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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>> JON LLOYD: Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here. A warm welcome to our session. Thank you to all of you joining online as well. They are in person for being here bright eyed and bushy‑tailed on the first session on the second day. I'm Jon Lloyd, I'm from WEOG. We're excited to have such contribution to the discussion.
We will delve into the involving landscape as digital public infrastructure, known as DPI, and digital public goods which are known as DPGs. Before we get going too far, I wanted to introduce the 50/5 campaign. It is one of the ways that the global digital compact is being put into action with the countries collaborating on DPI, sharing the learnings, best practices, technology, and digital public goods. It is just over a year and a half into the campaign now. In the spirit of the session, I'm very excited to announce that Kazakhstan is formally participating in the campaign as the 26th 50/5 country. We are thrilled at their implements alongside the fellow countries, including France represents here on stage with us today.
Back to our topic and introducing our panelist. In topic is timely and relevant. Counties committed to DPG as well as committing to collaborate and cooperate with one another through sharing lessons and best practices. Also developing, implementing, funding, and sharing technologies as digital public goods that's spoken in the software and open AI models and open content collections adhere to privacy and other applicable laws and best practices. Do no harm and help obtain the sustainable development goals. What this means in practice is countries can freely adopt digital public goods and use them for components of the DPI according to their own priorities and context‑specific needs.
I want to introduce the fantastic team. Joining is the online moderator. Here's Pelin and Max, both my colleagues here. Thank you to the two of you. We're fortunate to have a panel of speakers. Online we have Desire Kachenje, Rahul, Henri, Renata, and Liv. Our objective is clear; we want to explore digital approaches in DPI and the collaboration around digital public goods and address the sovereignty and local agency and tech development.
For the remote participants, you'll be able to use the virtual platform Q & A feature for questions, the chat for quick comments and reactions, and that is how we will be obtaining your questions. Onsite here, please feel free to actively participate in the discussion using the microphones at the side. Okay. Thank you with the session. Without further ado, Desire.
>> DESIRE KACHENJE: Thank you so much. I'm Desire Kachenje. I'm working for particularly Africa in the fund. I'm sure a lot of people have heard about us. Co‑development focuses on supporting the governments and other stakeholders in rolling out digital public infrastructure. Our focus expands to supporting in some of the channels and bottle necks, but also doing some research to understand a little bit more what digital public infrastructure looks like and also the different approach when it comes to deploying. We work very closely to see how they can make this sustainable.
Jon, do you want me to proceed?
>> JON LLOYD: Sure. I would love to hear some context setting remarks from the African perspective.
>> DESIRE KACHENJE: Great. We're seeing the digital public infrastructure is not just infrastructure. There are a number of other things that need to be considered when they want to roll out sustainable and scalable DPI. It is also evolving to be not just digital transformation initiated, but also sort of like a growth within the ecosystem to inspire innovation, but also to bring in private sector and other players. So there are three key thing that is we are seeing in the African region that I want to talk about.
The first one is it is government driven and ecosystem enabled. I can give a good example here with Tanzania, where I'm based. For the past few years, the concept around digital public infrastructure has formed and some of the research has been done, Tanzania has been building different layers of DPI. They started working on the idea and started building a digital payment system. Starting with connecting mobile operators.
How can we build a platform? In the first explanation for how the payment platform would be, they worked with DPG. They decided to roll out the in‑house platform that was and is still managed by the government. Currently right now, Tanzania is doing a very interesting, I would say a very interesting implementation plan whereas while it is government driven, they are rolling out what they are calling the data explain platform. This is the third layer of the DPI. As they are doing this, they are not only working with local implementors, brings in different DPGs. The data and working out in the use case on top of the exchange platform. They are using the different type of DPG. They are working closely with private sector to see how the platforms can interact with government institutions, and also interact with private sector institutions and allow data exchange.
I'm saying government driven and ecosystem enabled. Another example is around challenge‑driven DPI. A lot of digital public infrastructure platforms that have been rolled out so far, we're seeing slowness when it comes to adoption. We know even if it is interoperable and safe and if there's an adoption and there's no engagement with citizens and government institutions that need to use it, it cannot meet some of the potential that we see when it comes to DPI. We are seeing the DPI platforms that are being rolled out that start with a challenge are not only more innovative and more customer and citizen focused, but they also have more adoption from the point of roll out.
I'll give a good example in the SASSCs. There are 14 in the group. One of the questions and challenges that came up is there's a lot of migrants moving between the countries. A lot of these migrants might have a national ID and other documents; they are not in the formal financial sector. Some of them don't have documents.
For example, they are working in South Africa. I don't have the right documents in South Africa to support me to be formally included in financial services. But then the at same time, we know a lot of the countries already have national IDs. They have national, digital IDs. Then the static group had reached out to us and another partner to figure out, hey, can we build a use case that connects the national foundational IDs existing within the countries to be able to support to use financial, formal financial service in services within Africa. And we've seen the quick stakeholder engagement in the project. We already have the private sector. These are the banks joining in. We already have the central banks who are paying attention to the project and seeing how they can come in.
Last but not least, innovation. Innovation meets serenity. That's what I'm explaining today. There's always the question around DPI when they are building DPI with DPGs, how do we ensure that countries have the local ecosystem to not only own, run, maintain, and development new use cases. I think a good example is in Rwanda. They are rolling out a number of use cases when it comes to DPI. They are deploying center. This DPI center is supposed to support ecosystem players, you know, including developers whether they are in government or private sector.
Seeing they can understand and support aspect some of the cases that rolled out, I think that's a bit of an example of how DPI has been rolled out in Africa. I'm happy to explore this more. There's also challenges which I think are globally. We're seeing it very ‑‑ in real time in Africa. These are mainly to do with safeguards. One of them that I can mention is around the data governance. When we're building the data exchange platform, especially in regional bringing more than one country, we do not have ‑‑ we have fragmented digital data governance and framework that is are existing. This moves beyond just the platform itself and how do we bring policymakers and enable countries to harmonize some of the policies that are in place to ensure the platforms have been build are safe and inclusive.
I'll hand it over back to you, Jon. Happy to take any questions.
>> JON LLOYD: Thank you very much, Desire. That was an excellent insight into how Africa is approaching DPI development, especially using DPGs. Rahul, over to you now. We've heard so much about the IndiaStack. We would like to hear how they approached the development and DPGs as well.
>> RAHUL MATTHAN: We must trust data payments and sharing. It is not mandatory you have to do it in that way. Even though we think about the stack and the stack approach as a pathway by which must progress up the chain of DPIs, I'm here to say that the real idea of a stack is that we are creating modular elements, DPGs that can be layered on top of each other in whichever order that you want and whichever solution that you want. That really is the stack approach. That India is followed.
India is doing the pathway and built the data sharing. If you look sideways, they have a potential credential system. Credentials are useful for a number of things, from scaling to government to India. The real approach is the definition of what DPI is.
Open, interoperable, modellable assistance. You can start whenever you want on the stack. It will help if you have a digital identity system. You don't necessarily have to have one. You have to build the solutions to be modular, interoperable, and open. It is only if you build them to be modular, interoperable, and open you never have to rebuild something that's you've built previously. That's a powerful statement.
India, of course, as you know, has been doing this for 15 years. If you do it for a decades and a half, I have time for introspection. You can go and see what else it has been used for. One of the things I've been playing with is the idea that some of the things that Desire was talking about. We've got to really sort our data governance.
At the end of it all, we are unlocking a lot of data and we need to do it in a safe manner. How do you do it? The traditional lawyer in me says you have to write laws and build policies and you've got to do it the way we've done it for many centuries. But the power of digital and the power of digital where everything is digital is that you can actually build some of the governance into the design of the architecture that you're using.
Now, this is an idea that's not new. 25 years ago, they wrote a marvelous book in the other laws of cyber space. Around the Internet, code is lost. At this point in time, the Internet was a pin sliver of what we all do. Today the Internet and digital is everything that we do.
I'm here in Norway. I don't need to talk out my wallet. Which is remarkable. In many cities, even in this Europe, you have to. I can travel around using just the app. If the train is canceled on me, I can get the other train.
It is remarkable that you can do all of this using an entirely digital system. When we do that, we've got to remember we have the tools to build the governance directly into the interaction that is we have. This to me is the hidden secret of digital public infrastructure. Digital public infrastructure really is an infrastructure layer that you've created for transactions. Laws are the offline way of telling us how transactions need to be conducted.
In the entirely online world, the laws that tell you how to transact can be written directly into the ways in which the different modulars interact with each other. So the term that I coined is the infrastructure that regulators can regulate and innovators can innovate. This is different than the innovators, only innovation can happen on the terms of the people who control the platforms. They are forced to use the ways. If they can participate, they will be able to set the rules and the in factors will be able to innovate on the same platform. That's the hidden message.
>> JON LLOYD: It is interesting. India has been a leader. Henri, maybe we can move to you now. We've heard a lot about the idea of the EuroStack. We know it is several different things. I would like to hear more and how it aligns in the public agenda.
>> HENRI VERDIER: The decision in Europe and we have a long tradition and love good specification. Europe is the best place of the metric system. The ITU and a lot of open standouts and Wifi and a lot of open source. We love when the world is properly organized. The idea that you can manage the plan. We love it. We have a strong position. It is in the government. It is really strong. They don't consider they are there to obey to the ministers. They have a service to deliver. They do it.
Probably the connection when we see the digital world as we see it, if we have to work on the centralised vibrant Internet and to protect the democracy and the right to the people to decide together. This is the political decision and collective decision on the open interactive. I think we need to align. I say and use UPI in Europe.
In France, you can buy a baguette with your phone without a fee for decades. That's a very old and perfect system. You need a credit card and connection. It is a very complex system. You can do it. It is quite free. The need to change was not the same.
The growing concern regarding sovereignty. It is probably the most concern is digital content. A lot of other open forum is a bit less concern. We have the Trump Administration and it is very, very big and heavy. Some of the actors when you see, of course, carefully you can see the others. They want to decide the future of the world and national purpose as to Brazil.
We must try to do. We have a growing concern and to be frank, we are really, really, really heavily dependent and generous to American companies and American infrastructure. Everywhere. This is the American government. This is for the international courts. Because of this, we are progressing slow firmly to digital infrastructure. We have a very important step. We would have the same standard in all of Europe and citizens to present an interactive digital ID. They aren't giving name. It is compromising for a lot of issues. And now I'm doing in the good and open source. Let's get the comment. Of course, let's take this road. First connect.
Probably we've lost ten years because of this. The competition between the national solutions. Now we are learning thanks to the open source movement to build solutions. There's a Franco‑German project. This is not one solution. This is a series of modules. You can add your own module to work and develop if needed. It is not one stack. A cloud of solutions. I know when I do, I can interact. We have this for one year.
>> JON LLOYD: Thank you, Henri. We've talked about the issues and sovereignty issue. Desire and Rahul have covered that in your introductions as well. Renata, let's hear from you. I would like to hear more from the Latin American perspective.
>> RENATA AVILA: Yes. I think it connects well to Henri. It is very interesting. We start early the vision of digital public infrastructure was being discussed in Latin American in the early 2000s. Example of that is seven countries have legislation for open source and open content. The particular it is not words but actions. I would say the first thing that Latin American countries need to understand together with law is technology needs police. We learned the hard way.
After sanctions to some countries in Latin American, of course, we have a lot of vital things that you need to do your work. That accelerated in the early 2000s, the position when they were adopting the policies, but the main provider of the technology has to move the open source was the way. Interesting thing is it was institutionalised. You need inside ministers in charge of this. There were resources allocated to that.
But, in parallel, it is something that's very important. That didn't last long. Institutionality after transitions after left and right. It is in the very vital democracies. Many discarded or different around the community component. They have the open source and open content. It is very active. It is interesting. You see in Europe the digital social innovation. It is not a lot compared to Latin America. It is what you do after work and weekends. Do you edit the Wikipedia article and go and contribute to the collaborative platform?
I will say it is different. We haven't jumped to the infrastructure plans except for some specific cases. One case is very excited is the case in Brazil. It is amazing to Europe, you know, and in the moment, I live partially in Portugal. I was in Lisbon. I could tell in Portugal; they can pay with pics. It is being adopted in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Argentina is doing a pilot. It makes sense. Brazil is half of the continent.
All of the border countries are making it easier to exchange. It is difficult and frictions with a lot of currency and very difficult legislation because of the money laundering and so on. This is making a real difference. The other thing I wanted to highlight is nobody speaks in the exciting way about it. The geospatial infrastructure. Most of Latin America sure. That's the digital public good. That's amazing. That really enables the work of many, many public offices.
On the highlight is data. They open the country in the Latin American and the Caribbean. Many other smaller city tech projects follow the logic in the digital public goods. One thing before I do not want to forget, because it is going next to India is an emerging trend of south cooperation which is very, very exciting in the frame of bricks and catacomb. The India has signed with Cuba and Colombia.
That's the region practically. The Caribbean and Columbia. It is the only one in the mainland. It is very, very exciting to see how all of this connects. This is Caribbean and super strong community in open source. I would say the highlight of the region is a region that can make not only the legislators in the digital public infrastructure. So those are the exciting news from the region.
>> JON LLOYD: Great. Thank you so much. We're going to jump in now for the real question‑and‑answer component. We want your feedback, particularly online. Make sure you are submitting those. We've heard a lot of common use cases in particular.
One compelling thing is the idea of cross border use cases. I don't think countries are considering when they are implementing their own DPI. But the importance of interoperability and the solutions is becoming more and more permanent. You can now use in Europe, and, of course, Desire covered that as well with just being able to access financial services using your digital ID.
So, Rahul, maybe I can jump to you quickly. What do you think is some of the big differences between the way that India has been approaches its DPI development and what you've been hearing from the other speakers?
>> RAHUL MATTHAN: Look, I don't think there's much that is different. We came from a different place. To India and a lot of the global south, this is the only way to leapfrog development so we can ‑‑ I think the statistics are due in ten years what would have taken 50 years. France didn't need to do that. They put the 50 years in and were 50 years ahead of the rest of the developed world, this is not the sense.
Many of the traditional elements of the stack, digital identity, you don't need to do what India did and get biometrics for the entire population. If you have a working payment system that reaches everybody in the country, you don't need to build a pic. For the country in the global south, we're seeing there's a lot we have to achieve. This is a quick way to do it. Just to touch on the interoperability across borders, India is a subcontinent. In many ways, there's a need to interoperate with other countries. But we are a billion people. We really need to focus first on interoperating inside and reaching everyone in the country. Which is what the identity system did.
Fortunately, the payment system, as big as it is, is only covering 300 to 400 billion people. We have a billion left to cover. We have a long road ahead of us even within the country. I think there are many other elements where we can and must cooperation. I'm going to put a plug for climate.
Using digital public infrastructure to solve the climate crisis is probably the most important, urgent innovation that we can think of as the next step. As I'm saying this, what is he talking about? Let's just agree this is ten years from the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement isn't working. Temperatures are rising beyond the point; I think we can scale it back to the climate online.
The approach of building grand consensus between countries is not working, because countries are not committing and people are walking out of the agreement. We have to find a different way. The one thing about DPI is DPI unlocks abundance. We are stuck with data and valuable opportunity in silos that don't connect to each other. If we can just rethink the way in which we address climate channels by connecting our silos, we will find that solving the climate problem does not cost the trillions of dollars it is estimated to cost, because that's an old world way of thinking of solutions. I will strongly urge all of us here. I mean, you know, it is in Brazil this year. I strongly urge all of us to rethink the way we go about all of this. DPI has shown a way for big challenges.
>> JON LLOYD: Talk to us about, you mentioned it earlier, Latin Americans are sharing geospatial data. In terms of addressing the climate and using digital public goods, how have they been built and governed in a way that's enabling the cooperation and collaboration?
>> RENATA AVILA: I think the data governance, and usually cooperation is dynamic and fluid. Especially in two issues. In the cross border cooperation and the health issues. I think, for example, it has play regional mechanisms that enable the corporation. I think that also two actors play a crucial role. One is the inter‑American development bank and the other is, you know, the regional mechanism such as Selak and OES. It is close to the framework of Europe. I think the lack of tailored solutions and the lack of prioritisation but the global north is specific to Latin American celebrated that in the geospatial area. One more is very important. Latin American has been one of the pioneers together with India in opening also the knowledge and opening the research that will be like key is a combination of data knowledge and infrastructure that makes the region very ripe for more ambitious efforts around climate.
>> JON LLOYD: Excellent. Speaking about regional ambitions. Desire, we've heard from the east Africa community recently. We know there are commitments being made on the idea of cooperation and collaboration. There's a lot of political will there. That's a thread that I've kind of heard coming through as well as. But is there also a risk through moves too fast and not necessarily taking a multi‑stakeholder approach and the effects that might have on inclusion or exclusion of people and in terms of being able to access services?
>> DESIRE KACHENJE: Thank you. I think the way you put is a correct. There's a lot of political will. This is more specific when it comes to digital payments like the east African communities, mostly around digital payment and how we can connect some of the digital infrastructure that's existing. Right now just for context, it is worthwhile to understand that, you know, in Africa, DPI is not and looked at mainly to kind of store some of the fragmentation issues and also to bring together inclusion. To solve for the digital divide. Digital payments look off, more, I think in Africa region than in most other parts of the world. It came from a need and necessary that a lot of African citizens want to send small amounts of money.
To answer your question, there are two risks that a lot of countries are looking at and a lot of regional operators are looking at. We already have PASS, the pan African payments. There are a number of others that are coming up. One of the bigger questions has been there's a lot of smaller amounts that have been shared across the countries.
The platforms, while the interoperability is there, they are not really accommodating such amounts. So some of the work has been done, and I think I want to give, you know, more like a congratulations to some of the DPGs in DPI right now who are focusing on working some of the regional organisations and, for example, to say, hey, can we have a use case that just focuses on something like marching payments. These are smaller payments. To enable smaller SMEs go to smaller amounts to be sent in the region.
This is really helping with it comes to inclusion. The example of this is they are currently working with the DPG for payment platforms. They are doing a true grade platform whereby they allow smaller amounts within the region. The other that we've mentioned is there comes to that. There are a lot of legacy systems that are existing in Africa currently. A lot of the legacy systems it's been hard to transition them to actual platforms. It is even harder to transition them in a way using the DPI approach. Making them interoperable and open.
We are seeing right now that DPGs is taking ‑‑ a lot of countries are taking a different look at DPGs. They are open. We are seeing the specific request. Let's use an open source platform. Can we have the data being on the frame and on the ground. It brings a lot of questions around how do we manage this and incorporate this? I would say when it comes to inclusion, it is usually to look after the low‑income populations and harder to reach populations and the other is how do we ensure that, you know, a lot of the governments are comfortable in some of the open systems as they are built and spending less and more time in trying to customize them for one country.
When we are trying to connect regionally, we have to do more customization. It can be expensive and time consuming.
>> JON LLOYD: Interesting. Henri, I'm going to ask you a question. A little bit about some of the regulation, you know. We've heard the Silicon Valley approach of move fast and break things.
Unfortunately, seems like they've broken too much, perhaps. I think in Europe, given that often the rest of the world looking to tech regulation, things like the DSA or the AI act or that kind of thing. What we are hearing here is with DPGs for DPI, there needs to be a lot of flexibility and openness in the approach. In terms of the European or French perspective, what are some of the non‑negotiable elements that need to be in place? I guess from your perspective in order to maintain that sense of innovation and collaboration, but need to, I guess, set the box in order for us to all play in.
>> HENRI VERDIER: Very interesting question. I'm building the answer. This is non‑negotiable. This is all of the decision of the democracies. Privacy and free speech as we consider that free speech would be. It doesn't allow you to ask to kill people. If we cannot implement the collective decision, that's why sovereignty matters.
You cannot conceive democracy without sovereignty. You cannot get sovereignty with democracy, but you cannot achieve democracy without sovereignty. I would take the India vocabulary. You cannot regulate just with law. You need a techno‑legal approach.
You need assumptions if you are not creative or innovative. If you don't have research and intellectuals, and creators, and companies and starters, you won't impose your views. You have to be part of the movement. You have to consider the way to implement. This is the longer conversation. Yes. That's important to be sure that when you decide something, you know how to implement it.
Interesting example for years and years in Europe, we are very concerned about age verification. We know that very, very young children goes to pornographic web site. I'm speaking about the age of eight. 10% of the children less than eight years old are seeing pornographic content online.
If you just say we want to check the age, does it mean nothing. The question is how can we do this and because we need to respect the privacy, the only solution is to have proof of age separate from the identity. For this, you need to conceive infrastructure and that is efficient on the table.
We need also to be sure they are really separating the information. It is also politics. I was asking myself what do we have in common? We are from four continent. We have a lot in common.
I was thinking that something that we have in common is a bit hidden. It is so obvious. They need access to the basic approach. This is not what most of the companies of the valley think. They are developing to transform us. Within the platform, where they take all of the added value and if you pay attention, there's a real theory. It started and now they have a lot more and more books and the network states was to be seen. That's the programme of Elon Musk.
Let's reproduce all of the nation's states. The big front line. Can we still empower the people to respect innovation and everything? Or is it big corporation and infrastructure? That's maybe one connection between all of the movements.
>> JON LLOYD: Just kind of pause for a second. We're going to launch a Mentimeter poll. For those of you online, there was applause in the next room which we heard there. There's a Mentimeter poll or go to the QR or the link in Menti. Just a moment. People are still taking photos of the QR code. It is just coming up now. Okay. Let's launch the poll.
We've heard about the challenges and implementation from regional perspectives here. In terms of scaling DPI globally, what do you think are the biggest challenges? We can see some of the answers coming in now. All of us panelist are watching them come in. Looks like we have ‑‑ I'll open it up to the panelist.
>> RENATA AVILA: Everyone prioritised all of the funding. We are aware of all of the money spent in the not paid taxes in the countries. I think that's clear. That's consensus now. You are saying what we have in common. What we have in common is that we are, you know, we are between the ‑‑ we have squeezed without options. The second thing is very interesting. Very quickly something I'm a part of is most of the local capacity, most of the programmes training. Most of it. Basically training.
>> HENRI VERDIER: Work first about the allocation. Everything was very, very important. I feel we need a better economic theory of economic role of DPI. If we decided in Europe a century ago to make the service or whatever as public services, it was because they created so much value everywhere that it is what ‑‑ it was quite impossible to take the value everywhere. That is the best way to finance something that creates value everywhere. And we need to ‑‑ such a theory for the modern services for DPI.
>> JON LLOYD: Do we still have Desire with us? How are you addressing some of the issues like funding resource allocations where Africa has starkly resource constrained area now? What is the role of digital public goods in determines of DPI development and launch?
>> DESIRE KACHENJE: Yeah. First of all, it is interesting for me to see this. I agree that addressing local capacity is quite high up there. I think what we're seeing here is funding and resource allocation is still quite a huge issue. A lot of the other issues like addressing the local capacity, political will, and lack of interoperable.
For a lot of African countries, they need funding to sort of solve some of the issues. I think there's a slight difference in terms of the outlook here. In terms of DPG it is a double‑edged sword. It is a source point that can be easily implemented within the African countries. At the same time, a lot of DPGs still need to build local capacity within the countries that they are operating in. Which then requires time and resources and funding. DPGs have done a great job in understanding the challenges and needs, specific needs, when it comes to different African countries.
There's the other side. A lot of DPGs are funding. There's the stability around maintaining internally itself is still something that, you know, needs to be discussed. When they are rolling out in African countries, the customization and the ability to remain sustainable past a project, especially because most of the project when it comes to DPIs, they are not funded.
Sustainability past the donor funded project is still a question. Last, but not least, I want to touch on data privacy and security. I know that, you know, it is something that we're discussing on and on. It is such a crucial issue when it comes to working with DPGs. Because a lot of ‑‑ let's say if we look at something like data. There are some countries that do not have clearly defined, you know, does it look like when it comes to digital data for specific populations? When we're looking at children.
While we have a number of DPGs, it is doing a great job when it comes to registrations. We're seeing a struggle here. They make a lot of projects halt in between. You'll have CSOs coming in and saying how safe is this? That's my take.
>> JON LLOYD: That was extremely useful. We're going to launch a second Mentimeter now. Here we go. Hopefully you still have the link up from before. Which is most helpful for the countries based on their own priorities? Here's the link, if you lost it before. We have open source and I think it relates to the European agenda here. It addresses some of the capacity issues. The idea of international funding and with local control. I've seen some of the answers changing here now as well.
Also if there's anyone present with us who would like to ask a question, please feel free to come up and ask them at microphones either side of the stage. We would love to hear from you. The answers and questions coming from online. We can take a look. Right.
Maybe as the results are coming in, what are your reflections about this. I think this is what we saw in the previous Mentimeter.
>> RAHUL MATTHAN: DPIs are a relatively cheap alternative to doing this. I think it is interesting it see local talent we can't automate everything away. There's always the last mile. Even as I'm speaking, we have three tied from third place. It is clearly local talent and open source for the top two.
In many ways, it aligned with the way I think about the things. These are the two most important things we should think about.
>> JON LLOYD: Do you see assisting with the goods and development and training?
>> RAHUL MATTHAN: We need to take the steps. Certainly in doing that, the DPG training talent solutions are extraordinarily powerful. But I think that at least when it ‑‑ I speak to DPI development in other countries and not just in my country, I find this this is the thing that governments are most concerned about. It may just be fewer of the unknown.
But, a lot of governments are concerned about how much it is going to take to actually really roll this out in countries. I think that's certainly something that we can look to improve using the DPG solutions and building DPIs for talent development. We can't ignore the fact this is a concern and that this is something that needs to be actively addressed.
>> JON LLOYD: Thank you. We have a gentleman here with a question. Start by introducing yourself. Yeah. If it is directed to the panel.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. This question is in my personal capacity. I've seen the infrastructure is probably prominent, for instance. Now that we're discussing how to integrate the implementation with the review process, I'm curious about framing for the DPI. What would be the panel's impression on instead of just centralised governance models, adopting the truly multistakeholder governance approach for DPI. I think it is slight but important differences. It will be interesting hearing your thoughts. It is a question for the panel. Thank you.
>> RAHUL MATTHAN: I'm a big fan. One of the challenges serenity requirements. You can lose some of the requirements. I like the impact. All of which is seeing let's build principles and leave it for what's appropriate for their context. That's what we need. What is common to all of us. There are many things common to all of us. That's why we are meet in places like this and exchange views in a language we all understand.
At the same time, we have to recognise that we as nations and subnational institutions have our own objectives that we want to achieve. Some of those in India, Africa, and Latin America are very different from what Europe and North America want to achieve and can achieve. It is not wrong. It is just those are differences that you want to recognise.
Part of the way we recognise the difference is to recognise the commonalities. It is common. You can be different. That is sort of the ‑‑ maybe that's what you are trying to say. Multistakeholderism is there. I feel we lose that if we make it not grounded on common principles.
>> HENRI VERDIER: How do you say with the stack, it can be diverse and modular. Some things are were regalian as we say in France. You cannot crowd source. You can build in the bottom path approach and with a new form of cooperation states.
For example, in France, it was service cooperation. Now we have services with the national institute. We have the matrix and we just ask the matrix to develop some features. We did finance. They did implement it as they want. So you can for a lot of important part of this, you can be a stakeholder in the government and development and for all of the paths. You cannot because they state some roles and prerogatives.
>> RENATA AVILA: Yes. I had the need. We suggest instead of the multistakeholder, the public digital infrastructure. Beyond the national uses is the only way to help scale and localise the digital and common evidence. It is in the transparency and accountability. It accelerates the impact. It is governance, data, and even localisation frictions and the most important thing, it secures the community engagement. Even if the government changes, you have people actively involved in the governance of infrastructure that are common benefit.
>> JON LLOYD: We have a question from the chat here. I will just address this. This is a lot to do with inclusion, specifically access. We have the digital pay loop system that access on feature phones less than smartphones. The question is here with 2.6 billion people not using the Internet, any comments on how to overcome the divide?
>> DESIRE KACHENJE: I was just reading the question and asking myself the same thing. I think what we've seen with a lot of ‑‑ this is not just for payment systems. Even when you are looking at something like ID, one of the key questions that you would get from the African citizens, we were talking about this a month gender equality ago. I don't have Internet. This is the digital ID. They are trying to create DPGs. They are providing the data exchange platforms. Which is something that's common for a lot of African countries.
You know, the country has tried in some nations and tried to create systems whereby all local communities have spaces within the proximity that have access to the desktop and Internet. All of the digital platform can be ask security councils there. If you work around some of the revenue authorities across African countries, they do have desktops and access points whereby you can still use the digital platform at their office using the platforms. That's something that has been, you know, a lot of countries ‑‑ I think a lot of countries are trying to do.
But I think Joseph is raising a very significant question that goes beyond just, you know, rolling out and in use cases when it comes to DPI. The question is the access to Internet is still a prominent challenge when it comes to a lot of African countries and other countries. I mean.
>> JON LLOYD: Sorry. You just broke up there. I think the point in terms of access.
Yeah. Sorry. We've just got a little bit of time left. Thank you, Desire. Just one final question before we continue. We've heard so much about the idea of eGov and that kind of thing. Like the DPI approach. Just very quickly, are there any differences? Are we talking about same thing? The DPI approach particularly using DG. This is a fundamental new way of thinking.
>> RAHUL MATTHAN: I hate to use the Shakespearean a rose by any other name is still a rose. It is interoperable. I think we're trying to call the same thing by different names. I'm not going to stick my hat. We have to achieve the same thing. I think as we stop, as Henri said, trying to say my solution is the best. These have the same ideas. Let's find a way to make them work. Countries have built entire infrastructures on the solution. There's no point saying that's a bad solution. You have to find a way to make it work. We are moving to the multistakeholder world. They have to work with each other. I do want to use UPI in Brazil the same way they have been used in Portugal. I can't. I want to use UPI here in Norway. We've got to stop worries about, you know, which it is as long as we can make them interoperable. I want to pick up on the last question which was around the need for the Internet.
I don't want to ignore the statement that there's a large population that has been denied access to some of these miracles, because they don't have the Internet. But at the same time, I don't want that to be a reason for us to stop building DPIs until the whole world is connected. We have to push this out. I realise to the horror; there are parts of Canada that don't have 24/7 electricity. Electricity is a hundred‑year‑old technology.
If we wait for every person to be connected, whether Elon Musk from space or we on the ground, it is too late. What we have to do is ensure that access to DPI was not because of the lack of connectivity. We are always saying this is a digital public infrastructure. That's how it is delivered. The way you access digital would be using the internet and half physical. Online and offline. When India rolled out others, we did not on the Internet. Many people went out and wrote people offline and uploaded it into the server. We still do that in a lot of technologies. Africa should do it. Even in the part of the world that you don't have wonderful technology. That doesn't mean you stop building the DPI. We're not saying it is Internet driven. We're saying lean into digital.
>> JON LLOYD: On that note, I think we need to wrap it up. Thank you, especially to our speakers, Desire, Henri, Rahul, and Renata. The things that account to work together and build out your ecosystems, capacity development, all of those things are important. We have a shared solution for this. Interoperable DPI. Digital public goods coming through as a way to ensure that's able to happen.
One of the things that came up in the Mentimeter is: the idea of policies. The digital public goods alliance and 24 members of the alliance have put together the open source policies and practices survey. We would love everybody and as many people as possible to be doing this. We're aiming to collect even if you don't necessarily have an open source policy, it is really useful to have your insights and in this. Learning from that going to enable other countries to learn from one another, organisations to learn from one another, and enable to implement digital public goods.
Also I want to mention here, we will be having actionable recommendations. We encourage you to continue to engage on.
>> SPEAKER: Do we have to take your survey on the Google Doc?
>> JON LLOYD: I was hoping that wouldn't come up. We'll upload that to the IGF session page. Thanks for calling us out. Thank you again. We look forward to continuing this important work together. Wow. We ended slightly early. Thank you again so much.
