Session
Organizer 1: Moath Alzahrani, Digital Government Authority
Organizer 2: Areej Almeshal, Digital Government Authority
Speaker 1: Khalid Alshthri, Government, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 2: Khalid Alshthri, Government, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 3: Khalid Alshthri, Government, Asia-Pacific Group
Moath Alzahrani, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Moath Alzahrani, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Moath Alzahrani, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Round Table - Circle - 60 Min
How can we make use of digital and emerging technologies to promote innovations that that are inclusive, resilient and sustainable?
How do we make regulatory framework as an enabler without compromising with protection of citizens and environment?
How can we make sure that digital and advanced emerging technologies are not developed and used for harmful purposes?
What values and principles should guide the development and use of technologies to enable this?
Connection with previous Messages:
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Targets: 9.2 and 9.5: Regulations for digital era need to act as enablers of innovation and promote new industries that offer more inclusive and sustainable products and solutions for the society while increasing the share of digital economy in country’s economic growth and output. This is specifically important for KSA as it is on a journey to diversify its economy away from an oil based economy and position itself as a leading digital government around the world.
10.3: Advanced and emerging technologies must not further social and economic divides and therefore regulations need to play a critical role in leveling the playing field including restriction of practices that makes it difficult for new market entrants to offer their products and services, hoarding of data within few large organizations and their unethical usage.
Description:
Why this topic: Technology landscape is changing fast giving rise to new business models and industries. Governments often have a reactive approach to regulating these new market realities – often creating an environment of uncertainty. Moreover, emerging technologies such as AI, Blockchain and IoT have also raised issues of data privacy, security, environmental sustainability and legal complications. For instance, with regulations like GDPR, one can request their data to be removed from an organization’s records, but what does this mean for the future of blockchain? Similarly, data is the fuel for AI based solutions, how do we ensure privacy is protected? How do we shield citizens from unintended biases and consequences including issues such as job losses? With industries expecting governments to play role of an enabler of innovation and new technologies vs. government’s objective of protecting citizens and addressing undesirable consequences of emerging technologies, there is a need for rethinking the way policies and regulations are designed and implemented.
How we will address the issue: The session will explore potential ways to make regulations around emerging technologies a better fit for market realities in a roundtable format and will explore concepts such as:
Developing regulatory sandboxes to test new approaches and solutions and use it to form better policies and regulations
Flexible and adaptive approach to designing regulations that is iterative in nature instead of a static approach
Role of data in making better policies and regulation
The moderator will introduce the participants of the session followed by providing a background and context of the topic. The lead speaker will be invited to open the discussion with moderator inviting other speakers to weigh in their opinion through follow up questions.
Agenda (60 mins)
Opening and introduction (Moderator): 5 mins
Main discussion (Speakers): 35 min (10 mins for each speaker + 5 mins buffer)
Q&A: 15 mins
Summary: 5 mins
The session output will be converted into a report that will be introduced to the leadership and decision makers in the country and will act as a directional material for regulatory transformation projects currently active. The report will be also published on DGA website for access to general public and other government entities from around the world who are interested in similar topic.
Hybrid Format: Interaction of speakers will happen through online platform like Zoom or Microsoft Teams while the onsite moderator will collect questions from the onsite audience and share it with the speakers during the Q&A session. Whereas, the online moderator will collect and present questions shared through Zoom/Teams for the speakers to answer.
We will use a room or makeshift area with seating capacity of around 30 people with large screen and audio visual equipment to facilitate live broadcast of the online session. The audio visual setup with conferencing camera will allow onsite and online attendees as well as moderators to interact live with speakers. However, the Q&A session will be largely driven by moderators.
Usage of IGF Official Tool.