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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>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Hello, everybody. And welcome to this workshop on AI sandboxes. Thank you so much for choosing to spend what must be your morning with us. My name is Sophie Tomlinson and I'm the Director of Programs. For people who aren't familiar with your work, we're a due think tank working with businesses, governments and Civil Society and having responsibility and value data. We're here today to talk about how sandboxes and different types of experimental regulatory approaches can help us in using AI, in assisting whether we want to or need to use AI and also approaching this governance questions that we face and as we see AI penetrating different types of sectors.
So what I'd like to just share with you before we get started is QR code that we will be running. Please check out the QR code and go to the first question we have for you because we'd love to get your insights.
We have a very diverse and exciting panel today with many different speakers. As you can see from this list, we have a couple of people online, but all the in person with us here and also at the IGF. I'm going to introduce them as we go through this session.
So first of all, what I'd like to start with is what is a sandbox and what do we know about this as a concept for tech development and policy innovation? I'd like to hand it over to Mariana Rozo‑Paz who is the research and asset management lead to give us a first look at what sandboxes are and their potential for AI. So, Mariana, over to you.
>> MARIANA ROZO-PAZ: Good morning, good evening. I think it's the third workshop we host focused on sandboxes. And for those that are here in person, I would like to see a limb show of hands of who here played in a sandbox as a kid or maybe with Legos building blocks? I see understand hands going up, which is exciting. Well, I did too and I was actually quite obsessed with playing with Legos and building things.
One of the things we realized with data governing and data technology is we often forget how we used to play with we were kids. As we were children growing up, we were actually quite excited about experimenting and thinking about building things, building them and destroying them and building something new again. And that flexible agile mindset that maybe we had when we were children is what we're often lacking when it comes to building. Building its, and addressing the complex challenges that we're facing nowadays. So sandboxes, I would actually like for us to go to the MENTI. Could we look for answers of the first question? Thank you. I am seeing people are answering collaboration solution. That's what comes to mind when you hear sandboxes, which is an exciting response I must say. That's actually what ‑‑ what sandboxes are all B. it's about flexibility. It's about collaborating. So sandboxes are collaborative safe spaces for collaboration in which by nature different stakeholders come together to craft solutions, experiment with technologies. There are different types of sandboxes as we will be more than happy to share more of later, but regulatory sandboxes are those in which the different stakeholders, the public and Private Sector and hopefully Civil Society experiment and test technologies against an existing or in development regulatory framework and operational sandboxes are those in which different stakeholders test with the data or with existing technologies. Sandboxes can also be hybrid and we can go more into that. They were originally created within the finance sector to test financial technologies and they are now being used for health, for transportation and in many other use cases and they're promising methodology in the end that has already been implemented again crossed sectors and is being pretty effective in driving innovation and ensuring we are doing things as we were when we were growing up. So I'm seeing very interesting responses, testing, collaboration, solution. If we go back to the slides that we had, I wanted to share the data initiative. We have been doing intense and extensive work around sandboxes and we're sharing her ‑‑ thank you. We're sharing here our sandboxes for the AI report, which is our latest report focused on the potential of sandboxes for AI. We have a mapping that has identified over 66 sandboxes that now is around 150 focused on different topic and particularly on AI innovation and here you can also see a map of the distribution of sandboxes across the world, which is a very exciting and interesting methodology that's being implemented not only in developed countries, but also in developing economies throughout the global south and countries in Asia and Africa. We're seeing this is a tool proven interesting successful and powerful when it comes to testing bold ideas and collaborative and safe spaces. The Datasphere initiative, we also have a methodology how to do a sand box that includes not only thinking about how to do them responsibly, but responsible to sign effective communication and engagement and making sure that it is not only a space where specific start-ups or private companies have access to resources and testing and iteration, but it is also space that in the end creates public value and translates into better technologies for our society in general. So that's a bit of a snap shot of what we do and back to you, Sophie, for our interesting conversation today.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you, Mariana. So why sandboxes for AI in particular? This is what we want to talk about now in the first session. I'd like to welcome many who is the district policy Manager to share here thoughts on this. Meni, you're working on ICC with businesses from all around the world across all sectors. What do you think are the types of AI governance approaches that are needed and how could sandboxes play a role in the context of AI?
>> MENI ANASTASIADOU: Thank you so much, Sophie and many thanks. I am the digital policy Manager at the Chamber of Commerce. We are the institutional representative of more than 45 million businesses across 170 countries. So really have an inclusive membership that goes across sectors and geographies.
AI is really an incredible tool and really providing productivity gains and improving efficiency and lowering costs for various different sectors and again shapes and sizes of businesses. We also see this being especially true for SMEs. How should we consider AI governance approaches that are fitting to multiple different sizes, let's say of stakeholders including businesses and this really speaks to the fact in we should be mindful of the purchase we take when we talk about inclusive and supportive to innovation.
To that point particularly, ICC has put forward a proposal for an AI governance framework that we call the four pillar approach. We publicize it in Artificial Intelligence and the thought process that we present around this is that in order to ensure that we sustain the use of AI in a safe way that benefits different sectors, economies around the world, we really need to make sure AI governance frameworks are harmonized so they don't really create a patchwork for regulations, which we know make its particularly challenging for SMEs to respond to. We should also make sure that AI governance frameworks are flexible and do not hinder investment and they create at the end of the day favorable commercial conditions that can support entrepreneurship.
So back to my point on ICCs for pillar narrative and governance. So what we want to show is that we adhering to the ideas that I mentioned earlier, old ideas can harness to drive innovation and ensure compliance and they trust. If we align AI governance with that in mind, we can really ensure that everyone is equipped to harpness AI and accelerate their growth.
Now, regulatory sandboxes are really a great tool that actually respond to this framework of governance and they can enable the safe and real world testing of AI systems and particularly for SMEs. Marian, you spoke earlier about how sandboxes were first to use fentack. Their use has spread to other areas in covering geographies. So I really like the mapping that you have shown us earlier, which really speaks to what important tool AI sandboxes are to the trustworthy and safe AI governance model. So just to give you an example and speaking to the use of sandboxes and how those are effective for SMEs just as we know how engineers when they are in airspace. They're always testing on the ground how an airplane works and to make sure that it's safe before it actually flies. It's the same idea, the same principle making sure we bring together all stakeholders to have the time to test if AI works, what are the right safe guards to apply, what are the right, you know, principles and guidelines to make sure are in place that we make the complete use of all the benefits that AI has to offer and this can eventually help all the deployers, developers and users to really take off and can help eventually also SMes take off as airplanes do. So perhaps maybe I can stop here.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you for that analogy. It is really helpful. I would like to move on to Alex Moltzau. Alex, your role at the AI of the has a component which is very much focused on sandboxes. Could you share a bit of background on the role of sandboxes in the AI act and why you are thinking of how we can actually use the tools.
>> ALEX MOLTZAU: Yes, I would be happy to, Sophie. It's really important as you say that we create favorable commercial conditions and I think this is balancing act of responsibility but also innovation and how we get the right because as citizens, we want great products, but also safe products and services. So I'm just going to spend 3 minutes to talk about 3 things. The first is a bit of my story and the second is this balancing act and the third kind of what we're doing in the European Commission in this implementing act that we're working on.
So I have a background as a social data scientist and also with the artificial intelligence and public services. So I worked five years with AI policy nationally and with the research community with machine learning Artificial Intelligence and robotics; however, I was involved a lot of the time in this sandbox we had for privacy, but that had exclusively AI cases and a lot of exit reports that you can find on the Internet. If you search for the privacy sandbox so being here I now work in Brussels and I've been there for 1 year with my family working in the European AI office. It's been quite a journey.
[Laughter]
To start a new place. But I have to say it's a really wonderful place to be if you're interested in the AI policy and law. It's brought me to think about the whole European region. Right? And how do we get this balancing act right because I think as a region, you know, we have an approach. We have certain values that we aspire to and for us, I think we want to be treated in the best way possible as citizens, as co‑workers, you know, as part of society. So I think it's the case that if we want to have a responsible innovation, we need an evidence bases to inform that policy. So if we don't learn, you know, this regulatory learning like they are regulators building their competence on AI as we speak and try to seek what is the right way, you know, to ensure that we get this innovation that we want but also in a way that fulfills citizens needs and it's not just based on a bus word or based on a promise that is unfulfilled. So to not waste money and time, we have to make sure products work as intended and the sandboxes are really good mechanism to do this. So what are we doing in the European Commission right now? We're really working together with member states. We have a regulatory under the AI board. So we work with member states on a very regular BASIS. We are writing for regulatory sandboxes and we are supporting the rollout of the sandboxes crossed Europe with coordination and support action. So I think in that sense, there's a wide range of things that we're doing, but right now, what frameworks are we looking at? In the autism as well, we'll be putting out this because it is part of the democratic process for you to comment as well. I encourage everyone listening to keep track of when we are releasing this draft implementing act so that you also can tell us about your opinion because we are not the arbitrators of knowledge in this sense that we want to understand how to do this in the best way possible. So it's not necessarily true that Europe passed all the best solutions. I think we have to look globally at how we can do this together, which is why I'm here today.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thanks so much, Alex. As Mariana shared on her map which maps different data and AI sandboxes around the world, sandboxes fall for challenges and new technologies on just being looked at in Europe. It is also a pretty global tool that's being explored in Asia and Singapore, also in Latin America, Brazil and Chile and also in Africa as well. The initiative has a whole component on Africa and sandboxes and the forum. As part of this work, we hosted a co‑creation lab in Nigeria as part of the African data conference that took place in May. And Nigeria itself is working at developing a sandbox in the context of the data protection law as a way to help companies comply with this new data protection law. I'd like to bring in Jim sewn who is the chairman of vector which is one of the biggest Private Sector organizations in Africa and bringing together companies from across the country. Jimson, you had been working on regulatory innovation and technology for many, many years. Why do you think a sandbox is an interesting way to develop policy and innovation and could you share a bit about how Nigeria is also thinking about this?
>> Thank you very much, Sophie and good morning, everybody. My name again is Jimson. I am the Chair of the Council of the Africa alliance. It was founded in 2012 with 6 countries in Africa. Today, we covered about 43 countries in Africa. Members of ICT Associations, companies and individual professionals across Africa, well, that is my volunteer work. For my dear works I run temporary consulting. I am the principle consultant there. I am working through data center management, integration, software and research. So it is really a great pleasure to serve in that capacity of the Chair at that time. Everyone right now is very much involved in it. I am very, very happy to be associated with the topic indeed. Yes, Sophie. We had a great event in Abudgea last month. It was really spectacular. We have more and you also.
[Laughter]
So it was a great policy development event and I want to congratulate you for that. Right in the public, I appreciate all your work really. Veteran indeed. So thank you for whatever you do.
Will concept of sandboxes ‑‑ the concept of sandboxes is very important, very, very relevant, very, very appropriate. We all know that AI is the main thing and many people are concerned about ramifications of AI maybe for it. It is properly regulated going forward. We do know that the old essence even when I got in here, IGF, you can have people center inclusive Information Society. And Information Society is still evolving and AI is going to play a very, very important role and that's why this workshop I was happy and was part of it. We had regulators there. We had Nigerian protection commission that was there and also the NCC communication commission and also companies, AI companies, Civil Society people, and quite a number and also really very reach. We look at the three aspects indeed. Operational, regulatory and hybrid. We are case studies. That was quite interesting. So the meeting aligned with everyone the expectation of participants and the broad stakeholders in Africa because Nigeria involved the AI strategy. AI strategy was involved and going to AI law. Okay? And we need a regulation and also we'll start with data governance basically. And that's why the Nigeria professional commission took it very seriously and they are going to adopt it to help with proper regulation. Even some of us that developed application, we also will actually use it to be beneficial. In terms of market reach, in terms of the current product we need to design, in terms of what customer wants and everyone there will, of course, knew that the center bank of Nigeria actually adopt this. So it is a reach concept and I think we need to keep the conversation going. Right now, less than 10 African countries have AI strategy. Less than 10. So for me, we need to move over to AI regulation. It is very key to direct products because we don't want product (?) and also digital divide which is main idea with GDC and for sustainable development goal. So this lines up with GDC and the expectation for the achievement of sustainable development goal. They fully align with it and we'll continue to support the advocacy and the engagement that regulators can do the writing and members too can know what is expected of them for signing their product. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you and for the context of the wider world of internet governance too and within the process. I would like to go back to the MENTI here. This question is, um, we'd like you to think about the types of sectors and areas where AI is being applied or also the data governance point that Jenson mentioned there as an option. What issue do you think would benefit most from AI sandbox? So what kind of sector do you think would be most helpful? Those results come in and what I'd like to do now is move on to the next part of the discussion which is looking at when and how you have the sandboxes. We heard an interest of the potential for these tools. But if you are government and you are assigned to think how do I ‑‑ do I have the resources to design and set up a sandbox or if you're a company thinking what are the incentives I have to actually participate in a regulatory sandbox or set up myself which can perhaps be an operational sandbox? Where do you start? I would like to bring up Andy Cohen to start us off. Natalie, what would you say based on your research and work you've been doing with a diverse group of governments, what is the role of sandboxes within the regulatory process and what sorts of challenges my governments face?
>> Natalie Cohen: Thank you, Sophie. I am head of global policy for challenges. One of the things I'm looking at is this answer of how do you regulate the new technologies and how to go you regulate in a way that is innovation friendly and the OACDs answer to that is the 2021 recommendation on agile regulatory governance to harness innovation. As part of that recommendation, we have a big focus on regulatory experimentation. Sandboxes are just one aspects of regulatory experimentation. I think the first consideration for a government is look at the specific policy objectives they want to achieve and what is the best way for them to achieve that. Regulatory experimentation can mean policy purchase high paying. It can mean innovation test beds or using piloting powers to test different processes.
So we think regulatory experimentation is very important and it helps industry come together in a collaborative way as MENTI pulled out and managing the tensions that can be created between regulation and innovation. We think sandboxes are particularly well suited to regulatory experimentation and where companies are more towards the stage of early commercialization on the point of bringing something to market and they want to influence the regulatory framework around that and remove barriers to accessing the mostly sunny whereas some ‑‑ mostly some areas in market. As we mentioned, sandboxes are not new. They have been around for a while in the sector. But OACD, we have aspects to our work. We provide tools and guidance to help governments develop and build sandboxes and we provide support to countries and sometimes also fix a broken sandbox. One thing I'd like to say is they're not always the perfect answer. They can be quite resource intensive to manage. They do require governance resources and they do have certain elements that need to be in place to ensure success. So for example, governance need to think about the eligibility criteria for what kinds of businesses and innovations they want to test and make sure that is transparent. They need to be clear about the testing framework and the evaluation process that will be in place to make sure they actually have good evidence that can go on to influence regulatory policy. And they also need to have an exit around. So at the end of the sandbox, when do you close it down and what is the root for companies to then actually bring products and serves to market on the back of that. All of these things can require a lot of overhead space for regulators that need to be funded and resourced for that and also for the participating businesses. So sometimes one thing governance need tongue about is providing the funding support to businesses particularly if they want SMEs to come and participate. Some successful sandboxes have been successful in terms of testing products and serves and bringing them to market, but they have been successful with larger corporates. So sometimes SMEs need support and it is part of accessing data. It could be roll and compliance resources as well. So that's another thing to think about if you want to create a diverse and sustainable approach to sandboxes.
So I mentioned the key issues around things that countries need to think about there. They're all various things to manage around sandboxes, the impact on competition and innovation. So regulators and policymakers will be keen not to create market distortions, not to overly favor the participants that play in sandboxes while at the same time, they need to be incentives for, businesses to participate ‑‑ for businesses to participate. Accelerating root to market and providing them with enhanced support with some of those resources and funding considerations I had mentioned. See the OCD is in the process of publishing a toolkit on how to develop and design sandboxes that will come out in the coming weeks. We provide support to both members and other countries. We have done work on Croatia that's led to the development of the toolkit and we're about to start a project on one the sandboxes too. The country might need support and how to deploy these things and they can reach out.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you very much, Natalie, and very helpful in things that I really. Us to come back on. Before we do, can we get the resources of the MENTI that people found particularly useful for sandboxes? Finances is not surprising in thinking how sandboxes originated as a concept. Health being a big one, which is good because we're going to have discussion on health a bit later in this session.
Now, I'd like to bring into this conversation Thiago Moraes who is a researcher in Belgium. Thiago, you're researching sandboxes around the world and you also have some experience yourself in participating and designing one. From what Natalie was saying in terms of some of the challenges that governments can face and setting up a sandbox or really deciding whether or not this is the right type of regulatory experimentation tool, what could you say in terms of how governments can best manage resources to set up a sandbox, include transparency, maybe also bring in different types of stakeholders like Civil Society. Could you share some of your thoughts on this, please?
>> THIAGO MORAES: Yeah. Hello, everyone and thanks, Sophie, for the invitation. It has been very nice to be engaging with other colleagues that I see here in several and IGF is relevant for this topic. Just before starting a very clear disclaimer, as researcher as you mentioned, but some of you might know me as well as practice from Brazilian protection authority. Today I'm not speaking on behalf of them, but, of course, as part of my role there, I've been working with several colleagues to launch a pilot sandbox and hopefully there will be news on that soon. So yeah. It will be a nice way to see how the authority is dealing with this challenge of establishing something that can be very resource intensive, but at the same time, it is manageable if some care is taken. Maybe my comment then will be to compliment what Natalie said, but also to stroll the other side. It's true that sandbox is not the only tool. Request regulator that wants to establish one has to think and consider if how why right when all the questions we're discussing here to establish a sandbox but one thing that we have also learned and I've seen based on the experience that's different jurisdictions have been doing is that it is quite common when you're still testing the waters the sandbox is the sandbox. You will create the pilot. This pilot is several times that you deal with the resource that you have to decide the scope and how broad your sandbox will be. This means, for example, if you relied more on your internal staff and expertise they have or if you will have some kind of partnership or some specific experts, consultants. All this will depend on your conditions, of course. But there are several institutions directly supporting such initiative. So for example, at the international level, we have development banks like letting America have (?) other institutions around the world trying to engage in support. This is a way of dealing with a bit of this challenge of limited resources. So in the end, the word corporation is really important here. So it makes a lot of sense to be in the IGF discussing about that. And maybe as this first part of my speech, one other thing that I believe is very important to consider as you frame of who will be your partners in this endeavor and how you're going to establish helpful for how long because some sandbox can be quite short. There are cases like three month sandboxes. There are others that will go very long like five years, but in general, there's a lot of global reports on that and academic research on that. We're averaging 6 months to 2 years. It depends on the goal of what you're testing. Right? You can have flexibility of how many projects, how many use cases will be dealing at the same time. This is the design of the sandbox very important to consider. My last comment for now would be also what Sophie just mentioned that many times when we talk about several stakeholders that are engaged either participants or partners, we forgot many times the role that Civil Society has here, especially when we are now moving to this arena of sandboxes in AI and sandboxing several circumstances. We're talking about individuals that are having their personal data processing that will be affected by the AI solutions regardless of the Data being processed or not. And because of that, I think it is very important to hear the voice of the individuals and maybe this is something that we need to improve in the frameworks. So what will be the role throughout all the sandbox experience. Civil Society and individuals might have important role before, during and after the sandbox is done. This is exactly what I am researching right now. For now, I only bring in this. I hope in the future as we continue engaging in this, I may be able to also share some insights of what I found the potential role of Civil Society here. I would be glad to know other colleagues comments on that.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you so much for that, Thiago. You covered a lot which we would like to come back also. I would like to bring in our Africa sandboxes. Morine has been doing a lot of work researching in Africa how sandboxes are being used, interviewing Private Sector participating in sandboxes. Morine, picking up on things that are needing to do on how to go about setting up a sandbox and also thinking about the companies themselves ‑‑ about things. Could you also mention a bit about the types of training and support that the data is also providing to governments who are planning to set up sandboxes.
>> MORINE: Thank you so much and I'm really glad to be here to see you all who are participating.
So let me start by sharing a few numbers. So we have looked into sandboxes in Africa. Overall, at least from the last time that we updated the mapping, which is some time earlier this year, we have about 25 national sandboxes. And of these 24 are in the finance sector. It would mean that authorities and public or what we call government authorities are now starting to get into sandboxing. So it's a new space, a space which they have to identify quite a number of decor elements of sandboxes. The beauty is from the conversations happening in that content, regulators have really embraced the idea of experimentation when it comes to regulating the imagine technologies like AI. So they're really embracing the ideas of sandboxes. But from what we are learning, there are still questions when it comes to core elements of the how, who, when and all the details that go into sandboxing. Some of the things they are grappling with because when you realize that it is a new space they are getting into because sandboxes have been used in the sector. So part of what we have been doing is, of course, learning from what is available online with sandboxing. They have things to share and that we have documents in the report that Mariana shared earlier the outlook Africa sandboxes report. But we're also going ahead to engage with stakeholders and largely regulators, but we are also starting to engage with private sector and now start thinking about the core elements of sandboxing, things like the scope of a sandbox and the stakeholders and the legal models which are also reaching a sandbox which are also not clear, but looking into resources, which is a huge part of sandboxing because we have a number of regulators that are grappling with the idea of how does a sandbox get funded, where does the funding of a sandbox come from. So those are the areas in which we are trying to engage with people. The idea of raising funds for sandboxing has had different approaches in different places. What we're doing is bringing activities of the African sandboxes forum, we're aligning them being operated outside of Africa to see what is what. You will notice some sandboxes that are run by public institutions of authorities either have their funding coming from the co‑operations of an authority of states of operation authority. So there is that. Part of what we are exploring in Africa, that is not yet the case is for experimentation with some of these authorities is the co‑creation activities that we doing with different stakeholders is to get people to put themselves in their shoes or someone setting up a sandbox and think about, okay. Who would this sandbox affect when it comes to other regulators or other sectors? They're thinking about what are the sectors is this sandbox going to affect and can we bring the regulators in and think about some cost sharing models that, of course, it is shared benefit but also shared costs for the different sectors that are involved in such a sandbox.
And then the other thing we're trying to brainstorm around with stakeholders is legal models. Sometimes it's not clear and we know it is learn thing they grapple with. It is not clear that authorities allow to sandbox in any way. So where do they look to carry out such an experimentation and if it's not there, then how can they go about that? These are questions that most regulators and stakeholders have started thinking about while they know they want to Sunday sandbox and see how do they actually approach it has been a challenge. We have seen in a number of people we have been co‑creating with and growing from say the co‑creation lab that we did. We learned from stakeholders that they would love to use sandboxes and understand if indeed, some of the hype around is true for Africa and understand the real value of what some of these technologies are bringing so they're able to take them to the next level. So part of that is what's been taking our time in Africa to engage with stakeholders and understand where they're at and implement sandboxes.
As I conclude, I wanted to mention that part of what we're doing is group co‑creation activities, but we are also offering services such as one on one coaching journeys for someone who is ready to sandbox and they want to navigate the journey of all the co‑elements of sandboxing that are not necessarily direct. We are conducting master classes with group stakeholders that are learning how to technically run a sandbox. That is part of the activities we're looking into. The need for sandboxes is already there and has lead been recognized by regulators. So now what is really missing is that push to the next level. So working with them into creating the sandboxes and navigating challenges around resources which we know are key almost everywhere.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you, Morine. Thank you for stretching out the activities that we can also provide with the Datasphere. I'd also like to first of all mention if people in the room want to make a comment or a question, there's two microphones on either side of the room. If you want to go over that, please feel free. While people think about that, I'd like to bring up the next MENTI question. It picks up discussion. We want to collect challenges and barriers of people and how to think. Please take a look at the MENTI. I'd also like to bring in a perspective from the health sector. Many of you highlighted this as a key sector where testing AI technologies and policy threw sandboxes could be useful. So I can see you're online. Jai is connecting from the health information network. Could you talk to us a bit about where you think the potential for sandboxes are in the health sector? And could you particularly touch on how they could be useful in a cross‑border content as well. I know you're doing in terms of your conversion work at the Asia eHealth. (silent) Jai, can you hear us?
>> JAI GANESH UDAYASANKARAN: Yes, Sophie. Thank you. First, I would like to quickly introduce our network which is a eHealth network. Core focus on the western Pacific in terms of the world health organization regions, but we do have members across 84 countries over 2,600 countries. Our primary focus is capacity building and also support for the national digital health programs that we work with governments in the countries and supporting them in terms of the core health information building blocks. And then supporting them in terms of the gaps that are existing currently in terms of the governance, architecture, people in program management.
So I think many of this because they have mentioned various challenges. So one of the core challenges is who should be involved? And who is actually qualified to take the (?) regulators and also from the government point of view. Usually are the ones who actually start are this side on the sandboxing criteria. But then we also had receipt discussions how they mentioned about how they could participate fully. But then coming back to your primary question, we have seen extensively with countries now like we have official representation and two more likely to join which is known as the working Council. Working council is representation from countries which advise the Directors as well as our operations in the region. So we have seen boxes and health sectors and also for data governance and sharing. Universal health programs and sandbox helps them to get the applications developed by Private Sector and also to be getting the mainstream as long as they conform to the standards that are set by regulators. In most countries, the developments have been very, very fast paced as regulations especially from the health sector. It gets old. There is this issue of catching up with developments in the regulatory space. The emerging technologies does need support in terms of the sandboxes, but this is also my experience they don't say regulatory sandbox. It is a test bed and living lab and regulatory sandbox. Many of them use multiple terms depending on priorities and local needs. So the three most sought after needs are like to get applications, different applications developed even by private sector into the national mainstream conforming to the regulations where the regulations are currently still not there and also to ship the regulations in purpose space. And the second one interoperability. Most of the solutions need to be under operable. There are standards, but still there are sandboxes that are set up to make sure that the solutions are conformed to the standards. Interoperability the second use case and the third one is about the data. We have occasions where there are countries from which American tourism as well as people going for treatments in other countries. So there is a need for information to be shared. At the same time, in a very responsible way. So these are the broad areas in which we see sandboxes in our region. And then we do have a country currently discussing with us their need for sandboxes and then probably support and they have expressed several challenges also. In fact, we look forward to work together with other partners and especially those who are willing to support us in terms of the funding and capacity building in the space to work together. I hope I answered your question. If not, please let me know. Thank you, Sophie and colleagues.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you so much, Jai. I think that really provides a snap shot of the different types of considerations people and experts in the health sectors and especially in the Asia region when it comes to how we can make different types of technologies to help approaches. We got also some of the different points that we heard from the MENTI in terms of different barriers. I would like to note a very useful question that I had in the chat from a representative from the institute for policy studies and immediate development in Vietnam. This is to technology policy and their way is around how do countries design policy packages and govern sandboxes? Should AI be structured separately or integrated and what types of legislative or regulatory features have proved most effective in making participation more accessible to businesses and especially SMEs? As we go now into our final set of interventions from speakers, I can't say that anyone come the room wants to make a comment. I'll keep going. I'd like to ‑‑ yeah. Invite Alex again to share some of his reactions of what he's been hearing throughout the discussion today, the types of bear years that people have look ‑‑ barriers that people have looked at and linking the board that Jai was talking about. Could you tell us a little bit about how you're also thinking of this in the context of the AI act as well? That can be helpful. Over to you.
>> ALEX MOLTZAU: It is really great to listen to all different perspectives. I think I can start with the last questions. Especially relating to how to facilitate SMEs and start ups. In the AI act, if is fairly explicit that the participation for start ups should be free. This is kind of like one mechanism, of course, if already a start up and SME has overhead, it could, of course be challenging to participate. And I think Thiago's question about Civil Society one of the really wonderful things about sandboxes is that this is also conception in that we have exit reports. So I think dissemination activities and involving a broad set of stakeholders in thinking about what did we learn. You know? This is an outline that this can have a cost. So to get value out of the money that is being spent on this sandboxes, I think one should not ignore the importance of dissemination activities. So in many ways, sandboxes were created as to try to ensure responsibility. What is the potential for irresponsible innovation? In 2008, the financial crisis, the (?) (echo) sorry. So there is something wrong with the sound. They'll fix it. Okay.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: There's still an echo.
>> ALEX MOLTZAU: There's an echo. Okay. Let's see. This is now hopefully better?
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Sounds wonderful.
>> ALEX MOLTZAU: Okay. So with the familiar crisis and collateralized obligations, what are irresponsible innovations in a way as well and what can you explore this in a sandbox. In a lot of ways, what we are coming to realize is that AI affects us all across regions. So in a sense, what can we do to really unite across borders. This is also why I joined AI regulatory sandboxes as policy mechanisms. We're conceived to see can there be extensive collaborations and transport or health or other aspects and leading regulatory environments come together to really try to dive into that and figure that out. So this is part of what we are going to explore and this is also written into the AI act itself. And also into the Europe act. There is a mention across sandboxes. So I think we will see over the coming years this new type of expectation. I think what I can say right now is that we are kind of starting to facilitate that and we will be working on the rollout of that. So any type of engagement with this will be welcomed over the comes years.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you, Alex. I can see we have one question from the floor, which is great. I want to get Jimson to share reactions to what Alex has been saying and what we have discussed so far. Especially business incentives when it comes to participating in sandboxes. Knowing the members of the sector, what do you think they or what kind of questions will they have and how can you incentive businesses? As Natalie saying, there would need to be perhaps funding and SMEs? Would there be incentive if the sandbox was going to be cross‑border in nature? Will there be different interoperability in African countries? What are some of these things that people are asking?
>> Jimson: Thank you very much, Sophie. The discussion has been very fluid and very useful and highly relevant. To really operationalize sandboxes, it requires a lot of stakeholders, a lot of interest and to the SMEs, it needs some coordination. Vector is there. We are engaged in terms of industry awareness, especially in terms of members that want to create products that has country wide and regional benefits. So in this regard, of course sandboxes are necessary. Absolutely necessary. We know we need to fast track development. That is why we need all the partners in terms of funding, in terms of engagement and in terms of appropriate regulatory directive or directions framework like Alex mentioned the AI act and the process of bringing that together which is well established in here now. We really want to have that happening across Africa with AU. In term their projects like maybe identity project across Africa, across data structure, SME can be involved. For meaningful participation and then ‑‑ for meaningful participation and then for producing products that are highly relevant and useful for the society. Thank you.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you, Jimson. Can we go to the question in the room?
>> SPEAKER: Can you hear me? I am one of the facilitators and it's gone an amazing discussion. Thank you very much to Datasphere for putting this discussion together. I have a question about the exit reports and about the documents that might have been needed to be drafted during the sandbox implementation. And asking if you have some advice for governments or other public institutions that might be setting up a sand box because I believe drafting this report will be a lot of work and I have some concerns like the operationalizing of them specifically who will do it whether it is off private companies and in drafting those, what are the goals and actually having them not only as part of like creating a history and, you know, documenting the activity, but also to propose interpretation and pass forward. Thank you.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you so much. We'll take another comment from the floor and then we'll address those.
>> SPEAKER: Thank you, Sophie. It's a comment from the floor. For full disclosure, I'm attached with the Datasphere. I just. To highlight and make an additional comment. There are key words that we don't care to use, but are very important in this discussion. One is mistrust. We have to recognize that in the last 20 years, a huge amount of mistrust has grown between public authorities, and Civil Society. Sandboxes are one of the tools that brings the capacity of dialogue particularly when the discussions are taking place very early on. And in the mapping of the Datasphere done, we see certain countries that are using sandboxes not only for compliance verification or for pure regulatory aspects but also to understand better between the different actors what are the parameters of a particular sector.
The second word is anxiety. There is a little bit of anxiety about this new tool. The methodology is not completely stabilized and there is a risk. This is not the way operators are functioning and there are questions of who is taking the lead in one organization. How is the distribution of responsibilities and I think the work that the European commission and the AI is particularly doing in trying to shape how those things are going to be handled. The work that we're doing at the Datasphere through something that we launch which is global sand boxes forum which is a space for exchanging practices around this is helping in that regard. I have here something that I would be happy to distribute that we have launched that documents all the experiences around the world on sandboxes that we have documented. Thank you.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you so much. And Jai, I see you have your hand up. We have 7 minutes left. So yeah. If you want to perhaps answer some of the questions that Gio Vanna put forward, that would be great. Thanks.
>> JAI GANESH UDAYASANKARAN: Thanks, Sophie. I wanted to quickly add what was shared by the speaker from Datasphere. I think most of the times we look at sandboxes as regulators are the ones that want it and there is an entry or like a gate keeping, but then why not look at the sandboxes in terms of being in collaborative space where we helped entrepreneurs because innovation is really required. There are funding constraints and I think that is universal. So why not use this space as an environment where there is a bit of a handholding and support that comes from these regulators that are the governments. We can help those innovations that are coming into space to meet the requirements that meet the expectations in terms of trust and rather than just being gate keeping. That's my thought. And then use this approach on this convergence where we bring the various stakeholders within the country as well as those in the country.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you, Jai. We have 6 minutes left and I would love Thiago to come in to perhaps answer Gio Vanna's point on the different types of exit reports, I think that's something we want to make sure we answer that question. Thiago, you want to share your perspective on that as an ending comment from you as well? In 1 minute, if possible.
>> THIAGO MORAES: To that point, actually, I am finding fascinating how different regulators have been (?) with the exit report. In some cases, exit reports have been rapid by the companies and then many times it becomes more internal knowledge for the regulator, but the regulator has decided they should take the lead on that. I can give an example. Also the ICO several times have been the one in the main report and they do some assessment with the participants to be sure there is nothing there that's been shared that should not be disclosed. Actually, the way this exit report is public ‑‑ published, they really cover more about the experience itself than about sensitive confidential issues with what the idea should be. We also see that in the proposal. So yeah. I think it really depends of how you're going to deal with the report. There is room for flexibility here as well.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you. Thank you, Thiago. Natalie, I wanted to bring you in as a final wrap up thought since we're quite short on time. There is trust and the IGF this year there's trying to build trust and do a lot of trust building and kind of support international collaboration as much as we can. How do you think sandboxes can build distress across border level?
>> Natalie Cohen: Trust is key. One thing the ICD is trust in governments and I think on the proportion of countries that reply to say they have trust that governments will appropriately regulate new technologies was 41%. That shows that the trust alone. I think regular experimentation builds the evidence based for making regulatory reform in an area where the risk will not fully be understood and regulatory attempts also at an early stage. A lot is mentioned about risk to society and economic and benefits. I think it is that collaboration element that is creating a space where regulators and businesses and Civil Society and a range of stakeholders can dialogue and build the evidence based together in a way that can then inform and influence a regulatory regime.
>> SOPHIE TOMLINSON: Thank you. Thank you so much, Natalie, and thank you, everybody, for taking the time. I know a 9:00 a.m. session is not the easiest to get to after an IGF music night. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you as well for all the people who joined us online. Your time and questions shared were valuable us to as we try to understand how people are thinking about regulatory experimentation particularly sandboxes and yeah. Thank you for joining us and hope to see you all soon.
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