The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. 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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>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Good evening, good morning, depending on where you are. Let me thank our speakers, A, to host us on dataflows, privacy and impact on ITES and a host of related subject issues. Let me thank our speakers for their time and for their interest to speak on the subject.
So in my intro remarks I will be very brief and I will touch upon a few major findings, a study in partnership with the U.S. India problems advance. It looked at not just the dataflow but more in the Indian context that we are now debating a Parliament, which is called data pro technician. It could be enacted but the debate is going on.
So there are broadly two schools of thought in this cross‑border dataflow on various walks of life. So what we have done, we have looked at the impact of the measures which have been ‑‑ in this prediction of India, on our digital exports. Of course I come to this point and I'm ready to talk later on and also we have looked at a few other things like employment generation and ‑‑ now if I look at the India current data protection regime, cross‑border dataflows, it is fairly non restricted.
What we have found, we have also ran as part of missions of our data protection, we have also looked at the provisions of data protection in many other countries. And we found that if this bill is enacted, that India's data protection regime will become a little bit more restricted like the European Union; not as restrictive as let's say Viet Nam, of course China and Russia, they are very, very restrictive. But more like ‑‑ but suddenly not as less restrictive.
And the impact on our digital export will be negative, which means it's not going to be a huge impact, in terms of percentage it won't be that huge but the impact will be large.
There is another school of thought in India who says if we have a data protection language like what we have been proposed, then we get more and more investment for the setting up of data centre. More and more employment generation and of course that will depend on various other factors broadly speaking ease of doing business Internet business ecosystem and various other factors. So that during ‑‑ the jury is still out. We must keep in mind it's not a blanket protection. So we have divided the data under three broad heads, personal safety, privacy and all of these aspects and it is those data which we think are important, for us and they are being protected most as compared to more common data.
So we have done this work with the USIBC and have been very kind and active in this work. We have presented our findings before the many parliamentarians, including our parliamentary dealing with the subject and we hope that many offer accommodations. So in this brief intro, let me now request Jay Gullish. He was working in New Delhi and Jay is living the work on data‑related topics and subjects. I understand Jay is going to talk about the Internet Ecosystem and how does it evolve over time? What kind of lessons you can draw from the history of revolution? And what lessons we can draw in today's context cross‑border dataflows, not just for our digital exports, but the overall economy including jobs and health organizations and things like that. So you have about 25 minutes.
>> JAY GULLISH: Thank you very much. I really appreciate the opportunity. I want to thank my colleagues and speakers on the line as well for your time. I'm really excited about participating in the IGF. I want to thank the organizers as well. I know these are major programs to put together and superbly done and bringing critically important issues forward within a global, multi‑stakeholder debate. So thank you to everybody in the background who make today possible.
Where I want to start today is emphasizing the importance of privacy and cross‑border dataflows within the policy making environment. This is the latest issue that has come into the Digital Economy that really is going to be foundational. The decisions we make in the next year or two or three, will set the stage about the overall digital ecosystem going forward, how much benefit do we globally derive? What innovation comes out? How do people and governments work together? How do we build trust within the Internet environment?
What I'd like to do is put some context into where are we today and how did we get here. A lot of people think that a lot of the recent activities are sort of the beginning but it's actually ‑‑ we are in the middle of the journey here together. Looking forward, we have to figure out how information about individuals, about information under contract and the outsourcing environment, how information derived in an AI environment, how machine‑driven information whether personal or autonomous gets fed into the industrialization. There is a lot of really difficult questions that we have to ask ourselves about information and data about people and how it's going to ultimately be used within the economic environment to create the things I think we all want.
We all want economic growth. We all want increased investment. We all want innovation. We all want social benefit and the financial derivatives that comes to individuals, companies and ultimately governments as well within tax environments. How did we get here?
I'm old enough to have visibility of where we started. The Internet in its current formation had a slow start in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. It was very foundational. In the 1990s, you saw a massive boom of the Internet based around infrastructure development. Many, many new connections or nodes coming in. Many individuals and organizations coming on line. I think if you take a point in time like 1996 or 1998, it was not uncommon for people not to have an Internet account or for companies not to have a website. Just take a moment and think about that. Imagine a major company not having a website. Imagine someone in the professional environment not having an e‑mail.
So if you go back 20 years ago, that's kind of the environment where we were at. And so you had a massive investment that went into infrastructure and embedding the Internet into the IT environment. And that was called the dot‑com boom. And around 1999 there was a shift. It took a little bit of time but the bubble burst and it had to do with an antitrust case, had to do with web browsers. I don't want to get into the details of the policy decisions there, but as the dot‑com bubble burst and the economy took a downturn, a lot of the investment became stranded and lost and the Internet Ecosystem basically evolved.
Then it started to add what I call the social layer. So the second iteration, the first iteration was foundational based on some of the protocols, based on infrastructure. And the second iteration was besides a lot social media that in essence predicated an understanding of the user that you got free service, whether it was Free Internet, free news, free chatting and all of that stuff, with the understanding that information was being gathered and had some value on the back end.
Now, something else happened in this generation as well. The Internet was designed to maximize availability and access and did not really build in, in the early days, an understanding of the downsides, whether cybersecurity, or cyberbullying, and those sorts of pieces. And so as the second generation evolved, social media layer got developed significantly, and really drove an incredible amount of innovation, economic growth, investment and the this phase really lasted 10‑15 years into just the more recent past where we started to see a significant uptick in cybersecurity breaches. We saw the creation and formation of the dark web. We saw people's data being sold, being utilized, we saw some cultural changes around cyberbullying, violent extreme on line and some of the ills created around this social layer.
And then we had a very major shift and that's where we are today where there was this realization that we needed some sort of security‑driven environment based on some risk analysis of various threats and costs. But also we started to see this privacy element where people became increasingly concerned about the quantity of data, about the quality of that, and how it was being use to not only influence individuals but collectively use in more and larger activities around the elections and things of that nature.
And so, that's where we find ourselves right now. We are toggling into what I call the privacy‑driven environment where we are going to have the Internet that will be more secure technically. We are going to have a greater understanding of some of the cultural benefits but also the limitations and how people utilize it, and there is also a whole privacy element that is being fed into the need for cross‑border data.
As we talk about this today, as a group, I think there is a couple of key things to realize. That the benefits of the Internet in a Digital Economy over the last 20 or 30 years, have been massive. And we cannot underestimate that. And looking forward as we move in going forward, I think it's fairly clear that again, going forward, the economic, social benefits are going to be massive. So when we need to optimize that, we need to find the right tools, regulations, to provide enough flexibility that the inherent innovation areas of connectivity can continue.
And the privacy and cross‑border data flows are the decisions that will ultimately define that mechanism. I'll say two or three things. One, the movement of data has been incredibly beneficial T will continue to be beneficial. Soy we have to find the right mechanisms to allow that to continue. Any time there is man dates or movement for the reciprocity, that's going to create barriers and minimize, reduce the value of this.
Secondly, we need to rebuild trust. Trust between the end users and people who have that data, but also the companies and the countries perhaps seeking to access that information for legitimate lawful purposes. And so we need to build trust. The last thing I would say is this is not inherent to any one country. My country, the United States, is going through privacy regulation. We need to get it right.
Many countries are looking at it. We all need to get right. But we needs to get right together. And have some flexibility to understand that each country has its own context for privacy but at its core there has to be interoperabilities, particularly those countries that have major economic activities that is tied to the United States, India, our allies in Asia and Europe. We need to figure this out.
The very last thing I would say when it comes new policies and new regulations, it's always easier tightening the screws than it is to loosen the screws. We need a system to add additional layers of regulation, compliance, whatever mechanism going fished. We don't have all the answers. So if we try to create a really constrained environment right now, we will have trouble unwinding it when we realize f we realize that we need that flexibility.
So with that, I'm really excited to hear from our other speakers today and looking forward to questions and just want to emphasize that getting our digital relationship right across the countries, across the globe will be crit duel maximizing the optimizing continued value that the Digital Economy has provided and afforded us. Thank you again and look forward to further discussions.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Thank you for taking us through these per suspect and I was aspects and dimensions. The Internet‑based economy. This takes me back to the initial days even before the establishment, the early 90s or Mid 90s.
That time we also had been discussing a number of issues without having much understanding of what those issues are and what the impacts are with various sections of the Society.
The reason why I'm saying this is that it's not just the technical persons, it's not just the International limitations, it's not just the think tanks or Private Sector. It is also important for the Civil Society to have at least some understanding on many of these issues. I understand that this year's Internet Governance is discussing a large number of them. The important point is our relationship given the fact that many of these issues are ‑‑
So with that, let me now request joy to pick up from what Jay has said in the context of our discussion about cross‑border date flows and particularly in African country. So over to joy. You have about 10‑12 minutes. Thank you.
>> JOY KATGEKWA: Thank you very much. I'm pleased to be part of this important conversation. Thank you for including me. My name is Joy Katgekwa and I'm the strategic Advisor to the Assistant Secretary general and Director of the Regional Bureau of Africa. I come to this conversation really as a trade exert and someone who spent most of my career trying to do the link between trade and development.
And I think when we talk about cross‑border dataflows, we are really talking about how trade can work for development. And so many times in situations of this nature, it's almost easier to take away the complexity and try to look at the issue for what it is. When we talk about cross‑border dataflows, what are we talking about? The 80 of the transactions cross‑border to make their way seamlessly. We are talking about a situation where for years on end, we spoke about the early years T has already been accepted, acknowledged, 245 cross‑border dataflows are critical for the movement of goods and services. When you look at your services agreement at the WTO in terms of mode 1 and 2, you're looking at that possibility of goods to cross borders in a sort of seamless manner.
So in a sense, the importance of cross‑border dataflows is well understood. When you look at India and I'd like to congratulate this important study you put out, it's always easier to explain this point when you look also at the numbers. What does your study tell us? It tells us that if there are restrictions as to dataflows, exports will drop by 19%. GDP will drop by 36 billion. And a value of 0.34%. Behind those percentages of people. Behind those are jobs and innovation and reduction in investments.
When we are amidst the last leg of a decade of action, pushing forward sustainable development, trying to lift people out of poverty, and understanding critically that trade is a critical means of implementation, then we do understand that we have to manage this situation carefully. Here we are in a COVID environment where if we had any questions before, as to the implications of digitalization, the Digital Economy, and cross‑border trade flows within that, if we had any theoretical ‑‑ as to importance, it quickly shifted from the theory space smack into how we live our lives, and smack how we do our business, smack into how we trade across borders.
And so in a sense, COVID demonstrated to us it is in escapable for us to find that right balance on how to live rich cross‑border trade flows, for sustainable development. When we look at health for example, the amount of services that have gone across to various levels of recipients have been only promoted, harnessed, leveraged by the possibility of digitalization. Let's look at the same example from the converse way. Here we are sitting in New York in my case for example, my children will go to school on line. Where I come from in Africa, it's only the privileged to be able to make that transition to the on line learning. So early in the pandemic when we used to track these numbers, ting came wrought a figure that spoke about 333 million African children out of school. And the whole implications of that for the girls and for the boys.
So the whole idea of digitalization and its ability to contribute to sustainable development, or put differently, scale back the reversal by an absence of capacities is where the development question is. And that's where I'd like to sit wait it. So to conclude on that point, it's moot whether we should be investing in cross‑border dataflows because the economy in which we live, the development we are pursuing, is inextricably linked to that. Live health and live education and look ate e‑Commerce. The businesses managed to stay afloat are the ones who managed to my great to the digital space.
It's a critical development point for cross‑border dataflows and therefore what is the issue? The issue is about how to democratize that space. And hire I'd like to take us to the key findings of a recent report that analyzes the Digital Economy. And of course it's in the context of hitting the Regional Office of Africa so quite familiar with these issues. The problem with the space in which cross‑border dataflows operate is precisely because you have a yawning gap in the digital divide. You have a marketplace and a business model where there is only a few dominating, seven key owners of the platform. So Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, WhatsApp and so forth.
Africa owns only 1.3% of this platform. 1‑5 people has access to Internet. So it's a question of inclusivity if we are talking about Sustainable Development Goals. How do we ensure this promise of digitalization for sustainable development reaches everybody? And this is where we need to touch on that which is holding back the capacity of this new wave to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals.
And we do that by tackling the question of how is data owned? How is data mind? And how is data ad value on and then how is data therefore exported? So that is increases the value component of the exports of African countries? What the report tells us is that many of the African countries will give the data for free because it is being mind because of your participation in the platforms but the collection, the value addition that creates a product, that then comes back to you to buy s where the real value is. So how can Africa capture those parts as well? This is the critical development question.
When I was coming to this conversation, I was pleased to have a friend from Kampalao who said they just established the first data collection centre in Uganda. It is my hope that we don't use it as an opportunity to localize in terms of restriction, but certainly to start to think about how to capture some of that value, create product that can then enhance our exports.
The final point I'd like to make how do we correct some of the ruins understanding that cross‑border dataflows are critical for development, the second pill of the augmentation being there is a problem with the temptation of capacity. Not everybody is involved so the way we are going it is promoting exclusion, even if the numbers are coming also on the side of exclusion. What then do we do?
I'd like to say two points. We must invest as heavily as we have in trying to understand the new dynamics. We must invest in the capacities, extend the reach, because it's now very clear to everybody that it's not a matter of choice or luxury, it's a critical matter of survival if we are talking about the core of basic services.
We talked about health, education. So we must invest in those capacities to strengthen the ability of more women, youth, enterprises, to be part of this revolution. The second point I'd like to say is we have to think about competition and the rules framework that can get us there because while you think about dominance, the owners of the digital platforms tell us a situation of this arrangement. How do we ensure we are managing that from the perspective of competition and policy in order to ensure that there is fairness in the market? Because for now, even if there is parts that are participating, it is certainly true that there is some larger play.
The third and last point is the question of regulation. Regulation is this place where when you think about many of the advancements Africa made, and Africa is indeed leading the fourth Industrial Revolution in some areas, not at least areas around mobile management, innovations come from the continent and spread world over. There is an interesting approach to regulation in this area, which is that if we think about people, if we think about protection, consumer protection, think about safety, we must also think about regulation from the lense of facilitation. That not all regulation and control. Not all regulation is about collecting taxes. Many of the these great innovations coming out of Africa came from a type of regulation that some call sandbox but really put simply this idea of we don't understand it, but let's watch and then when we need to come, we will.
So there is a need of a mix‑and‑match in terms of how you approach regulation in this area. So you ensure that the capacities are created, they are bigger, the market is operating in a more fair manner introducing new players but you're not stifling the possibility of advancement movement. Thank you very much.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Thank you, joy. Thank you for that. I would just like to highlight a few key points that joy has made. First is that numbers will be more small, participation may be small but there are stories behind them, there are people behind them. We shouldn't just talk about beginners. We should also think about the possible losers and how we can help them to gain from all of this development.
Very rightly emphasized on and contextualize this whole thing. In a manner we should have a positive agenda. It's not a question of restrictions or ideation. Liberalization or things like that. It's not a question of this or that. It has to be this and that. Now keeping this context in mind, a question which is going in my mind is that, are we missing the bus? Are we going to miss the bus?
When we talk about the various elements of this fourth Industrial Revolution, Internet and others. And this COVID‑19, it is also taught us or highlighted to us, that things which are going to take place over a fairly long time, I would say ‑‑ are taking place in a short time, 3‑5 months. Changes.
So there are good aspects of it and there are challenging aspects. Not bad but I would use the word challenging.
So she used the term democratization of the Internet space. How to enable our small and medium enterprises who are actually the backbone of our economy? In getting advantages of these changes. So I know that there are various agencies working on it. UNDP have projects to help, not just ‑‑ but to help. Develop countries. To not just to come up with challenges with all the changes which are taking place, but also to take advantage of these changes. So before I hand it over to Raymond, we are very pleased to have you with us in today's meeting. Let me also analyze a very important point in the context of what we are just wanting to speak about it's not a question of having this regulation or that regulation. We need to been optimal regulations. We also need to think about that dominance may not be bad, per se, but dominance is definitely there. Profit is not a bad word. Profiteering is a bad word.
So here we are seeing it, this new economic Internet based where maybe once they think they are getting things free of cost but actually they are not. There are other aspects; which we need to take into account to understand consumer behavior, to understand the impact on consumer behavior.
So let me now request Raymond for talking on the subject, 10‑12 minutes. Raymond, over to you.
>> RAYMOND TAVARES: Thank you very much, by pull. I would also like to commend the great presentations and the talk of the Panelists, joy and Jay. Thank you very much. You make my life easier United Nations in the organizations, I will be sharing four slides so you can understand better what my organization, a U.N. agency, focusing more on the SDG9, which is for innovation infrastructure and industrialization. So you can better appreciate what we are doing as agency in terms of helping the countries to enter into the revolution, which is really characterized by data management, date acquisition, the use of data to make the difference to trade. And we could go further because here we think the other Panelists, they mentioned idea of data for development. But you can see the data regarding people moving the country, moving from the country to another place.
So I want to just mention those meeker trends which are the migrations, which are these new technologies and opportunities they offer, which are now the pandemic situation. And we can mention without any doubt the tensions is not over. We are still into trade tensions. And all of that without the pandemic or organization, was to assist countries to swiftly move from the third Industrial Revolution to the force evolution to the digitalization of our economy. I can share my screen, which would help me at least to put things together. I'm getting a challenge to share my ‑‑ anyway, I would like first to mention aspects. We are focusing and having challenge. I don't know if somebody can see this otherwise. Can you hear me?
>> We can hear you.
>> RAYMOND TAVARES: The problem is sharing the screen. Can you see my screen.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: We can. Now it is better.
>> RAYMOND TAVARES: Excellent. If you can see my screen, I'm going now to ‑‑ first I mentioned the pandemic situation, migrations, new technologies, and the protection. I want to start from here in the last seven months this is the case. The case showed that there is an increase of digitalization and so it means without even knowing it, already accepted it, we are sharing data. We are protected, not protected, but this is the situation. So to discuss the concept and what we can do together with joy and Jay.
Here what I hope just to say is, obviously, the potential of data collected, we don't really know the data that is the big ‑‑ those are ‑‑ they have the domination of the digital development gathering. The only thing is the concern growing now when we have the time to think about our data, what we are sharing. People are sharing their behavior. They are trying to be more cautious. They are sometimes the issue of which kind of regulations and now the first world regulation.
I could not hear it before when Jay office ‑ I was expecting to see that and joy mentioned it. We could maybe regulate ‑‑ and joy was inviting to regulate more, regulation using the length of development, the length of sharing of inclusiveness. But not of really ‑‑ it used to be the same thing.
So that is why in my presentation, we are going to mention more status. I think the standards and quality Jay mentioned those aspects of building the trust and I think when he was saying, we need obviously to build the trust and we need to be flexible in cross‑border data. Not to boost the Research and Development and the internal development or Digital Economy development. The next slides I would like to share with you are the slide Number 6 here, which is focusing more on the standards of what I was just saying.
In the white part of your screen, you can see some selected technologies that my agency is promoting in manufacturing because obviously tomorrow in many, many Developing Countries at least in transition country, it is essential to the event that manufacturing that you have block chain.
I think the other side is it interesting to see the new technologies of yesterday are recording for new standards because the essence of the existence of the new technologies of the new industrialization is data management. The data governing we mentioned before. Data will make the difference. And from my organization, into the force in the evolution, it is trying to help the new business models.
We can talk about smart factoring, where you have many more technologies which are very gritty on data. So, what it means, new technologies and new standards. But also data to manage, to know how to handle it and to have the capacity to mine data, to manage them, to protect them, to share what we would like to share.
After these slides, I wanted to share this, another one with the way forward, which is going into what joy was just mentioning. Inclusiveness, existence or the basis of our actions, multilateralism. If you could like obviously cross‑border and corporation.
Those are our basics or the fundamentals of our expertise and actions. Inclusiveness even the new slogan we use, it is inclusive and sustainable in this development. No one should be left behind. It was the motto. It was our slogan. Why we started the process before the force of the evolution has made some countries to enter into globalization and global play value chain exchange. And nowadays, it is the same that we are using, so global should be left behind in terms of digital infrastructure. Capacity and skills and the people in order for them to be able to engage and to include this.
Multilateralism. I started it's a new challenge now. We could not get out from this pandemic without the multilateralism where everybody is thinking about the solution could be national because we are all concerned about our nation, our problems nationally, but global solutions and let's say the solutions to the pandemic is coming from the multilateralism. We shouldn't be kept out from that. Corporation, I think the two worlds are really complimenting somehow they are the same in certain aspects.
You need activation. Remote cooperation. And when we recite policy, it is not only national policies. We are talking about regional policies ‑‑
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: You have five minutes, please.
>> RAYMOND TAVARES: Okay. The rights are the regional economic information where we gather in a economic environment and regional policy and data management providing capacity that you see later on. So capacity development of institutions not only SMEs on data management and standards, but we also strengthen the capacities of institution. It's the capacity in terms of themselves managing data, creating new infrastructure or new institutions in charge of data, creating new projects and pilot centre like just joy mentioned before when you mentioned the first management centre in Uganda.
I'm not going to show what we are doing in other parts of Africa where we are helping the country with smart factories as demonstration but we have been had more digital observatories centered to manage data to protect data to enable the enterprise locally to take advantage of the data they can mine and they can manage.
I think I wanted to mention the policy and standards and the standards bodies, but we do more. We are working at International level with the other quality development of quality infrastructure institutions. ISO, International laboratory of centers are for all to accompany and solve this new trend of data management, new technologies in terms of standards. We go beyond what our perspective is, and harmonization of standards, which will be less ‑‑ an example of regulation.
What I would like here, people take away is, we can find solution for the cross‑border data management and exchange without regulating like it used to be the first basic behavior and reaction of International level let's.
Regulate. We can also set standards. We can help to be much more flexible without development of new technologies which are in need of data. I think this is what I wanted to share today with you. And I thank very much for inviting us. I think I stick to the time?
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Yes. Absolutely. Thank you Raymond. So we are on time, which is good. So there are a number of questions. Let me start with the question, which is to Jay N there I will come to a question for Raymond and then follow‑up questions for joy.
Now, Jay, the question is, without localization are there ways to protect sensitive data and ensure that law enforcement can investigate crimes? So we have about a good 30 minutes to go. So I will be saying Jay if you could repeat your answer to 1 1/2 minutes to two minutes.
>> JAY GULLISH: Thank you. The easy question in 1 1/2 minutes. So the first thing I have to share is when you have mandated data localization, what happens is you have an architecture that may be globally intended to have five major points of entrance, hence risk. Then you have to add in additional sites. If you're talking about one or two sites, maybe that is more manageable but if every country on the planet has some sort of data localization, you're talking about many dozens if not 100 additional sites.
Most people think about cybersecurity from the zeros and ones but most people breaches, at least really the real critical ones and many of the dangerous ones, actually have to do with physical penetration or insiders. So every time you add a physical centre, you actually create or increase risk. One more physical site to protect and one more site where there may be ab error in configuration or mispatch. So when you're talking about balancing cybersecurity and privacy, fewer physical sites of where that data is managed is often better than more sites. Obviously managing redundancy and backup and so forth. Now for law enforcement, this is one of the trickiest questions. You need to balance access to data for legitimate law enforcement that does not have any of the bias or the political leanings or for those of us in democracy, maybe have to worry about this less than government itself.
So when people think about privacy, it's not only privacy from companies. It's privacy from governments as well. And so you just have to add that into the overall argument.
Now in terms of law enforcement access to data, you have to think about the real criminals and people that really trying to hide this information, they are going to do a lot of workarounds and you do things that actually make them safer than others. So, in a lot of instance we are talking more about sort of incidental, accidental or unexpected sort of access to data as part of just sort of normal law enforcement or enforcing cultural norms such as cyberbullying.
Here there is a lot of work that could be done. A lot of work that needs to be done. There are some International, not the International accords, the Budapest Accord is one of them. The United States is developing agreements on a bilateral basis. There needs to be a lot more there so that law enforcement can be part of the solution to access this information.
A lot of the issues here has to do with different legal environments in each country. So if one country wants to give data to another country, it has to meet certain criteria. There is no perfect or comprehensive way for law enforcement to do this. But also we need to make sure that we are balancing access that is even too easy or in cases can be abused by certain types of governments or in certain instances.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: thank you.
>> JAY GULLISH: Needs to be multilateral recall and multi‑stakeholder as well. It needs to be a mechanism for consumers and individuals and organizations to be part of that conversation.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Absolutely. Thank you. I know we want to discuss this as well. There is a question for Raymond. How will climate change mitigation efforts such as leveraging artificial intelligence, which uses the data to boost secular models that are more sustainable industrialization and technological changes, including policies in Developing Countries? Raymond? In about two minutes your answer.
>> RAYMOND TAVARES: Thank you very much. I think it is critical. If it is all what have we are doing. You have a division dealing withs economies and division dealing with digital development and innovation and so we are working together so it means it's not alternative. It's the use of data like you mentioned, and use various other new technologies which is what we are promoting.
Obviously what we would like to do is not to be fragmented in our interventions in countries but to have integration of all of those aspects which sometimes seems to be let's say stand alone like when we talk about secular, it's just a science of thing other aspects of where you need new techniques and innovation.
They record more innovation even if the people see it is for sustainability. So, our policies are the policies we are promoting in Developing Countries, policies which look at sustainability, prosperity, and respect of the planet. So integrated policies we are promoting. And just to finish also, we need a hybrid solution that we are promote ‑‑ proposing to our member's face.
So I don't feel that we are thinking about two different things here. In many Developing Countries you have lack of infrastructure and you have lack of skills and you have also non existence of policy which are now appropriate to help them to live from the new technologies. The ease of solution is a new business model and really effective and sustainable.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Thank you, Raymond. I have a number of questions for joy. There are three. She has already answered them in the screen. There is a common question which I will request joy to address. This is from Alan and another from Michael Nelson that says, what would you say at the most widespread excessive restrictions to the cross‑border dataflows? One of the examples with overly restrictive legal framework, and interested to hear your opinion on whether or not the date will be able to maintain to protect data if the restrictions are lifted.
A related point is, we tend to focus on Best Practices at the IGF, but often one can learn more from what practices when it comes to data localization and Data Sovereignty which countries are making the most mistakes, especially with regard to government's own data. So since we have come to more or less an end to this session, there are 5 more minutes to go. I will ask you to all touch upon these points as briefly as possible without overshooting the time. I will start with joy. Then I'll come to Raymond and finally to Jay. So over to you, Joy.
>> JOY KATGEKWA: Thank you very much and thank you very much also for the questions. I made an effort to answer them as they come in. I think in my one minute, I'd really like to touch on a forward‑looking question, which is where is the solution when you try to anchor it in trade? We have seen some perspectives and direction from New Zealand, Chile and Singapore, which created Digital Economy Partnership Agreements.
Is this the way forward for Developing Countries? Is this the way forward for Africa? I think we have to be careful to ensure that you bring countries onboard. Everybody is trying to leverage the value of digitalization but I think the moment you trade, the moment you talk about banning customs duties and the moment you talk about dispute settlement, the moment you talk about nations, you're not really putting a trade negotiate's mind into the defense, how do I get flexibility out of this. So you determine what will be a willingness to come to the table. My plea in what is left of the 30 seconds is this question of, can we learn from the Trade Facilitation Agreement? By front loading the question of dealing with the capacities to implement? We know that infiltrate supporting digitalization is only 1.2%. It was 3% in 2000, reduced to 1.2%. We need to touch that capacity point because that is answering the development question. Once you touch that capacity, you democratize the space and then it has direct relevance for schooling and health and for the exploitation of various services. Thank you.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Absolutely. Thank you. I'm glad that you highlighted the transportation agreement in the context of technical aspects and capacity building. This is exactly the point which you have in the paper done by my boss ‑‑ and the title is, what would happen to a world without the WTO? And we are going to release it next week. I hope you all will join us.
So Raymond n one minute what you say?
>> RAYMOND TAVARES: I would like obviously to reemphasize what I mentioned before. We have another approach so that approach is to force the more quality and stand outs and so to regulate less because we think that with quality and stand outs, it is another way to facilitate or trade and to make technology, Private Sector, to help them to develop without ways and regulating and maybe creating barriers. And I have another message I want to share with everybody.
The other message is maybe all this sharing of data without asking, or hindering dataflow and let's say exchange should happen in our own city. What we are doing and we are working very, very strongly on that, is to try with this new Industrial Revolution to create smart cities. Smart cities is a kind of own experience in your own city. You see the interactions, the exchange of information and everybody would benefit on that exchange of data information to boost new technologies and relate new solutions for the development. This is the message I want to pursue into this discussion today.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Thank you, Raymond. We have about a minute to go. So Jay?
>> JAY GULLISH: Thank you. So, I think the core question here is where do we want to go from here? I think we all agree that the Digital Economy up until now has been incredibly beneficial to humanity at large, to countries to, individuals to, companies, and so as we move into this next iteration, we should look at rather than what Best Practices in the future, what is generally worked? What has worked up until now is an incremental build. There is open movement data. There is transparency. It's a multi‑stakeholder approach. It's risk‑based. I think going forward we should look at some of those sorts of tools and techniques and we don't want to go too far too fast. We clearly need to, but it should be done in a measured way to thoughtful way, flexible way, building on existing privacy laws, existing laws of consumer protection, existing laws of competition. And so when we are thinking about localization, what is the solution we are trying to solve here?
Is it really about data nationalism? Is it about cybersecurity? Is it about protecting privacy? Because all three of those aren't solved by any one policy so we should just be very conscious about how we move forward from here so we can optimize the benefits.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Thank you.
>> RAYMOND TAVARES: Want to thank you and I go. If. And really appreciate giving me the opportunity to talk to you all.
>> BIPUL CHATTERJEE: Thank you very much and everybody. Let me conclude by saying that we are going to prepare a report of what we discussed today.