The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin, Germany, from 25 to 29 November 2019. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: My dear friends, maybe we should start, and I begin with the introduction. Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the session about data use and data sovereignty in the framework of the Internet Governance Forum today. Before we dive into the discussion here my text says 60 minutes, but we only have 30 minutes. I'm Stephanie Czerny. I founded 2005 Conference called DLD. DLD stands for Digital Life Design. It deals with how is the Internet shaping our world and our society and our personal lives.
It's an honour for me to moderate here today. We have a distinguished group of people from different geographies as well as backgrounds in the session. One of the fathers of the Internet, Vint Cerf, four Ministers ‑‑ in the moment, only two Ministers, but we hope there will be more, four Ministers of Government from Asia, Africa and Europe, one high ranking UN representative, one Advisory Board member of globally operating companies and one representative from a non‑profit organisation.
Unfortunately, the announced Mr. Tarek Müller couldn't come. He got ill tonight, so I am the one who do the introduction. So allow me to lead into the topic briefly before we go into the individual statements of each panelist and following Q and A session. Many of the globally operating digital services, we are all using or should I say we all are relying on today are based on a key resource, which, as you know, machine generated data, and more importantly, human generated data such as location, medical or behavioral data.
Around this human‑generated or personal data, there has been much debate on how it can and should be processed in order to further economic development, efficient governmental processes while protecting individuals' rights for their privacy. Calls for data sovereignty and regulation have been raised especially from European Governments and consumers, while on the other hand, the argument can be made that the full potential, the full potential of the Internet can only be harvested when it remains open, free and borderless and data can flow freely.
What makes data governance under the global space of the Internet a particular challenge is the fact that there is a different understanding of data who belongs to different regions of the world. Thus the data belongs to the companies which collect it to build businesses and services out of it. Does it belong to the state Government which can use it to further the technological development of the nation? Or does it belong to the individual which has a right to make an informs decision where and when their data should be used?
How can we reach an agreement on what good data governance is in this respect? I think we all can agree it's a necessary and important task to define these rules. If we want to enhance trust in the Internet, while fostering growth and development of digital data‑driven businesses and research.
So let's jump into the panelist discussion. I would like to turn to you, Vint Cerf.
You are one of the fathers of the Internet. And also Vice President and chief evangelist for Google. And essay from 2013 coauthored by yourself is titled Internet Governance is our shared responsibility, which makes a case for existing, multiple Internet stakeholders to push forward governance initiatives in three areas of expertise, in their area of expertise rather than presume a one regulation fits all approach. Is disbursing responsibility the way forward? And how far are we in the process of governing the use of data?
>> VINT CERF: I hope that in fact it is the way forward because the ability to move data freely from one place to another in the world over this world spanning Internet does require a lot of cooperation and assumed responsibility among all of us. We have to have both technical protections and we have to have common principles that will allow people who put data into this system to feel that the data is properly protected and that they can trust the organisations, Google and others to maintain safety and security of that information.
The GDPR is an attempt to both to sort of standardize the way in which we treat data, but it is essential that there be accountability for the safety of that information. So from the Google point of view, we are very experienced with enormous amounts of data that people trust us to put into the system and maintain access to only authorized parties. It's your email, your documented, your Google searches, your maps and all of the other things that we offer are protected, and we do that recognizing that in order to trust us with the data, we have to apply extremely powerful mechanisms including cryptography to maintain data in transit and at rest.
One of the things we have to collectively achieve if we want all of the organisations who are part of the Internet to fully move data around is the adopted common principles, technical principles in order to ensure the data everyone that the data is adequately detected that there is strong authentication of parties before they get access to the data and that those that own the data are cost that it's being treated in accordance with their expectation. I will mention that we have established a Google safety engineering centre in Munich and that group wishes to engage with others in order to formulate practices and policies and principles for protection of information.
I'll stop there, mad Dan chairwoman because I know you have very little time.
>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: This is the perspective of a U.S. company. I would like now to ask Nadia, Minister of Economy of Spain. Dear Minister, you have also had a longstanding experience as Director General of the Directorate general budget and the European Commission. What is European point of view the reaction of what Vint Cerf just said.
>> NADIA CALVINO: I was very happy to hear this very constructive approach. Before I was responsible for the budget in the EU commission, I was responsible for financial regulation and competition. Technology has evolved very fast, and we need to adjust our institution and systems and legal frameworks. And I was very encouraged this morning already to hear that there is this strong consensus that probably self‑regulation is not enough and we need to find a way to regulate things in a coherent manner throughout the world to build global standards, global conference frameworks, and I was happy to hear that the business sector most directly impacted by this is also seeing this need and happy to find a way forward.
When it comes to data, we don't need to spend any time discussing the importance that they have. There are three key issues we need to reflect upon. The first one is accessibility, not only the free flow, but how do we ensure that we take the opportunities of accessing data to improve health services. This has been mentioned as a very good example in the course of the morning while, of course, ensuring the integrity, the correctness of the data, the maintenance of those data and the privacy and the non‑individualization of the data.
And this is a first key issue, accessibility, but it is undoubtedly connected to the second issue, which is trust. If there is no trust in that the data is going to be appropriately used by the private sector and public sector then citizens are not going to be willing to give their data and we will lose these opportunities.
I think that the GDPR becoming sort of a standard throughout the world is a very good development because it will avoid that we end up having hundreds of different rules which at the end of the day are not going to enable us to know what's going on with our data. This second issue of trust is indispensable, and then the third issue, which is the big elephant in the room, but it has been mentioned already this morning is who owns the data?
Citizens own data. Companies that develop these know‑how have the data. So what is the value of the data and how do we have a fair taxation system? In that sense also I think it's very important that we make progress in the OECD and in the good 20 framework so we are building economic Government systems which enable this development of the new technologies across the world in a manner which protects or put the citizen at the centre of development so we profit from the opportunities but we avoid the mistakes and risks which we are already starting to see.
>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: Vice Minister Makiko Yamada, we spoke very briefly about the panel, and you mentioned immediately trust as one of the most important sources of dealing with the Internet. Can you give us your point of view?
>> MAKIKO YAMADA: I am very sorry to be late. I was in the wrong room, and I sat on the stage and I was so much embarrassed, so my colleague took me here. So I'm very happy to be here in time, and so we, Japan, we Chaired the G20 meeting this year. And that meeting focused on the data free flow, but we had the consensus on the data free flow with trust. And it is the G20 Government's consensus that the freeze flow of data is important, but the trust is necessary for the future data flow.
And so I would like to introduce here our initiative, Japanese initiative on one of the examples of the, how to reach the suggestion of the trust of data flow. It is concerned with the personal data our personal data bank. So there are many consumers who have anxiety over providing personal data. And in order to resolve this status, it is critically important to the individual to be involved in the use of personal data.
We need to balance controllability by individuals in data usage, and in regards to this, I would like to introduce a Japanese framework called personal trust bank which allows data use by individuals. And this system allows individuals to store and manage their personal data. However, it is difficult for people to make decisions on the use of their individual data, and in addition each person has difficulties thinking about the purpose of the use of data. So Personal Data Trust Bank is a framework to solve those issues and this scheme enables individuals to delegate entrusted parties to provide personal data to third parties with consensus. So if, and I understand this panel is very much time limited, so if I have time more, and then I can also explain a little bit more, but this is kind of the introduction remarks from me.
>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: Thank you very much. I think it's realize for us, the audience, the listeners, really important to learn more about the amazing things which are going on in Japan. I think I had no idea how advanced your policy is. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
The next panelist, the next Minister of State, I would really like to hear from Ebrima Sillah. As we heard, many African states are quickly leapfrogging into the global digital economy, so what is your position on data governance in this growing market? Should it be left to the economy or to the Government?
>> EBRIMA SILLAH: Thank you so much, Madame Chair.
I think time given to us is too short to actually lay out our strategic policy interventions, but I think your question and, of course, the issue of data governance brings to the fore an important fundamental issue for us in Africa, which is data security and data integrity, and also trust in the trustee, because let me tell you that, I mean, within the next 20, 30 years, I mean, you will have more Internet users in Africa than Europe, America combined with the way the trends are going.
What a lot of companies are looking at basically is to what we call segregate the populations into classes, I mean, the middle class, the affordable class, the extreme poor, but who will have important data that the NGOs and multilaterals will have to use to justify a whole lot of interventions in Africa.
For us this is extremely important that data sovereignty lies in the states so that companies that are coming in to work with our governments, our citizens ensure that the rules are respected, the rules are followed, and then we have a fundamental right to access data with respect but also responsibility.
So far our global convergence is around than the Budapest Convention on cybersecurity, and all of those issues, but we also have great concerns about who uses our data, what do they use it for, because right now we need to, we have to admit, people of African dissent and people of Africa and African countries are people who have been tracked most for data miners, for what we call opportunistic use of this data in future.
It is extremely important for us that we lay foundations through policy but also through legislation, that data that is collected by our people, our unsuspecting people are managed by the state, because it is conventional wisdom that the state acts on behalf of the people and it acts in good faith on behalf of those people.
So really for us, it is too short to lay out our fundamental policy concerns, but, you know, I mean, we have already developed a paper that I will share with especially those of the countries that are from the developing world, not only from Africa, to put some of these fundamental issues into great, great consideration while we move together to ensure that we have a fully digital governance environment that acts with caution but also with responsibility. Thank you.
>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: Thank you for your optimistic vision, and I'm very glad that you told us this. I think this panel could be held for a whole Conference. 30 minutes are definitely too short. It's such a pity. The next statement I would like to hear is from Liu Zhemin, the Undersecretary of the United Nations. You are at the very centre of all of the data governance debate. You are also a national of China. Do you see the conflict line between China and Europe and the U.S. when it comes to data use and privacy as clearly cut as it is often reported?
>> LIU ZHEMIN: Thank you, moderator. This is a challenging question to me. Let me share with you some perspective as how we see the data issues in the United Nations. Actually Internet is really changing the data generation, changing the data procession, changing the data use. Until Internet was developed, actually the data for the whole international community we all rely on official data, official statistics.
But we have developed Internet, actually generation data at a much wider scope, every citizen has now become the owner of the data, but that's a risk, not a problem, that you could really balance the difference between official data and non‑official data. And how do we assure that non‑official data will be complimentary and attributed to the integration of the data, that it lay good foundation for the future development of the Internet.
For the United Nations, we have a challenge since 2015 whether the world adopted the 2030 Agenda, that would be agenda until 2030, how we could support Governments, Member States, and all communities to ensure that they have adequate data for preparing the development as well as to measurement their progress. This year's big challenge, I think we are trying to use official data because official data much trusted by Governments, much trusted by Governments.
But in many cases, this equity data is big challenge because even official data there is also gaps between Member States depending on their capacity for development and generating data. You mention what about the U.S. and China, actually I think these countries, they are in a better position for official data. They are in a bitter position for both generation and processing. But among 193UN Member States, the data gap exists very seriously between the north and the south.
I think until now as the Minister of Gambia mentioned, we do not have universal access of data capacity among 193 members. So that's the issue we want to try though achieve to have every country have the national capacity for developing official data. Second, I think, based on official data, how it could help improve processing of unofficial data. The Internet would be of great help.
I think we need to cooperate with different Internet Society Internet companies so that they could help to improve our quality of data. By improving the quality of data, they improve the authority of data. So the Minister of Spain had mentioned it's trust of data, it is a big issue. I think to improve trust of data, we have to start by improving the quality of data. Of course, I think this data will be basis for further development, further evolution of Internet, but I hope it will be for all Internet companies, really devote more investment in helping the international community improving the data, I think this can be done through the calibration with some comments, as well as cooperation with some international organisations.
I think United Nations is really in a position to collaborate with Internet Societies, with Internet companies to ensure our data would be improved. I am confident on that. Thank you.
>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: Steph, thank you so much for your call to action. Now, Pablo, please give us your perspective. Pablo is with APNIC. Maybe you could give a short glimpse what is it and what your role is there and how you see the question of international trust in data regarding localization of the Internet.
>> PABLO HINOJOSA: This is a very flash panel and a lightning talk. I wanted to bring here a perspective of phenomenon that has happened on the Internet which is the localized content on the Internet. I will depart from what Vint Cerf said that people basically put a lot of trust, with their data to organisations, certain organisations which are called the Cloud computer companies and the content distributors. So this has created sort of a change in the way sort of the Internet works in the sense that it also enables national interests around cyber sovereignty and more control and regulation over data.
Since today, most of the traffic goes from a content owner straight to the Cloud provider and there are sort of concentrated group of companies that deliver this content, this content can be local or global to the final users. So the traffic flow instead of going through the public Internet is now bouncing between sort of these networks before it goes straight to the local networks.
So I wanted to bring sort of the questions of localized content into this discussion because I think they are at the core of self‑determination of data and also data sovereignty as the question for this panel post.
>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: Thank you Pablo Hinojosa. The it's the idea of think global and act local. Maybe it's an old fashioned quote, but it still works. So now I have the pleasure to ask you, my dear friend, Simone Menne, we know each other for a long time and I'm happy that you are here. You are an influential businesswoman in Germany. You work with several boards, you are advisory committee board member and you have a good insight of the state of the Internet and digitalization in the world because you work with global companies.
You just heard from six different panelists, six different statements. What is your point of view regarding our topic?
>> SIMONE MENNE: It's a slightly unfair position I'm in now, because I'm the last and I have nearly the last word.
So let's put it like this, data, and I think we all agree, is absolutely valuable resource, and we need it for the human mankind and further development. And, therefore, we need it globally for health, for distribution of goods. What we see at the moment is already an operation of Internet, so we see some localized Internets, different rules and different countries that may hinder our global further development of data. So to solve the problems of mankind, we need a global cooperation beyond borders and industries and this for yum is great because it brings together politics, companies and scientists knowing what we can do as well as industries.
United Nations is, I think, the owner, the task holder for this, but slightly controversial to what I have heard before, I think trust globally is already lost. There has been too many misuses of data by companies as well as by nations, and what we need, I think, is first a lot more transparency to the individual, meaning what are algorithms doing in Google or BMW. We need ownership for an individual. I don't believe a company or a nation can own the data of an individual.
Unfortunately at the moment, we have a technology where you have to hand over your data to get some convenience or sometimes even something you urgently need. So, therefore, I think and I hope a solution like Tim Bernis Lee is providing where we have an individual link and ownership of data where you decide on your own what to do with it could be a solution. I don't seize national solutions. I think we need a lot more training for everybody to understand what we are doing with our data and we, of course, and we all agree on that, need a code of conduct with responsibility for every player, meaning the individual, the company as well as a nation has to sign a code of conduct which is borderless with common rules and where misuse by individual, company or nations is a crime like any other crime and will, therefore, like any crime against human mankind be punished.
So that's my idea.
>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: Thank you, Simone.
We need a kind of enlightenment. In the 18th century happening the democracy of states, we need this, we have to get involved much more than we are. And since we owe the fact of the Internet our dear friend Vint Cerf who is still one of the fathers of the Internet, I will give you the last word. How did you react to what you just heard?
>> VINT CERF: Thank you so much for that.
I wanted to point out to you that not all data should necessarily be owned. Some of the most valuable data in the world is public data, shared data and we use it to advance scientific knowledge, we use it to make major decisions and policy decisions. However, even if it's not owned, it's important that have integrity and that we understand the Providence of the data. So part of our challenge is to make sure we can achieve that objective.
If we know about open source, think about open data in the same context. We also need to develop ontologies that help us describe the kind of data we are dealing with, whether it's official data that you mentioned earlier, or personal data or protected data of one kind or another. We need the ontology so we can tell people how we are treating the data based on its type. So I just leave that for you to consider that let us not imagine that all data has to be owned, that shared data, public data is vitally important.
>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: Thank you so much. Thank you dear panelists. I'm so sorry that we can't open it for questions. We already have 30 minutes and this is over now, but I encourage you to continue ‑‑ 38 seconds. One question from the audience. Here. Please introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: Haas Cramers, Germany. I very much appreciated that there was at least the last panelist. Thank you for having a little bit of criticism or skepticism about our societies. What the reality is you can wish all of the trust you want, and the reality is that it doesn't work. And, for instance, one question for me raised here was in direction of United Nations, how is the effort, the realistic effort of United Nations to fight corruption internationally?
Corruption doesn't work without information, and we all know that corruption is about big money, and those people need the information from the others. That is, corruption is part of the Internet fighting. So what is the realistic perspective of United Nations?
>> STEPHANIE CZERNY: Thank you so much for your question. I think it gives us food for thought. We can't answer it yet now because it would take too much time, but I invite you to come to the DLD Conference, it's January 18th‑20th. Please apply to come and I encourage the panel to continue DLD. Thank you. Bye.
(Applause).
(Concluded at 1220)
PANEL IB: DATA DRIVEN BUSINESS MODELS, SUCH AS INDUSTRY 4.0, NEW BUSINESS MODELS BASED ON AI, CLOUD SERVICES AND PLATFORMS: WHAT KIND OF FRAMEWORK/REGIME IS NEEDED?
>> MODERATOR: Hello, welcome to this highly relevant panel on data driven business models. I will not make a long introduction because we have lost a lot of time. This panel has gone from 60 to 50 to now 40 minutes, but fortunately there has not been a reduction in the number of panelists so we are still nine panelists with about 40 minutes to share. We all know the importance of the subject. I'm not going to go on about that.
Data really is the oil of this century, but we have a lot of questions that we need to discuss. How are we going to leverage that? How are we going to leverage the value of data? Data is not homogeneous, there is public and non‑public, user and machine‑derived data, so we need to discuss how we are going to leverage the data in the future.
We have done a lot of work in the OECD and we have new work now on how to enhance access to data. That is why we take a particular interest as part of our going digital project which is the biggest horizontal project in the OECD. It's going to work this way. I'm going to give all nine panelists the floor to say whatever they want about the subject. I'm not sure we are going to have time for Q and A. We will try to if we can. I have a method to discipline you that the public doesn't know about, but there is a watch to limit to three minutes. I can see it, but you can't see it, but that is meant to discipline us.
You all have three minutes except you, Martin, you will kick us off, you have five minutes. Martin is the founder of Bolt and also an entrepreneur for 20 years. You have started six companies and you are the cofounder of the foundation. Martin the, the floor is yours.
>> MARTIN VILLIG: Hello. Great to be here today. I'll try to give a quick overview of how we see transportation and how data is relevant to our business model. Bolt is the third fastest growing company in Europe based on financial times. We operate in 34 markets. We operate micro mobility, electric scooters, motorcycle, taxis and now recently now also food delivery. We have been growing really fast. We are a 6‑year‑old company and one of the European unicorns.
How much we actually and gather data. We do about one million rides per day. So we get hundreds of gigabytes of data. When talking about AI. We have 300AI models in production currently. That's not just developing the models, but we need to monitor them to make sure they make sense, add value and so on. Then what are the use cases where we actually use data and also data science and machine learning?
So as in ride hailing, you probably know that pricing is really important. So passengers always want the cheaper price. The drivers always want to have higher price. How do we find reasonable balance in between them to make sure that we have enough drives to cover the need and the price is cheap enough so that drivers will be willing to come out. So this is one of the main things we use data and try to predict what kind of pricing logic we should provide.
Second is about campaigns. So, for example, recently we launched in London and we invested millions per month, so how we make sure that all of the campaign money is exactly targeted to people that will get the best return out of it. So we need to subsidize drivers to bring them online. We need to give discounts to passengers, how exactly, what patterns is needed to get the best results. So this is on the pricing side. Then maps and ETAs, you probably all know about ETA of these apps are challenging.
Sometimes they go wrong because the city traffic is very difficult to predict. So we have now last two years built the mapping layer in‑house. Before that we were based on Google Maps, but now we also use open street maps. We use our own data from the rides, and we try to calculate the best possibility to make sure that we can tell you when the car actually arrives. So those are maybe the three main areas where we use data science.
A few principles, we always want to be ethical. So we don't want to use data. For example, we know that passengers ordering a car, they have an expensive latest iPhone model and their battery is about to die. Quite a good situation to put high prices, but we don't want to do that, and all of our majority of our AI decisions are actually based on aggregated data, not about single person.
Few examples or a few exceptions when we need to deal with fraud prevention or law enforcement situations, then we need to consider specific users. And, of course, we need to take very much care about the data. Everyone is accessing private data is logged and only per need basis. And then lately we have lots of regulations coming up, GDPR, but also the AI ethics and different frameworks that we are monitoring on. So we try to always follow the regulations and best practices.
And then what challenges we see ahead. So for our case, operating in cities then many, more and more cities are asking data from the platform. The challenge for us API is very different, how they ask, what they ask is very different. So we would be happy if there would be some kind of best practice globally, so we could have one API and share it with all, but on the second, the challenge is what data to share because data is also competitive advantage for platforms and cities often ask too much data which they may not even use. So we need to find a very balanced situation, what to share in order not to lose competitive advantage but on the other hand gain data that cities need for planning transport and so on.
And secondly, we see that over our global literacy level for people is relevantly low. We have sophisticated discussions about AI, the data and so on but most people don't understand that. So we need to raise and educate people. There is one very good finish initiative. It's a free online course, elements of AI and Finland claims that 2% of their population have already passed it. I think that many other nations could take that lead and then try to educate their people so we actually have relevant and reasonable discussions.
And finally, I mentioned radio regulations. That's a challenge everywhere, so how to find a decent balance for that. So thank you. That was a very short from Bolt, and all of our rides in Europe are carbon neutral so we also try to be a sustainable platform.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Martin, you did it in four minutes. That shows the efficiency of the private sector. I would like to turn to you, Dr. Dirk Abendroth. You are the chief technology officer of continental automotive and award winning experiment in the development of systems for automated driving, connected mobility and electric vehicle drivers. You have the floor.
>> DIRK ABENDROTH: Just reflecting on a couple of critical principles we think are the key ones to make business happen and make us feel comfortable with this. I think one of the key things first of all is that we agree on an underlying principle which is very simply speaking, we are under control for data. It applies to us as human beings, our personal data on the one side, and secondly, as he mentioned as well, to IP, so IP is to a certain degree data as well, and it is something that needs to be under control, otherwise no business is possible as you mentioned earlier. So that is kind of the to my understanding underlying principle otherwise it can't work.
Once this is in place and you are under control of your data, the second step is very straight forward, then it needs trust to give your data to somebody else. So this trust is something you need to earn one by one or you need to have at least enough initial trust and then see if trust is proven to be right. So in the end, it needs very clear regulations and how do I give away my IP and get recharge back. How can I have control of personal data and make sure it's no misused, et cetera.
So these are the two steps which are think are straight forward. When it comes to the very special and dedicated business I'm in automotive and mobility. I think there is three basic notions I would like to mention here. One is classification. So to us, it's very, very important what kind of data we are looking at. Just to give you a couple of examples, one, you just collect traces or another thing you might ask people and the quality of what you get back, the samples are totally different, which is related to a second aspect, which is what I call qualification. So qualification is something like, well, you could simply kind of translate that to quality. What is the quality of data I get.
So, for example, is it a representative sample is it something that represents European Union or African people or the entire world or a city, whatever? Is there a representative sample? Or is it maybe something which even qualifies, for example, to get a certain location to get something proven to be safety relevant or even safe. So these kind of traces, once they are kind of harmonized and have been proven by an official institute or Government could be very helpful for us.
So another example for qualification of data, the very last one obviously mentioned, I guess, as well, cybersecurity. You and I know it's easy to manipulate data as well as software, so it's one of the crucial parts we need to take care of as well.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Dr. Dirk Abendroth. I would like to introduce, and we will jump ahead a little bit in the queue, I would like to introduce Carina Röllig. You are the founder and CEO of Web Data Solutions which is one of the fastest growing German startups and has released market analysis of software black beak.
>> CARINA RÖLLIG: We are a spinoff of a university, and it's all about data. We collect online data prices and product offers from online marketplaces and retailers, and for us it's really relevant what we are allowed to do with it. So, first of all, for us, all of the regulations with the Internet, all things that doesn't allow us to extract product information from the Web, like images or data descriptions, product descriptions.
This is everything that maybe could bring us and travel with our business model. So for us it would be very, very relevant to get the same regulations as you maybe have in the U.S. or in other states in the world. So huge differences if you compare this with the German law. This is maybe the first point. So on the other hand, as we are extracting all of these heterogenous data from global web sources, we have a very high focus on data quality. So data quality in the end is really key.
And what we see with even huge companies are sometimes struggling with data quality even with the internal data. So if we bring data together to make analysis to realize maybe in the end Artificial Intelligence solutions, we need to make sure that we can trust in the data we get, and what our clients can also rely on this data.
What we also see is what data is stored in different resources, platforms or databases, and to realize global data‑driven businesses, you need to bring all of this data together, normalize it and enhance it maybe with more relevant information, and to make sure that it's always available and it's directly usable. And for us, the main point with the Internet is, on the other hand, this is really a huge duty to use the data there, and to make it useful and to bring it in the end to solutions which can help people.
Maybe in our kind it's an easy good solution how to set your own prices in maybe your own store, but it could also help to realize which products are maybe sustainable or not. So there are lots more business cases behind this data we are collecting today. I really hope that we can create a world where the data is available and it's useful for everyone in the end.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. That was short and sweet and to the point.
I now turn to Henry Verdier. You are also a former entrepreneur with digital experience across the public and private sector. I notice that I forgot to introduce myself earlier, and I think the easy way to do it is by saying when Henri and I met earlier today and we talked about negotiations, he said I have been a tech guy all my life, I have only done this diplomatic stuff for a year. And for me it's the opposite, I have been a diplomat all of my life, and I have been doing tech stuff for a year. Enough about me, Henri, you have the floor.
>> HENRI VERDIER: Thank you for four minutes, and I will leave before the end of the Conference.
>> MODERATOR: But not before the end of the four minutes.
>> HENRI VERDIER: Good morning. I'm happy to share ideas with you. I was the first chief data officer of the French Government, and I share four ideas. The main idea is we have to face the fact, think about this, through history the man's greatest growth has occurred when scare resources became abundant. And now we have to face the fourth one is the data abundance. We are not prepared for this. Because when we have this kind of revolution, everything changes.
The balance of power changes, the value changes and the public policies and role of the state changes. And this revolution is not like the former revolution because there is a great difference. Data is not the new oil. I disagree with your introduction, because data is an infinite resource, you can use the data and you create more data, not less data, so we have to deal with abundance revolution with an infinite resource, and that's something very new in human history. And your question this morning is how to create more value in this field.
So first, the first answer is quite simple. We create value when someone uses the data to build something. That's quite simple. And there is a first consequence is that very often, maybe not every time, but very often you should share your data, make open Government data for Government because if you don't, the people will find the data elsewhere, and will organize themselves without you. And without your data and you will weak and alone somewhere. So it's not so difficult. If some people use the data, they may create value.
The question for Government is more where do we create value and for whom? And, of course, as Government I think that we have to promote shared value and to fight for general interests and for this, maybe it was your question we will need some regulation, sometimes, but I feel that we need more public policies. We need three very important topics in these public policies.
First, we need to foster innovation. This innovation comes from a rich ecosystem with a creativity, iteration, fair competition, we need research, experimentation, we need to be able to create a lot of startups. So we have to foster innovation. Then it is very important we need to build data infrastructures. We spend a lot of money for roads, rails, and a lot of physical infrastructures, and we do not consider data infrastructures.
So sometimes we will have to finance and build infrastructures, but in this field, sometimes it's more efficient to cooperate with Wikipedia, because users, people, you are building very interesting infrastructures, digital comments is very important. And, of course, last but not least, we need to build trust and accountability into everything we do with data. Most people have concerns around the misuse of data to oppress and control individuals. They have concern with policies, with privacy. They are right. You have to face this. You have to organize ourselves to avoid this kind of threat with data.
So the citizen has the right to have this consent, and the Government has the duty to find solution with you, but that's my three topics, innovation, infrastructure and trust and accountability. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. I would like to turn to Grégoire Kopp. You are the Chief of Staff at OVH, you have a varied background as former Director of Communication and spokesperson for Uber France, and you are also previous Ministerial Advisor in the Minister of Transport, and you did some time as a lawyer, lobbyist protecting consumer interest. The floor is yours.
>> GRÉGOIRE KOPP: Thank you for inviting us to talk. It's good to have area to discuss between diplomats, politicians because we need to create Internet together. OVH Cloud Company is the biggest one in Europe. We are the only European one in the top ten worldwide, and we were built 20 years ago by a Polish immigrant. So we are open by design, we create the European scale between 2000 and 2010, and we did that with very special values. Because the founder is a real tech guy, so for him, open source, sharing data is very important, and all of the commitment of the company is based on that.
First of all, the motto of the company is innovation is freedom because for us it is natural that innovation can create freedom, but we discovered and realized a few years ago that it was not always the case, and we change our motto to innovation for freedom because we need a special commitment for that.
To answer the question how we can build more trust for Internet based on data, there are two main points. The first is reversibility. We need to exchange data and we need to create some way to work together. Now, in Europe there is a special initiative based on the German Government because we need to create links between our companies and we need to share it with transparency, and we need to push standardization too. That's my second point, standardization.
We need to be able to discuss together. It's like to not be able to talk together. And Internet is a common thing, so reversibility and standardization.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, that was short and sweet, very much to the point. And you actually asked or recommended that we could have more dialogue between the private sector, the multi‑stakeholder community and the Ministers, and we actually do have a Minister also on the panel so that's a good thing. I would like to introduce Minister Johnny Plate, who is Minister of Communication and information in Indonesia. Your portfolio covers many of the main themes of this Forum actually, both the cybercrime, data sovereignty and information technology. We are very pleased to have you with us Minister Johnny Plate.
>> JOHNNY PLATE: Thank you. I was sworn in a month ago and I have to deal with all of this informatics. I'm talking about Indonesia only now. As Indonesia aims to become a digital nation, a great emphasis is being placed on improving connectivity across the Archipelago through infrastructure, fiberoptics, BDS, satellite that connect people from Papua in the east, it took 75 years for telephone to reach 100 million users worldwide, but it took Pokémon Go only less than a month to reach the same number. Private adoptions of universal technology has been a key consequence of unprecedented cross‑border data flows.
Data flows have made our country safer, more efficient and productive. Indonesia enabling of Internet access to its entire populous and leads us to inevitable data governance challenges. As more than 150 million Indonesians now have access to the Internet, Indonesia is operating on a multi‑stakeholder approach to supporting our citizens' data. This approach involves ministries, the national police, telco companies and civil society. I will clarify the roles and responsibility of stakeholders with examples.
First, our Government will soon complete the general data protection regulations, which is currently being discussed in Parliament. This new data protection regulations will not only acknowledge data privacy as a basic right of every citizen. It will also guarantee protection of consumer's data. Second, Indonesia has launched the digital literacy movement in Southeast Asia.
The national movement on disability literacy is a multi‑stakeholder grass roots movement. This movement is made up of businesses, communities, Government entities and academics to engage with and empower communities in data protection, digital literacy, develop curricula and govern cyberpeace. It is taking concerted access against hoaxes, fake news and cyberbullying that have become rampant.
The two examples illustrate the key roles of the regulator and regulated. On the one hand regulations are given legal weight to the importance of all stakeholders all to give up protecting personal data. On the other hand, citizens must be aware that data privacy is a basic right he or she enjoys.
This can only be achieved through strengthening disability literacy. In my view Government must act to protect citizens at all costs, and that includes data. Civil society must educate itself and be educated in schools on data privacy rights. The public and the private sectors may collect data, but must do so in accordance with the law, and we are just witnessing the early stages of Artificial Intelligence, big data and Internet of Things.
Future innovations will revolutionize daily life as we know it, but only if we follow these principles can we ensure that data protection will be upheld in the wake of new innovations and technologies. We have a long way ahead in answering our long‑term digital competitive and analyzing our data governance framework. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much Minister. Next in line is Theresa Swinehart, the Senior Vice President of multi‑stakeholder strategy and strategic initiatives at ICANN, and you are also a leading advocate of an open and secure Internet, and, of course, an expert in global Internet Governance and cooperation.
>> THERESA SWINEHART: Thank you. And thank you very much for having ICANN here. We appreciate the opportunity. We are one of the many players in the Internet space and the Internet Ecosystem and you may ask why we are here on this panel on this topic. It's really about trying to retain an open, stable, secure, interoperable Internet.
We deal with the coordination of the unique identifier system, the addressing space, IP protocol, domain name and IP addressing. And that's really the mechanism on which the platforms run, and so this conversation is very important because there is dependencies between frameworks being looked at around data and frameworks that impact the underlying infrastructure of the Internet more generally.
I was struck by one piece of information that was prepared for me in preparing this. It took radio, it took television to reach the same market, but for the Internet, it was only four years. And I think that really goes to some of the earlier points about the rapid pace of the evolution, but also the cognizant nature of having all players at the table in discussing frameworks that need to be addressed around data and around the future regulation or best practices for the Internet space.
So if we look at the ecosystem more broadly, we heard some other terms earlier around the importance of the trust in the Internet, mow it works, the security, the stability, and for that you really need to bring all of the players together to have that conversation. There is no single stakeholder, so I think having a panel like this is really quite critical.
From our standpoint it's really informing the discussion that's are occurring, the technical nature of the discussions, the potential for unintended consequences around that, and if I can bring one story closer to home for us has been the recent discussions around the data protection legislation in the GDPR. A well-intended legislation and a well-intended effort. The unintended consequences around that have been seen in areas that are part of the underlying coordination of the infrastructure space and of the domain name space.
So when we talk about what kind of frameworks or regimes are needed it's really ones that bring all parties together to the table, figure out solutions that are scalable, but also solutions that don't have an unintended consequence for the future of the Internet and benefits that lie ahead. So to put that into context for this panel, thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you also for your brevity. I would now like to introduce Leonid Todorov, and you have also been involved in the creation of the relation of the IGF. Thank you.
>> LEONID TODOROV: Well, I will be short. First of all, I represent a huge community of 64 organisations that run National Country Code Top Level Domains like DE for Germany or FR for France, but across Asia‑Pacific, and as you would imagine the region is huge and so is the diversity within the region because we have huge countries like China or India, and very small ones like, for example, the small Pacific Island of Neva with 1500 residents. With that I must say that we face probably the same challenges of anybody else because we live on data.
Let's say in contrast to Uber, we don't have any physical infrastructure, but some of our members operate name servers, which is hardware, but in effect, we run registries which are lists of people or organisations that register domain names which is understandable. And 70% of our members are Governments which is also interesting because then it means that Governments are coming to the forefront of the problem.
With that I must say that by and large my empirical sense is that across the region, there is a huge lack of awareness of the value of data. For example, if you talk to people in certain countries like China, probably you won't be able to make them appreciate the value of personal data and they would not be on the same page with you. So that means that for some of our members, quite many of them, data collection and data storage and use is not, are not specified in any SLA, Service Level Agreements and are by and large left to navigate the way of their role.
And remember that now GDPR across Asia‑Pacific, so there is not that level of concern about the usage of the data. With that I must say that as any CC, country code level and domain operator, our members face the same processes, adverse processes because Governments are really keen to take on this subject, and those brilliantly put, brilliantly put by Bertrand Lashappel, three things that really concern us.
First of all, in reacting sometimes irrationally to the challenge, Governments are trying hyper jurisdiction, which means they focus on jurisdictional issues. Secondly, legal plurality, you would imagine how many laws are adopted across the region and worldwide and thirdly, legal arms race. And we are in the epicenter of that legal arms race, although we operate in each and every jurisdiction across the region. So the remedy is simple it seems to me, and that is education and awareness raising. UN put it in one of their documents back in 2003, and I see no other remedy actually. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, we have saved the best for last, so I now turn to Monika Wiederhold, Executive Vice President of airline central in Eastern Europe, also care yam of the managing board of Amadeus Germany. Monica, do you want to finish us off?
>> MONIKA WIEDERHOLD: Amadeus is the leading travel tech company and half of all of the airline passengers worldwide flow through our system. That means we are dealing with a lot of transactional and private data. What we are trying to reach here collectively is really organising the digital world of the future, and that is just amazing task in itself.
So what we see is that we have to organize both sides, the data owner side, and the data user side. The data owner might be a citizen, a person, a traveler might be an organisation, a company, or Government. Both needs actually we think are quite similar. You need to have trust. You want to know what to do with the data, so the owner should be in control of the data. We think that is most important, with it an individual person to privacy reason maybe, be it an organisation more to intellectual property reasons, but the control of the owner of the data is key. On the user side, on the other side, we see that the accessibility and manageability is very important and this is quite difficult and we heard it earlier in the keynotes that even for a smaller, for smaller companies, medium‑sized companies this is an issue.
What I would like to do is to finish with two examples what we do as a company to address both sides, big projects going on on the owner side and the user side. On the owner side, I would say in travel the most burning problem, one of our biggest projects right now is really trying to create interoperable digital identities. This is something in the new digital world of travel which is so important for the travel and it's so difficult to solve because we have all of these different national interests, legal environments, et cetera.
So how can we collectively create and corroborate and secure these digital identities of our citizens, of our travelers in the future? And you really think through, close your eyes and dream of the travel of the future, it will be quite different. You won't queue up at hotel desks or airports.
The travel of the day is really a difficult journey and it will be different tomorrow. And digital identity is key to do so. And on the other side, on the usability side what we do as a company, but what I think a lot of companies do is really open up our data, not the individual lines, of course, but the aggregated ones, the Artificial Intelligence skills we have, open it up and provide an environment for developers to access it. So seen as an individual person, as a startup, you could use this massive data and the massive skills behind to create innovation and businesses on top.
Now, that is to close. Both sides have to be managed and maybe the last word I have is really whatever policies we create, we have to create a practical manageable output for users and owners.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. I think we were due to the lateness of the proceedings this morning, we were given one minute ‑‑ ten minutes extra, I'm sorry, it's only 9 past 1:00. So there is one minute available if any one of panelists thought there was something that they wanted to react to that others had said. Anyone? Perhaps especially I'm looking at Grégoire Kopp, Theresa Swinehart and Carina Röllig who were brief in their comments.
>> Maybe one addition, so as we are spinoff from universities, research was always eye huge topic for us and if I remember the times when our or my research colleagues tried to develop something really, really great new stuff, we are always lacking on data, so we take too much time to get data, to get access to data, and I would say if we can solve this problem, all of this research will be done much more efficient and much better. That's maybe the last I would say to this discussion.
>> MODERATOR: Grégoire Kopp.
>> GRÉGOIRE KOPP: I would like to add that there is possibility to do something very concrete. For example, tomorrow, we will share with the open commission the release of the first code of conduct for infrastructure as a service. Is it is very concrete engagement that we will be able to promote a and share a group in society to get that conduct and it is very concrete. It will be engaged in the European area, and we should work on that because data is very important because if you can't take your data, if you can't move, if you are stuck somewhere, it's finished for you. So it's important to do that too.
>> MODERATOR: With that I would like to thank all of you. It's been a very, very stimulating discussion. I won't try to summarize this, because it's been such a diverse discussion. I put down here digital literacy, awareness, education, standardization, trust, innovation, even freedom, cybersecurity, even cyber bullying, so you were very disciplined in keeping the time, but it's difficult to be disciplined when it comes to containing this issue because it really is so diverse, and maybe that leads to two more procedural conclusions.
One is that I think it shows the importance of having this dialogue as many of you pointed to between the political level, business level, private sector, academia and civil society, this has to be a multi‑stakeholder endeavor if we are to succeed and then perhaps secondly also to move from the conceptual or abstract to the more concise and concrete. That's easier said than done, but I think I felt a common wish that we can move in that direction.
Just 20 seconds on what we do at the OECD. We will continue to our digital work, we provide targeted policy regulations for companies. We have a going digital toolkit where we try to example best practices when Governments and others confront difficult policy questions. We promise that we have listened today and we will continue to stay engaged. We will continue with phase 2 of our going digital project, and is there a brief comment? I hope it's to praise the OECD because otherwise I won't allow it.
>> It was supposed to be. So I think that OECD is best placed, best positioned to do the work like this because in the past, you created amazing alliances and a great dynamic because people actually, not only people, but Governments were keen to follow the best practices in whatever area we can mention whatever Conventions. And they do so voluntarily in the proper understanding that they are joining a club of leading nations that are in pursuit of prosperity and happiness for the mankind, sorry to say that, but seriously, that's a great job and I think you should just keep it up. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much. You just improved my talking points to a level that was unmanageable, and I promise that this was improvised and we have not provided fees to any of the panelists. Thank you so much, everyone, I have never encountered such a disciplined group of interesting panelists. Thank you for your insights. I'm sorry for the delays, I think we got a very rich discussion nonetheless thanks to you. Should we give the panelists a round of applause.
(Applause).