The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual 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.
***
>> BENGT MOLLERYD: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all participants in the OECD open forum at IGF 2021. Great to see you all. And there seems to be in the room in Poland one participant in the physical venue. Otherwise, we are a global community here.
My name is Bengt Molleryd. I'm from the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, PTS. And I'm also the designated chair of the OECD working party on communication infrastructure and service policies.
I will moderate now the first half of the open forum of this session. It is with thanks to communication technologies that we can hold this open forum in a hybrid format. The OECD recommendation on broadband connectivity addresses this important aspect of digitalization and aims at extending broadband services and improved quality of services.
Today we will explore the recommendation on broadband connectivity and the role of connectivity in the first half of this open forum.
We have an impressive panelists today from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication in Japan, Mr. Akihiko Sasaki. We have the Ministry of Communication in Brazil, Mr. Daniel Cavalcanti. And we have from the private sector, Zeimm Auladin-Suhootoorah.
We also look forward to discussing with the audience and we therefore invite you to raise questions and share thoughts on this important topic.
Please raise your Zoom hand to pose any questions or write questions in the chat and we will follow that closely. We will read them out to the speakers as we go through the session.
Let me now jump right into the interventions and welcome Mr. Akihiko Sasaki, the Director of Multilateral Economic Affairs Office, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication in Japan.
Akih, how can policy and regulation in Japan unleash the full potential of connectivity for the digital transformation and ensure equal access to connectivity for all. Please, you have the floor.
>> AKIHIKO SASAKI: Thank you. I would like to thank IGF and OECD, I'm honored to be a panelist today. The topic is of importance as reliable and affordable broadband is essential especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I'm excited to share our experience. I will give you an overview of broadband service in Japan. As you may know, Japan is facing geographic and social challenges that causes difficulties in sustaining all kind of services.
Although in such a situation, people are using optic fibers and advanced primary sources for broadband access as shown in the graph below.
And the coverage right for ultrahigh speed broadband is almost 100% here as indicated in the red. To foster investment, Japan has been modernizing regulation for telecom services to facilitate fair competition and ensure consumer benefits. The simplified licensing procedures through registration impose open access to the facilities and promoted fair competition so that everyone can enjoy affordable prices and nondiscriminatory conditions.
In principle, networks have been installed for fair competition. However, in rural areas the government is implementing initiatives to support networking solution. Next page, please.
So the latest comprehensive initiative is the MIC plan. The master plan was released on June of 2019 and set a long-term road map to visualize access and goals here. So far we completed some measures including radio wave propagation in tunnels and we have ambitious goal for 5G stations up to 280,000 by the end of fiscal year 2023 which is four times larger than originally planned by major carriers.
We are conducting a couple of measures to promote nationwide dissemination of 5G network including secure and open system and enhanced competition. And we are promoting use cases for private 5G network or local 5G to be widely adopted in the rural areas. Next page, please.
So local 5G is a system that allows entities such as the local companies, guests to build access spots and flexible networking in the premises based on their unique needs. MIT has been promoting this network with field trials to create new values and technical standards and promote digital transformation.
Last year we have 90 cases and developed rules and guidelines for local 5G in various environment such as agricultural and healthcare and manufacturing.
And we also served households for optic fibers to 170,000 by the end of the fiscal year. To Achieve this goal, we are offering subsidy for installation cost to local governments and telecom carriers to develop ICT infrastructure in disadvantaged areas with a certain ratio with budget of 32.3 million U.S. dollars this year. Next page, please.
The scope of the universal service is another topic we are discussing to cover broadband in rural areas. Currently incumbent carriers are obliged to secure appropriate fair and stable provision of fixed line, public phone and emergency calls and the deficit is covered by the universal service fund.
Since April last year, MIC has been holding expert group study to discuss whether to include the broadband as the universal service and discussing for the final report whether to propose fixed growth such as cable to be provided nationwide as universal service.
And I'm personally interested in how the discussion will end and come off the future mechanism for universal service.
To wrap up, sorry, Japan has been promoting connectivity and ensuring equal access to all to unleash full potential by encouraging investment with modernized regulation and supporting unserved areas with comprehensive ICT development plans. Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to answering your questions.
>> BENGT MOLLERYD: Thank you for the presentation on the situation in Japan. Thank you very much.
Let me welcome Mr. Daniel Cavalcanti. He is a coordinator of telecommunication policy at the Ministry of Communication in Brazil.
Dear Daniel, how can policy and regulation in Brazil best unleash the full potential of connectivity for the digital transformation and ensure equal access to connectivity for all? Please, Daniel, you have the floor.
>> DANIEL CAVALCANTI: Thank you, Bengt. It is, indeed, a great pleasure to join you all for today's open forum session. Brazil is dedicated to bringing open communications to Brazilians align with the UN 230 sustainability development goals.
We believe reaching the targets in SDG9 we are enabling four and five and SDG10. Brazil is driving to close the gaps.
Strategy covers enablers of digital transformation including network infrastructure, trust and skills as well as the data driven digital transformation of the economy and government services.
Despite the challenges of a vast territory and large population, we are making significant progress in expanding network infrastructure and providing connectivity all over the country. The most recent numbers show that over 81% of households in Brazil have fixed or mobile broadband service subscriptions.
Internet use in homes is noticeably gender balanced in Brazil with 79% of women and girls and 77% of men and boys using the internet.
I would like to briefly mention some examples of successful policies and regulation in telecoms in Brazil that promote competition and investment, increasing coverage and access to high quality broadband internet. First, on internet exchange points.
In order to provide internet connective to service providers of all sizes the country operates several open UXBs. Most were not interested in participating since they operated their own exclusive exchange points where small networks connected. We introduced an active quality of increasing participation including the major transit providers and this translated to require network operators to be present at OIXBs in the coverage area and have a public reference offer for services at each location.
Today, over half of our fixed broadband subscriptions in the country are provided by small and medium sized ISPs. The national infrastructure proved to be robust and resilient during the tremendous increase in traffic that took place during the pandemic.
The Brazil internet exchange is one of the largest in the world. The second example comes from mobile broadband. In the country like Brazil, mobile connectivity are not a substitute for fiber and must be part of the solution to provide affordable access to all. With 4B and more so with 5G, mobile is a viable option for broadband internet service provision. In the recent 5G spectrum, Brazil put in efforts on coverage requirements rather than revenue from spectrum licenses.
In the 5G the winning bidders could deduct the estimated cost of the additional coverage from the value of the bid. The result was along with the five existing operator, three national and two regional, it attracted five new entrants, one national and four regional. All coverage requirements will be met with the significant expansion to rural villages and districts and public schools and along federal highways.
A third and last example is in fiber broadband network expansion. Fiber infrastructure is an essential element of today's robust and resilient broadband networks. Brazil introduced legislation organizing rights of way with dig once policies and facilitating the deployment of fiber networks.
Since they will require the deployment of fiber back haul this presents an additional opportunity to promote sustainable fiber network expansion. With that, I will stop here and looking forward to questions. Thank you, Bengt.
>> BENGT MOLLERYD: Thank you very much, Daniel. And thank you for this and congratulations for the very positive outcome on the auction there.
Let me please now, Ms. Zeimm Auladin-Suhootoorah, security expert at BGO Solutions, an impressive track record in private connectivity.
How are you supporting and making networks secure and what will be on the wish list of governments and regulators to pursue the goal? Please, you have the floor.
>> ZEIMM AULADIN-SUHOOTOORAH: Thank you for having me on this open forum. I'm very proud to be here today.
Digital risks are growing every day due to the high number of interactions and transactions that are being carried out on the internet, especially since the pandemic.
It is essential as recommended in that adequate resources are allocated to promote the improvement of digital skills for all users of the internet.
As an example, assimilation of a phishing attack in a typical organization can get around 30% or more users to click on an insecure link and 20% of the users would actually give their user name and passwords. It depends on industry and IT maturity level of the organization.
For example, in banks this would typically be a lot less because they have more training sessions and users are more aware of the risks and they know they have to be careful. Cybersecurity awareness for us is essential and how to use social media should be included in schools and provided for free to adults and the media.
I'm referring to the recommendation two, number six which is promoting and investing of digital skills to enable the effective use of broadband by citizens of all incomes, ages, genders and abilities. And it continues to say that this should include facilitating the development of locally relevant and easy to use access to content to increase usage and demand.
The weakest link remain the people using the networks, and it is essential we reduce the impact of social engineering. To close that point, I would like to say that to drive a car we have to get a license and get training on how to go and how to use the car.
When we have a mobile phone or computer system, we just switch it on and start using it. Maybe we should invest a lot more into training people before they start using the internet.
Second point I would like to make would be about a targeted point. I agree broadband connectivity that we need to have policies in place to ensure that network service providers provide transparent reporting so that end users can make better choices.
Here improvement in terms of processes such as best practices based on ISO principle one and two three or first down for internet service providers can help with a safer environment and reduce digital risk.
Enforcement of digital privacy controls, the controls should not have a limited internet service providers, it should include cloud service providers as well. They are prime entities in providing services and must provide records and information on the level of resilience, redundancy, diversity that they provide for different regions.
Monitoring of data is a sensitive subject, and but it is very useful, and I think we should be monitoring data for internet exchange gateways can be very useful in securing the internet. The use of artificial intelligence can make the securing public networks proactive rather than reactive.
Nowadays we have products that can learn from behavior of different users and different entities on the networks and can actually block connectivity according to the specific applications or take other actions that we would define.
If peer-based collaboration between networks could help detect illegal activity and provide law enforcement with the right information. We could imagine an AI showing a repeated sharing of children's photos and relaying key information to Interpol. We have to be careful and have a multi-stakeholder and transparent approach, so the data is not used for oppression by some governments.
We need a methodology and system that ensures transparent reporting for user information. Resilience in security building which design and based in best practices and enforced the legal requirements. And I would like to insist here on the security by design. Unfortunately, from experience with seeing that security, especially cybersecurity is always an afterthought, it is only after attacks that companies realize that they have to invest a lot more.
Fortunately, this awareness is rising, and it is predicted that more and more companies will be investing with training to increase cybersecurity on their premise. But I think we need to keep that trend up and that design in security in all of the elements of the internet must be done. Like and it has to be enforced to be useful.
So I would just like to talk a little bit about the Section 3 which is the broadband recommendation.
So that would be that adherence to measures to ensure resilient, reliable and secure high capacity networks. Reliable subscription coverage and service data from periodic reporting.
Promoting measures to ensure residents of communication networks and taking measures including legal measures when necessary to secure communication networks and make those networks resilient to digital securities.
So that's all from me. And I look forward to questions afterwards.
>> BENGT MOLLERYD: Thank you very much, Zeimm, for the insights and also talking about the significance of security by design. A very important topic and also as you said an important part of the recommendation. Thank you once again, the panelists, for your contribution to the discussion.
So we get a very short view from Brazil, from Japan, and from Zeimm here on the security aspects of all of the issues in the cyber world and also online in the recommendation.
I would now like to open the floor to the audience to raise any questions or comments. So please, raise your hand. And you can also use the chat function. Do we have a hand -- yes, we have a hand here.
>> LAUREN CREAN: Lauren Crean from New Zealand. Hi, thank you very much and thank you to the speakers today.
I have a question for the final speaker, Ms. Zeimm Auladin-Suhootoorah, and I'm sorry for my mispronunciation perhaps.
I'm interested in what you are saying about how ISPs can be an important gateway to help secure communications. And I thought that the example that you put forward is interesting.
Could you expand on that a little bit because it is something that we are thinking about, and I would like to get insights how that could maybe happen in practice.
>> ZEIMM AULADIN-SUHOOTOORAH: Thanks for giving me this important question because I think that is something that we really should be doing.
I won't mention the name, but further that we are implementing and that actually works on corporate networks that we connect to core networks and that monitors all user activity in the network, in the whole network. So if you are connected to the core switch it will monitor for example, Zeimm comes to work at 9:00 and logs in and I use things and that is what I do all day.
And that device that -- that intelligent device knows my profile. And right now we are using it for security so, for example, if someone has access to my username and password and logs in from Japan at 2:00 a.m. in the evening, it might flag that it is not typical activity and it will flag it as suspicious connection.
But if I come up and start a scripting, it will cut off that activity based on how we defined it and trained the digital intelligence device.
So extrapolating from that, I think at the internet exchange points we actually have access to all of the task that is going through the network and internet in the country so we could learn typical pattern and set faults to allow us to understand.
We don't need to understand what they are doing or get into the data packets, but we could, for example, look at large things being exchanged or look at typical patterns that could cause exchange of I have photos in mind because I'm thinking of children, and it is like the topic of this subject.
There are many other law aspects that such an attack or other cybersecurity issues that could be detected by artificial intelligence. But this needs to be managed and has to be law based, and we need to define what we think is right and what we think is wrong and train that artificial intelligence entity over time so we can make use of it. Does that answer your question?
>> LAUREN CREAN: Yes.
>> BENGT MOLLERYD: Thank you very much, Zeimm. Are there any other questions? I have one, but I'm waiting to see if I see any raised hand.
So if not, I would like to hear from a short view from you, Akhi and Daniel, when it comes to OECD like in Europe and Sweden where I come from that we expect the market to do the majority of the investment.
Now we are in the digital transformation, and it becomes critical for society. How do you see the responsibility between policy makers and the going forward?
>> Thank you very much for your question. An important question that we have to keep in mind. As you mentioned the investment by the private companies to be fully protected or maybe promoted with our policy and laws because as you know if there is no fair competition to investment -- to invest the network and also the services, I think it won't be, you know, we can't expect any growth for the service and for the disseminate, you know, the -- to meet the needs of the public.
But at the same time, that we have this kind of harsh situation especially during the COVID-19 and also if we have faced the difficulties in disseminating in the rural areas that is not disseminated areas. If we do nothing, we cannot do with the people living there.
We have to keep in mind as well if there is no, you know, how to say, way to be served with the private companies alone, we could intervene and do some fair policy and how to say make the service to be promoted.
So I think that we have to both keep in mind that to keep the fair competition and also if there is no, you know, cannot be with the competition we have to support in a more transparent and fair way. Thank you.
>> BENGT MOLLERYD: Daniel, if you could say a few short words from your perspective.
>> DANIEL CAVALCANTI: Thank you. Briefly. With a country as vast as Brazil, although broadband service provision is driven by the private sector, there are limits to market efficiency and sustainability of these services.
So there is a role for policies and, indeed, for action by the government. One is our universal services front has already been converted to support broadband as a universal service. And we, indeed, intend to provide to all.
So in extreme remote locations there is no market solution, so we provide government-provided satellite broadband services to some of these locations.
So indeed, it is a combination then of the use of universal services funds to promote expansion by the private sector and as well direct provision of services by government because digital transformation is not only of the economy but also of government services. So it is in the interest of the government to provide universal service. Thank you. I will leave it here.
>> BENGT MOLLERYD: Thank you very much. I would like to thank again Mr. Akihiko Sasaki and Mr. Daniel Cavalcanti and Ms. Zeimm Auladin-Suhootoorah for participating from the first part of the forum.
We have reached the end of the first part of the open forum so I would like to thank you all the panelists and audience for this discussion. And now hand over to Roschke Guilherme, so please, the second part to begin.
>> GUILHERME ROSCHKE: Thank you, Bengt. I'm Guilherme Roschke. I'm counsel at the Federal Trade Commission in the United States and also the Vice-Chair of the OECD working party on data governance and privacy in digital economy.
Good afternoon, good morning. It's morning here in Washington, DC. And I'm very pleased to be here and moderate this second part of the panel which will focus on the OECD recommendation on children and the digital environment.
This recommendation was a product of over four years of substantial analytical work with the participation of over 80 international experts.
The recommendation's overriding goal is to find the balance between protecting children from risk and promoting the opportunities and benefits that the digital environment can provide.
It includes overarching principles for safe and beneficial digital environment as well as guidance for governments in policy making and in international cooperation. Without further ado, we will kick off this part of the meeting with a presentation from the OECD secretariat on the recommendation.
It is my pleasure to head over to Elettra Ronchi head of the privacy unit in the Digital Economic Policy Division of the OECD to present the recommendation. You have the floor.
>> ELETTRA RONCHI: Thank you very much. What I wish to do in the next few minutes is provide an overview of the recommendation to sort of inform the discussion of the panel today. Let me backtrack briefly.
Ensuring that children can benefit from a safe and secure digital environment has been a priority of the OECD for almost 15 years now since the declaration in 2008.
Following the declaration, the council adopted in 2012 the recommendation on the protection of children online. If I can have the next slide, please.
We uncovered significant changes in children's online life and in the digital environment. Much is due to the growth and use of mobile device and changed patterns of use. Since 2012, for example, there has been a 50% rise in 12-15-year-olds owning smart phone devices and globally an estimated one in three internet users today is a child.
On average, 15-year-olds spent 35 hours per week online. The benefits can be tremendous. The digital can support children education and enhance productivity and provide social and cultural opportunities. Children are today enthusiastic users of social media apps and are more prone to sharing self-generated content than before. The next slide, please.
At the same time our work shows along with the evolution and type and frequency of children's online use new risks have emerged and the changed patterns, the frequency and nature and scale of existing risks. We have a typology of risks which provides useful guidance to government on the issues with four main risk categories.
Content and content risks. Content and consumer risk. The ease and variety of ways in which children can be contacted in the digital environment changed the frequency and intensity much risk such as cyber bullying sexual exploitations. And also concerns about body image disorders that can be exacerbated by frequent exposure to unrealistic and altered images on social media. Girls are particularly prone to this.
And there are rising concerns that too much time online could be harmful for children. The next slide, please.
In the highly commercialized digital environment where personal data is a commodity, children are increasingly exposed to significant privacy risks.
As a result of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, it could be used to profile for predictive models a -- I think the COVID pandemic accelerated the trends, identifying the different risks that children may face in the digital environment and how to best respond to them has been an OECD priority.
Responses are fermented and have not always keep pace with advances in technology and are not always based on sound evidence. The next slide, please.
Now, the revised recommendation on children in the digital environment is a response to this significantly changed digital landscape. It benefited from multi-stakeholder and the input of a dedicated international group of experts to whom we are very, very grateful was adopted on 31 May 2021.
The recommendation's principal goal is to find a balance between protecting children from risk and promoting the opportunities and benefits the digital environment can provide. In particular, the urgency of protecting children's private and personal data and calls for age appropriate child safety by design and measures which promote inclusion and encourages multi-stakeholder cooperation.
The slide provides a very glance overview of the different sections of the recommendation. As you can see, it includes overarching principles for safe and beneficial digital environment as well as guidance for policy making and international cooperation.
I already mentioned some of the principles in the first section and let me move to the second on overarching where the recommendation aims to provide guidance to governments in setting a policy framework.
It calls for policy and effective legal measures and evidence-based responses and promotes digital literacy as an essential tool and adoption of measures which provide for an age appropriate child safety by design. And the section on international cooperation highlights the importance of international regional networks and seeks to promote continued corroboration and development of shared standards as well as information sharing.
The next slide, please. Alongside the recommendation the OECD developed guidelines, specifically directed at digital service providers in recognition of the essential role they play in providing a safe and beneficial digital environment.
The guidelines have been developed to support the digital service providers in taking actions that may directly or indirectly affect children in the digital environment. That is in providing services direct to the children and those that may not be necessarily have been shaped to be directed at children, but that children are using in reality.
The guidelines are intended to complemented the recommendation and be read in conjunction with it and there is a link between the two documents with each referring to the other. I will end there, and I'm happy to take any questions on this presentation and look forward to the panel discussion. Thanks.
>> BENGT MOLLERYD: Thank you. We will now turn to the panelists. With that, let me turn to the first panelist Brian O'Neill professor emeritus at Technological University Dublin. You joined the minister of Ireland to launch a report regarding online safety.
One of the key takeaways of the report is that there were often significant differences across different age categories of children in terms of the nature of engagement with the online environment, the online risks they encountered only the resilience in the face of the risks.
The OECD typology of risks which underpins the recommendation underlines that the age and maturity of children may affect their ability to understand risks, for instance, to their privacy. Can you share your views how we can support children with different age maturity and circumstances to better understand the risks of the digital environment and how they can be protected and empowered?
>> BRIAN O'NEILL: Thank you very much, indeed, for the opportunity to join this important panel on the OECD recommendation for children in the digital environment.
I'm delighted to be speaking to you from Dublin Ireland. As you mentioned recently, our minister with responsibility for the communications area launched our report which surveyed children, parents and adults.
And I should say that this is in the context of a national advisory council for online safety which the minister chairs and in fact I'm the deputy chair and it is sponsored this research very much in the spirit as Elettra pointed out for developing evidence-based policies.
It is in fact a further iteration of the EU kids online survey in Ireland, so we have a database with 20 countries with up-to-date data as of 2020 regarding the opportunities and risks in the digital environment. It forwards opportunities for stakeholders and four governments in forming good policies for the future digital environments.
So I will just say a few words about our research findings and how it amplifies some of the messages which Elettra presented in her overview of the recommendation and then say a little bit also about legislative proposals from the Irish government which seek to bring forward key principles of safety by design and encouraging responsible behavior by digital service providers.
So in this context, as you mentioned, age, maturity, circumstance, all matter to a great extent in how children attain benefits from the digital space. And our survey certainly endorsed that.
The vast majority of children gain hugely from their online engagement and participation. And that is the case that as children become ever more active online there is so much to be gained, particularly as we gathered much of our data over the course of significant restrictions when socialization and education could really only take place online.
Also, as noted, that children are digitally active from an ever earlier age. Our survey findings are from age 9 and 17. Is but we are increasingly conscious that we need more, and better evidence of how younger children are experiencing digital participation.
But in our area -- in our findings we know that children from age 9 upward have increasing autonomy in terms of ownership of their own devices, phones and tablets and 40% of 9-year-olds have their own device.
And with that, what is clearly evident from the research findings is still a ladder of opportunities. By this I mean not all children gain equally from opportunities available to them.
And they slowly graduate through different levels of relatively passive consumption or communication activities to attaining more participative and creative online opportunities of course, a key feature of research such as ours and through EU Kids Online is to highlight the experiences of risk that mitigate children enjoying benefits online.
And exposure to potentially harmful content is something that has been very much in focus. And that was something that our research has something to say about and that one in four children report being exposed to varying categories of harmful content.
We heard listing of some of these in the typology of risks in the OECD recommendation gives a helpful guide in this. One in five have seen hate messages. One in four have been exposed or have been upset by gory or violent content online. Eating disorders is an area of online content which is of concern.
And while one in 10 or just over 10% of children overall have seen or accessed content of this nature, it again adversely affects significant numbers of girls rising to nearly one in four or 23% for teenaged girls.
So these are certainly concerns in relation to access to potential harmful content. Contact and conduct remain persistent themes reported by children to be distressing and certainly mitigate against availing of positive online opportunities. And cyber bullying is a complex phenomenon but what our research shows that particularly affects teenagers of a particular age at transition points where they are relatively new to socializing online and engaging in social media type environments.
Also as highlighted in the typology of risks, the area of contract or concern -- and consumer risks is a relatively new area for research but what we are finding is that too few children are able to manage privacy in such contexts or have sufficient awareness of the potential risks to their data or how their data may be misused within context where they don't have sufficient consumer literacy regarding these areas.
So this is a broad base of research findings which we have up-to-date evidence to support the policy making effort and that refers to the Irish context but there is also a wider European dataset. And the comparative nature of that becomes quite important.
All of this is really quite significant in terms of as governments and OECD member states think through their policy frameworks. And this is, of course, a key part of the recommendation. Ireland is proposing new legislation in the form of online safety and media regulation bill.
And this again within the European Union context is in part transposing the audio-visual media services directive and provides enhanced protections for children in the area of video sharing platforms and platforms which provide access to children -- to different kinds of content. And there is official demand.
>> GUILHRTMR ROSCHKE: Could I ask that you give wrapping up remarks please.
>> BRIAN O'NEILL: Yes. The policy frameworks in developing legislative approaches here have the aim of enhancing and supporting safety by design as I say and puts in place proposed regulatory frameworks which will allow for safety codes to be developed by industry and again the guidance for digital service providers in the recommendation are a key in relation to that and media commission which hosts an online safety commissioner and will have the opportunity to apply sanctions where such safety codes are not adhered to.
So in this broader context the OECD recommendation is not only timely but hugely important and influential, and we hope that it provides the context for wider international cooperation in developments such as these. On that, I will hand the floor back to you and thank you for the opportunity,.
>> GUILHERME ROSCHKE: Thank you, Brian, for these important remarks and for highlighting your research and evidence base.
Now let me turn to Alexandre Barbosa who is the head of the Center of Studies for Information and Communications Technology in Brazil.
Alexandre, a research project in Brazil highlighted a digital divide is still a key concern in the country which especially affects low income households and rural areas.
And the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to establish enabling equitable conditions for all children which can ensure access and protect them from harm. Can you tell us the relevant statistics from Brazil that you collected and in particular what percentage of children have access to digital technologies in Brazil?
>> ALEXANDRE BARBOSA: Thank you. This is a real pleasure because we had opportunity and privilege to participate in the group of this recommendation.
Brazil, as you mentioned, is regulating the data on the access to and use of digital technologies by children since 2012. On an annual basis, a national representative survey and the Brazilian kids online survey is fully compliant with the frameworks both from the European Kids Online and UNESCO Global Kids Online frameworks so we have international comparability data.
We heard previously from my colleague Daniel Cavalcanti the internet connectivity is a scenario in the country much evolved in the last years and mobile broadband does play an important role in promoting connectivity.
However, we still have some inequalities in the country marked by urban versus rural and socioeconomic gaps. Although we have 83% of the households connected, some rely only on mobile connectivity and without computers, for instance, any type of computers. And if you consider the ideal scenario of having broadband and computers, we have only 41% of children age 9-17 years old live in households with computer access but without any type of computers, relying only on mobile device.
And when we look at the dynamics of the internet use among this young population, we find that 89% of internet users are young children and adults, a proportion that represents about 24 million children in the country using internet.
And although connectivity has been observed, digital divides exists in some regions. The proportion of internet users were much lower in rural areas and in the north Amazon region and northeast region of the country and in poverty households.
This represents three million children not having internet access at all. And we still have 16.5 million children living in households with limited internet access.
Either without any connectivity at all or with limited download speed below four megabits per second. So if you look at the low socioeconomic status population there is a high proportion of users that have only mobile access via wi-fi connections without any 3G or 4G data package.
And this we could link with the concept of municipal connectivity you have to have broadband and devices, not only mobile devices. So the absence of internet access in the household was the main reason for not going online which was reported by 1.6 million children. This represents about 6% of the Brazilian population age 9-17 years old.
>> GUILHRTMR ROSCHKE: If I could ask that you wrap up, so we have only a few minutes for the last speaker.
>> The people using access via mobile represents a great challenge because it does impose several to digital skills and online opportunities and, of course, existing infrastructure to risk. I will stop here. Thank you for the opportunity.
>> GUILHRTMR ROSCHKE: Thank you very much. If I could turn to the last speaker, Amelia Vance, who is director of youth and education with the Future Privacy Forum.
One of your areas is the unintended consequences of laws and regulations meant to protect children primarily in the United States.
How can government establish more enabling and equitable rules for children. If I could ask that you limit the remarks to one or two minutes. Sorry, but we are almost out of time. Thank you.
>> AMELIA VANCE: No problem at all. Thank you so much for having me here today. I'm honored to be in the presence of so many brilliant people working on these issues.
So as mentioned, one of my area of expertise is on unintended consequences. So I track the student and child privacy laws in the U.S. and to some extent globally and was honored to be part of the expert working group tasked with revising the recommendation.
Over the past eight years in the U.S. we have seen over 130 new student privacy laws passing in 40 states with well over a thousand at this point introduced in states across the U.S. and I think about 15 federally.
And we have seen from that many examples of both best practices and lessons learned. And we have seen that well intentioned actions can result and have resulted in unintended consequences.
So, for example, in 2014, the Louisiana legislature passed a law to protect student privacy which required parents to approve nearly any collection and sharing of student data with no student information shared without a parent's express permission.
The law involved jail time and fines if even a mistake. Schools afraid of prisons or fines were so concerned that they stopped allowing school photographs without consent. Stopped announcing sport player names at games. Stopped hanging student artwork in the hallway.
I will add just one more point. The -- you can also have unintended consequences on the other side of this where efforts aimed at protecting children from risk can cause unintended consequences.
In Florida, for example, we have seen attempts to minimize and mitigate violence by requiring schools to inquire about student mental health status when registering for school implementing social media monitoring at a state level all of which had unintended consequences for students with disabilities and other students who pose no threat of violence that are being now heavily monitored.
>> GUILHRTMR ROSCHKE: I do want to give the floor to Audrey Plonk, head of the digital economy policy OECD for her concluding remarks. Thank you.
>> AUDREY PLONK: Thank you all for joining us. I will be brief and say in the interest of time I want to first thank our speakers as well as our panelists for their insights into these two very important topics and for connecting the two very important milestone recommendations that came from the OECD this year.
One on how to protect children and one on how to advance connectivity because as we try to bridge digital divides and have better connectivity and make access more fair and equitable we have increased risks in some areas, particularly to children and minors.
And I'm very inspired by the incredibly passionate people here trying to tackle that issue, trying to gather real hard data and evidence about what the benefits and the risks are because there is obviously a lot of fear and a lot of hype which is important.
It is also important to acknowledge the positives and risks and find the right balance. I really very much welcome this dialogue and want to commend both our moderators who were involved in the work at OECD and commend you both for the leadership in the making the recommendations come to light this year.
It has been a big year for us for connecting these two really important issues together. In the interest of time and because I know that we are supposed to wrap up here in one minute, I just will thank the panelists collectively rather than individually and just say that it has been a really impressive lineup of expertise here for the IGF from across the world. And as I think our chair said at the beginning, we are a global community here trying to solve both connectivity divides as well as protecting children in that process.
I want to close by thanking all of you who participated in the OECD work and invite you to look at our recommendations and we would love to work with you on how to advance the important issues in the future.
Thank you for your time and I wish you an excellent ending to the IGF. Still another day or so to go. Lots of rich content out there.