well as handling the privacy and security aspects of the data. It is also noted that the relevance of data and the objectives or goals in collecting such data shall be well defined in the first place to ensure the effectiveness of any indices to inform policy makers’ decisions. However, Sherry indicated that there is room for improvement on open data and the data format from local governments to assist research or studies. She observed a general reluctance of government departments in Hong Kong to open up data or only release them in pdf format which poses difficulties for researchers to extract and analyze them.  

Please describe any Participant suggestions regarding the way forward/ potential next steps /key takeaways (3 paragraphs):

The Youth Mobility Index has planned improvements on incorporating gender and freedom of the internet factors more into the calculations as well as taking the Internet Universality Indicators adopted framework and the ROAM principles.

Other suggestions made by participants are to take into consideration the backgrounds, like cultures and upbringings of the individuals that are being investigated, including their education. It is because the education system differs depending on the country and also depending school by school. Another question raised is whether the quality of the exchange experience has been taken into account.

There is a call for paradigm shift from concerning only Internet connectivity and access to how the Internet and digital mobility is actually supporting or not supporting young people and their development in terms of the competitiveness.

Gender Reporting

- Estimate the overall number of the participants present at the session:

There were around 25 participants

- Estimate the overall number of women present at the session:

Approximately 12 participants were female including 4 on the panel out of the 6 speakers.

- To what extent did the session discuss gender equality and/or women’s empowerment?

- If the session addressed issues related to gender equality and/or women’s empowerment, please provide a brief summary of the discussion:

The session did not address gender issues in specific while there is a mention to include gender aspects into the index calculation.