Session
Organizer 1: Stefania Pia Grottola, Global Studies Institute - GSI
Speaker 1: Marco Lotti, Civil Society, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 2: Cedric Amon, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Vahan Hovsepyan, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
Stefania Pia Grottola, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Stefania Pia Grottola, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Stefania Pia Grottola, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Break-out Group Discussions - Round Tables - 90 Min
- How can we bridge the gap between technological innovation and policy implementation?
- How can we facilitate constructive dialogue between members of the technical community and policy-makers or their respective teams?
- How can we inform existing policy processes with a more dynamic framework?
Connection with previous Messages:
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Targets: SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure & SDG 17: partnership for the Goals
- Bringing in industry experts to facilitate a dialogue with other stakeholders on how they can achieve common goals.
Description:
The Multi-stakeholder Tech Dialogue (MSTD) framework aims to provide a constant dialogue between technology developers and policy-makers with the aim to:
- help in bridging the gap between technology and policy hubs;
- facilitate the acceleration of the implementation of policy recommendations at the national and international level as well as at the organizational level of non-state entities.
The framework will take the form of an interactive workshop divided into two workstreams:
- Technology in diplomacy (TiD) bridges the gaps in the technical understanding of technological breakthroughs from policymakers. TiD fights dystopian narratives of technological breakthroughs and sets the scene for constructive and informed discussions.
- Diplomacy for technology development (DfTD) addresses the lack of comprehensive understanding of societal implications from developers of the technology. Diplomacy for a more ethical tech development requires a proactive role by states, civil society and academia in engaging and calling upon the private sector for ethical development of the next innovation waves, able to meet privacy - and human rights-by-design requirements.
The MSTD framework enhances a bottom-up approach by including academia, civil society and the technical community in the implementation phase of breakthroughs; and improves a top-down cascade effect by producing well-informed recommendations. The focus of this session will be on standards development in AI for facial recognition.
The framework builds its procedures on three key aspects.
- Small multi-stakeholder groups - To facilitate interactive discussions, members are divided in small multi-stakeholder groups led by a member of the different stakeholders’ groups according to the workstream.
- Informative sessions - The first workstream informs members without a technical background of the main aspects of the technology, highlighting – in an understandable way and without exposing trade secrets - how such technology functions and is developed. The second workstream introduces principles of international law to the developers of the technology to understand possible downsides of the data used, its biases and legal implications when introduced on the market. Each group produces a policy-oriented report which is then examined and commented by one of the other groups.
- Role of the Chairs - The chairs of the groups reconvene to elaborate a final document that highlights the elements raised during the discussions in the form of policy recommendations or business guidelines.
The framework has three main objectives:
- to inform participants of technical or policy-related aspects that they might have not considered due to their background;
- to facilitate a constructive dialogue between members of the technical community and policy-makers or their respective teams.
- to shape the work of existing multilateral efforts through more informed members and give them an opportunity for further dialogue and cooperation.
The framework aims at complementing existing multi-stakeholder efforts by providing a venue for informal discussions that might help finding consensus over topics and issues deeply politicized.
The framework will provide two major insights and writtten recommendations (policy recommendations and business guidelines) that will be then combined into a final report by the organizers and the Chair in a supervision role.
Hybrid Format: - How will you facilitate interaction between onsite and online speakers and attendees? Ensure the presence of two moderators (online and in-person) that coordinate with the session organizers to ensure that attendance and participation is fostered equally.
- How will you design the session to ensure the best possible experience for online and onsite participants? Ensure that everything can be done online through existing platforms (i.e. Zoom).
Usage of IGF Official Tool.