Dynamic Coalition on Data and Trust (DC-DT)

Introduction

In recent years, disinformation scandals and increasing levels of consolidation in technology markets have diminished the confidence of regulators and members of the public in the effectiveness of industry self-regulation.

The initial focus of the group will be to explore issues of data and trust through the lens of industry responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, including:

  • Self-regulatory actions by registries and registrars to combat disinformation or scams relating to Covid-19 in the DNS.
  • The broad ecosystem of actors whose services are used and abused by websites that systematically publish disinformation (including disinformation relating to Covid-19).

The objective is, through inclusive discussion of the issues involving all relevant stakeholders, to deepen understanding of the issues, build consensus, identify good practices and other actions to improve quality of data and information, as well as raise levels of public trust in industry self-regulation.

The scope of this Dynamic Coalition is kept deliberately broad, so that over time it can accommodate a wide range of discussions relating to data and trust in response to emerging issues. Typically, issues relating to content and infrastructure are examined in policy silos. This Dynamic Coalition will fill a governance gap, by encouraging an inclusive policy dialogue among all stakeholders who are interested in exploring issues of data and trust in the online environment, and the extent to which actors in one segment of the ecosystem can take effective actions to curb abuse in other segments.

Examples of potential areas for future discussion could be the role of data accuracy as a tool for law enforcement and those enforcing intellectual property rights, the impact of international privacy laws on availability of data for law enforcement, the human rights aspects of low-quality data and information, and the impact on young people of poor data and misinformation. It is hoped that interested stakeholders will be able to use the broad framing of the DCDT to bring emerging issues for discussion and share their best practices to date.

Action Plan

DCDT Action Plan for 2021

The DC held its first meeting of interested stakeholders during IGF 2020. In preparation for the first meeting, EURid took the initiative to engage with interested stakeholders and encourage their participation. The theme for 2020 was be to examine Internet industry responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our key aims and activities will include:

1. Explore linkages between data and trust

The Dynamic Coalition will seek to inform policy discussions with a solid evidence base and will showcase relevant research which explores linkages between data, information and trust.

2. Sharing good practices

The Dynamic Coalition will showcase voluntary industry initiatives aimed at raising quality of data and enhancing trust.

3. Inclusion and transparency

The Dynamic Coalition will be open to all interested stakeholders, and will actively seek to engage under-represented perspectives, particularly youth and those from developing countries, and will ensure that statements and outputs reflect minority or dissenting viewpoints.

The Dynamic Coalition will promote transparency, with published mailing lists and proceedings of meetings.

4.Working intersessionally

The IGF Dynamic Coalition structure enables coalitions of the willing to work intersessionally, rather than a focus on one-off workshops or roundtables. This enables a sense of momentum can be maintained, and relationships of trust to be fostered among participants to develop effective policy interventions.

The work of the DCDT will culminate in voluntary declarations and published good practices which encourage improvements in industry self-regulatory responses to challenges of data quality and disinformation, particularly during times of crisis.

Mailing List

Mailing list address: [email protected]

To post to this group, send email to regina.fuchsova[at]eurid.eu.

Stakeholders

The following stakeholders have already indicated their interest in participating in the new Dynamic Coalition on Data and Trust:

Public sector

  • European Commission
  • EUROPOL

Private sector

  • Member(s) of INTA, the International Trade Mark Association (Charles Shaban AGIP and Lori Schulman INTA)

Civil society

  • The Computational Propaganda Unit at the University of Oxford Internet Institute
  • EU DisinfoLab

Technical community

  • EURid, the registry manager of the of the .eu, .ею (Cyrillic script) and .ευ (Greek script) country code top-level domain names
  • AfTLD, the regional organisation for African Top Level Domain registries
  • CENTR, the regional organisation for European Top Level Domain registries
  • Donuts Inc
  • Jeff Bedser, CEO and President iThreat, Chair of ICANN SSAC working party on DNS Abuse
  • David Cake, ICANN Community

Documents/Reports

Contacts

Regina Fuchsova | EURid – regina.fuchsova[at]eurid.eu