The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. 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, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> YOICHI IIDA: Okay, so, we'll start our open forum. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to IGF open forum. My name is Yoichi Iida from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. I'm serving as chair on the Committee on Digital Economy Policy.
I'm happy to serve as moderator today. We'd like to hold one discussion on current issues on data flow and data governance in the global internet environment.
And we have very excellent speakers with us. We have Miss Gosia Loj, from U.K. Dr. Ann‑Christin Soekadar from Germany. Dr. Mankoto Yokazawa from International Economic Collaboration of Japan and Miss Timea Suto.
In this session, we're going to discuss the recent development of the policy discussion on cross‑border data flow. With particular focus on the concept of data free flow and trust.
Which, was proposed by the Japanese government two years ago.
Also, we discussed a broader aspect of data governance and as well, we also share our expectations for further challenges and progresses in the coming years, in the, during the years to come.
So, as many of you here today, may be well aware, our government of Japan proposed to the concept of data free flow with trust on the occasion of G‑20 Summit two years ago.
The purpose of this proposal was to facilitate international discussion on the relationship between data flow and trust in the digital economy.
Our belief is data should be utilized to full‑extent, to maximize the benefit of digitalization or digital society.
And for that purpose, data should flow as free as possible, but in order to ensure such enabling environment, where every company, every citizen, every single person can participate? Digital economy without concern.
We need policy majors and business practices to ensure trust through privacy protection, security implementation, consumer protection and all different majors and practices to improve a trust in data and digital economy.
So from that sense, freedom and trust are not in trade‑off, but should work in complementary relations and we need to promote synergy between these two elements.
This is a fundamental concept of DFFT and is high level policy objective. In order to transform this high level concept into actionable formation, the U.K. presidency of G7 worked out roadmap this year. We know OECD is promoting discussions to promote data flow and data governance.
To discuss and exchange our views and expectations, first, I would like to invite Miss Gosia Loj to speak about G7 this year and also give us some insight of the further progress.
Gosia is head of Global Governance, international directorate of digital, culture, media and sports in U.K. government. Gosia, please.
>> GOSIA LOJ: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone. I'm very pleased to be with you here today. And thank you so much to the Japanese government for this opportunity to join the panel and for hosting this session.
It's a shame we can't be all together in Poland today, but I hope we can enjoy a fruitful discussion.
I hope to give you a little bit of insight into ‑‑ not only what we agreed on at the G7 this year, but what we've achieved since the declaration was signed in April at the digital and tech track.
And part of that declaration, the data free flow trust with the Corporation has been one of the agreements we reached with the G7 under U.K. leadership. I hope as they, in the last 12 months, we've been able to show leadership on much of this agenda, especially with the concrete achievements that we've done throughout the implementation of a number of series of workshops and wide ranging events to implement the roadmap.
And I just, firstly, also want to acknowledge the efforts that the G7 members, together with partners, have achieved to progress this agenda and to build on Japan's leadership and vision, following Japan's G‑20 presidency in 2019.
Through our U.K.'s presidency, we're audible to reach tangible commitments and we focus on four components of the roadmap for corporation on data free flow with trust.
Firstly, we focus on regulatory relationships and have tried, since that commitment to create a stronger relationship with regulations and regulatory authorities in terms of global information sharing.
Hopefully in the long‑term, will better‑inform businesses and the wider community on the global data protection regimes and how to act within them.
One of the key agreements we've had, since April, was around the meeting of the data protection authorities, the G7 partners. An agreement to incorporate and explore across corporations in different specific areas.
These included online tracking, AI, pandemic‑driven tech innovation, government access to data, but also, commitment to progress initiatives at the international level, with wider communities, especially including the G‑20.
And to continue meeting regularly to exchange. We also had a regulatory corporation workshop of policymakers, as well as national regulators and that meeting focused on regulations of interoperability of global policy frameworks.
The second included data optimization measures. We tried to promote discussions around data localization and the just barriers and unjust barriers to data flows due to such measures.
So, one of the events we hosted since April, has been a roundtable with businesses, especially on identification of impact of data localization measures on micro, small, and medium enterprises and looking into policy responses we could find to mitigate such measures.
Especially the work of OECD in supporting these consequences ‑‑ this, this policy area, needs to be acknowledged here, on the work around the consequences of data localization.
And further understanding the opportunities to help facilitate future interventions.
The third component we focus on, especially with regards to trust, is government access to data. Held by the private sector. And this is one of the instruments we are in the process of developing under the OECD's work and we hope to be able, in the long‑term, to remove barriers to commercial, cross‑border data flows.
But, especially, with an increasing trust component and ensuring there's a legitimate government access to that data for law enforcement and national security purposes.
And then, lastly, we also focused on policy exchanges on data sharing and we sought to enhance collective understanding of that data sharing issues.
And we hope to be able to promote opportunities for innovation and with that, in mind, we've heard a couple workshops, including on identifying priority sectors, where we can find noble data‑sharing solutions to empower consumers to drive competition and for example, meet net zero targets.
And we also held an expert‑led forum to consider how nations are responding to sharing data through the use of intermediaries.
I also wanted to mention an event that we held last week out of the G7 meeting of leaders in June. The Future Tech Forum, which was wider than on the G7 partners and included a host of different governments and G‑20 members, and brought together international partners from industry, academia, Civil Society and one of our sessions that we hosted there, was specifically focused on the future of trust in data, as a process for good and we included an example of how data can support, on the example of data using health sector and innovative solutions to help related measures with the use of trusted data.
So, we are still looking forward to having future discussions and of course, there's a lot more to do. And so, building on the data flow with roadmap will be key for us in years to come. We hope to continue working with G7 partners, including Germany as the next presidency, and Japan.
Also with the G‑20, we've made progress this year and we're looking forward to discussing this with Indonesia next year and then, also for the U.K., there's also an opportunity to work with the commonwealth countries as a forum to help assist developing and emerging economies in this respect.
And I also like to just acknowledge the leadership from OECD as well, through different initiatives, data localization mandates and enhanced regulatory corporation, which will be key, hopefully, to unlocking barriers to global data flow.
And so, let me pause here, for now, and I hope to continue the discussion during the panel session. I hope this gave you a little more of an insight into what we've done this year through the G7 presidency for the roadmap on global corporation with free flow on data trust.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you for the detailed explanation and presentation on the U.K.'s perspective. Actually, my impression is, you know, over the last two years, since mid‑2019, many people were wondering, you know, we could agree on the very high level concept of DFFT, but how we can option ‑‑ make it into actionable measures and one of the answers was presented by the U.K. government in a very beautiful formation and what was good for the government of Japan, the domestic discussion on national data policy was what's going in parallel with the discussion at G7.
Our national data strategy was enabled this June. We have a lot of commonalities with G7 roadmap, but we have some differences, of course. It's interesting to see the commonalities and differences. We see a lot of work to be done in the future.
So, thank you very much for the presentation and now I want to turn to Dr. Ann‑Christin Soekadar. I'd like to invite Ann‑Christin to share with us Germany's, the insight and also the expectation for the further work on this year's achievements.
>> ANN‑CHRISTIN SOEKADAR: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. As Yoichi and Gosia have highlighted already, data governance, data free flow of trust are of most importance for our economies and for our societies. Because both are more, and more relying on access to data, the use of data and therefore, of course, the flow of data. At the same time, we find international patchwork of regulations on data flows.
This patchwork is posing a challenge to enforce public policy goals and for businesses that would like to profit from the opportunities of global digital economy.
Japan put free flow trust on the table with 2020 and 2019. Now the Indonesian G‑20 presidency would also promote this important topic. In the G7 context, U.K. has pushed data governance and it's very successful G7 presidency this year.
As Gosia has already pointed out, the G7 made an important step and agreed on a roadmap on cooperation, data free flow with trust and is part of this roadmap, the G7 work to develop processes for priority sectors and collected evidence on the economic and societal impact of data localization measures.
We made further progress in terms of mapping commonalities in regulatory approached to data transfer with the help of the OECD.
And we are also concerned with government access to data health by the private sector.
And just last week, as Gosia said, at the Future Tech Forum in London, we had very, very interesting discussions about data as a force for good and the importance of public trust.
So, what does all this mean for the upcoming German G7 presidency? When I speak about our presidency, I first have to give a little caveat. As you might know, Germany held elections in September and the new chancellor will be elected by Parliament today.
And it is only afterwards, that a new minister competent for digitalization will take office.
Anything I can outline as you as our current planning is preliminary only and might be subject to changes.
However, what we'd like to propose to the new minister is to continue the G7's work and unlocking the potential of data for the economy and society.
For this effort, we'd like to take our commonalities as a starting point. And there are a lot of commonalities. I'm sure we'll elaborate on the studies that are being taken in this regard.
On the basis of these commonalities, we could be building bridges between the different approaches, aiming as a final goal to harmonize relevant framework. This is, of course, a long way to go and it is clear that the prerogative to choose mechanisms that best‑serve national policy interests is to be achieved with government.
However, what we could try to do is initiate an approximation process that tries to align essential rules for international data transfer.
And our aim would be to create a level playing field to promote global data traffic and to spur both innovations and cost benefits for consumer and businesses.
So, this, in a nutshell, would be what we are thinking about for our G7 presidency, with regard to data governance.
However, as I said, all up to the decision of a new minister for digitalization. It'll be interesting to see how the discussions in the G7 process will be influenced by the discussions in the G‑20 process and other international forum.
It's clear that the digital economy is a global one and the society's connect globally. Even if I have outlined now, our preliminary thinking for one of the smaller international fora, the G7 for us, a global and inclusive approach is the way forward.
Thank you very much.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much, Ann‑Christin for sharing your views on next year's presidency. It is very inspiring to know you are new chancellor, decided and selected today and further collaboration between, not only between our two governments, but also, globally, among the G7 and also, as you've said, among the inclusive community of global, digital society.
So, thank you very much for your presentation and now, we heard a lot of voices talking about OECD's contribution to the G7 discussions.
I know the discussions and product from different committees, including CDEP have been contributing enormously to the policy discussion progress, not only at G7, but also G‑20 and others.
So, I'd like to invite Audrey to share with us, the current development of the discussion at OECD and also, some, some perspective for the future work.
Audrey is head of the Digital Economy Policy Division, directorate for science technology and innovation at OECD. Audrey, please take the floor.
>> AUDREY PLONK: Hello, everyone. It's great to be with you today. To say a little about the OECD's work on data governance and data flows, the OECD policy guidelines that date back to 1980 provide a framework and baseline by which most of the world's countries have built their privacy regimes and frameworks.
In the context of those guidelines, there are known exceptions to where they apply. One of those exceptions is around law enforcement, national security and public order.
And those exceptions, back in the 1980s, probably made a lot of sense and, not that the exceptions don't make sense, but that the need for more‑common understanding around the exceptions to the guidelines has been illustrated through the work of the G7, as well as in various other policy debates.
And so, the OECD is working to try to fill the gap of international instruments that look at how governments access data, when held by the private sector. What common approaches exist in policy and in practice. And how we might articulate those commonalities in order to build trust among OECD‑member countries.
That's an important piece of the data flow puzzle, but not the only piece. The world that used to be once‑distinct from one another are increasingly intertwined and the commercial and economic import of data flows is now dependent on other aspects, like, trust among governments and how they access, particularly, personal data in the private sector.
Our objective is to advance discussions within the OECD membership about how those data are accessed and under what regimes. And to articulate commonalities among our countries, so that trust can be increased and, hopefully, data can continue to flow or be allowed to flow.
I'll mention another important project, which this ‑‑ the one I just mentioned is part of, which is a project across the organization that my team is responsible for, looking at data governance for growth and well‑being. And it really builds on many of the same things the previous speakers raised.
Data are non‑rival risks, they're an economic resource that's important to advance economies going forward and in order to reap the benefits that access to and sharing of data, both within jurisdictions across, across stakeholder groups, but across borders is important and, perhaps, a prerequisite for the growth that we believe is possible, from, from the data, the sort of data society we live in today.
And so, this project really brings together expertise from across the organization. All the way from our health committee colleagues to trade colleagues, to economists that work on national accounts to try to understand the answers to important questions like, you know, how should we think about the value of data to the economy?
How should we measure it? How can we factor that in to policy? How can data be shared, particularly in the cases of crisis, like COVID, and what taxonomy should we use to think about different kinds of data and how to access and use them.
What role data play in innovation and productivity and advancing small and medium businesses, but also firms, more generally.
And then, finally, how we trade and share data across borders. So, our intent with this work, which should terminate at the end of next year, about a year from now, is to develop a guide for policymakers and how to understand and think about the various opportunities and trade‑offs to be made in policies for thinking wholistically about governing data. We hope that will provide important contribution to the global dialogue well beyond OECD and its membership and can be a step forward in identifying other areas, particularly areas where additional evidence‑based on data, not, not data for data flows, but information to build our evidence and understanding of data could be gained and advanced in order to better‑understand the problems and opportunities.
So, with that, I'll turn back to you Yoichi, thank you for the opportunity.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you, very much, for your very‑comprehensive presentation. And actually, to talk a little bit about my personal experience, I was in the Secretariat very long time ago. 30 years ago, when the committee was called Information Computer and Communication Policy Committee and division was also with the same name.
At that time, discussion was very much advanced, similar with the current CDEP discussion. But the coverage and the influence of the committee is very different.
At the time, the ICCP committee was technical discussions and very small community, but, now, CDEP covers a wide range of issues and topics across the organization.
And we work together with so many experts from different fields. Including health, education, transport, whatever.
So, it is, it, apparently remains, that the digitalization is going on and permeating through the society and economy. And the importance of digital technology is increasing day after day.
Thank you very much for sharing the, your experience and now I turn to the private sector. Because we are always making our efforts to advance our policies and one of the objectives, or maybe the most‑important objective is, we want to know how to flourish our economy and society through a digitalization with digital technology and policy.
We always need to know what the business and Civil Society need from the policy. It is always important to discuss in the multistakeholder participation.
So, now, today, we have two participants, speakers from business and tech committees.
First, I'd like to invite Dr. Makoto Yokozawa, in Japan. Dr. Yokozawa, what is the evaluation of the business community on the current policy discussion progress? And what is the expectation for the future work? Please?
>> MAKOTO YOKOZAWA: Thank you very much. I was very much impressed at the ongoing issue, has continuity from, for several years. This is a very, very important thing. We started the G7 discussion and G‑20 discussion. The need for continuous discussion, continuous movement is very, very important to business.
And I think it's already very interesting discussion going on, and from business side, I would emphasize that business always hopes the regulatory framework is coherent and not fragmented and known access regulation with respect of accountability in the private sector.
Also, the regulation must be risk‑based and no duplication of the regulations.
So, these are very, very important elements inside the world trust. And always the baseline of our position, when we talk about our position at OECD and many other occasions of the data‑related discussion.
So, in this term, all the, all the participants here, is well‑recognized the importance of the trust and the, how we can promote the data free flows of trust in this continuous way.
So, the, I also want to emphasize that the whole stakeholders corporation is also part of trust. So we have heard from the government side, there's some very good collaboration and continuous work, but how about the stakeholders corporation as said a few minutes ago. It's not only the government, but also the business Civil Society and communities can be involved in this data free flow discussion.
Let me talk a little about the taxonomy of trust, which I'm always thinking about.
So, the work in trust is maybe the next step of our discussion in the coming years in 2022 and 2023.
So, this is why ‑‑ only my hypothesis, but... the ‑‑ we can demonstrate in, in this way, that the digital, will be a common thread for humanity to make trust, a new social principle.
It is up to users to decide whether to use digital as a tool for just for efficiency or to regulate humanity. Trust will be necessary for digital to become the driving force of the new post‑corona ‑‑ after corona global economy.
The second point is governance based trust will enable companies to increase productivity and reduce risk. This is a very‑important meaning of trust for private sector.
Business transactions without trust requires broad uncertainty and we have to know each other's background, including the economic foundations and the capital redaction steps and stability of their business and understanding of the human rights and global environment or diversity recognition.
So, the, by having a trust, we can escape many of these complex processes.
And the last one is, losing trust is fatal risk for businesses. So, one company, one company whose trust of consumers, it may lose the business space, sometimes to the point of not being able to recover.
So, this should be a very important aspect of the trust and the element of the trust. So, I would like to extend this discussion to the non‑OECD countries or non‑G7 countries, as mentioned, the African economies and Latin America, must be included in this discussion. Thank you very much for listening.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much, for pointing out the important points and business perspectives. And yes, multistakeholder participation is very, very important in the policy discussion, especially in this digital and data policy.
And this IGF forum is the most‑typical and representative platform for all stakeholders to join, get together and discuss and find, explore the ways to take options together.
So, I hope this, this year, unfortunately, the COVID prevented many people from traveling to see each other on site, but we keep working together and we believe multistakeholder approach will produce a lot of power to the digital policy formation.
Now, I'd like to invite Miss Timea Suto, the ICC knowledge manager from International Chamber of Commerce. She has a long history of experience working to contribute to IGF.
So, based on your experience, how do you evaluate the current progress and current situation, or how do you expect further work, by multistakeholders at IGF?
>> TIMEA SUTO: Good afternoon, everyone from Poland. Thank you for the invitation to this session to be here with you all. I wish you were all here with me on the panel. The seats are saved for you.
Thank you, first of all, for the opportunity for the International Chamber of Commerce to be part of this conversation. We sincerely appreciate the government of Japan for putting DFFT on the global policy agenda at the G‑20 summit back in 2019.
As we were talking about data, want to take a quick moment to put some numbers about why free‑flow is so important, for businesses and all of us. Data transfers are estimated to contribute around 2.8 trillion U.S. dollars to the global GDP, a share that exceeds the global trading goods and is expected to grow to around 11 trillion by 2025.
This value is shared by, not only the digital industry, but by traditional industries like agriculture, logistics, manufacturing that contribute about 75% to this value of data transfers.
Around 60% of GDP, expected to be digitized by 2022, disruptions in these cross‑border data flows will have very broad reverberations that can lead to reduced gains, reduced investments in local markets, job losses, which consequently mean welfare losses and other adverse impacts for the local and national digital ecosystems.
So, looking at our shared experience under COVID this year and last year, it's really demonstrated why the value of this international data flows, global data flows is so important. We've seen how international organizations shared data and collaborate to mitigate the challenges that this pandemic has posed for all of us.
Trusting cross‑border data flows is critical for social and economic importance, to organizations of all sizes.
To the private and public sector, and increasingly so in this evolving pandemic situation that reminds us of this value every day.
Trust in data flows is being eroded as many of my colleagues on the panel said, over concerns that demands from governments to access data held by the private sector may conflict with universal human rights, freedoms, including privacy rights or causing concerns and conflicts with domestic laws when such data exceeds borders.
These increased concerns and reduced trust have more far‑reaching consequences. They lead to uncertainty that discourages individuals, businesses, even governments from fully‑participating in a digital economy. It has an impact on the inclusive development we're all talking about, especially now trying to recover from the pandemic and economic effects.
So, the lack of common principles, on trusted government access to data results in these increased barriers to data flows, which, not only contributed to lack of trust, but, contributes to increased data localization measures as well, which create their own set of challenges to businesses who wish to operate across borders.
So, for these reasons, and let me be the fifth one to remind of the OECD's valued work in this topic, of business, strongly supports the initiative of the OECD to develop common principles and trusted government access to personal data.
By identifying shared safeguards, practiced by like‑minded countries and capturing them as principles that can serve as a foundation to enable broader global dialogue on data free flow with trust.
Agreements and such safeguards will bring about a more‑predictable environment for global data flows, enabling the current pace of digital transformation to be maintained at a time when economic recoveries is top of mind for governments around the world.
The OECD is a unique place, it's really appropriate forum for this work. Member States share the democratic values and commitments to rights and freedoms of individuals, including privacy and the shared common interests including preventing, investing and prosecuting serious crime and addressing national security threats.
The OECD could be the first to set a baseline of international standards and norms for trusted government access to data held by the private sector.
And set a firm foundation for further progress on data free flows with trust.
So, business really supports the continuation and successful completion of the OECD process and hope for timely and publicly visible interim outcomes as well and that are informed with a broad range of experts in national security, law enforcement, privacy, both from businesses and Civil Society organizations in their respective Member States.
So, the International Chamber of Commerce is really ready to provide input into this process to the OECD, as well as evidence on behalf of businesses that we work with worldwide to assist this work.
Both in evaluating existing practices and in developing the policy guidelines that we're all hoping for in this matter, so, thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute here and if there are any questions, I'm happy to respond.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much for your perspective from the business and Civil Society community experience.
So, now, we have 15 minutes left. I'd like to invite some of the audience to make any comments or questions to speakers or to rest of the world.
If you have any comments or questions, please use the hand‑raising function of the Zoom or type in chat box. If you can, please raise your hand and speak out.
In the meantime, from the different, all the five presentations, I found the, everybody believes in the power of digital technology and the digitalization. It is the democratic technology to empower the people. And trust must be a kind of passport to the digital society and economy.
To increase trust, the data flow and the participation into the digital society must be more smooth. And the power of innovation can be promoted.
And the policy challenge will be how we can increase trust by different stakeholders in technology and digital society and economy.
So, I see no hands raised. Okay, so, using this time to ask...
>> GOSIA LOJ: I think there's a hand in the room, actually. A physical hand? Unless that someone has just moved on. I thought there was someone ‑‑
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much. If you have any questions or comments, please tell your name and affiliation and please tell us the addressee of the question.
>> Hello, my name is Rita from the European Chamber. I have a question regarding local data governance. The democratic countries are a small minority on this panel, so, I was wondering how you suggest to use data flow and trust with the rest of the world, thank you?
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much. Who wants to respond to this question?
>> AUDREY PLONK: I'm happy to go first, Yoichi, if it helps.
>> Yes, please.
>> AUDREY PLONK: And provide time for my colleagues. Yes, you're absolutely right, for example, the OECD is 38 countries. But we work with many beyond that and we have a long history of setting standards that are broadly adopted beyond just the OECD membership.
The privacy guidelines are an example of that, the tax example is an example of that. I think our aspiration is that we can set baseline principles that could be widely applied for countries who, who take this similar view and similar values‑based approach.
I recognize that it, it may not ‑‑ it takes time to get there to something that is, you know, broadly applicable around the world.
Our goal is, you know, to, to create something that could be foundational for, for more than just the OECD membership. I hope that helps, thank you.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much, Audrey. I see Dr. Yokozawa raising hand.
>> MAKOTO YOKOZAWA: Even the government doesn't have a common economic forum. The business is almost the same. So, business is sharing, almost sharing. It's not perfect, but the theme is to share the mind, we want to be free and open.
I think the key is the business. Thanks.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much, Dr. Yokozawa. This question is very important, I believe. As pointed out, G7 OECD is not working only for the member countries, but the principles and policy discussions are just forming the core or most‑advanced formation of the commonalities and the, we are always trying to outreach and share the same principles with other countries across the world.
And I have very good one, experience on my own. When I was discussing AI principles at G‑20, the AI principles was discussed and endorsed at OECD and we imported to the same principles into G‑20 discussion.
Most countries welcomed, but there were two countries who were opposing until the last moment. I don't think it is dishonorable just to name the countries. They are India and South Africa. And they were very careful to endorse these principles.
Because they were not members of OECD. They didn't have enough time to understand. But, they, after a lot of explanations, they agreed to endorsing the G‑20 AI principles. But, at that time, India said, because Indian government hadn't discussed their own national AI policy, until that time, they didn't want to commit to the recommendation part to the government.
So, that's why we put the path two of the AI principles outside to the G‑20 commitment. And that was done at G‑20.
And one year later, when I met the government representatives from India, they said they started policy discussion inside the government. And they were elevating their own national AI policy. Based on G‑20 principles. And they were very grateful for the discussion and the opportunity when they joined the discussion with other G‑20 member countries and they came to know how the humans entered the AI principles should be and how they can incorporate those discussions into their national discussion, in their government.
So, I was very much impressed by the story and I, I'm not following up with the development with India's national AI policy, but I believe this experience was very much contributed to their national discussion.
So, I think there are a lot of chances for different countries to learn from each other and even the Developed Countries, such as G7 members, have a lot of room to learn from other countries and policy discussions.
Not only from the government, but we need to learn from other communities, including business or Civil Societies.
So, multistakeholder discussion is always needed for all different communities, including government.
So, we have a few minutes left and I want to make roundtable ‑‑ oh, okay, I see one more hand raised. Timea, okay, if you have any comments?
>> TIMEA SUTO: Just a quick one. We're here in Poland. I don't want to make a survey, perhaps maybe half of the room links in OECD or G7 countries? A lot of you, apparently, don't. IGF is a place for such discussions, to learn principles and initiatives that are coming out from various places of the world, share that knowledge, share that information. Between all of us. Discuss it, learn from it, contribute to it. And then take that back home, whether you are from a business or a Civil Society organization or any other type of stakeholder group.
That's the way ‑‑ that's the value of forums like the IGF to take those discussions and share it in home countries and try to arrive to commonalities.
So, just a shoutout to the IGF and other multistakeholder conversations like this one that bring us all together.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much. Yes, that's why we need people to develop the IGF framework, to enable the participation from global countries across the world.
So, we have, probably five minutes left and I want to make, for five speakers to make final comments.
So, I start with probably, Gosia.
>> GOSIA LOJ: Thank you very much. Thank you to all of the speakers today. And those in the room and online for their participation in today's discussion.
I think, building on what we've just said, I want to reiterate, the U.K.'s strong commitment to not only continue building on what we've achieved since, really, 2019, and Japan's G‑20 establishment of the concept of data with free‑flowing trust. The commitment to making sure we do this with the different communities it around the table.
So, the multistakeholder approach is absolutely critical. Not only on the aspect of data governance, but with Internet Governance, AI, and other policies to do with the digital economy and digital society.
I think as we have just said, working with businesses and wider communities and wider set of countries is absolutely critical. This is a global corporation and coordination, not only that that is being proposed by G7 or other countries.
From U.K.'s perspective, we're committed to making sure that as we engage with others, we bring those principles and those frameworks that we decide on, within that smaller, sort of community. Wider, and that really is to do with, with any of the four or wider components of the roadmap.
So, on data localization measures, making sure we build an evidence base, that we understand the impact and that we are able to come up with policy responses that, that can deal with, with the, with those localization measures to ensure that businesses can improve and act within those different policy responses.
In terms of regulatory corporation, I really do want to drive forward that corporation and making sure there is best practice, case studies, so we can understand better how to enhance corporational data governance and data protection and identify opportunities to overcome the differences, but also to explore more of the commonalities in regulatory approaches.
And on that, specifically, when it comes to government access to personal data held by the private sector, as been mentioned before by the speakers. We're very much committed to ensuring that we have that common sort of benchmark for industry to be able to understand how legitimately and with trust access that data and again, support the aims and objectives of this work.
And lastly, when it comes to data sharing, again, and collaboration around making sure that we understand the priority areas for delivering societal benefits, including anything from trust coordinate, zero emissions, research, science, education, to name a few, that work will continue.
And Yoichi, as you mentioned, you know every country has their own, different, regulatory regimes and we also only publish our data strategy last year and continue through this year with public consultation on GDPR and improve what we've seen before and what the U.K. will be able to do now, after the initial consultation.
It doesn't really matter because we can still find interoperabilities and be able to exchange and collaborate despite the variety of regimes based on commonalities and on those interoperability frameworks we work on together. Thank you.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much. Ann‑Christin?
>> ANN‑CHRISTIN SOEKADAR: Thank you very much. It was interesting to hear all the views for the way forward and where the focus should lay. For us, for the German government, we very much hope we can tie in with the success of the British G7 presidency, also in the, regard of free‑flowing data and next year, we'll show how this will be done.
All together, for us, I'd like to repeat the multistakeholder approach in all aspects of internet governance is very importance for Germany and also in the G7 process. It is important that we hear the input of businesses and of society and all the various groups. Thank you very much.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much. Now I invite Audrey for your perspective.
>> AUDREY PLONK: Thank you, Yoichi. I'll be brief, just to say that we really tried to play the long game and take a long‑term view of things. We're committed to building the evidence base to help support better policies around data, data flows, data governance. Our almost 40‑year history is evidence of that.
I think, you know, that's the contribution we overall strive to make. Putting evidence in the hands of policymakers and making recommendations, obviously, directly to OECD members and with the hope they can apply, more broadly, to the global environment. Thank you.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Thank you very much. The time is running out, but just a few words from Makoto and Timea.
>> MAKOTO YOKOZAWA: Thank you for doing this.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Collaboration within governments, collaboration between governments and collaboration between governments and the private sector. Thank you.
>> YOICHI IIDA: Okay, thank you very much. Time is, time has run out. But I believe discussion was very productive and very future‑looking. So thank you very much for your participation to all speakers and to the audience and I believe we can continue our collaboration.
Thank you very much. The session is over.
[Presentation concluded at 4:47 a.m. CT/11:47 a.m. UTC].