IGF 2024-Day 1-Plenary-Main Session 1 Global Access, Global Progress- Managing the Challenges of Global Digital Adoption-- RAW

>> TIMEA SUTO: Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to this main session that is global access, global progress, managing challenges of global digital adoption.  My name is Timea Suto, I'm going to be your moderator today.

Today we are gathering for this main session under the theme of IGF, harnessing innovation and balancing risk in the digital space which I think is one of the main themes of all of the conversations we are having on digital policy and Internet Governance so it's quite timely we address this here at the IGF.  What we will try and do in this session is connect two parts that I like to say that come with bringing people online.  First of all, what can we do to actually make sure that everyone everywhere every day has connectivity that they are able to connect to the Internet, that they are able to access services that are relevant to them, that are in their own languages, and that they can actually make use of that want them to come online, and then, of course, that everybody has the skills to make sure that they can participate once in the online world once they are online whether that's for social activity or economic activity or whatever other service they want to access.  But then once we bring online and we carry on doing, what happens then?  Is that the end goal to bring people on line?  Have we solved everything once everybody is connected.  That will be the second part, what are the challenges of bringing a lot of people online at the same time, and what happens once they are online?

So those are the two actual main themes we would like to discover in this session together.  I have a distinguished list of panelists here to help me answer those questions.  I'm very glad I don't have to bring the answers.  I will be just asking the questions today.  So first we will have Mr. Gbenga Sesan, Executive Director at Paradigm Initiative.  Then we hope we will be joined by Ms. Thelma Quaye, Director of digital infrastructure, skills and empowerment at Smart Africa.  Then we have Ms. Sally Wentworth, President and CEO of the Internet Society.  Dr. Takuo Imagawa, Vice Minister, Ministry of Internal affairs and communications of Japan, Ms. Alaa Abdulaal, Chief of Digital Economy Foresight at the Digital Cooperation Organisation, Mr. José de Pereira, cofounder of the laboratory of public policy and Internet and the researcher at the University of Bonn in sustainable AI lab.  Hi, Thelma, great to have you.  Then we have Mr. Shivnath Thukral, Vice President for public policy for Meta in India, and then last but not least, Ms. Tami Bhaumik, Vice President Civility and Partnerships at Roblox.

Wouldn't further ado, we will jump into the first segment of the panel trying to figure out how we make sure that we bring everybody online, what is left to do in this important task and after we hear first from the half of the panel, we will turn to questions and comments from the floor.  So please know there will be microphones circulating around the room when you are ready to ask your questions.  As the speakers are speaking, think of what you might want to ask them as they speak.

My first speaker is Gbenga Sesan, and I would like to ask you a little bit about why is it so important that we connect everybody?  Why is it so important especially to connect those who are living in remote or hard to access areas and how does this work in your region.

>> GBENGA SESAN: Thank you I'm tempted to say and I will say connectivity could be a matter of life and death.  We write an annual report on digital rights at Paradigm Initiative and one of the stories that really paints the picture for me is a story of a woman who was three minutes away from missing medical intervention because the telecom services in our country were shut down, but someone just knew that it was just mobile phone connectivity that was shut down and they could get WiFi signal to make a Voice Over IP call.

It sounds like when we talk about connectivity, at times it sounds like a "nice to have" but in many cases in healthcare it could be a matter of life and death.  In education it's a difference between somebody who was born into poverty and who works to literally eradicate poverty in just one generation.  We do training programmes for young people and one of the stories I love is the story of Famous.  Famous was told by his parents you have gone through secondary school.  That's it.  That's all we have.  Your younger sister has to go to school, so when you get to SS3 and you graduate, go find a job somewhere at a factory and just work there.

Famous walked down the street and found our training centre in his local community.  He walked in, saw that we had computers, showed interest, signed up for a six week training program.  At six weeks Famous for some reason paid attention to Microsoft Excel.  He just loved spreadsheets and we asked him why spreadsheets.  He says, it sounds cool, spreadsheets.

That was what made a difference in his life, because a few months after he finished, he saw an advertisement for an internship.  He applied for it.  He got the internship at the commission.  While on the internship he saw another opportunity for a full time job at the UKI commission in Ubuja and when he told me I was going to apply, Id is, well, maybe not, you don't have a degree and there are not too many who will be able to apply for this.  But, because of his knowledge of spreadsheets, he applied and got the job.  To cut long story short, Famous got a job.  The embassy sent a car because he needed to fly for the interview.  If he didn't get the job, that was fine, but he got the job, spent six months on is that job, resigned because he had saved enough, went to the university, graduated, got a job at KPMG.  That was in 2009.  Today Famous is a manager at KPMG in New Jersey.  That is what is possible with connecting people.  It is not theory.  It is my story.  It is Famous' story.  It is the story of every young woman, every young man what gets access to opportunities.

It is the story of every person who has access to healthcare because they can connect with the services, even though they don't have as many doctors in the village.  This is why it's important.  Every time we say we must connect the rest of the world, the last third of the world, we are not saying that because it's a "nice to have" because we would like to say that in Riyadh so that everybody will hear.  It's because as we found out during COVID, businesses, education, healthcare will come to a standstill, especially in the times of emergency if we do not have connectivity.  That is why it's important.  It's important because if the story of Famous were told without connectivity he would most likely be working in a factory, which is not a bad thing if that is the only chance you have.  But right now his entire family one generation has moved out of poverty because of his chance connection to training, mentorship and connectivity.  That is what we must do for the rest of the world.

>> TIMEA SUTO: That is an inspiring start for the conversation.  There is no better story than the personal development stories to illustrate and make it real of why we are doing what we are doing in our day jobs and why we are talking about this on the stage.  With that I will turn to Thelma.  To follow the same sort of question that was addressed to Gbenga.  I would like to ask about your view and Smart Africa's views of connecting the next billion and what do you think are the barriers that exist still for us achieving the goal of connecting everybody?

>> THELMA QUAYE: Thank you very much.  And apologies.  I was in another session that took a bit of time.  So there are a lot of Famous’s and another perspective to it is I also have a story of a lady called Aisha and for her she hasn't gone on through training but for her it was just the access to a phone and WhatsApp that's changed her life in terms of her business.  She sells shell butter in Ghana in her small community, but when she was able to afford a phone, which we know is one of the barriers, when she was able to afford connectivity, data services, her business blew up.  Now, her child, her son is able to go to secondary school, for instance.

So just like he said, Internet or data or connectivity is a life and death issue.  For me it's a utility just we are fighting for electricity, water, Internet is equally a utility, but what are the barriers?  Why do we have still only 40% of Africans connected?

Traditionally it has been the mobile network operators investing.  Africa is connected because we have a lot of mobile network operators investing, but then they are at the point where it doesn't make business sense now, putting up a tower in that village where Aisha lives doesn't make business sense because the number of people there will just not make the return on investment.

So we need Government intervention now.  It doesn't have to be a Private Sector thing anymore.  It has to be a PPP where Government is now investing in infrastructure, for instance, and giving this infrastructure to the Private Sector to build upon.  It has to be also a collaborative effort, for instance, where Private Sector or the Internet Service Providers are not agreeing for infrastructure to reduce cost, for instance.  So that's one challenge.

The other challenge has been the likes of Aisha, when you give her a phone, what does she do with it?  If you look at the content structure of Africa, a lot of our Internet content is on entertainment, and so a lot of them will not understand what they have to do with it, if it's just entertainment, but if we then now put content that allows them to learn or even allows them to trade their words or we teach them how to sell their words, the economic activity, if we give them content that are relevant, then they are able to make use of it.

And then finally is the cost of hand sets.  I think this morning Ms. Doreen Bogdan Martin mentioned how expensive it is to get a handset.  We tried in Rwanda with Mara phones to try and assemble phones so it becomes cheaper, but it wasn't cheap.  The cheapest was around $120.  That's very expensive for the average African.

So we need to also see how we make devices cheaper.  Now, I'm not talking about feature phones because we did a survey with youth and they said, I want the iPhone that you are holding but I want it at the cost I can afford.  I don't want to buy it at that amount.  So we need to talk to, and I know there are stakeholders here, the Googles of this world, the people part of bringing a device, but the Government on the Government side, what are the taxes that can be taken out?  What are the incentives that can be taken out?  To make these Smart Phones, not feature phones, smartphones affordable so we can all use it.

If you look at the coverage situation of Africa, over 80% has mobile coverage, but 40% are connected, and that's because of affordability.  And then there comes skills, and then relevancy of the content.

And these are all things we can do something about.  The only thing that I think we've talked too much about and done nothing is the investment part in terms of the Government coming into invest, we have the universal service access funds.  If you check the status of these funds across some countries, some are dormant, some are being used for other things that are not, that they are not supposed to be used for, so why don't we go back to why these funds were created to solve the situation.

For me, I think we've spoken about it too long.  The solution lies in front of us, and Governments are able if their will is there.  So the issue, one other barrier I will add before I end is the political will.  We need to have that political will to solve this issue.  Let's not continue talking.  We can do something about it, and let's do something about it.  Thank you.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you very much Thelma.  There is quite a lot in a very short intervention, but I think what is important to bring out because it showed up a number of times as you were speaking is the need of the Private Sector and the public sector cooperation and creating those policy incentives together to make sure that the market works in every region and in every circumstance, and that actually requires a lot of collaboration between the Government and the Private Sector.

So I'm going to turn to Sally who was worked on this issue for quite some time now, and in coming into this role that you have now with ISOC, I'm just asking what is ISOC's perspectives on these issues and what is some of the work that you have done in this area together.

>> SALLY WENTWORTH: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on this topic.  This topic of connectivity is one that's very near to the Internet Society's heart.  Our mission and vision is that the Internet is for everyone.  And so the fact that we still have over a third of the world's population not connected to the Internet means that we have a lot of work to do, and that's work that the Internet Society is very committed to.

I was taken with the stories of my colleagues before me, in particularly the story of Aisha where she is in a community where there may not be a business incentive to connect.  The Internet Society has been in the space of connecting hard to reach communities for whom there may not be an initial business incentive, and what we do is really look at a community centred approach, a bottom up approach to connectivity that ensures that people in their local communities are empowered, are resourced, are trained and are skilled enough to build the community networks or to build the networks for themselves.

We believe that with a small investment, and we have quite a bit of experience with this, that local and communities that are supported in this way can build the networks, they can maintain the networks, they can sustain their connectivity, and ultimately they can defend it.

That is a hugely powerful model of connectivity that I think we need to look more at as a global community as we think about how we bridge this final digital divide.

We have done this since 2020.  We have provided funding and technical assistance to over 60 community centred connectivity solutions around the world, and this is a major part of our strategy going forward.  And I was asked to provide a few examples and just a few minutes before I walked in here, I stopped by the booth of the Internet Society chapter in Tanzania who last year was awarded with the WSIS prize for the Tanzania digital inclusion project which really does embody this community centred connectivity approach, and here what they say is that they have connected over 1800 citizens to affordable and meaningful broadband Internet, trained 4,000 youth and women on essential digital skills, are training teachers on E learning skills.  This is all being done by the local community for themselves.

They understand what is needed.  They understand what the gap is, and by ensuring that through in this case a chapter, that ensures that that connectivity is sustainable over the long run.  They are actually interestingly now looking at a program to make the smartphones more affordable, particularly for women entrepreneurs through a financing program that allows them to use this technology then for their own social enterprises and the like.

We have seen these kind of solutions work both in Africa, outside of Africa.  We were very happy to deploy the highest community network in the world in Mt. Everest to connect the sherpa communities in Nepal who are feeling the effects of climate change on their economy, and the lack of connectivity has been a real barrier for their people to participate in the digital economy going forward.

By connecting that community they now have access to medical care, but also to skills and training opportunities that might expand the economies in those communities.  Airbnb is coming in.  Some of the sherpas are opening their homes via Airbnb and providing different kinds of opportunities for that community to participate in the global digital economy.

So this model of community centred connectivity we don't have to wait for the solutions to come in.  Communities can connect themselves.  I think it's a powerful approach to this, and one that as I said, the Internet Society has been committed to and will continue to be committed to.

Going forward, and I know this is the topic for the second part of the panel, what we want to really think about and work with partners on is as we are bringing populations online, how do we ensure that they have the skills and expertise to participate in the global digital economy safely and securely.

So it's not enough to just bring connectivity in, we need to ensure that people have the skills to participate safely and in a way that gives them confidence that their information is protected, and that they feel safe and secure.  So these are things that we are taking very seriously, and I think are important as we think about how we bring connectivity to the final two billion people who are not online.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you, Sally.  You've mentioned the importance of making sure that in the communities there are ways of building up networks.  There is the importance then to connect to small networks to larger grid and also making this work in a way that it works in investment, it works for trainings, and it works for the long term sustainability and resilience of these networks.

So there is a lot of works between different partners and stakeholders of making all of this happen.  I'm curious, Dr. Takuo Imagawa, how do you see this from the Japanese perspective and your perspective in sitting in the Government, what are the actions that Governments can take to help incentivize connectivity?

>> TAKUO IMAGAWA: Thank you, Chair.  I looked at a little bit different point of view in this panel.  Despite advancement in disability technology there remain 2.6 billion people worldwide who are not connected to the Internet and there are still many people who cannot fully enjoy the benefits of digital technology.  It is crucial to further accelerate international cooperation to build an inclusive data society.  As you know, emerging technologies such as AI can only be effectively utilized when connectivity is realizes.  Ensuring connectivity is a prerequisite for reaping benefit of technology.

In addition to providing physical access, it is essential to ensure that these technologies are affordable, and that individuals have the necessary literacy and skills.  Therefore achieving universal and meaningful connectivity is extremely important.  Japan welcomed the GDC adopted at the UN Summit.  The first commit is addressing the digital divide and the importance of UMC is mentioned.  Achieving the GDC commit including bridging the digital divide cannot be accomplished through a top down approach through the UN Member States alone.  Cooperation among multistakeholders is essential as pointed out in the IGF many times.

Significant efforts have been made and we need to continue building on these achievements.  In particular next year makes the WSIS+20 review, the WSIS initiative should be complementary to the follow up of the GDC.  So during this upcoming review, it is necessary to thoroughly consider the existing multistakeholder efforts, identify challenges and outline the next effective steps.  The IGF provides a vital platform for diverse stakeholders in digital technologies together and engage in active discussions.  This forum exemplifies the importance of multistakeholder efforts and we firmly belief that extending the IGF mandate is indispensable from the perspective of eliminating the digital divide.  As highlighted in the GDC, the role of the ITU, we recognize that ITU's substantial contributions to bridging the digital divide especially in countries through their various initiatives.  Japan will continue to support these efforts by the ITU.

Please allow me to briefly introduce Japan's domestic initiatives.  Japan has significantly advanced domestic broadband infrastructure development where the national coverage rate of optical fiber services per household reached 99.84% in 2023 and population coverage rate of mobile phone services reached 99.99% in 2022 achieving one of the world's highest levels of broadband infrastructure.  We understand these almost 100% broadened coverage of both fiber and mobile are coming from the good mixture of a competition policy and Government support for nonprofitable regions.  We have been promoting competition between the Government and the entrants by the, as well as introducing Universal Service Fund and also financial subsidies to the players operating in nonprofitable rural areas.  We believe that mixture of regulatory and financial frameworks is indispensable to realize UMC.  Japan is achieving promoting research and development of non terrestrial or space network technologies such as HAPSs which provide connectivity in remote areas where communication infrastructure is not well established.  This is part of our efforts to advance the next generation communication infrastructure beyond 5G or 6G.  We are also assisting the capacity building programmes of digital utilization such as the use of the smartphones and the digital ID, digital ID card called my number card or protection against cyber-attacks and so on.  So through such initiatives of the regulatory and financial frameworks as well as the efforts of research and development, and also capacity building and by sharing our various experiences with the multistakeholder community we would like to contribute to enhancing the global connectivity.  Thank you.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you so much.  So as this was the first sort of thought starters, idea, from the first half of our panel, so what we are trying to take away and what I hear a lot about is the role of partnerships, the role of working together, to bringing in different stakeholder communities, different Committees from the local, global, regional level to try to find solutions that are sort of universal in spirit, but work at the local level.  So I'm hearing calls for partnerships at the grassroots level to reach out, train, find the people and talk to them in not necessarily just their own language, but the way they live in their own situation.  What I'm hearing calls for enabling policy environments to make sure that we work together, Governments, businesses, civil society, the technical community to make sure that we incentivize investments, we incentivize trade and commerce to help facilitate affordability of connectivity and of devices.  Incentivizing investment in skills and training programmes and, of course, then making sure that we insight this cooperation at the global level and we come together in fora like this one to have these conversations and then cooperate with partners outside our local communities outside our nations to make sure this all works the same way that the Internet works at the global interconnected level.

So we have a little bit of time to turn to the audience for some reactions on this and then we will turn to the second panel.  If you have any comments or questions, please raise your hand high so that my colleagues can see you.  And when you speak, please introduce yourself.

>> AUDIENCE: Hello.  My name is connecting ordinary citizens to digital opportunities online.  No, I'm kidding, my name is Dr. Naza Nicholas Kiama from Tanzania, and I wanted to make a comment on the effect of connecting schools to the Internet.  As when you get time you go through a booth you will see that we have been able to connect about ten schools to the Internet, and what we are getting from the schools that we have been able to connect in Tanzania is that the school students, there is a lot of improvement in terms of their grades that they are getting from their exams, and also the teachers that we have engaged in our programmes.  They have been able to go online, access different courses, and through these courses, they have been able to improve their skills, their teaching skills as well as upgrade, taking different free courses online, and before the connectivity, teachers were not able to access free courses online because the access was very limited.  They didn't have any broadband Internet access in their schools, and with that it was impossible for them to stay online for a long time to be able to study the courses online.

So connecting schools, connecting the communities, the ordinary citizens to broadband Internet has enabled the communities that we serve in Tanzania access, digital opportunities online.

So we have a lot of improvement in terms of grades and also the teachers now can be able to read and improve their teaching skills online without ever looking over their shoulder that their data band is going to exhaust.

So it is very important to continue to build alliances around the world to finance the connectivity for schools, connectivity for the rural communities, and also the underserved urban communities as well.

So I think the idea of connecting people to digital opportunities online is very important because ultimately, you will find yourself in a situation where when you connect people, the next frontier will be what sort of important skills that we need to deploy to those communities so that they can stay safe and they can feel comfortable to stay online.  Thank you so much.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you for that comment.  Indeed, I think a lot starts when once we are able to get a school online or library online because they are the hearts of the communities they function in and then the ripple effect is clearly palpable.  Do we have any other comments or questions?  I don't see anybody.  There you are, sir, yes.

>> AUDIENCE: Hello, everyone, my name is Guria from the Guria foundation, India.  My question is that it's based on the use of international AI and evaluation examination.  Now, I just want to let you know, I want your opinion on how we can create a uniform framework for the evaluation of the student examination?  Is it possible to create a uniform framework form throughout the world.  I want your opinion on that?  A digital evaluation framework on the evaluation of students examinations.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you for the question.  Would anybody from the panel care to respond to that question.  The panel is asking if you could clarify your question.

>> AUDIENCE: Yes, certainly.  In the education system pre exam degree having the final examination right, okay, now, can we create the digital platform or, you know, framework through which we can use the technology to evaluation of the students throughout the world?  That is my question based on the technology Internet and AI.  Every country is having different evaluation process.  Yes.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Please go ahead.

>> SHIVNATH THUKRAL: Since you said you are from India, there are many AI evaluation based frameworks which have been in the private space both Private Sector and civil society sector in the not for profit space.  I can tell you one example.  One partner that Meta in India works with is Rocket Learning Systems and all that they do is use AI evaluation on actual physical answer sheets by deploying thousands of teachers who have based their evaluation by first physically evaluating them, and then they have created a machine learning tool to assess how they can give feedback digitally to improve upon the evaluation ecosystems.  As a result the feedback loop that the teachers have created is going back to the student at the end of it and using AI analytics tool they are able to point to them where they need to work harder.

This is in the civil society space, not for profit space and I'm happy to connect you with Rocket Learning.  Similarly in the private space, many of the companies are doing the same thing, one is to deliver education, the other is to assess education programmes based on the tutorial that they run, how AI analytics can help them.  I am happy to share those examples after the session as well, but, yes, to answer your question, the possibility definitely exists.  It is already being deployed and what that would do is which I was going to respond to when it comes to me, it will solve two issues, one is of scale given that in a country like India, for example, over a billion people, let’s say 300 to 400 million students coming online.  You will able to solve the problem of scale of giving real time feedback.  And the second is the complexity of the language which is a point I will talk about in detail subsequently, is how using AI analytic tools you can solve the language issue to give feedback to those even if the teacher doesn't know the language.  AI tools can help understand better assessment of such frameworks.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, sir.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you for jumping in on that Shivnath Thukral.  I think we have time for one last question on the first segment of the panel if there is anybody from the floor.

My colleagues are getting a workout to make sure we get the microphone to you.

>> AUDIENCE: My name is Professor Nevi, presenter of creator's Union of Arab in United Nations.  So I was last near in Kyoto, and the same problem was we were talking about the same problem, but actually I didn't see any Action Plan.  I'm sorry to say that I have some rules enforcement roles, and I will give you some examples.

Why not we do like if you need to promote as a faculty member in this area, so you will have to teach some people in that area.  We have to draw some roles in order to help some society in order to be educated enough to use the Internet and so on.

In all of the countries, if you have a company, then you have to have some local people in your company in order to proceed.  And this is their right.  And also their right, the people who don't have any connection in their Internet, to enforce the people who has Internet to teach them in order to take your rights in your job, in your promotion, in your salary sometimes I'm sorry to say this.  So we need an Action Plan in order    it's called enforcement Action Plan in order to help those people in a different area.  Thank you very much.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you for that.  Would anybody from the panel like to address the important question of skills development?  Can we have the microphone here.

>> GBENGA SESAN: I'm happy to speak to that.  I think two things, one is the importance of skills.  We can't overemphasize that.  The story I told of Famous.  The reason he was able to advance is because he peaked the first skill using spreadsheets and that led to others.  The second which also ties into the skills is the need to empower communities.  Sally spoke earlier about, and I think it's important because learning is not just about the content.  It's also about the agency.  It's also about realizing the fact that this is not something given to me by others because they pity me.  This is something that I'm given access to.  I think this is important.  This is why one of the things when Timea talked about the universal service earlier, I was excited because we did a whole report and I will be speaking about that tomorrow at one of the lightning talks about 26 African countries and what we have done with USFs.  And you are right, many times the solution we need to connect the last mile is already there.  You have collected the money from the taxes, but we need action.  And I think that's the phrase you just used.  We need the people to be literally forced to act.  So I think it's important to have a sense of agency in learning and it's absolutely important to make sure that the community buys into it because we have done projects that were literally protected by the community.

In one of those times I was leading a project called digital village, and it was a situation where people were fighting and it became very violent.

The security guards in the area who are children who are learning from the centre came to my office, locked the door, locked the gate, and when everything happened and everything settled down I asked them what was going on.  They said we are protecting you because you are teaching our children and we are protecting the centre because if you destroy the computers in the centre then the next generation is poor as we are.  So when community gets a sense of ownership it helps to protect and make it sustainable.

>> TAMI BHAUMIK: I'm from Roblox and I will get into more, I will explain what that is, but I can't agree with you more.  I lead an area called civility at Roblox, and our sole focus is to bridge the education gap between children, parents and teachers.  And if we are going to create a global community that will thrive in this next generation of the Internet, we must educate everyone.

And so our focus really is working with partners from around the world to make sure that we are getting evidence based data to be able to inform and educate parents, teachers, and children so that they can grow up in a much safer place.  I can get into that during our session.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you so much, and I think that's a great segue in going into the second half of the panel.  We have heard a lot as we were talking about the audience and as I was listening to the first part of the panel on what happens once people are online.  We want to make sure that we bring people online so that they can reach their full potential whether that's for education, accessing important services like healthcare or their own maximum potential on the job market or actually developing entrepreneurship or making businesses grow.

So those are all of the positives, the great stories.  What we want to happen.  But, of course, there is also sometimes challenges with coming online.  So that's what we try to address in the second part of the panel.

So once people are online, what is it that we still need to do to make sure that that connectivity is meaningful, that that actually works.  So to start us off and sort of make the connection between the first half of the panel and the second, I'm going to turn to the Digital Cooperation Organisation and would love to hear from you from the DCO perspective how do you work to address digital divides and what are the challenges you see that come with rapid connectivity.

>> ALAA ABDULAAL: Hello, everyone, good afternoon I'm honored to be in this association and even to be the first speaker to connect both aspects.  I would like to highlight important points that my colleagues here in the panel mentioned which is looking at the almost third of the people are still not connected and then we talked about some skills that they need to be from a digital literacy perspective, and how it's very important for everyone to have that right skills once they are connected.

At the Digital Cooperation Organisation, we, our mandate specifically is to make sure that every person, every business, every country and nation has a fair opportunity to prosper and have a fair opportunity to grow in the digital economy, the cross border digital economy and to have that exclusive and sustainable growth.

So it is part of our objective and goal is to also bridge the digital divide and make sure that everyone is part of this ecosystem and acceleration of the digitalization that is going on.

And for us to do that, let me go back, we are a four year old organisation, so we are actually new.  We started by when we, when the organisation was built, it was very important for us to understand, understand what are the different challenges that are hindering the progress and the participation to be part of this digital economy growth or even digitalization growth.

And this is why we have done a lot of global roundtables.  We have done five at the beginning of 2022 2023 to really understand those challenges.  And the insights were similar to what we are saying, which is there is a lot of countries are struggling with do they have the right infrastructure for them to be connected?  Do the nations have the right skills when they are already connected?  Are the policies and regulations from the country are enabling people not only to be connected but even businesses to grow in this AI era.

And a lot more are is there cooperation between different countries and organisations, are the businesses involved in the running and in the setting, are they cocreating those policies with their countries and Governments?  And then also, again, if we want to really make sure that everyone has a fair opportunity, we need to start measuring things because, again, just saying that there is a gap, there is a divide, we already have numbers that people, 2.6 million people are not connected, but how can we start measuring how countries can start progressing?

And this is why we put it among ourselves in the DCO, we have that goal is that, okay, let's first of all create a framework to look at the digital economy.  Have that and I think one of the audience will have asked do we have a unified framework.  So, yes, for us we need to build a unified framework definition on how to measure the digital economy.  What is needed for each country for them to progress, to grow, to have all of their nation connected and have that fair opportunity?  And we launched recently during the UNGA in New York, the Digital Economy Navigator, which is a tool which we put the framework on how to measure the digital economy.  We assessed 50 countries for them to understand where do they currently stand from a digital economy perspective.  We put different level of categorization from a maturity perspective, identified that we have three dimensions.  We need the right, we need to tackle it from a business perspective, from a society perspective, and then having that dimension of what would enable the society and businesses identifying 11 pillars, different pillars from infrastructure, from digital transformation, having the right regulations, having the right digital skills, education, health, and different sectors.

And then we assess those 50 countries and gave, where do they stand?  What is the gap?  How they can move forward.  We have done that huge analysis through different lenses, through the 11 pillars that we have, we looked at different regions, because, again, you need to create synergies.  Not every country should work alone.  We can work together.  And this is, you find all of these findings in the report that we have launched and I hope everyone had the chance to look at it, which is the Digital Economy Navigator report.

With that set of recommendations, we can start creating synergies targeted to Government, targeted to Private Sector where we all have to work together because, again, we believe in the approach of cooperation.  We are the Digital Cooperation Organisation, cooperation is our middle name.  And this is how we try to work because we believe that we are in a world we do not want to leave anyone behind.  How can we guarantee we don't leave anyone behind?  We have to work together.

So, again, the Digital Economy Navigator, I think we believe that this navigator will help in starting to measure the maturity, to have that, if we identify what is the gap, let's build actionable plan which is also one of the audience was mentioning, and then let's measure are we progressing or not towards those different pillars from as we said connectivity, skills, infrastructure.

And for us we took all of those findings, those findings were not just a one year work that we have been working for three years to gather the data and to really have that understanding to bridge the digital divide.

And we created what we call the digital space accelerators.  Those accelerators are focused on the challenges and the gaps that we are finding.  Again, going back to finding the synergy between different stakeholders and different countries.  The digital space accelerator, we identify each year specific topics that are very important that will help making sure that the future is inclusive and sustainable and that everyone has the fair opportunity to grow, and we try to have that multistakeholder approach where we create different topics with different groups.

We bring Governments on the table, we bring Private Sector, Academia, experts, and we try to solve that challenge.  We created a group for which has been mentioned women empowerment, how they can be empowered by the ICT and through ICT.

We created a group for misinformation online and how it's important to solve that issue.  Also AI, ethical use of AI, and different and we have almost covered along eleven topics last year and this year.  It's all built on one mechanism which is bringing all of the right stakeholders not only Government, but Government, Private Sector, think tanks, experts, are not only focusing on one country rather than going, we go through different roundtables to really capture the different aspects, different insights from and angles that each expert and each region can bring to and we try to build those solutions.  Again, there is a report in our website that reflects that journey of the digital space accelerators and the different topics that we have.

And it produced this mechanism produced almost 11 publications that are giving specific, some of them are Toolkits, some of them are unified frameworks, policy recommendation.  And we hope by this mechanism we really would help in bridging the digital divide.

In addition, last but not least that I want also to highlight of some of the cases that we are working on, which might colleagues mentioned the skills, and even enabling digital transformation for different businesses.  We have what we call We Elevate.  It's a program that we have where we enable women led businesses and help them to have the right skills to transform digitally from regular businesses to businesses online.

This is giving them an opportunity not only to have digitalization for the sake of digitization but even expand their businesses.  Being online means having bigger outreach, being cross bordered, and this really has been already launched in different countries of our Member States, and we are targeting to digitalize three hundred women businesses giving them the right skills and the courses that will enable them to be online.

Just as a final point, I really iterate that we believe that cooperation is the solution.  No one nation can work alone, and solve all of the issues.  It has to be a collaborative approach where countries work together, Private Sector, international organisation, NGO's, all of us try to work together hand in hand to solve those challenges and bridge the digital divide.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you so much for that comprehensive presentation of all of your work.  What strikes me is the fact that you are talking about collaboration between nations which is very important, especially as we see how difficult it is sometimes for nations to agree on the way forward to producing incentives, toolkits, opportunities for them to meet and collaborate and identify perhaps common challenges that require their common solutions is very important.

But you also mentioned building blocks of the digital economy itself starting from connectivity, but working all the way up all the way into the most recent technologies.  So how do we move from bridging the divides for connectivity so that we can make sure that we are not widening the divides as we move rapidly along with the development of technology.

So this brings me to José de Pereira because you work a lot on emerging technologies, and how do you see connectivity as a prerequisite to where we need to arrive with AI and digital technologies and what do we need to enable access to everybody, to those technologies as well?

>> JOSÉ DE PEREIRA: Thank you very much.  Thank you for having me.  It's a pleasure to be here.  It was a bit loud maybe.

Thank you very much for having me, and, yes, I have been looking.  Forward to this topic.  I think that connectivity is, we have talked about access.  We have talked about how we should universalize connectivity, access to digital tools.  And I think that, we have been working on this for a while., and we have not achieved this universalization yet, but I think we should also start thinking about how can we include, how can we have the allies of    help the allies of the community so they can help shape the digital agenda and shape the digital futures.  Despite the many benefits we can see that digitization brings and I think most of my colleagues have mentioned a lot of them and access to job opportunities, access to possibility of learning, of reaching wider audiences, I think it also relates to like how can we include these people so that they can also think about how is the future of technology that they want in order to serve their own purpose and which included also the purpose that we need in order to serve the environment issues.    solve environmental issues.  So I think it brings notice to how local communities are using these technologies and the Amazon among indigenous peoples bring important clues on where are we going and what are the challenges we have and the opportunities out there.  And most recently, especially in the last two years, we have been having what I see as a transformation out there.  For years we have more indigenous communities being connected either through the community networks or more traditional ways of accessing the Internet, but nowadays, especially when we look to the Amazon where traditionally the present state and telecommunication companies have been failing to provide connectivity to these people.

One new factor is out there which is lower orbit satellites especially when you think about Star Link.  And to some degree, these technologies are allowing many of these peoples to communicate between themselves to have access to social benefit, but at the same time, they bring a whole new challenge which is they are also facilitating access to people who end up being enemies of these communities and I'm talking about invaders of indigenous territories, of illegal goldminers, of land grabbers and so on.

So this brings us to a paradox here.  On the one hand, these technologies are facilitating at the capacity of indigenous to resist to these people, but at the same time they are contributing to the cycle of violence that is perpetuated.  And this is more problematic if you think about the Anamome people in Brazil their territory has been witnessing invasion of many goldminers sometimes even to fuel the digital economy.  They have been extracting gold and selling to many big corporations, big tech operations that are across the world.

So how can we be their allies in putting in resistance against these challenges especially when we consider that, and this is the case of my this Anamome communities is they had to decide and sometimes go against their own habits their own ontologies to connect in order to resist these problematic features of both these invaders, but also how the industry develops itself as a whole.

So something has to be changed, and I any that it's very important that these people end up and participate in the design of these digital futures, both on a degree of developing these technologies but also of thinking about policy making.  I think that forming issues should be pushed forward and we are here in the form of multistakeholder forum and I think that we should think about possibilities for us being allies of these groups.

I think that first of all, and I think it has already been mentioned by other participants, digital literacy is fundamental not just to use correctly the technologies but also to have them develop and critically assess what is going on, what's going on on them and also with regard to infrastructure so the infrastructures that relate, that are even the basis, on the fundamentals of these technologies.

The second is the ability to, it's helped them address the risks of monopolies and state action is fundamental.  Thinking about how can we create alternatives considering that Star link is controlled by Elon Musk who has been challenging authorities and failing to comply with institutional demands that are made to him.  Third would be to think about governance measures that allow for popular digital sovereignty.  There are movements happening in this regard, one is the homeless workers movement which talks a lot about digital sovereignty which is not only sovereignty on a state level, but also communities to control their data, to control and finally enabling how to build bridges so they can participate in policy making efforts.  In Brazil, for instance, the debates on the regulation, we have had three years of debate and only one indigenous representative who was Chima managed to participate.  This has to change.  This has to change.

And I think that as Devico Papi an important indigenous leader in Brazil says all of these mechanical machines should be appropriated by these peoples because it is their blood and their metals, the resources in their land that are feeding them, so they should also find ways, we should help them find ways to appropriate them in order to shape the digital turs I'm talking about.  So the Brazil Internet steering Committee is working a lot to connect these communities with other organisations including ISOC also participated in many community networks being built there, and beyond, but I think we should give a step further and I think that COP30 which is going to take place in the Brazilian Amazon in 2025 is an important forum for discussion on how to find ways to bridge, to create bridges so that these communities can participate in shaping up these digital futures.  Thank you very much.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you for the input and for highlighting connecting people to technologies but also connecting them to conversations we have about these technologies, and make sure that we shape those together with those who we are trying to target.

You also mentioned emerging technologies and AI and we have kept hearing AI creep in in these sessions and it creeps into every session we have at IGF recently.  I want to turn to Shivnath Thukral and ask what do you feel are persisting challenges to achieve inclusivity not only in connectivity, but at the end of the spectrum that we have, at the end of the spectrum generally but where we are with the development of technology, how do we connect people inclusively to the latest developments when we are already see that we are facing challenges at the beginning of the spectrum also.

>> SHIVNATH THUKRAL: Thanks for inviting me, Meta, Meta from India on this panel.  In the spirit of being a die-hard optimist, I try to paint a more realistic, pragmatic and positive picture of what I see as the future and hopefully will address some of the concerns my friend has but I want to pick up one line from each of the speakers to try and create a framework of why we must use technology for the sake of technology.

It is very important to sometimes sit back and think why have we failed over 2.3 billion people of this world so far.  I'm sure Sally will agree that even if we give them network, connectivity, it may still not solve for the need of the Internet because the Internet as we know in our languages may not be the Internet that we will be able to provide for them in their language or in the complexity of the environment they live in which is affordability, access to device, et cetera.

So I think if you step back and, it was said no one should be left behind, Internet is that critical if you provide it to them.  Thelma said over pivoting on Private Sector investment has not led to the result you want to see on the ground.

Our friend from Japan said could it be the futuristic technology like AI which helps us solve it?  Ms. Alaa Abdulaal says cooperation between nations fully agree and I will tell you why one by one.  At Meta, we definitely feel the answer to this future is open source technologies which Meta professes.

And I will tell you two examples why so.  Let's take the issue of language.  You said no one should be left behind.  Today it is possible using a program like NNLB200 which Meta runs, it's a program called no language left behind where almost 200 languages can be translated directly with each other.  Normally the framework of translation is you take a language.  Get it from English to the other language.  Today NNLB makes possible 200 languages to be translated.  Is there is an offer where languages known as low resource models where you do not have a written script of a language.  Those languages can be used training AI models so the languages become inclusive of the generally Internet ecosystem.  What that is solving for is inclusivity.  It is solving for those people who are out of the world of Internet to be brought in the world of Internet.  So while we solve for physical connectivity, physical infrastructure, you must solve for this.  Let's look at examples of where open source technologies like our large language models, LAMA has been able to help.  I was telling my friend from India about examples in education, and we talk about agriculture.  In our part of the world agriculture is a serious issue, but if you deploy open source technology, you can give the information relevant to the farmer on the device using LAMA.

Low cost model of LAMA which you can deploy on the device.  It doesn't need to be on a fancy computer with a fancy server.  There is a startup in India, these are the kind of examples which can solve for it whereby they get relevant crop information, climate information in the era of climate disruption.  Using their phone they can have large language models.  You said AI is the fashionable word.  AI is being deployed not through some very sophisticated ecosystem and they get real time information.  So that's agriculture for you.

Student led inclusivity.  You talked about how to we make sure representation happens.  One of the reasons representation doesn't happen is they feel overwhelmed by connectivity to the language of English.  In India we are working a program at an AI institute where how to teach children English at local state level which has largely education system delivered in local language.  How can they learn English skills.  Similarly for the Government, one of the partnerships that Meta has deployed using AI tools is how to make sure somebody in a remote area finds the right skill set, training available on the Government website.  Governments actually have done a fabulous job of running programmes, but the missing link is how do people access if.  So let's say in your region you are running skilling programmes but somebody doesn't know how to find the right skilling program.  This pilot we are running allows them to connect just by verbal assistance saying I'm so and so from this region.  I am in this language.  I would like to learn about welding.

And the AI assistant can help them find the right course in the nearby geographical region.  The long and short of the story is with open source technologies, what are you achieving, inclusivity.  You are achieving a lot of real time feedback, making these models better, and the best part which addresses and I think you mentioned about sovereign AI, we do not think it is in contribution when you adopt open source technologies, you can have local deployment.  You don't have to worry about data floating elsewhere.  You can use a large language model locally and create those solutions.

Why is this possible?  I think you talked about policy framework, super critical.  Why do we need supported policy frameworks?  In India, for example, India is now Famous for what is known as digital public infrastructure.  It is a Government initiative.  Government created digital rails based on the identity layer to deliver solutions like payment.  Today in India.  We have billions of transactions purely cashless using phones.  How is that possible, because you created what is called a digital infrastructure.  What the Government did, Private Sector built on it.  I think the DPI approach the digital public infrastructure approach that the Government took to AI will be the next frontier.

Government will build open compute resources, support open sourced technologies, open data sets and support language translation models.  If you combine all of these four from a DPI perspective, many low income countries, middle income countries could leverage what they have not been able to do for 20 years within a few years.  They don't have to go through the whole evolution cycle.  They can crunch that.  I was at the India IGF last week, Mr. Chengetai spoke there.  There is no uniform solution.  AI could be the bridge.  AI could be the glue which will bring all of these people in if you start connecting the dots, create low cost, localized solutions in their language to deliver not just citizen services from the Government, but support an ecosystem, start up a system like we have done for agriculture, for education, payments, financial sector.  I'm sure in our part of the world, small ticket lending is an issue.  Farmers want more ticket loans.  How do you use AI based analytics to do that.  I think the world is full of possibilities, and I think the next frontier of the 2.6 billion people will be solves for faster if we are able to adopt open source technologies which is in sync with what the world needs.  Thank you.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you so much for that, as you said very optimistic perspective, but I think also the tangible and real one on what technology can help us achieve.  You said technology for the purpose of technology, but I don't think, I don't think you are right.  It's not technology for the purpose of technology, it's technology for the purpose of developing the potential that individuals, societies and businesses have.  It's not just to have the next one and the newest one.  It's to actually use it in a way that is helpful for the communities that are so diverse as you said, and build the bridges to help them bring them along on where they feel they ought to be there in their potential.

So I want to continue with that line, and tell me when you spoke responding to the question, you mentioned how we need opportunities to empower people to have the relevant skills and training to access AI and through that skills and training we can actually help them address the safety issues that they might face when coming online or the big unknown of connecting to the Internet and the newest technologies.

So perhaps you can expand a little bit on that now in, you have more time to expand a bit what you and what Roblox does.

>> TAMI BHAUMIK: Thank you so much, what an honour to be here with you and hear your perspectives.  What I would like to do is focus, maybe take a little bit of time to share a little bit about what Roblox is, we are not quite as big as Meta so I would like to explain what it is.

So Roblox is a technology bilateral form.  It's a place where people can come to learn to work, to create, to communicate with one another, and a lot of people come to actually design and create games and experiences, publish it on our platform to millions.

We now have over six million active developers developing experiences.  We have tens of millions of games and experiences on Roblox.  Every type of game you can imagine.

It is a place where young people and children are thriving.  It's where they are learning.  It's where they are connecting with one another.  And if you take a future vision of where this next generation will go, it is they will be in immersive worlds such as Roblox learning with one another and doing things.

It is, we have now 90 million daily activity users on your platform, so we are large, and we are global.  And so from a connectivity standpoint it's so important for to enable people from all generations to be able to connect with one another and learn from one another, the Roblox platform is someplace they can do it.  Because there are so many young people on the platform, we prioritize safety.

So the area that I lead is called civility.  It is focused on, as I mentioned before, bridging the education gap between the generations, which is so important.  It's giving parents the tools and the knowledge to be able to help their children to thrive online.  So I have two daughters, and I actually laugh because I am in the technology industry, and when people talk about if you see something that bothers, you go to a parent or a trusted adult.

I'm not, I'm not this expert, right?  So I'm not a doctor or an academic.  How do I know?

Parents have no idea how to guide their children in this new Internet world.  It is up to us collectively to make sure that we have the power to be able to educate parents so they can help their children to thrive.  That is through industry.  Industry needs to be responsible.  Technology companies need to be responsible to make sure that they have the education materials available and getting it out there.  It is the responsibility of Governments to make sure that they are prioritizing digital literacy, not just as an afterthought, but truly and meaningfully integrating it into their education systems from the very beginning.

By the time a child gets to 15 or 16 years old, it's too late.  We need to start thinking about educating them the moment they get a digital device into their hands, making sure it's age appropriate and making sure that the information going to the child is evidence based, and it's vetted.

And so one of the things that we do at Roblox is we work with Governments, we work with teacher organisations to make sure that we are developing curriculum as an example in South Korea, we are developing a curriculum, a digital, a civility digital literacy curriculum for teachers and a operate one for parents.

So many parents come and say to me that they are so scared of the world that their children, the digital world their children are going into, but fear is driven by the unknown.  And if we can educate them, the more that we educate parents, the less fearful they are.

And so at Roblox our civility initiative is based on three different pillars.  The first is safety.  You got to know how to use the safety tools.  You need to know that they are there, and you need to know how to use them.

If a bad actor comes on or you see bad content, you need to know where to report it.  You need to know how to process it.  That is something very important.  The second is mental health and wellbeing.  Loneliness is a global epidemic.  Anxiety and depression, global epidemic.  We need to wake up.  We need to take this seriously, and we need to make sure that anywhere where there are young people, children, that we need to make sure that we are giving them the life lines necessary in order to help them thrive, that is help lines, that is, and I know that United Nations, in fact, we are partners with United Nations in developing help lines for developing nations.  We need to make sure that those life lines are available and easily accessible.

I will give you an example.  On Roblox, one of the things that we do in this world, we have a partner, aloe yoga.  They are an exercise brand.

They developed a mindfulness experience.  It's beautiful.  Beautiful music.  It's about meditation and the importance of meditation.

Within the first five days, we had 8 million people come on and learn how to meditate.  The feedback that we got from children was unbelievable.  There was one child who said my parents are getting a divorce.  I'm so anxious and I'm so upset, but when I come into this experience, this aloe yoga experience and I put on my headphones, I can shut all of that out and I can find peace.

So technology is an area where we can bring that to young people.  We have a responsibility to opening up these worlds that are positive and good so that they can learn from them.  And then the final pillar that we focus on in civility is digital literacy.  And so, again, knowing how to respond to a scam, knowing how to identify a scam, knowing when to, again, have a healthy relationship with technology, to know yourself.  Every single one of us sitting here is different, and our relationship with technology should be different.  Maybe the amount of time that I spend online maybe is not as much as somebody like you.  Maybe you can actually handle it, handle a little bit more.

So not everybody is the same.  So, again, technology firms have the responsibility to continue to innovate.  Roblox is continually innovating and making sure we are developing safety tools, mental health support tools to allow people to adjust based upon their situation.

So I think that one of the things that we all have to recognize as we start focusing on bridging the gap, the digital divide is also thinking about the education because we need to get that fly wheel started now.  We are already behind.  And so the fear that I have is that we won't collectively as a world wake up to the necessity of prioritizing digital literacy, mental health, and safety before it's too late.

So I'm really glad we are having this discussion now.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you so much for that and I think you are bringing it full circle from what we have been discussing in the past hour and a half together.  And you are also bringing in somehow to me this spirit IGF.  Because as I listen to you, when you say Roblox does this or it's not about you going away and thinking about it by yourself, because for you to be able to develop a curriculum, you have to work with the teachers.  For you to be able to find the right partner to develop a mental health application, you have to talk to mental health specialists.  You have to talk to the children themselves.  You have to talk to the parents.  We all have to have this thing that we come together and do at the IGF where it's the true meeting of the minds and the meeting of perspectives from different backgrounds for us to then realize what are the challenges we have and how can we bring these unusual partnerships together to actually find a response whether we are talking about a tool for agriculture or a tool for children to navigate their online lives.

It's very different perspectives, but it's technology in all of its different forms and technology is clearly a challenge but it can also be the solution if you know how to use it wisely.  So on that, I would love to turn over to the audience and see if they have any reactions to what we have heard from our last four speakers.

>> AUDIENCE: Can I speak in French?

>> TIMEA SUTO: Yes, we can hear you.

>> AUDIENCE: Hello I'm Dr. Abdullah.

>> TIMEA SUTO: One second, please.  Are we good?  Channel 2.

>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.  So I'm Dr. Alpha Abdullah Yelo, I work in the Parliament of transaction in Kenya.  I'm very happy to participate in this forum.  This is my first time.  First, I would like to give my salutations of the Parliament of the Guinea to all of you, and I would like also to salute the king of Saudi Arabia and the Conference and I would like to salute all of your panel and all of the participants that are here today with us.

I was very interested in all of the comments, especially in what the Indian panelist was saying and also the rest of the speakers.  It is very important to agree on one fact.  It is true technology is very important, but I completely agree that what the colleague from India said that the use of the technology is also very important.  It's as important as technology.

So it is very important today to the literacy is very important today.  And the reason for that is because today in Guinea, we are writing a new Constitution and the use of technology has helped us to disseminate the content of the new Constitution to the population.

But also to foreign countries, and this has been enabled with technology and with the platform that we created with interactive platform that was created and today I can say that all Guineans know the content of our Constitution thanks to technology, and the good use of technology allows also that population agree wherever they are, and so the population agrees with the Constitution.

So recently in all of our country, and all of our members of Parliament have traveled everywhere in the country, and they knew them and that was thanks to all of the videos that was on the platform that I was talking now, all of the works of the Parliament were broadcasted on this platform.  So everybody in Guinea, and outside Guinea could follow the works.  So I agree with you, so technology is important, but is the use of technology is even more important.

And literacy in the use of technology will allow to multiply this positive side of technology.  And also it will decrease its negative effects.  And especially when we talk about young people, teenagers and children we are very happy to participate to this forum, and I would like to request to all of the panelists to give some examples regarding the good use of technology.

Above all with Internet.  In their own, your own countries.  So we can share your experiences.

So we could share all of your good practices, thank you very much.

>> TIMEA SUTO: So what we have heard is    thank you very much, we have heard about civic participation which I think was something that the panel didn't mention but is one element where technology can be of help and we were asked as panelists to give examples that the rest of the world could learn from, some good examples of the use of technology in your regions, in your countries or in your organisations so anybody would like to take up that request from our speaker from the Parliament of Guinea.

>> SHIVNATH THUKRAL: I want to thank my friend from Kenya for acknowledging some of the things I talked about.  I can give you many examples of successful use of technology, but I'm sure everybody is much more competent than I am to talk about the successes.

I will give you a bit of a fun example, in the light of conference, for example, if you are writing the new Constitution, how about using AI tools to make it interactive.  Ask them how they would be able to apply the principles of Constitution in their real life.

Just as an example, when you do law writing, when you write a new legislation, in India now there is a trend that when they publish the law, they use illustrations, how will the law actually apply.  I think it's a commendable exercise for people to have the connect.  Otherwise law is written by lawyers and we only get to use it when it was challenged in the court, but if you suddenly start writing laws with illustrations of your day to day example of how the law would be applicable to you, that is one very interesting use of technology that one can do.

But in terms of what you talked about, sir, in governance and how the parliamentarians when they went to different parts of the country and people could connect to them, there are many such examples.  One closer to my heart which I feel strongly about related a Meta platform InstaGram is how you can take up your causes of your country which you want to highlight and have the creator ecosystem showcase it.  Tourism is a great example in India where the creators actually they run a competition in India probably would be the only country which has recognized national creator awards.  So creators are given issues and ideas and they run a contest and create showcase different locations in the country.

Well, the marketing Department of Government of tourism could spend a lot of money, but if you have these creators with millions of followers showcasing different location in the country, that goes a very long way.  So there are many such examples, but more in the space of artificial intelligence I would say there are examples in the medical field you are able to create solutions on diagnostic health.

So, for example, we are trying to work with a firm where the initial assessment of somebody in a remote area doesn't need immediate medical interaction.  They can talk to a tool and asking them their symptoms, the initial assessment, so primary healthcare can be solved at a fundamental level.  So there are many such examples we can talk about, India population of 1.4 billion there are many such examples, but I will pause there just to say that, I mean, what Tami said is so critical that if technology companies do not take up these challenges, who else will because we recognize that our products have immense up side but certain challenges which we have to all work together, collaborate together, so to solve for safety, literacy, awareness in itself.

For example, in InstaGram, there are 50 tools for parents to kind of help children, but how do we make sure everybody gets to know it.  Every time we talk to a policy maker and tell them about it, they are super happy we are doing something, so it's about taking responsibility and driving it.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you.

>> SALLY WENTWORTH: I would like to add onto this  

>> TAMI BHAUMIK: A year and a half ago we hosted a workshop with Harvard medical we worked on hypothesis in five to ten years the online world could be safer and civil than real life.  If we were to make that reality what would need to happen in technology innovation, policy and education.  We invited over 100 thought leaders from around the world from safety NGO's to academics, researchers, child psychiatrists and industry, and we brought in teens and we learned a lot.  To cut to the chase, the one thing that came out so strongly was to include teens meaningfully through everything that we do, and I can honestly say I work for a technology company, and while we certainly have focus groups, things like that, we don't actually from beginning to end include youth meaningfully.

This year from that workshop, we changed things.  We have announced a teen Council that we are integrating into our work.  One of the funny things about when we were in this workshop, all of these smart people were talking about things that should be done on the Internet, what should be done to make platforms safer.  And this young 17 year old woman started shaking her head.  She looked at us and I looked at her, what's going on.  She said that's not how we use it.  That's not how we use the Internet.

We got it wrong.  All of these smart people.  So as you are writing and drafting this new Constitution, please remember children.  Please remember teens.  And incorporate them meaningfully through the development of that framework.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you for that.

>> JOSÉ DE PEREIRA: Thank you for this question.  It is easier for me to speak in French.  Thank you.  I'll give you two examples and then reflect a little bit about this issue as a whole.  I think that the example is the homeless workers movement in Brazil.  They have an initiative, maybe one of the members is in the audience, which is work hire who fight.

And the idea is to create, the idea was to create a platform linked to WhatsApp through which people could hire for like services in their houses, services in their office, or even like for delivery services, hire people who were homeless and were working together and were part of the initiatives of this movement which is very big throughout Brazil.  I think this is a great initiative.  One thing that they always discussed was we need to appropriate these technologies in a way that serves our benefits when we do not have the means to reach another platform, other platforms, other delivery platforms or services as a whole.  So this was a very important initiative.

Another one was a platform that was built with by incorporation between an NGO in Brazil which works on research in the Amazon.  I don't want to be unfair here, but it's better that I don't say the name because I'm not 100% sure, I can't remember exactly the name of the organisation, but they did this platform through which indigenous peoples themselves would include data on the forestation for them to have like a better assessment on the ground and not just rely on satellite imagery to map the forestation sites in Brazil.

This was a very important initiative which I think represents not only co creation, but also self governed data.  And I would say as a whole on, especially when we think about providing public services through technology is that we always remember to keep the analog.  In people do not know how to use technology.  Many people don't have access.  We talk about connectivity.  That's crucial, and also when they have access to it, we may face challenges regarding, for instance, language which has been talked about in this panel or even the possibility of the capacity of explaining oneself of understanding what one's rights are.  That's why the human aspect is fundamental to be maintained throughout this process.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you for that.

>> GBENGA SESAN: Thanks, that's a direct question.  It's as direct as it gets.  Half of my work is in digital rights, human rights in the digital age.  And over the last few years one of the most important uses I have seen young people put technology use to is in political participation, in civic participation.

I spend my time worrying about how the digital civic space is closing and I see young people do creative things, conversations that you can't have on TV stations because of concerns, conversations you can't have on radio, you can have those conversations in safe digital spaces.  I think that the example of writing a Constitution and getting feedback from young people is a perfect example of political participation.  It's not just about elections.  It's not just about choosing leaders.  It's about envisioning the future together, participating in it, and making sure that young people are not involved in tokenistic examples, where they can actually participate in this.  We have seen that a very good example I was involved with is in 2011 the electoral agency at the time in Nigeria said you have to wait for the voting to finish and then for four days before you see the results.  I'm not that patient.

My parents may be that patient, but I want to see the results immediately.  So a group of us gathered, designed a mobile app.  We used the acronym of what the commission had used registered voter database.  We created an app that while we were on the cue and people were voting and results were announced in each location, we were able to use that platform to aggregate and see what the results were and when the results were announced to say, you know what, we think this is correct because the margin of error is not large and that is where technology is useful in participation.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you so much.

>> ALAA ABDULAAL: It highlights what you have been mentioning.  The question is how can digital technology help and lets us as the panelists share our learning and example.

And I think as DCO, one of the things we thought is the exact same thing, how can we enable Governments and countries to share their successes and their digital solutions that they are using and their digital transformation.  This is why we created a platform called Impact where all of our Member States can list their digital solutions that they are using for their digital Government for other countries to learn from to share that experience, and why reinvent the wheel?  If a solution is deployed, for example, a digital ID solution is deployed in one country that is successful, that has been working very well, another country in need of such similar solution, why do we have to redo it again?  Access, share the experience of another country and take it and deploy it.  This is why we created the Impact.  I think this wouldn't be possible without the technology and without having those platforms that you can share the experience.

Another life example is that before conferences, if we do not have access and Internet our panel now it's accessible through live stream online, it means that all conversation, all questions is being streamed to millions of people without being physically here.  So this is a live example of how technology is enabling us to share our knowledge to even hear different voices at the same time.

>> TIMEA SUTO: That's a great example.  Sally, you had your hand up and then Thelma and then we go to you.

>> SALLY WENTWORTH: Thank you, and I think this builds on the last two comments, and I'm really impressed by the way that you spoke about using technology to improve transparency and engagement in your policy development.

And building on that, I think there are important lessons and opportunities through that which is the technology can allow coalitions to develop.

We are part of the global encryption coalition, for example, which has over 400 members around the world who spot threats to encryption or identify opportunities to promote better online security, and as you said, they compare and learn from each other.  So where one stakeholder may have encounters a particular challenge and successfully advocated and worked in their local community, those are resources that are shared online through this coalition.  This is almost all done virtually to support activities in other communities.

And we see that kind of civil society coalition building happening online and in really powerful ways, I think my advice to our colleague is to be open to that kind of advocacy that happens from civil society from your communities on the basis of the transparency that you are providing in support of your Constitution is not just about consultation, but about building together and leveraging your civil society that is able to organize online to be part of that conversation.

And if we circle back to some of the comments earlier about connectivity, I think what you are seeking about in terms of involving parents is every bit as important as when we think about connectivity solutions.  Being able to engage those communities, giving them agency in the conversation about the solutions that will work for them and the languages they speak consistent with the culture that they are coming from is what will make the connectivity powerful for them.

This is not a drop connectivity in and leave.  This is about enabling those communities to be part of that solution.  And I think if that's the approach we take, we will be, we will go much farther than we have been able to go so far, and those communities will be then part of building the digital economy of the future, and not being on the receiving end of it.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thelma, you wanted to say a few words as well.

>> THELMA QUAYE: Thank you.  And I think I would also like to commend the colleague from Guinea.  At Smart Africa what we do is to leverage what countries are doing well to show the other countries so there is leapfrogging and you don't fall through the same mistakes that they may have done.

So one practical example, for instance, in healthcare is what Rwanda is doing using zip line where they are using drones powered by AI and what this AI does is to measure and check and know where blood supplies are low, for instance, and the drone takes it directly to these remote areas.

And these are places that are usually hard to reach and this is a practical example within the healthcare, but also even on the policy side, we are starting to use AI to harmonize.  It's much easier.  When you have so many different policies on the same topic, you can always leverage AI to harmonize.

In the same vein, countries can leverage the same technology to learn what are the short falls of my policy, for instance.  So these are some of the things.  There are so many other examples, but these are what I wanted to share.  Thank you.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you very much.

>> TAKUO IMAGAWA: I was very inspired by today's discussion from the panelists and audience.  It seems to me there is a lot of discussion about using the digital technology in school or education process, and I think it is very important to build up some specific projects to involve a lot of stakeholders.  An example in my country, it's not my ministry, but Ministry of Education, and we introduce the specific project called legal school project and it provides, it distributes a PC to every student in the high school and junior high school student.  That way the vendors, industry sector, vendors and telecom operators are incentivized to join the project because they can get money from the Government in that way.

And also teachers and students, of course, involved.  And also parents should be involved because the homework can be, have to be submitted through the PC or tablet and parents have to prevent students from looking at making access to the legal or harmful information.  So I think specific projects can involve a lot of stakeholders and it's very important for the Government and also industry sector or civil society and academia to very good project that involves a lot of stakeholders.  Thank you.

>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you very much.  So we are coming up to the end of our session.  Actually we have one minute left for the two hours we have had together.  So I will ask indulgence of the audience to maybe bear with us and our panel for a little longer.  I understand we have another intervention.

>> AUDIENCE: (No English translation).

>> TIMEA SUTO: Just a moment because I don't think we have interpretation.

>> AUDIENCE: So I am Mrs. Chope.  I coordinate a fund that confirms that has a fund for kids for digital inclusion.  What you mentioned today is very important when we speak about ethical access for Internet where we have a positive change actually, we search for connectivity and some teenagers find a way to connect, so the state services are very important today in this digital world.  My friend from Guinea mentioned the services they guarantee, but also we have societies that are not well structured, and because of this new component digitally in addition to databases and usage that is not really known for the community, so these actually are changing the modalities of the society, and these new AI ask us and put a new challenge, and we ask ourselves where are we heading, where our societies are heading if we are really serving them, what are we doing.

So these questions related to training, to women, women who are forgotten or when we speak of uncomprehensive model of Internet usage by teenagers, it makes us ask how and what is the future of societies that are already traditional in their way of living.

So we should not forget that these trainings are important experiences, are very important they are feedback also to know how can we actually keep up with these transformations and have a positive transformation in society without unstructured values and destruction of values, cultural values, especially that are important for our life together.

So how can everything be actually, how can this be an ally to this.  This is my remark.  Thank you so much.

>> TIMEA SUTO: I wanted to ask our panelists to each share a word and take away, but I am being told that we are running out of time, so I think I will share one word myself, actually two words and those two words are thank you.  Thank you to all of you here who have spent the last two hours in conversation with us, to all of the speakers for making sure way here to Riyadh and sharing your expertise and knowledge, to everybody in the audience who has listened and participated.

Thank you to the IGF Multi stakeholder Advisory Group who pulled this session together and the coordinators, Manny and Chris for bringing us together and inviting us for the conversation.  And thank you to the IGF for making this possible and I hope we can have many more conversations like this together.

So big round of applause to the speakers and to all of you.

(Applause).