The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> MILTON MUELLER: Okay. I think we're going to get started now, if everybody can hear me.
I'm going to introduce the topic, and then I'm going to introduce the panellists.
We had a last minute cancellation. So we're lacking perspective from India, but we're talking today about digital public infrastructure. This has become a fashionable term. Someone just told me we should call it AI digital public infrastructure, but that's not a very scientific or accurate way of going about this. AI is a digital technology, and the infrastructure supporting digital services and applications, particularly payments, are something where we're bringing together new services in ways that raise policy issues regarded to security, trust, competition in a digital economy, and the role of government in the private sector.
So we are going to first examine what we mean by DPI. Is this just another buzz word? Is it something real? We're going to talk about the institutional frameworks for collaboration between states and markets, oversight mechanisms, and the role of multistakeholder cooperation in fostering DPI production and governance.
So what we're going to do is spend about 30 minutes with this discussion, including our online audience and the local audience, fully aware of the fact that our online audience will be probably having better sound than we have here.
So let me introduce the panellists now. We have hovering above me on the screen is Ms. Jyoti Panday, Civil Society, Asia Pacific Group. She's a regional director.
I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Milton Mueller, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group. I'm with the Internet Governance Project too.
Situated going from my right to my left is Luca Belli, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group. He's from Brazil.
The well-known FTV, which nobody relates to.
>> LUCA BELLI: That's the name of the foundation. It's the Centre for Technology and Society.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Right.
And then we have Ambassador Vadir (phonetic).
And we have David Magárd with the Digital Wallet Consortium and the OpenWallet Forum at the ITU.
Welcome, David.
And we have Anriette Esterhuysen, Civil Society, African Group, and also the former chair of the multistakeholder advisory group. Are you still the chair? No. No. Okay.
So let's get started.
Let's begin with definitions and why you think this concept of Digital Public Infrastructure has taken off and become such a buzz word.
Let's begin with Jyoti.
>> JYOTI PANDAY: Good morning, everyone.
As Professor Mueller introduced me, I work with him at Internet Governance Project. Welcome to Emerging Norms for Digital Public Infrastructure.
So the DPI, as it's commonly referred to, Digital Public Infrastructure, is for building large scale networks, platforms, and services, to what is essential in the digital economy.
So whether it's digital economy, paying for transactions, the underlying design, the institutional frameworks, resources that enable the development and use of these large scale systems. DPI, as you know, are transforming the global economy. They're impacting business practices. They have altered relations between state, market, and citizens.
The emergence of DPI is like identity and authentication or interruptible payment systems have blurred the difference between public and private sector, traditional and new economies, tradable and non tradable products, and between goods and services.
They've also created norms and standards for security, privacy, data protection, and (?) Consumer protection, digital security are significantly impacted by the emergence of DPIs, and Internet governance policies are being shaped and advanced to DPIs.
So, as we know, this is a really important topic that everyone wants to weigh in on, but the fundamental issue is even though we see forums like G20 and bilateral negotiations indicating the adoption of DPIs at a tipping point, they're being advanced globally. Their lack of definition of consensus around what should be labeled as DPI and what doesn't fall within that label is missing talent moment.
So our aim at this workshop is to have various folks who are part of stakeholder groups who are working and engaging with these processes to kind of shine some light, you know, and bring to increase and expand our understanding of how they are approaching building DPIs, how they are going about defining the values and infrastructure development, and the design of these DPIs.
The advancement of DPIs is happening even as legitimate concerns on their impact of trust, security, and competition on the digital economy remains unexplored or underaddressed.
There's a centralisation of identity and online payments happening under the DPI label, and this can lead to policy problems like exclusion, fraud, or even compromise of digital security.
The rapid development and deployment has profound implications of disrupting procedures.
There's rooting in digital sovereignty or the claim that states have a claim in running the Internet and digital services and should have the maximum say in how they are to be taken forward is it could lead to fragmentation.
We want to kind of explore this tension between fragmentation and cooperation that DPIs enable.
Control of these institutional arrangements and the technical architecture of DPIs is using discreet spaces of data and transactions which can enable governments to pursue a serenity based agenda.
The adoption and expansion of DPI could be affected if embraced elsewhere.
Given the social impact of DPIs, it is important to think through the development, create avenues for oversight. This is exclusively focusing on legislative and regulating measures, however, interventions such as assessments can play a vital role.
So, as Professor Mueller directed, we will delve into other issues in this discussion, but on the definition itself, we do have certain global forums that are trying to create the platform and bring together diverse stakeholders to come towards a common definition.
Again, because of this sovereignty based approach to developing DPIs, the consensus has not been easy to come by. That's what we're hoping to kind of delve into more over here.
I'm happy to, like, jump in and talk more about it, but I want to hear from my other panellists.
Thank you.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Thank you, Jyoti.
(Audio very low)
>> MILTON MUELLER: Why don't we go to David.
The ITU has played a classical role in basic telecommunications, infrastructure, coordination.
(Echo on audio)
(Captioner picking up production mic)
>> MILTON MUELLER: Okay. You have to turn it on. Somehow it got turned off.
So, yes, let's turn to David. Can you give us a brief overview, five minutes or so, of what your perspective is, particularly focusing on the definitional issues at this stage?
>> David Magárd: I can give it a try.
I work for the Sweden offices of (?) Affairs and I'm the coordinator of EWC.
There's organisations from private and public sector.
I guess in some sense, public infrastructure, all of this is not really my area of expertise. So I'm coming with kind of a perspective from what I don't understand of the public infrastructure associate that can add to the discussion.
When it comes to the public infrastructures and this is what I see. I've been working with the Swedish government and within the Swedish government for about 10 years and India as well, part of several expert groups and also the Open Wallet Forum.
There's a public infrastructure that is, in my view, the last three years, I wouldn't say this is a big discussion in the EU. I haven't really used it at all, to be honest, in the work that we've done.
It's not something that is really looked at, from my perspective, when it comes to digital identity ecosystem in the EU.
I think it's interesting for the discussion because then it seems like we have different angles here and different understandings and, also, of course, that makes it difficult to come with an increasing understanding of public infrastructure and what we should do with it.
From our perspective, also speaking about EU and also about Sweden, this is my personal understanding, though. This is the core focus of the EU, in our digital strategies. I wouldn't say it necessarily hinders the cooperation with the private sector or other countries, but there is an understanding that we need to, to some degree, have control of some of the key fundamental infrastructures when it comes to things like data identity. Although, we have a lot of good experience with private/public
>> MILTON MUELLER: We have a lot of ambient noise.
>> DAVID MAGÁRD: Should I stop for
>> MILTON MUELLER: You can go on, but we have a lot of ambient noise here.
>> I think what is mostly interesting where I kind of sit, is the interoperability between identity systems and interoperability under a technological infrastructure layers and also the semantics, legal semantics and definitions and so on. So I'm kind of curious on the interoperability questions in the digital public infrastructure framework, which, as far as I've seen, it's not that prominent in kind of the discussion papers and so on that I've browsed through the last years.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Good. Good. Thank you.
I think it's interesting, then, from the perspective of from David's perspective, the term is not commonly used, and whatever concern he has is with interoperability, which Jyoti flagged, if you take a sovereignist approach to DPI.
So let's go on to Ambassador Vadir. I think you're more involved with this topic?
>> VADIR: I am. First, let’s say I'm a veteran. I started my first company in 1995, and then I became an ambassador.
This is evolving, diverse, complex, and we look for words, but there's not obeying to the words.
DPI movement is a new world for value approaches, and you can connect it to public service, to sometimes digital commands, and strategies.
Personally, I discovered the ideas. Fifteen years ago, I was writing a book on platform strategies, and I was trying to complain the success and the strength of the big platforms like Google or Facebook or Apple itself.
I discovered that some people were speak about government as a platform, and I was very interested by this approach. When I became the head of the French IT department for the government, I tried to develop some building blocks for government platform strategy, and we developed some important APIs, and it was on a certain perspective kind of prototype of what we call now DPI. And I've discovered at this time, there's another kind of ancestor of the DPI approach.
And then I discovered what was happening in India. We can observe a massive impact because, in less than three years, they developed a digital ID for more than 1 billion people, and 25% of them didn't have a legal existence.
Then they developed a very smart payment interface that is just a set of API. They just decided that the banks have to be able to receive payment orders through this format, and they had a duty to agree to execute payment through this format.
Thanks to they approach, they agreed to let the markets receive 600 systems. Google is the biggest, but there's a diversity of payment systems. You can pay with a credit card or with WhatsApp or it depends on your service.
So I mention this to say that a lot of people, a lot of countries or organisations, are trying to build this small layer of something
there's a connected computer with a lot of tools plus good SDKs. So you are very grateful and agree to share 30% of your revenues because they did allow you to innovative and create and try to access the market.
So that's efficient, and that can be done. The platform is controlling everything. But, to conclude, from my perspective, the most important reason to speak about this here in the IGF is that if we want and we want to protect free, open, decentralized, neutral, and unified Internet, and if we want to avoid the capture of this Internet by strong companies that are built on the Internet and that try to capture the customer and if we want to remain free democracies, we have a fundamental right, for example, in Europe, we are very attached to privacy. We have a fundamental right to say we want to protect privacy or we are not democracies anymore.
So we have to impose some views to the companies that are built on the Internet. So if you want to manage all of this to protect the free and open and decentralized Internet, to avoid the capture by strong actors and to develop feedback, probably the design of this small layer of public services to build the interface between all those principles, it's a very, very good and efficient approach.
But, of course, and it will be said, I think, you can also have a public strategy that is (?) Too much controlled by the government itself, that is not transparent enough, or that makes mistakes with a security breach or I don't know. So we have to design it carefully in a multistakeholder way with enough transparency, with enough democratic feedback, but I don't see any other approach than this layer of public service. If we don't want the Internet to become a newfound waste.
That's my comment to launch the conversation.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Very good. You have launched something that is the best definition of DPI that I've heard, which is a set of APIs that is serving as an intermediary for or a platform for many different particularly an interface between government services and the broader public.
Let's turn to Luca, who has, I think, very strong perspectives of DPI, based on your experience in Brazil.
>> LUCA BELLI: Not very strong. I would not say strong, but just to provide a little bit of context.
I'm a professor at a law school. Besides directing the Centre for Technology and Society, as Milton was announcing, I also have a programme called cyberbricks that compares the bricks grouping.
So over the past five years, we have discussed a lot of issues, and one of them is also amongst that digital governance and transformation and AI governance.
An overlapping issue is digital sovereignty. So we have a book that should already be available in open access on the Cambridge University websites on digital sovereignty on the bricks.
And some of the things realised from Brazil is how they can be considered of good digital sovereignty, in some cases.
Again, I also want to introduce a little bit of caution because DPI, as digital sovereignty, as pretty much everything you can speak of in life, it may be a label. So to understand if it is good or bad, we have to understand what is the content behind the label. Right?
So DPI, as a definition, the only agreed international definition we have of DPI has been put forward by the G20 last year under the India presidency and has been taken on by the UN.
If you look at the reports recent on DPI safeguards, done by the UN and (?) You see the G20 last year under the Indian presidency. It's the key to their digital transformation strategy that has endured 10 years under the stack programme.
The cherry on top of their strategy was to put this into the G20 so everybody is now speaking about DPIs, which a very successful strategy. This is DPI, digital systems that should be secure and interoperable and are used to provide access to public or private services and delivered for not only public services though they are mainly used for public services, if you look at India, there's a very good (?) It's a protocol where any kind of private service can be delivered. So it's not only about public services. Usually, we categorise DPIs as digital identities, online payments, and personal data managers. So this can fit into the public services, especially the first two, but they are not only public services. They can be used for private services. Another good example, also to stress that this is not only happening at the federal level, the national level. In the city where I live, Rio de Janeiro, there's a company like Uber that you can use. It's an example of how DPIs can be local.
We speak of digital sovereignty that's not only state driven, it can be by local individuals.
Our national digital payment structure is a good example of digital sovereignty. It allows the understanding of how technology works, regulate it effectively. It's about developing and regulating effectively technology.
Before the national payment structure was developed, the only exclusive way to process payments in Brazil was through Visa and MasterCard.
They charge 3% in all of the Global South, but, also, few people understand that over the past 10 years, they've become big data companies. Most of the revenues is not three to 5% of the fee. It's the intelligence and profiling they on data collection on every consumer. People do not realise that when people use their credit card, they're paying with identity. The only people benefitting are Visa and MasterCard. These are examples of how DPI can be leveraged for good digital sovereignty because it broke monopoly of Visa and MasterCard. This has created three to 5% of what consumers pay out of their pocket.
It's enormous advancement of data protection. People now understand that their data is collected and who is collecting them because the only banking intermediaries, they have terms of service and precisely state what they do.
When you use a credit card, you don't even know your data is collected that's an enormous advancement.
Also, to conclude, this has also provided a very good example of how multistakeholder cooperation is very outcome oriented and very effective. The Brazilian Central Bank has leveraged a lot of conversation with stakeholders to build it's still working with all financial intermediaries to implement and create something called pics forum to collect feedback from those implementing the technology, to understand how to improve it, and what are the pitfalls of the technology.
One more minute?
>> MILTON MUELLER: Yes.
>> Also, in India, there's success only because net neutrality rules were adopted. So if you have meaningful connectivity, you can use APIs. Global South only accesses the Internet through (?) (audio is distorted) you cannot use API because you pay for them.
The reason why India is experiencing (?) Information, they've (?) In 2016. This is the same reason it's been success in Brazil.
(Audio is distorted)
>> WhatsApp introduced payment, and Brazil knew that it was a payment in the pandemic that had been introduced before no one here would be celebrating it as a success story but everybody in Brazil would be using (?) As payment. They suspended until pix was also enforced.
(Audio is not discernible)
>> Only because the banking understood that they allowed WhatsApp payment. Before that, pix would be absolutely useless. I think this is a very cautionary tale for all governments. If you spend the money to do the best possible API but if only accesses via Facebook, it's useless to put money in DPIs.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Okay. Now you understand why I said Luca had a strong opinion about DPIs.
>> So make it even more simple, one day, when I was discussing with Pramod Varma, who was supposed to be here today, and he told me this very simple idea. He said in Europe, you did build your strengths and prosperity and maybe sovereignty thanks to public infrastructure, roads, trains, bridges, and you became very prosperous. And then you suddenly stopped.
Today, in the current economy, you need payment and localisation (phonetic). Those are the (?) Of the 21st century.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I think I see the ancestors of DPI. I'm speaking very much from an African perspective. I am in South Africa, but I work across the continue tent.
First, open government, one of the grand ideas and grand coalitions from about 20 years ago, which still exists, but it's lost its glamour.
There's eEducation and eHealth and an environment for innovation, all those elements that are part of and, of course, connectivity infrastructure.
And what we have, as a result of 20 years later, is a landscape that's completely characterized by digital inequality, which means that any initiative, be it a health initiative or education initiative or government initiative actually, in most cases, just increases the inequality because if there isn't connectivity across the board, if people don't have the devices, if people in rural areas cannot afford the cost of mobile broadband, then any investment in any kind of digital services, commercial services, tends to just increase the gap between those who have and whether or not can benefit and those who don't.
I think I'm not surprised that David has not heard much about digital public infrastructure in Sweden because you have digital public infrastructure in Sweden. You don't need to talk about it, but we need to talk about it, and we need to talk about it very seriously. I don't think, Milton, it's a set of APIs. It's much, much more than that.
I think the G20 definition, or looking at these four elements of broadband infrastructure, absolutely critical in Africa. I don't know how many people are aware that Internet penetration in Africa is lower now than it was a few years ago. It's now below 40%. It was around 40. It's now more in the upper 30s.
Even access to electricity is reducing in parts of Africa where dependence on hydro is affected by drought.
Again, even identity systems are a challenge in many African countries. And then the challenge to moving to digital identity when the data governance and protection frameworks and rights framework are (?) In many cases, another challenge.
Finance payments, how do most Africans have financial inclusion or any semblance of it? It's through mobile operators, facilitating quite expensive financial services for the poor.
Very few countries in Africa outside of Nigeria and South Africa, for example, have banking, banking that is accessible to the poor.
>> MILTON MUELLER: So let me just be clear here, Anriette, you're broadening the concept of infrastructure to everything, electricity, telecoms, banking, the whole schmear.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: It looks at data finance broadband infrastructure, and identity. I think for all of those aspects to be able to implemented and operated and to become a platform for developing public services, you do need not just the broadband, you also need the electricity infrastructure. Why I think it's important and why DPI is such a good opportunity is because I think look, I talked a lot about how it can facilitate multistakeholder cooperation. That's absolutely true, but even at a national level, it can facilitate intergovernmental collaboration. It can facilitate initiatives such as building out broadband backbone, which is often done by the Ministry of Communications with the Department of Finance who is dealing with inclusion and home affairs dealing with digital identity systems.
A country like South Africa, for example, pays social grants. The only reason people don't starve is because they get grants from the government.
There is no infrastructure to do things easily. It's been done in the private sector, but it's extremely complex.
>> MILTON MUELLER: I think I need to keep us a bit more focused here because if you're talking about the development of telecommunications of broadband infrastructure, right, there is a completely different set of institutions and processes that have facilitated the growth of that.
For example, all of these countries that had state owned telecom monopolies had abysmal levels of penetration before competition was introduced in the '90s or 2000s.
You have to admit there's public infrastructure whether it's power or specifically telecoms, these countries that relied entirely on the state to be the developer or on international grants are simply never going to catch up with what was happening in the world where there was commercial development.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Milton, what I'm saying is DPI is an opportunity for countries where that gap exists to fill it.
>> MILTON MUELLER: With what capital? With what investment? Where does the money come from?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: That's why it's an important discussion. That's why it's important to discuss it in the IGF. Financing that investment and having private and public partnerships and having the kind of rights, protections that needs to be built into that, it's something that we can try to achieve through the South African chairing of the G20.
The fact that it's public infrastructure doesn't mean that it has to be developed and owned and controlled by the state. It means that it has to be developed and control and regulated in the public interest.
I'm not suggesting the statist (phonetic) approach.
(Static on the audio connection)
>> JYOTI PANDAY: These are really interesting perspectives, but I just want to, as the token representative of India and living through this great digital public infrastructure revolution, I feel I have to chime in. Going back a little bit into the history of how did the DPI come about? Anriette is very correct. The digitisation initiatives that have kind of evolved with time and investment and stakeholder priorities, it is running along the same trajectory.
But, for example, digital identity is rooted in the notion of national security, and, therefore, the state has way more say in running digital identity within the India stack than it has in matters of UPI, which has been developed by banks coming together to compete against MasterCard and Visa. Even after this got reformulated as DPI as they wanted to export it to other countries, the idea of digital identity is coming from a different perspective.
Digital payments and wallets are coming from a different priority and perspective.
And this is the thread that ties these two different efforts and neatly brings them together under a common label and, therefore, facilitates adoption, et cetera.
I want to throw in a couple of questions here for everyone's consideration.
I like what the Ambassador said, the experience, there's a huge gap. When we talk about DPI in India, one of the common things is look at the scale. The large population were lacking any form of legal identity. Firstly, that claim is very, very contested. There's identity available to the population in various forms, but this identity project was backed, and one of the rationales to push this forward is people need that to upgrade the population and bring them into the modern world, into this revolution. Right?
But, also, I wanted to ask, after the digital identity got built, it got integrated into welfare not because this was strategic from day one. It's because developers realised that the quickest way of assuring adoption and achieving that scale would be integrated with (?) Because the state had greater control over it and, therefore, would be able to apply its might behind the adoption of these services.
Again, the intention, is the scale the only parameter of success? I think this is what Anriette is referencing when she talks about we cannot only look at the scale.
Let's talk about roads, like, right? All countries have roads, but, in some countries, the roads are excellent and talked about globally, but in other countries, they're not well developed. Some towns in India have dirt roads. Who is responsible for building roads? It can happen through public funding. It can happen through public/private cooperation, or a private sector can be contracted to build roads.
But it's not just building roads once. Roads require maintenance. Roads have to be upgraded as traffic piles up. Different aspects need to be considered as the use of the road evolves.
I feel in a lot of these discussions about DPI, we get stuck at pointing to the success in India and not delving deep into no matter what the justification as to why this label has become really popular, but what are the impacts of DPI on the ground?
What is the reality of the people who are actually engaging and interacting with these public infrastructure? And how public are they?
So, for example, the API is owned by the consortium of Indian banks, and they developed the API before, and they actually kind of didn't allow WhatsApp to launch its payment or delayed WhatsApp launching the protocol that was developed for online payments in India.
So if the idea of public infrastructure is it's an alternative to big tech infrastructures that are prevalent in the ecosystem currently, are we replacing one kind of monopoly with another kind of monopoly? And I would love to hear more about these themes from the panellists.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I want to react to Jyoti, please, Milton.
I agree 100% with you. This workshop is about norms. I've looked at quite a lot of norms, the safety guidelines, whatever they're called, and none of them mention what you have just talked about. How do you maintain these roads? How do you get assistance to those who need it most? And how are people able to get buses to ride on the roads to get to where they need to. I have not seen the practical looking at the sustainability and the impact of initiatives.
I think, in fact, if we don't reframe how we talk about DPI, it's just going to be become another opportunity for pseudopublic investment, taken advantage of by corporations set up to do that, as it has been with eEducation via the access line.
>> I want to connect some dots. I think it's the utmost importance to understand what has, what must be materialised. And the difference you said sometimes the public telecommunications did not reach out so much. The growing consensus within the community of DPI builders is we must find what has been done with this kind of public service approach and what must be led to the markets.
Most of the DPIs' architects, they're looking for the necessary infrastructure, if I may. For example, in India, they don't UPI doesn't make the payment systems. They have more than 600 private payment systems.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Exactly.
>> VADIR: But built on the (?). Same with roads. The importance is to have interoperable road systems. I cannot change my car because those are private roads. So I need to be able to drive everywhere. If some of those roads are highway and I have to pay because this is a very expensive highway and others are communal, small streets, it doesn't matter. The point is to have one unified system.
And the beauty of the DPI movement we are looking for, yes, it must be done as a clear infrastructure for the market.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Right. I think this is a well known although not frequently acknowledged we tend to have this polarity. The fact is markets function well when they have the right commons in which all the market players can interact.
>> VADIR: And maybe just one last thing. For most Europeans, when you say public services, you call lawyers, too, because there's a long tradition of (?) Definition of what must be a public service. It has to be neutral, equal access. You have a duty to maintain it. You cannot change your mind and say, Ah, sorry. I stop this project.
There are very clear and strong definitions of public service. It can be done through the private sector or not. It can be free or not. But there are some specific duties, and public service, at least in Europe, it might be public. It can be state owned, but public service are not governments. And they have, for example, the right to contest the authorities because they obey to the definition of their public service.
>> MILTON MUELLER: In some countries, that is true.
Luca, you're dying to get in here.
>> LUCA BELLI: Yes. I wanted to first attract everybody's attention to a rare moment of agreement between me and Milton because I think I concur with Milton in the fact that I think it is better to keep separate the distinction between digital public infrastructure and classic infrastructure because when we speak about DPIs, it's about digital systems built on open standards that are interoperable and secure to provide service.
We might include into this telecommunication structure, but I think it's a stretch. I would keep it softer rather than get into harder.
As I was mentioning in the beginning of my remarks, I think one really has not only to think that DPI although, there is this nice, internationally agreed definition, there are very different implementation of the concepts and very essential to start the details. Of course, in this panel, we can only have a superficial discussion about it but let me provide some key examples between India and Brazil on the very same type of the public infrastructure for payments to illustrate how this can be radically different.
I think the example of pix has been an evolution of what has been copied factor from the UPI in India and maybe India will not disclose, this but they have copied it from Russia because Russia introduced Mir (phonetic) after the invasion of Crimea when it was sanctioned a day after with by the U.S. Russians could not pay anything with their cards, so they had to come up with a new system, a domestic one, Mir, like the space station, Mir, but it was a very old system.
Now, they have copied India and also have a softer digital public system, but the Russians developed this from existential reasons. Overnight, they had to come up with this.
At the same time, Visa and MasterCard developed this.
It's a not for profit they were skeptical about this. They, together with the main financial intermediary, created this it's like the ICANN for payments. They did the digital public infrastructure. They created the UPI.
The reason why I argue that actually the Brazilian experiment went farther because, in my opinion, it's much more transparent and accountable. The Brazilian experiment was directed by the Brazilian Central Bank. If I request information and ask them, tell me which data you have about me. Tell me what you share? Tell me the standard you adopted. They're obliged to reply to me. If they don't reply. I sue them.
If I ask, they reply, I'm sorry. We're not a public institution. We have no duty to reply to you. We can keep everything totally opaque as much as we want because this is not a public institution.
Of course, this can be changed in India if the national corporation (?) That would be obliged to be accountable, not in the protection terms. Those who know the digital data protection Personal Data Protection Act of India, all are even if it was a public institution, it would not be bound by respecting the protection law because the Data Protection Law in India has carved out an enormous exception for institutions.
That's why we should look at the details of these thing. Calling it a public infrastructure does not make it good or bad.
We have Bill Gates blogging about this it's been (?) By Microsoft. This usually happens. Last year at IGF, we were speaking about national sovereignty. We released a book. Two months after Nvidia and Oracle started a blog I think it's a little bit of an overstretch of the concept because the argument is you can be sovereign the you buy their tools, which is an overstretch of the concept.
We have to look at what is behind the label to understand if we can form our opinion and to understand if it is good or bad.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Good. I need to get in here.
I really appreciated your story about the competition issue related to visa and MasterCard in Brazil. In the U.S., this is competition.
You have to look at the domination of these and how it's in our system of banking regulation. In some ways, the system has created conditions which lead to an oligopoly.
You can recreate this situation where local actors within a state essentially if the DPI is not open and not standardised in a way that is facilitating competition, it can very easily lead to the recreation of national oligopolies and one of the big competitors to an emerging form of DPI, i.e., cryptocurrency, which are the central banks.
This is a clear contradiction, or clash, between a sovereign based monetary system and a globalized one facilitated by the Internet.
The other point I would like to make here is that when we talk about interoperability and commons versus market, it seems that we're not fully recognizing the revolutionary impact of the Internet itself.
All right. What is the Internet? It's a set of non proprietary protocols, right?
A non proprietary protocols made this possible and essentially facilitated a digitally networked economy. Right? So it wasn't like the government said we're going to great a globally integrated economy and we created this protocol. The protocol was created but computer scientist it was non proprietary, so neither the U.S. Government nor any private actor controlled the use or development of the infrastructure around the Internet.
One of the things we can even talk about digital payments now coming down to our phones is because of this commons, the digital commons, created by the protocols.
>> LUCA BELLI: It's based on open standards, and we have to protect it. But it's captured through ID, payment, and some things like this. So DPI could be an answer, but you're right, too. Maybe we should start thinking about ITU for APIs. I should be able to use my European digital wallet in India. That should be the goal.
I should be able to travel coming from my DPI and negotiating with others.
>> There's already and ITU for DPI, which is the ITU because it released the (?) Which is a set of open protocols for DPIs.
ITU is an intergovernmental organisation that sets norms.
The reasoning behind the DPIs is building the infrastructure.
(Please stand by)
>> Honestly, I use this in class with students as an example of what was called 25 years ago relation by architecture.
You're not defining a normal or imposing a sanction. This competes with what exists.
And you're perfectly right both of you are right. You're right because the Internet is based on it's probably the only part of the Internet that is public, is the protocols. It's leading U.S. big tech as concentrated dominance. So for the DPI now, it's to revert the concentration. It's quite blatant.
The DPIs could be seen again, once again, a word of caution, DPI is not always good or not always bad, but some of the examples could be seen as very good examples to reclaim digital sovereignty.
So to reclaim the ability to understand the function and develop it and regulate it effectively.
Everybody has lost this over the last decades because how the Internet is regulated is not through the laws. I say this as a lawyer.
It is not the law that I teach to students. I tell them this is one vector.
This was mentioned 25 years ago. It's one of the vectors. It's much more effective to regulate through infrastructure (?) Architecture (?) But what students called instructional power 30 years ago or through market incentives, through session based and taxation. Why does everyone use WhatsApp in the Global South? It's considered as free. It's a marketing incentive. If WhatsApp had to be paid $100 per month, no one would use it in the Global South.
But the way we communicate is regulated by a subsidy that
(Captioner has no audio)
>> MILTON MUELLER: Most of the infrastructure is actually created I mean the telecom infrastructure, the power Fredricks.
Let me get David in here and see if he has anything to say at this point. We've left him in the dust.
>> DAVID MAGÁRD: I have two things to put on the table. One is an interesting fact from Sweden. We use bank ID, which is digital identity made by the corporation of the big banks in Sweden. It's 99.7 of the Swedish population. Is that's akin to 67. It's very successful when it comes to usage and option.
But now, the last three years, we have started work for a government issued identity because we have kind of seen the giving away all the control of digital identity creates some issues. Those can be security and seclusion and the development of infrastructures because then we have the public side in the hands of the Bank ID, sometimes it's good because they're a corporation, but it stifles a bit. In my mind, it everything is different. It's not possible to have a framework to adopt in one country. It will differ, depending on where you're coming from.
>> MILTON MUELLER: I would like to hear more about this Bank ID offline.
>> DAVID MAGÁRD: The second part is with wallets, regulate open source standards for the identity. I think that the digital infrastructures, if you want to call them that, the trigger is really when you can make it across the border because you need the interoperability and all these things working. The standards, we can see they are different standards. What we're seeing in the EU is the regulation of it. It comes from an open source idea. So I think that is very promising for making these things that you're speaking about, being the data commons and the possibility for everyone to kind of have the same set of infrastructure and standards and so on. Yeah.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Okay.
I think we're supposed to end at 10:45. So I will ask all of you, starting with Jyoti, to provide wrap up comments. I want you to focus on exactly what action items you think the global community should take with respect to this issue.
Anriette, I will not allow you to say that we should magically appear with $7 trillion to build broadband infrastructure everywhere. I'm going to have to ask you where that money comes from.
In terms of real, feasible action items, what should we do next?
Let's start with Jyoti.
>> JYOTI PANDAY: Before I comment to the action items, one big takeaway for me from this conversation and it's also a question is that which digital services qualified? Is social media DPI? What are the values that translate into something being labeled as DPI? Does it have to be open standard? Does it have to be public for the public part of the infrastructure to hold?
Also, another big point of confusion here is the architecture, as Luca had fully referred to, has a certain notion there's a common ground around these ideas. Right? What is happening in the case of India stacks specifically and maybe DPI more broadly is that software and applications are being relabeled as infrastructure. And this is a very problematic part of it, in my view, because, you know, as digitisation and your growth of your digital economy goals keep shifting, you can't keep relabeling things that are agreed upon to suit your strategy and your convenience and to propel you into the global conversation on regulating the Internet and services. It's a strategy that causes confusion and will lead to exactly this kind of fragmentation where everybody in various jurisdictions, stakeholders the that have a stake or are behind certain projects see the benefit of labeling their project as DPI to attract for funding to attract more mileage to attract more attention.
In terms of action points to focus on, I think unpacking these terms are all digital services DPI? What values constitute as public of the DPI label? And what can applications and software become infrastructure? What are the infrastructure dimensions?
So can you make a digital identity the Indian digital identity mandatory for me to engage and access services on the Internet?
Right now, the Supreme Court (?) Intervention has been restricted to services paid for by our taxpayer money. Even that decision is being (?) By both private and public sector because they see the benefit of pushing digital identity adoption to achieve that scale.
So I think drawing the guardrails and working closer to a more narrow, value driven, precise definition is going to take us in a much more productive direction than the confusion that is currently informing our discussions.
Thank you.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Thank you, Jyoti.
Let's start with Anriette and go around the circle, ending with David.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thanks, Milton. I agree very much with Jyoti.
My understanding, what I think we can do with public infrastructure is to look at it as an infrastructure that can be used and enabled, digitally powered public services and benefit.
I think the narrow definition is a good way of looking at it.
Milton, maybe there's millions and millions of dollars
>> MILTON MUELLER: Trillions.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: can come from all that growth coming from the advanced policies in the U.S.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Going to get (?) Losses from that.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: But I absolutely am not going to take physical infrastructure off the table because unless there is Internet infrastructure, Internet enabled public infrastructure cannot exist.
The other point I want to make is DPI is not neutral.
(Static on the audio connection)
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: DPI, how it's rolled out, how people are experiencing it, it will be shaped by the context and, also, a (?) Regime is going to use DPI to enhance control. Revenue connection focused regime is going to use it to enhance (?) Election and public services, public benefited oriented regime is going to use it to create more inclusion.
I think question not take that out of it. In other words, DPI is not mutual. It's going to rise and fall on how much inclusion there is, how much oversight there is, and how much public engagement there is. I think it's coming back to looking at what we mean by public services, to go back to the very fragmented initiatives that emerged from open government which are not connecting at all and, in most cases, not placing more digital equality and digital inclusion. I think we can use DPI to bring that conversation back to how do we collaborate, how do we integrate to achieve actual benefit for people?
>> MILTON MUELLER: Thank you, Anriette.
>> I think there's a right between physical infrastructure and digital infrastructure. The difference is, basically
(Static on the audio connection)
>> Of course, you have to pay the service. I was impressed in India because, basically, the cost of (?) Is one dollar per person. The cost of the French and most European digital IDs is $100 by person.
(Audio is poor)
>> DPI need more transactions and U.S. plus China together. That's basically a set of APIs plus a government body. That's such (?). You asked what should be done. First, I'm sure we have a very precise, unified definition for everything. Probably, what we should look for should be the minimum viable infrastructure is to protect the free markets in real democracy.
You can find answers. For example, Jyoti asked should (?) Be a DPI? I don't think so. We should impose (?) We should not let 3 billion people access to information through one algorithm designed by (?) Because that's not democratic. So we should use the API movement to impose (?) Regroup. Thanks to one store, that social network should have to accept. We should start learning to think like this.
What should be the minimum infrastructure to protect the free Internet and unleash a free market and protect democratic feedback?
When you start thinking like, this you find sometimes (?) Answers.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Thank you, Ambassador.
We'll go to Luca next and action items, if you can.
>> LUCA BELLI: I think we're drawing conclusions from what we've discussed and from what I was trying to convey. There are multiple layers that we should consider this complex situation.
First, we should not think that DPI is bad or good but analyse how it is proposed. I am speak about the how, how it emerges as a discussion because I'm very concerned, for instance, now IMF is imposing digital identity as a counterpart for having loans because this is an imposition. This is not something that's emerging from the country that wants to develop it and knows how to develop it but is being imposed and likely adopting neither type of technology that doesn't fit the situation.
You mentioned (?) Being part of the U.S. ecosystem that maybe worked very well in the U.S., but we have also to acknowledge that, I don't know, I'm not an expert in U.S. (?) Is not a country I study too much, but every country is very specific. First, there is no silver bullet. So we cannot impose that is probably the reason why the ITU stack doesn't work very well because we cannot hope that everyone will magically adopt a fantastic solution. It's much better to bet on the fact that those who are ready and want to do this might be able to develop it.
And here is my second point. Institutions that drive this process are very important. The Brazilian example, I want to stress this, is very special example, driven by an institution or though it is an emerging developing economy, it is very well researched and has common abilities and understands systematically how to do this.
They showed the pix system is a success because they understood all the layers of complexity, starting with the access, meaningful connectivity or the lack of meaningful connectivity in Brazil.
The reason why they postponed WhatsApp payment is because theory well aware that Brazil is not meaningfully connected. 20% of population has meaningful connectivity. 70% is using WhatsApp.
We have to think systematically.
Last but not least, I think this also gives a lot of hope to those who have been over, like some of us, for 15 or 20 years speaking about multistakeholder it's how things can go from a nice chat in exotic places and being very outcome oriented and effective when it is well orchestrated.
>> MILTON MUELLER: So more bottom up where it's ready, no top down
>> LUCA BELLI: Understanding the realities and engaging the stakeholder in the most effective way.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Good at recognizing that when things evolve in that way, they tend to be fragmented, right?
>> LUCA BELLI: Yes. They could be fragmented, but we cannot think to fight against fragmentation, we (?) Accumulation of wealth by three or four enormous tech companies that are not even taxed as they would be. So if you want to find the way to (?) All, this start to tax Facebook, Google, Amazon that have reaped benefits but never been taxed. There are enormous reports that only Brazil, India, and Indonesia lose $4 billion a year in tax evasion. If you want to find it, let me tell you, my friend, where to find it.
>> MILTON MUELLER: It could enhance the broadband in two cities.
>> LUCA BELLI: Speak about broadband, software, it's much cheaper, as we would say.
>> DAVID MAGÁRD: I think a bottom up approach I mean, there are already key players to control most of the environment. So they would effectively control more of the environment. So I think regulation needs to be there with the institutions but also I know that the ITU libraries and so on may not be fully used as some, but I really do like the idea that we have libraries with open standards sourcecode and so on because that also drives innovation and ensures that the civil society but also that private companies can look into what's happening at the public sector side so that the government doesn't take control of all the relevant infrastructures because I think to develop an exclusive digital infrastructure needs to be cooperative but in the private sector but also needs to be transparent and ensure that everyone can kind of everyone with skills can go in there and look at what's actually happening. Also India has excluded their (?) From the data protection side because I think that's one thing that's working quite well in the EU when it comes to ensuring transparency and openness of the data, which is, of course, what is most core to the people, their data or the data about them.
So I would say regulation and openness and providing tech stacks (?) To users, and we'll have some players that go before the other ones, and, hopefully, they will do a good job so the other ones can jump on that train and see an interoperable basic infrastructures that people can build up using their kind of natural context through that.
That, in and of itself, I hope, will enable people to travel more freely, both digital and physical, using that kind of all controlled digital identity, which is the key enabler for most of these things.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Okay. So I just realised that I've totally excluded the audience from the discussion because so much vigorous stuff was going on here, but it was hard to get in. I'm sure we would be talk for another hour if I didn't rein them all in.
I would encourage if you're here, approach the speakers, take off your headphones, and talk to people about some of their ideas. I think we have about five minutes.
>> Seven minutes.
>> Let's unleash the audience.
>> MILTON MUELLER: Here. We've got somebody. You will have to give him a microphone.
>> FLOOR: Thank you. I'm from Nigeria. Quite insightful and interesting conversation. My question is: Why is it only in the Global South that we talk about DPI? In the Global North, nobody talks about DPI. And looking at how they develop, in terms of building the infrastructure, what is happening in the enterprises?
(Audio is distorted)
>> By having a backbone, and by that, they're connecting everyone.
So sometimes I just get confused. I would like to talk about DPI in the Global South.
>> LUCA BELLI: First, I don't think there's a thing called the Global South. There's a (?) In the south and the north. I work on this question for a long time, your question, because the truth is, as it was said, we have complex systems that are working a bit like a DPI. In France, you can buy a baguette with your credit card without paying a fee to everyone. There is a strong legacy, very expensive. It's not the same.
There's a (?) Before the DPI movement.
>> LUCA BELLI: I think the Global South has realised there is a problem. We have been digitally colonised. I think the only thing that's common in the Global South, or the global majority, there are diverse countries. The only thing they have in common is colonised. They're realising it now. I was at the European Parliament in September to present the research because now the Global North is (?) Global South. There's a lot to be learned from India, Brazil, China, in terms of how to react to this digital colonialism. Only one is benefitting. And the others are not benefitting. So the others have a problem and need to find a solution.
>> MILTON MUELLER: I want to challenge
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Right. We speak about it in the Global South because we don't have infrastructure. You don't speak about it in the Global North because you have infrastructure. I mean, you know what it feels like to go to the Netherlands, and they complain that their trains are late. You know, in South Africa, getting a bus is impossible.
So it's a vast difference. I think the sad thing is that these conversations replicate. During the adjustment era when we were trying to advance public comment, we were told, no, no, don't. Let the market do it.
When we talked about building broadband capacity, we were told by Milton and other people to let the market do it. The market fails to do it. I'm not saying the market is to blame for that. There are a complex set of factors. That's why we keep having these conversations. I think the challenge is are the governments having them in the right way, in the most effective way? Are financial institutions responding in the most effective way?
But I think it's very clear why we have these conversations. I think we just need to use these conversations better, be more action oriented and more context oriented in how we actually try to address these gaps in infrastructure that we're talking about.
>> MILTON MUELLER: I don't think any of you answered his question. None of you have dealt with why they don't have infrastructure.
I'm talking about real colonialism, not this fake thing called digital colonialism. A lot of it is also the fact that your institutions have not allowed for the market development that is possible in other countries. Right? You have telecom monopolies still in many African countries still stay on telecom monopolies. It's illegal to have VoIP in many of these countries for a very long time.
All the forms of competition and innovation that were enabled by digital technology have frequently been stifled by extremely authoritarian or protectionist governments that will not allow the infrastructure to develop.
>> I just need to jump in. I think Jyoti has something to say, but I was going to direct my question to you, and it builds off this, if you would like to take that.
I think what he is trying to say and what you're trying to say is what we have to acknowledge and what we publish in our own research is these are Leapfrog reasons that exist 2349 Global North. When COVID it, we saw there was not infrastructure in the north as well. We need to acknowledge that digital (?) Goes across both sides.
When you talk about authoritarian governments and monopolistic governments, I think what we feel in the Global South is those companies and those structures are not structured by our governments. It's structured by outside forces.
So what can we do, as parties in the Global South like, I come from northern Ethiopia. He comes from Nigeria. I'm not sure what you come from, but, you know, I think what I'm curious about here and Jyoti, I would love for you to start off how do the youth from these places, how do we decide we would like to take control of our own infrastructure, and how do we Leapfrog past what we see in front of us because it's highly unfair?
>> JYOTI PANDAY: Thank you for these amazing questions from the audience. I have a very skeptical view of this. To the first gentleman's question, as to why we hear this label more from Global South and not so much in the Global North is because the label has actually been developed in the Global South. You know, these advanced nations with their advanced technological capabilities are very adopting terms that they have not been involved in directly right from the outset been dictating terms of their development.
So it's like a little bit coming from geopolitical competition around tech policy but also, you know, people are wanting to see how this label evolves, what is the impact. Then, when they say it is a great success so, to Luca's point, why the Gates Foundation or the IMF are suddenly using these labels once they pick up and become popular and they see the benefits of these labels, they will start using it more.
In terms of leap frog, I want to give an example of broadband
>> MILTON MUELLER: We're about to get kicked out of the room. It's 11:00
>> JYOTI PANDAY: Two seconds.
The (?) Rate is low in India. Everyone clapped and said this is wonderful. Now, 10 years down the lane, we see the actual infrastructure has dwindled down because there's a monopoly or there are only two telecom operators in India. So we have to take these decisions carefully. There are always trade offs involved, and I'm happy to discuss this offline. I don't want to hold anyone in the room.
Thank you for the questions and for all your inputs and for making the time to all the panellists and the speakers. Thank you. Thank you, again, very much for being a part of this.