The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF 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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>> SIENNA BYRNE: Can everyone hear me?
>> ADEL ABDEL-SADEK: Yes, I hear you.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Great. Thank you so much for joining us for Workshop 86, "The Role of Citizens: Information and Maintaining E-government."
I'm here today joined by panelists Asha Abinallah, Founder and CEO of Tech and Media Convergency. Florian Marcus, Estonia Digital Transformation Advisor. Noha Baky, Instructor at Pan-African Youth, Ambassadors for Internet Governance. Dr. Adel Abdel-Sadek, Director of the Arab Centre for Cyber Research. And PeiChin, Senior Policy Advisor on Government Innovation at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
To kick things off, I would like to pose our first question relating to how we can most effectively create channels for citizen participation in the design of e-government systems while still addressing security concerns.
The way this panel will work is ideally as a roundtable. So, panelists are going to engage in conversation and we will leave time at the end also for questions from the audience and input or thoughts on what we shared.
So, without further ado, if anyone would like to start by addressing that first question.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: That's weird. I mean, considering these very square nature of this table, we will try to make it a roundtable. We will do our best.
I guess if we want to talk about secure participation of citizens (?) off digital government or what I would prefer to call a digital society, we need to talk about secure digital identities, which are universal, so that I can be sure that when I am logging into my bank or into my digital state portal, that the government actually knows who it is talking to as well and that I get the services to which I am entitled. So, to make it more personalized as a service provision for me.
And then also based on that data exchange, of course, is super important, that you have secure, decentralized data exchange network where all the different government authorities can talk to each other and exchange data to provide the services that you deserve.
But beyond that, I think I would leave it to my participants first and then potentially chime in if we go into further details.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Great. So, on that first question, how we can effectively create channels for citizen participation on the design of e-government systems while still addressing security concerns, Noha, do you want to talk about youth involvement?
>> NOHA BAKY: Yeah. Thank you, Sienna. I'm Noha Baky, for the record. Our users are the main users of -- they are the primary users of any tech solutions or any digital tools provided for them. So, we are the first responders, the ones who influence other age groups to use these tools. So if we going to tackle the security perspective of it, it needs to be done through secure channels, not necessarily social media. Even if it's done through social media, it needs to be done maybe anonymously or by using multifactor authentication or just to verify that it's not scam, or like in Egypt we have verify accounts for each ministry or governmental body on all social media channels.
So, as youth, it's our role to raise the awareness for the other citizens on how to communicate effectively and securely with the governmental bodies through the available channels. For example, in Egypt, there is also hotline where you can call the government or Digital Egypt's initiative and raise your concerns or open a ticket with them, so it's not only through social media.
But, yeah, we need to raise, like, the security precautions when we communicate with the governmental bodies. Thank you.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Now, jumping to Asha. I would love to hear your answer on question 1 as well, bringing your perspective.
>> ASHA ABINALLAH: I love the feedback commentary, but for me, I would like to remind, when I look at my country and the state of development where it is, the first channels will be creating all those platforms to make sure that proper channels and platforms to understand that there is this mechanism when the mechanism is being created, because we now have a state where the government is creating mechanisms to bring people on board, not necessarily strategically focusing on different groups, but just generally.
So, the first step would be creating platforms for the youth and citizens to be interested and understanding why it is important for them to engage and also enticing the way that we can reach where our fellow participants are, that now they can create a community of youth who can bring -- sort of bring other people or other youth on board in the peer group to be able to use their e-government systems. Thank you.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you.
I know we have had some technical difficulties. But I'm hoping that PeiChin, are you online with us?
>> PEICHIN TAY: Yes, I am. Can you hear me?
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Yes, we can hear you. I will repeat the question again, but we would love to hear your response to Question 1, how can we most effectively create channels for citizens of participation in the design of e-government systems while still addressing security concerns in.
>> PEICHIN TAY: That's great. The audio works on my side. Hi, everyone, sorry I can't be there with you in person, I hope you are all having a great time. I'm PeiChin from the Tony Blair institute global change. We do a lot of research around e-governments and I think technology definitely brings a lot of opportunities for civic engagement now, because it really does reduce barriers to scale and creating a lot of digital feedback loop that are really important for policymakers.
There are a number of online tools these days, such as government (?), (?) platforms, (?) systems and so on. All these different tools allow citizens to voice their opinions and to contribute to decision-making without physical barriers, which is a key challenge in some of the countries.
And governments are also developing and launching open data initiatives and using technology to release data publicly, and this really empowers citizens to be able to access data, to be able to analyze, critique and to hold officials to account.
So, in terms of the actual channels, I think we need to leverage on technology to ensure there are inclusive inputs and to create platforms that would allow citizens to provide input anonymously and/or securely. So, I think (?) is an example of a really popular consensus generating platforms that crowd sources ideas from the public. And bearing in mind that a lot of social media does have that polarizing effect policies (?) to help to generate consensus.
This has led to (muffled audio) Taiwan to help policymakers in (?) such as how do we regulatory Uber and so on.
I think in addition to (?) and privacy, I think general consensus is really important panel for that journey and I think encouraging citizen participation is one side of equation. But equally it's helping policymakers to make better decisions and to achieve regulatory outcomes.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you. It's a great answer.
Dr. Adel, do we have you online as well? Great. Thank you for joining us virtually. We would love to hear your answer to Question 1, how we can most effectively create channels for citizen participation in the design of e-government systems while still addressing security concerns. For everyone in the audience, Dr. Adel will be speaking in Arabic and Noha will be providing a previous translation afterwards.
>> ADEL ABDEL-SADEK: Thank you very much for this invitation because the subject matter is very important to understanding the real work between or relationship between citizens and the government. I will translate -- go into Arabic.
(non-English language)
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you, Dr. Adel. The things that this session is super important to -- yeah, do you want to resume?
>> ADEL ABDEL-SADEK: Can you hear me?
>> NOHA BAKY: To draft the framework of creating secure and transparent channels between communication between the citizens and the governmental bodies and to consider the opinion and feedback of the citizens when designing the tools -- the environment tools and services as its citizens right to be a partner in creating those tools.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you for that translation, Noha.
Just building off of question 1, one thing that I want to pose to the panelists and going back to what you said earlier, Asha, how can we build citizen trust in e-government initiatives in places where we don't have these systems up yet and where this is really a future opportunity and something that we are having to build from the ground up? How do we introduce this, how do we get stakeholder buy-in, and more importantly what metrics should citizens be basing their trust in e-government on? Anyone who wants to take that, please feel free.
>> So, I think the first thing that we take for granted is the understanding of individuals. I would say the first step instead of just going into doing that. First of all, in introducing, having the metrics of their perspective, if they are positive, if they are negative because it's the best way of introducing a new aspect into the community, as well as (?) when it has to do with technology.
Sometimes that's the government when they bring own solution, they bring on initiatives and introduce it to the communities. They are not (?) government decided. They don't feel like they are part of it. The first step would be you have to make sure that the citizens are in these. And I know sometimes it's very confusing when you talk about citizens, we are -- as (?) we are over 65 million in population. And the active Internet users is just 35 million. So people have registered. When it comes to active, you might find it's lesser than that.
So, how do you reach all these -- all these participants? Then you go to the next step, identify the stakeholders, which stakeholders, which platforms has the target audience you are reaching. In most cases sometimes we tend to forget the religious centres. For (?) citizens. And I think in most communities, religion is a very important aspect. If you could find ways to find youth through religion, especially maybe when it comes to whether it's mosques, whether it's churches, you find the youth who will reach large number of youth. I think that's a plus. When you go to universities, you go to -- you go to CSOs that work with the youth, I think that's the best way.
So, how do you reach that? You do a stakeholder mapping. You just don't maybe draw -- you just don't draw your line. You just don't draw a list and say as long as we have reached this (?), that is fine.
The key metrics, going to the key metrics, it should be you need to identify a group that by the time you are done engaging with them, you can measure their understanding, their interests, their interests and that's very easy. We have social media right now. If the citizens are not talking about it, if the users are not talking about it, they are not aware. Because if they are aware, they will in one way or another, whether it's memes, whether it's (?), however ways, they will do that.
The other challenging thing is we consider research very, very academically, and I know we have a Ph.D. on board, but when it comes to research, usually it's just taking something like you just have to go to the academic, have a study on something, and show of it. How can research be incorporated in a way that it could be friendly and guide the overall process of engagement?
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: If I could take it from there. Thank you very much for bestowing a Ph.D. upon me. I'm just a student for now. But, yeah, I'm actually one of my research projects that we just finished up is called e-gov for youth. We published an over 60 page as well. It's been very fun. Basically identifying how youth actually want to be interacting with the government. And what we found extremely low interest in was outreach via social media because youth don't want to be talked down upon. They don't want, I don't know, economic ministry for kids version on Facebook or something where they, sort of, speak to everybody like they are 15 years old.
The second thing, what you already mentioned as well, was that citizens want to feel like they are being heard. And right now, that is not the case, because most countries don't account for citizen opinion in their processes. I will give a very simple example. If a ministry in most countries decides that it wants to digitalize a service, then usually it will go ahead and do that.
In Estonia and some other countries where public-private partnership is extremely strong, there's a stipulation that says, hey, if there's a project that goes in the direction of service development, you must involve stakeholder groups. If it goes in the direction of e-health, you must talk to patients, to a social insurance, to the hospitals, to the nurses and so on, so forth.
So you have to bake that into your procurement procedures. If you don't, well, that's probably one of the problems lies.
And the last point that I would add is, if we expect citizens to care about the services that government provides, then they should probably be good. And truth be told, in most countries that is not the case right now. And especially if we talk about youth being the ones that bring other generations into the fold, well, youth have to be convinced first. And if youth think of stuff like Amazon that predicts the next thing that they want to buy or on Instagram within -- if you scroll through Instagram or TikTok, within five minutes the algorithm knows exactly what you want and, you know, what interests you and what you scroll through.
And so based on that, they will make recommendations for the next -- well, fort the rest of your life, actually, and government doesn't do that. Government says here's a PDF online, print it out, scan it back in and send an email. That's not user friendly. That's like 1998.
So, what we have been doing in Estonia for the last five to 10 years is what we call proactive government services where can give a personal example. We have a baby daughter, she is almost 1 1/2 years old. She was born -- she got a personal code like a citizen's number, the day that she was born. Her citizen's number gets connected to my citizen's number and the one of my wife because we are the legal guardians, the parents. And then the next day we get a notification on the state portal that says, congratulations on the birth of your child. We know that by our own laws, you are entitled to child benefit payments, to which bank account do we send the money? There is no more application searching for the right authority, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's about trying to not even copy the private sector, but just get a tiny bit closer than we were at the moment because government will always be slower than private sector. It has to be because of ethical guardrails. That's fine.
But we don't have to be 20 years behind. That's a quick thought from my side.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you for that response. Would anybody else like to answer this question? I think we have time for about one or two more responses before we move on to our next question.
>> ADEL ABDEL-SADEK: Yes.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Free to go ahead, Dr. Adel.
>> ADEL ABDEL-SADEK: Yes, yes. Thank you very much for this information. I think if we wanted to have a good, effective channel, tool, designs, e-government system, I think we can take into our consideration many, such as the e-government system should be caught up with the national need and what we -- what is their people need to have or what is the real hoops, real needs to development in the future.
Also, I think there is also very important item in this, how to know -- know the challenge. What is the challenge we have. What is the opportunity? I think it is a very important to have a good solution to shave our problem to connect with citizen, to apply e-government so we are now to transfer from e-government or e-government to smart government. I think it is a bit important to have smart government to have ability to use many technical tools, especially with the raise of AI to apply with and how to handle with citizen and how to use the bots and the AI to deal with the citizen. I think also it's very important to have a good connection between citizen and the government.
Also, I have also another item, considering on we should have one national strategy to e-government or smart government. It is very important because it makes a connection and compromise between the old views, the old idea and how to move our vision to have development by apply e-government system.
Also, I think also political support, I think political support, especially in our developing countries, it is very important. Because it is very important to be easier to be easy, the tools and easy to apply and also it is well worth it to support the leader to apply the e-government system.
Also, I think the e-government and digital transformation, it is a big challenge to the laws. How to modernate, the -- (?) how to (?) on cyberspace because related with a trust citizen, if we have the trust in ecosystem of digital development and digital transaction, it is very important to encourage citizen to deal with the e-government service.
Also, especially in our countries like Egypt, we don't focusing on the service by e-government. It is not -- it is just add service. Not to control on the citizens. I think it is very important to make a comparison between the service by government. It is a duty for the government or it is a control on the citizen. I think it is very important to have culture of digital transformation. It is very good to encourage people to have their inputs about the service and use many tools.
Also government should be available, many tools like focus group, like conference to raise awareness about what is e-government system have and what are the --
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Adel. We really appreciate your response to that.
We are going to have to move on to Question 2 now. Question 2 is what form should citizen participation in e-government take beyond the mere use of e-government systems and this goes back to what Florian was talking about earlier regarding proactive government service delivery. Florian, if you would like to take this first question.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: Yes. There are several things that we can do. Number one, what you could have is something like a digital petitioning system. So, right now we have got online petition systems all around the world where, I don't know, you enter your email address and then you can sign whatever the problem with that system that is being used around the whole world, of course, is that you can create many email accounts. Many of us have several email accounts and we can create 10 more within 10 minutes and then we can give 10 signatures for whatever petition we care about.
And if there is ever a petition that you actually do support but maybe government doesn't like. They will always be able to put into question the legitimacy of the number of signatures that you have collected. We have seen this in countries all around the world. This is not one specific kind of government that does this. And the way we can circumvent this is to say well, as I said at the start, you all need a universal electronic identity with a digital signature that we can all understand that this person truly gave this signature at this point in time and you can't hack it somehow.
And as a result, the politicians will be able to see that, yes, there are legitimately 20 million signatures from 20 million real people for this kind of petition. So, this will be a good start.
Number two, some experience from Estonia, perhaps, what we also see being experimented with in other countries at the moment is online voting. So, we had a discussion yesterday in another workshop about the topic, a tiny bit already as well, in Estonia you can vote online since 2005 with your electronic identity again. The whole source code for the system is open source, so, you know, if you have any worries about how your vote is being counted or not, then you can check the source code online. And that makes it very transparent for international observers as well.
So, we have international observers in our country, not just for the physical counting of votes, but also for the digital counting of votes.
And then last but not least what I said already about public-private partnership that forces the companies to get stakeholder groups into the room and ask them how they would like the services to develop. I think that's a good direction.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you, Florian. I think I would also like to offer PeiChin the opportunity to respond to this question, since this is the realm of your knowledge. What form should citizen participation take in the use of e-government systems?
>> PEICHIN TAY: Can you hear me? Yeah. So, I think policymakers really need to see citizens a co-creators and not just end users because there's a lot of complex challenges and governments do not have all the answers. Especially when we look at -- we did a lot of research in the gig economy or digital platform economy, for example. And that is where we really see government lagging behind, because they don't really have the tools to regulate for new businesses and they really know how to deal with it, apart from relying on the tools of the 20th Century.
So, for instance, Uber entered the market in the U.S. in 2011, and it wasn't until almost a decade later that there was any regulation taking place. So, I think there are two main things here, which is governments need to gain insight in order to frame the problem in a more accurate manner, especially when it relates to new models, new services and new challenges.
And secondly, they need to have the right tools to be able to approach some of this complex policy issues. And this is where, you know, citizens can come in really useful as co-creators of solutions and to contribute ideas and feedback in the development of new policies, perhaps, and this is why we at the Tony Blair Institute have been working with human-centered design agencies on very specific worker centre projects, because one of the things that came out as the key challenge in the gig economy is that workers often do not have a voice. They are often just at the receiving end of new technologies and algorithms that is there, too, so to determine their pay and experience and so on, which is why, sort of, taking a worker-centered and human-centered approach in policymaking has been really fruitful.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you. Would anybody else here -- or Florian, would you like to go ahead and respond to that?
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: Actually, I wanted to ask a question to PeiChin. You said at the very start that the citizen needs to be understood as a co-creator, and totally agree the question is not whether yes or no, but how. I mean, we have a million working groups and a million multistakeholder everythings and it's all great and we have a million reports that come out of the all of the different working groups and nobody reads it and nobody cares.
So, the question is how do you want to effectuate change in that sense? To give you, perhaps, also something that failed in Estonia, we had a discussion in government roughly 10 years ago about whether we can tie the success of or failure of digital service delivery to the salaries of public servants.
So, guess what? If you make a new tax declaration and you get the budget to develop it as you see fit, but if it's awful, then maybe you should get punished for that. And if it does really well and within the next two years 100% of people do it online because it's so good, then maybe you deserve a raise as well, beyond the regular inflation or whatever adjustment.
So, even if Estonia that will shut down for obvious political reasons. But how do we make sure that politicians are forced to listen to what we say? Thanks.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you, Florian. And PeiChin, I will give you the opportunity to respond to that, if you have any suggestions on that.
>> PEICHIN TAY: Yeah, and the idea we will be able to force policymakers to do the things that we would love to do. But organization that is sort of part think tank, I think there is a number of influencing methods that we use. And in our research, we take, as I said, a very strong, sort of, human-centered approach. So we engage workers and not just giving them a survey, right? I think one of the risks here is also the survey fatigue and people don't know what you do at the end of that survey and how it is being implemented. So sort of close feedback loop is often not there.
How we engage workers is taking the ethnic strong approach. It could be even things like we shadow them because they may not always be able to express the breadth of their insights in a survey form. And I think it's very important that we take a very open view initially when we are trying to scope out the problem statement. Because most of the time we don't know what the problem is or it could be, you know, there are a thousand problems staring in our face and we don't really know how to prioritize them.
So I think taking a very open approach, especially in the beginning, we use the double diamond methodology and they converge that to identify some of the key challenges, again, together with workers and not just typical stakeholders such as government and private sector. We give workers a seat at table when it comes to suggesting solutions together with all these different stakeholders. And this is where the co-design methodology really comes to life, and really sheds useful insights that we wouldn't be able to uncover otherwise. And then, obviously, we use these insights to try to influence policymakers.
>> ADEL ABDEL-SADEK: I think -- okay.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: In the sake of time, we are going to move on to Question 3 now. How might citizens be included as stakeholders in the design of e-government systems to address human rights concerns surrounding the collection and processing of citizen data? And I think we have touched on this briefly, kind of in earlier responses. But I would love to hear a little bit more specifically any ideas or design initiatives that have given greater transparency or even kind of ideas that people are having on this topic.
>> ADEL ABDEL-SADEK: Yes.
>> I think the first thing --
>> ADEL ABDEL-SADEK: Okay.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: I think Asha is going to respond to this one, Dr. Adel, and then we will move to you afterwards. Asha, go ahead.
>> ASHA ABINALLAH: The first thing we are supposed to do is give them leadership roles according to attributes, identify them and give them leadership roles. And I will say most cases, leadership, when it comes to youth, it really has to be something they are passionate. Not I'm here at IGF, I go back home and have my son be the leader of an initiative which I think there is an opportunity. When we talk about responsibility, we normally point fingers at governments. But in normal cases, if you are here, like if you are in this room, I think you are a step ahead of so many people in your country. So, you are a leader already.
So, as a leader, how are you making responsibilities and decisions to engage the youth? I think that's a very important question. Not just the government.
But the other aspect I would like to point out is that there are so many global platforms that are there. And when we are in our own countries, we are, sort of -- you know, you live like in the (?). You want to start an initiative about youth, which is brand-new. How do you map out as a country, as a government, as a working group, how do you map out the existing relevant bodies and platforms of the youth and make sure that it is chartered in your organization as well? Because that way when you start out, when you branch out something which is new in the community, I will give an example.
There is youth IGF, there is AI, there is artificial intelligence, again, there is maybe youth artificial intelligence. So, how do you make sure that as a leader, you start some initiative identifying as a government, you start certain -- some initiative, identify which -- maybe which hubs there or which community is there that can establish that kind of platform which will be instrumental.
The reason why I'm emphasizing on that is there are mechanisms, there are youth chapters that are successful in other countries, not successful in other countries, and when you branch out, these youth tend to learn from one another. It is easy to fast track their intended goal instead of starting with something entirely brand-new.
The other aspect I would like to talk about is legal framework. I think we shouldn't take it for granted, when the government decides because a certain leader and a sense the important (?) is not integrated in the legal framework, then when we leave, everything goes out. Everything fails. So it needs to be in policies. Policies, when you talk about the national ICT policy, the youth have to be there and I'm really glad that my country Tanzania have considered that. When you talk about the digital transformation framework, it has to consider the youth. Those are some of the ways it can be done and implemented. Thank you.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you. I want to build off what you just said. Thinking about codifying protections for user data and ensuring that we have a good legal framework for digital governance, how should we think about digital governance initiatives in states that currently face accusations of human rights abuses and that currently do not add here to some of the democratic processes that we think about ideally when we think of digital governance? Does anyone want to go ahead and take that? Or would you loo I can to respond, Asha?
>> ASHA ABINALLAH: Yeah, I think my country is one of those countries. And yesterday I pointed out that I'm really proud of where we are as a country. The e-government system is very impressive, I am personally very impressed with the e-government system. But when you have a government that will very well informed or it really understands how the e-government systems has to be and you have other actors that don't understand and don't know their role in it, it becomes very dangerous for the youth and the community at large.
So, now, the civil society very important actor when it comes to propagate human rights. You want to propagate human rights, whether digital human rights or human rights in general, you have to have an active civil society community.
The active civil society community will hold the government accountable. They will hold them accountable when it comes to accessibility. Yes, we have very well integrated e-government system. But if we considered person with disabilities as -- one of the (?) address as TMC. Next year we plan by March to have an analysis of whether the persons with disabilities and especially in technology, we are talking about the blind and the deaf, if they have been considered in the infrastructure of the e-governance which has to be access to. We have to make sure that there are mechanisms that can tangibly point out the challenges and proposed for solutions. Now if the government is there, and there are no actors, whether private or CSOs that are holding them accountable, (?) they know they are doing okay and they are doing okay and they are doing okay and they are doing right.
I would say, speaking for Tanzania, I would say the ICT ministry is one of the ministries which is so very lucky to do whatever they want because the space, when it comes to CSOs, we weren't as active as that and I am really glad that in 2024 which launched the Internet Governance working group to address that. I think that's a very important aspect.
But the second one, I wish that we take it for granted when it comes to corporate companies, especially mobile companies or maybe banks. When you have -- when you have banks and mobile companies that are very close to the government, as in, like, they are buddies, the youth, the citizens, it becomes very dangerous. Because then you just provide data, just provide information. And, you know, it may -- as petty as it might seem, somebody can go there and want to access information about their husband or their wife, you know, sometimes they can be in danger. Those are things which is so much taken for granted but they cannot be sorted by the government themselves. So we need an active civil society that makes sure that it has identified the challenges that are in the space but not only identify, capacitated itself to the (?) understand what it needs to address. Thank you.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: And Noha, would you like to go? Oh, I think we are going to open for questions in about five minutes. I think we will have to get through the conversation -- oh, go ahead, if you would like to ask a question, then we can address, of course. We will go ahead and pass you the microphone.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you very much. I would like to answer your previous question. I am from Russian Federation, completely not related to the government. But I would like to answer your question about how to protect citizens in not very democratic countries.
I would like to say this is very difficult, because even in nondemocratic countries, digital services might be very well developed, Russia is a rich country, got very well developed states services portal which celebrates 15 years today. By the way, but the greater examples is if government or ministry is not accountable, they could even randomly, not on bad will, not on a will of abuse their citizens. They could easily violate human rights. As a best example, maybe you still remember, (?) process, which usually been core quarters which is very fine, something like once Russian states services portal decreased by two times from one year to half year all such COVID process. It definitely was kind of back.
And actually, it was required for pressurizing for people to extend it back to one year. There was not -- there is not only example of what doing. And actually government and ministry and developer are not accountable in any way.
Maybe it's reasonable not just to work with civil society, because, well, on this -- in this vein, your political activities are not very well accepted. But in this case you have to be very political actor also to push the government. So civil society is not enough. You have to work with your politicians, you have to work with elections, you have to do something to gain power, to be able to do this.
Thanks.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you. Going off of what you just said, I want to ask, what do we think the role of the international community, and particularly the international technical community who is providing advising services and expertise to governments as they seek digital transformation, what is their role in ensuring that these systems are not, you know, conducive to human rights abuses?
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: I may not be saying what you are expecting me to say. I remember very clearly from my bachelor's studies in political science, a wonderful course about American democracy promotion abroad. And people not being a big fan of it in some countries. Understandably, potentially.
I would say that we have to stay the hell out of whatever country is -- or whatever it wants. Yes, of course, there's a consideration for human rights and so on, but that table can turn very quickly and then those countries can point the finger at western countries which are also not perfect democracies either in some sense.
So, I would say what we can do as the technical community both on a private sector basis and also --
(Background noise)
-- international organizations is just to give guidance and provide forums like this one to exchange ideas, to share what has worked in our country. It may not work in your country, but it can. And to just use that as a form for cultural exchange first and then technical implementation second.
The truth is also that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. So, I'm very relaxed about the conversation. Perhaps more than some others might be at the table.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Noha, would you like to share your perspective on this?
>> NOHA BAKY: Yeah. So, yeah, the technical community, of course, have a big role to create, like, innovative and new solutions tackling on-ground problems, like they can work in parallel with entrepreneurs or civil society organizations to understand the local need or the real problems that need to be addressed and put them in context of the emerging technologies that can be effective in resolving those issues. Sorry. And offer these solutions for the government to implement.
For example, in Egypt, we have a great initiative created by the government in (?), it's called governmental innovation lab where they encourage entrepreneurs to recommend solutions or create new solutions in the e-gov sector. So, yeah, technical community can help to -- with integrating AI, data designs, Blockchain and other technologies with these solutions, of course.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Moving now to our last question, in the sake of time before we open up to further discussion and further questions from the audience, how might e-government systems be designed to address the needs of vulnerable members of the population? And this goes beyond just human rights concerns. We are talking about people who, I think, have different abilities in terms of using e-government systems, people who may be hearing challenged or visually challenged, things like that.
Does anyone want to start by addressing that?
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: One problem for politicians is also they are often be driven by their populations to adopt the latest buzz word technology. You mentioned Blockchain, AI, IoT, blah, blah, blah. Why do we use AI, why do we talk about the implementation of AI if the data quality of most governments around the world is so bad that AI cannot make any good decisions. You know, trash in, trash out. That's very simple. So, just sometimes governments also being driven in some sense in the wrong direction.
About accessibility and inclusion of people with disabilities and so on, for example, if you think about the healthcare portal, it would be primarily used by people who have trouble reading because they are elderly and so on. So, why not make the default font for users over 65 just automatically 10 times as big? Why not make those areas where people with disabilities would be primarily users, why not focus proactive services there?
So, as an example, if I know that you get a retirement or disability benefit, why don't I make that proactive first, that you don't have to apply, that you don't have to go to the bank to cash the check or something, so that you make that as low interaction as possible. So, that will be one way that we can do this.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you. I think -- why don't we move now to PeiChin, would you like to address this question 4?
>> PEICHIN TAY: Sure. Actually had a similar point as Florian around proactive services. Because I remember when I was working in the London regional office, before this role, and, basically, the job was around how do we skill up the population that had very low literacy rate. And we were always very concerned about the people who were so-called hard to reach. But then we had this conversation with the colleagues. Basically the hard-to-reach people are the people who need public services the most. And these are people often categorized as low income and those who have disabilities or very low digital literacy or living in remote areas. And they often encounter barriers that would prevent them from fully benefiting from government programmes such as not having digital ID in the UK or not even having bank accounts and so on.
So, for them, the government considers them hard to reach, but, actually, the discussion, basically, pivoted the whole point which is for these people, the government is hard to reach. So, therefore, the whole idea of proactive services is really important because we need to reduce the administrative burden on these people. They don't have time to navigate a web of bureaucratic intricacies. And even sometimes for myself, when I used to live in the UK, it was very difficult to actually understand what I am eligible for and how I apply for it. And I would consider myself to be somebody who is quite digitally literate.
So, actually, we need to be radically thinking about that and reducing all these barriers and hurdles, especially for people who need it the most.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you so much.
I think we are about at time here now. But I think we have time maybe for one or two questions from the audience to close things out.
I see we have someone back here. Let's hear it.
>> PARTICIPANT: Yes. Hello, good afternoon. My name is Matula Mashuri from the Prague and Tanzania. We talk about this e-governance and everything but what are the strategies that you are going to use to engage the youth especially from marginalized group to engage themselves in this e-governance you are talking about. For me, I live in Tanzania, I just did a problem in (?) and I did a programme in (?), a place where I went to give them about capacity building, I could not even give them because we do not have the digital infrastructures. (?) digital governance, what are the strategies that you are going to use and especially for this marginalized group, of course? I want to know, for it to be sustainable, for everyone to use, you know? Sustainable for everyone to be able to engage in, especially for African youth mostly, marginalized community completely. Thank you.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: I will pass it on to the panelists. Who wants to take that?
>> ASHA ABINALLAH: Yeah, for the Tanzanian government, you know, it's very strange. I did say that they are doing very well and this is an excellent example. When it comes to infrastructure, Internet and digital infrastructure, Tanzania is covered by 60%, 60 to 65%, like it's covered, we are talking about fiber. But the infrastructure is only accessible at 38 to 40%. It's telling a lot, that, one, the people are not really literate. Secondly, the infrastructure is not there to be consumed by the community.
Secondly, the government, through regulators, TCRA, they have a programme known as youth ses. It is intended entirely to reach out to the rural. So, I will say, with this conversation, digital transformation started in 2021 when we had the funds from World Bank and EU. I would say that we are in progress. We are getting there. It's not perfect. But it is something that is worked upon.
The newly launched policies also, has also identified the intent. And when it -- and the government is also -- they also want to make sure every Tanzanian has a digital identity. And this, they want it by end of 2024, which I know won't work. I think -- I think they will have to move it forward.
So, yes, it is not perfect. But something is being done. I wish I could explain further and we can talk about it, because the time is limited.
>> SIENNA BYRNE: Thank you so much. And, yes, unfortunately, the time is limited. And we are now at time. But thank you so much for that question. And it was a pleasure hearing everyone's ideas and speaking with everyone today.
(Applause)