The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Good morning, everyone. Thanks for making it early in the morning. Not the best time for starting an open forum, but thanks for those who made it.
We will still wait a couple more minutes. It's still not 8:30 for others to join, but just as a preface, it's an open forum, and so the spirit of the open forum is everyone can share, take the floor and discuss and we are in this mode of kind of cocreating this concept of digital capacity building with this proposed Dynamic Coalition. The idea here is to really listen to your insights and then we follow up with you, and community that has come to the IGF. So we'll start in a couple more minutes as others join in.
In case you would like to get some water or coffee, it's just outside.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: I should pass down the competency framework that we have itself. Some of the publications are there, but I will pass it around for those who are already here.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: So good morning, everyone. I think we'll start now. I'm receiving WhatsApp messages from people who are late, but let's be on time. So welcome to this open forum on capacity building for civil servants on digital transformation, which is co‑organized by UNESCO and GIZ FAIR Forward team. And some of our GIZ colleagues are also online and welcome to all of you who have made it this early in the morning.
This is the ‑‑ the idea is really to have an open conversation to learn from you, we shared with you some of the guiding questions on what this Open Forum seeks to achieve. The first idea is to really convene a diverse group of experts from different parts the world who are working on capacity building initiatives so that we can explore whether a coalition would be a sustainability model to go forward in terms of sharing good practices of capacity building initiatives.
I have been here since the past two or three days and we heard about so many wonderful initiatives, but they don't seem to be talking to each other. For instance, I was talking to Mark from Kenya, and Jazz, they are doing some great work and then I was talking to Resper who is also here from Nairobi, and they are doing some great work. We need to learn from this work and then also share these practices with different parts the world. So there's just ‑‑ this is just one of the reasons.
The second is, of course, we want to also develop new content and create new knowledge products which can then be used by partners and organisations around the world. So just as an example, we launched the competency framework on AI and digital transformation, with the UN Broadband Commission which is itself a multistakeholder group composed of the private sector, civil society, governments, academia and UN entities, of course. We developed this framework through a year‑long process of regional consultations and then through a Working Group.
And now we have the framework, which has identified a wide range of competencies and some of you have the copies in front.
Now, the point is about how to operationalize this. And UNESCO alone cannot do it or GIZ alone cannot do it.
We need to work with partners and build these coalitions and then eventually support governments with your expertise. This is kind of the broad theme of the conversation today. I will invite our technical team to play two short videos to kind of set the stage and then my role will be really to facilitate conversation. We'll be taking notes and ‑‑ and then I will walk you through some of the final objectives for this session.
May I request the host to play the video, please.
>> We stand on the cusp a digital revolution, brought by artificial intelligence and other digital technologies. These technologies are shaping societies and economies and are predicted to add over $13 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Given how significantly AI and digital transformation is affecting different social groups in our environment, policy making plays a crucial role in ensuring sustainable development.
The question is: Are civil servants ready? Unfortunately, the answer is no. A recent survey of 198 countries found 47% had no strategy to improve digital skills. And 51% of government chief information officers said they were blocked from implementing digital transformation schemes by siloed strategies and decision‑making.
This needs to change. And UNESCO has been working on how. Beyond funding constraints, there are three key challenges to address. Cultural and organisational barriers. Many governments see opportunities in changing their traditional way of working by encouraging experimentation and innovation, to deliver better services to people. Data and infrastructure barriers. This includes limited access to data sets, inefficient data organisation, management and governance and a lack of IT infrastructure investment. These issues need to be addressed. Human resource capacity, related competency gaps grow when there are low levels of investment in digital adaptation, data analysis, and AI skills particularly for women. The adoption of digital technology and digital systems needs to be inclusive and fit each organisation's unique context.
Fortunately, while these issues might be challenging, they are aren't impossible to address. Watch the next episode to learn more about it.
(Music).
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: So that's a short overview of the challenges we mapped over the past years. Before we go to some of the solutions we are proposing, actually, I would like to open the floor and invite our host country here, Mr. Nobu Nishigata to say some opening remarks and opening words. Over to you, sir.
>> Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Kyoto on behalf of the Japanese government and Ministry of the Internet Office and Communication who host this IGF. We are very much proud of it and welcome to everybody.
And just I saw the video. That's great work. Most of it I agree, in the Japanese government. We always appreciate the work of UNESCO, and the work stream, and the capacity building, and let me give some words on the capacity building that the Japanese government is facing just some of the programmes that you already showed.
For example, like we are having a hard time connecting with Zoom. It's more like a network thing. Like, we can use the WebEx and Teams but some different network structure provided by Zoom. So we are still working on it. And being of course, the company with Zoom is also working to get us more, like, connectivity to the Japanese government so we can use them for ‑‑ particularly for the webinars, you know? I mean for the videoconference and the WebEx and Teams is okay, but once we want to have webinars then Zoom is somewhat difficult for us.
Or maybe, like some challenges the government is more like a procurement, I would say. It's a big issue, like, for the government perspective, I mean, there are a bunch of different people working in that area. For example, the people working on the research and development side, we don't worry about the capacity or capability of doing that job, because they know what the technology is, and they know how to cope with it. But only the normal people who usually, you know, making the documents are like for me, make some documents to the minister, documents to the data ministries and some ministry sisters. These people, we are not very good at a computer. Of course we can use the computers. We know more, we want to know more about what the technology is built on and those kind of things.
When it comes to the AI, like ChatGPT is a good solution, and we have big expectation on the technology within our work, but still there's some risks in it, and it is not easy to allow every government people to use the ChatGPT within our network within the government.
I mean, you can use a standalone PC or your SmartPhone, it could be okay but there's some risk, and we have to identify the right risks. We don't have to worry too much, but still we have to ‑‑ I mean, then the UNESCO can come in to help us understand better what the technology is. Or, like, for example, maybe before that AI came in, there is some challenges in the cloud services. You know, like the government is more like preferred to have the data within the building, on premise time services, but, of course, there's some advantage in the cloud services in terms of the cost and other items, et cetera.
We have to know more about the security and SLA type of things to know better about the cloud service so we can get the best advantage of the cloud service in our service. So there are many, many, things that we are expecting that UNESCO and our partners in working harder to ‑‑ to help us do the better service in Japan. I mean, it goes to everybody, I think, I hope. So thank you very much. I stop here.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you for sharing those examples and actually, these are some of the challenges across governments around the accord. It's not only in Japan. It's in different countries and I'm hoping that we will hear more about that also today.
So we'll play the second video and then I would like to move also to the online. I know that a lot of people have connected on Zoom as well. So may I invite the technical team to play the second video and then we'll go online.
¶
>> So strengthen government organisations for the digital age, we need to meet the challenges of digital transformation. This doesn't mean public sector officials have to become specialists, but they do need a solid understanding of how technologies work and of their impacts.
This is where the artificial intelligence and digital transformation framework comes in. Built on exhaustive global research, it articulates essential digital competencies that public sector officials need. There are three competency domains that are interlinked and complimentary. Digital planning and design. This enables better understanding of the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous problems policymakers face. It will allow policymakers to identify opportunities to use digital solutions and strategies and to handle possible unwanted consequences.
Data use and governance. This competency provides a deeper understanding of the data life cycle.
It will support policymakers in addressing governance issues and public expectations while using data effectively and ethically.
Digital management and execution. This empowers policymakers to apply new management and collaboration tools in government. It will enable them to harness data, new technologies, tools and approaches to solve complex problems and foster civic participation.
In addition, digital transformation also requires a mindset that enables trust, creativity, adaptability, curiosity, and experimentation.
Digital transformation is everywhere. And the knowledge and the skills divide across governments is expanding. Let us leave no one behind. Those who are prepared are the ones who will benefit the most and create the most benefit.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: I would encourage you to check out the report at a later point.
I now open the floor and really start with the conversation today. I would like to invite Dr. Gianlucamisuraca, who is joining us at 1:00 in the morning in Siville.
What kind of capacity building are you doing with the AI4Gov program, and what other skills and knowledge do we need in today's age in the public investigator. So over to you Gianluca.
>> GIANLUCA MUSURACA: Thank you, Prateek. Good morning. I hope you can hear me well.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Yes, loud and clear.
>> GIANLUCA MUSURACA: Yes, it's true. It's almost 2:00 in the morning. I'm actually calling from Rome today, but, yes. I'm normally based in seville. It's a pity I could not make it to IGF. I discussed it with Prateek. Sorry for that. I hope you are enjoying the forum, and I'm following it from remote.
So I will just share I prepared a few slides if you will allow me to share and try to be brief, but, yeah, that's something that I want to share with you is exactly the ‑‑ you know, the topic of the days, whether, you know, we are able as civil servants and policymakers, actually, master the digital governance and now AI, artificial intelligence is what everybody is talking about. I know there are a lot of sessions at the IGF on this topic and also closed‑door meetings there was a discussing about the global governance issue of AI.
And so are we ready for disruption? That's something more than what the video showed and what Prateek was saying. I will try to go brief on a few issues, why we are still lacking after 20 years of the global digital governance framework that we are ‑‑ I mean, we are in much need of for this topic, and maybe we should also get back to fundamentals. Everybody talking about ChatGPT and generative AI. It's very exciting, but maybe we still have to fix some of the basics in our public administrations. And that's why we propose and I will show a bit what we are doing with the the iPhone master.
We need the functional specialists and that's what we are doing with the colleagues of UNESCO, that we partner with to build a compass for digital governance and AI capacity.
So briefly, I mean I was working for the UN, the general Secretariat back in 200, 2back then, Kofi Annan was the Secretariat and he was pushing on on the fight of the digital divide and showing the sense of urgency that we had already at the time, very, very clear. And as ICTs as we were calling at the time, were actually already about to change the world and they did so.
But 20 years later, the Secretary‑General Antonio Guterres is calling for the need for really making sure that we can manage this digital transformation and we basically need to do this in a human‑centric way. And that's why probably ‑‑ I mean for next year, there's need to propose something, let's say concrete to make sure that we can have still the open, free, inclusive and secure digital governance that we ‑‑ we desire.
And that's very important role for governments, in addition to our all other stakeholders. So this shows also the need and the urgency for equipping the civil servants and policymakers with the skills and capacity as mentioned before needed to address these big challenges.
Now, going back to the fundamentals, as I said, we need to really rethink a bit the way we address public sector innovation, and I mean, in a data‑driven society, that was one of the key competencies that was mentioned before in the individual. And ideally we need to address the multidimensional complex issues that are linked to the digital transformation. It's not just digitalizing or, you know, putting some computers in the room. As really, completely reframing and changing the way we address the ‑‑ you know, the Digital Transformation Strategy.
I won't go into details but I want to mention that when I was still working for the European Commission, JRC, we did comprehensive review of literature and practice, with a specific focus on the European Union and we saw that despite the quite big rhetoric on this topic and the claim that many governments have done over here, there's still a lot to be done and at the policy level, it's important to be really clear on what is, you know, the objective of this transformational strategies we want to, let's say ‑‑ you want to unleash.
And so the question is if we are ready for it. This was also one of the questions in the video. And actually, the answer is yes/no. Because data shows actually the very ‑‑ not draws a picture, and the latest ‑‑ I mean, the data from ITU shows in their dashboard, actually, for instance, despite the recent effort to, you know, equip ‑‑ you know to prepare to have a digital‑ready countries, in the world only a few actually have matured national framework. And even, let's say advance countries like UK, that notably quite always been a pioneer in this topic, they showed in recent data from the national office that only 20% of the civil servants actually are equipped with the skills needed to manage the digital future as they said.
So this shows that we need a lot of these capacity building. This is not just the technical skills that are needed and actually, what we did through the AI4Gov program which is a program implemented by the Universidad Politecnicade Madrid is to design a master to address what we call specialists role, based also not only on teaching and training to radical issues of technical work, but actually based on real project and concrete cases.
And at the same time, we are trying to build and that's why the collaboration with UNESCO, an ecosystem, a system that start from the European Union and admission to greater network.
So the master, in particular that I have the pleasure to direct is actually training ‑‑ at the moment we are in the third edition, where we have trained 120 executives from all over the world to more than 40 countries are represented. And it's to focus on the governance perspective of AI, the human‑centric principles for service design and the AI systems and that's very important because while we, of course, have experts from the AI and data science, we also have a specific complimentary skills from other design department of Politecnica Milano. So it's not what AI use or methodology or technology, but rather if we really need to use AI, for instance on a specific desire or service.
And now we can re‑design the entire process to make sure that we use the best technology, the more appropriate technology. So we, of course, focus on the use of AI in the public sector, but also there is an importance of public procurement that was also mentioned in the intervention from the host representative.
So to get to the conclusion and just illustrating working progress that we are doing with colleagues of you necessary could, with Prateek, in particular.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: We can't hear you for some reason.
>> GIANLUCA MUSURACA: Hmm?
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Can you try again?
>> GIANLUCA MUSURACA: Can you hear me now?
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Sadly, we don't hear your conclusion. Okay. Now you are back.
>> GIANLUCA MUSURACA: I don't know. Maybe we were banned from the conclusion or there was ‑‑ I don't know.
Okay. So just ‑‑ can you hear me, no?
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Yes, yes, please.
>> GIANLUCA MUSURACA: So I hope I am not taking too long. So basically, just getting to the conclusion. Yes, the work that we are ‑‑ I mean, we are doing with Prateek and colleagues at UNESCO is actually I would say, quite ambitious. It was very interesting because we have been trying to develop a comprehensive approach to operationalize exactly the framework that has been developed by you necessary could, that, of course, provide the principles, the guidelines and the specific orientation, but now we need to design and develop and that's what we have been doing with colleagues, a self‑assessment methodology for making sure that policymaker and civil servants both at the individual level but also the organisational level can actually be, you know, empowered if you want, because by first assessing the needs and then developing specific tools that can help them, let's say, be ‑‑ improve their capacity.
At the same time, we are supporting UNESCO on Devineing an open principal resources repository that could support the digital capacities navigator that UNESCO and partners are actually developing.
And at the same time, we are ‑‑ we have proposed an outline of a short‑term curriculum ‑‑ I mean a curriculum for a short‑term training for policymakers based on this compass that could be immediately operationalized and, in fact ‑‑ I mean, I don't know if Prateek, we can say that there will be a first pilot training soon in Africa, and others, I guess will follow.
So just to ‑‑ I mean, without going into details what we have been doing, we started from the work of UNESCO and the broadband communication. We have been reconceptualizing certain issues but we also engaged some of the participants in the AI for government master and other experts in validating some of the proposal we made for having, you know, self‑assessment methodology. And then we, of course, proposed this based on questionnaires and some tools that could be then piloted and further developed into these digital governance and artificial intelligence compass or competency compass.
So just to mention also we are trying to align with the canvas, we call it the functional specialist canvas of AI4Gov that we are also developing, because here the difficult is to create probably some new professional roles, some new figures that we need, some new profiles that we need in the public administration in particular. It's not the super data scientist and super expert in AI, but rather someone who understands how it can be used and procure systems that are ethical and appropriate and context based. And being of course we have three areas here, one is the management, the technology also, and policy, legal and ethical. And we have been doing this with a number of colleagues and through some expert peer review and validation.
Also, to underline the importance, not just to be, you know, the best technical expert but actually this a multidisciplinary field. So we need to really combine hard and soft skills and some of the soft skills are in what is sometimes making the difference. It's not enough ‑‑ I mean, it's not so important or not important for all, especially at the highest level to be technically a super expert, but rather is important to have this interplay between soft skills that is fundamental. And of course, what we have to also understand this is teamwork. It's not just individuals that need to be empowered, but rather, the team, that deal with these complex issues.
And so to conclude, this is the first sketch of the work we have been doing over the summer, basically to ‑‑ to exactly try to personalize it, three main area that was mentioned by ‑‑ by ‑‑ I mean, the video that are included in the digital conpact framework of UNESCO, so the digital planning and design, the use of governance and the management implement part. And here we have a self‑assessment toolkit that is being developed by the initial training that will be tested and piloted with the idea that this is more forward‑looking to have also as part of this digital governance and AI competence compass, that could be instrumental to the work of UNESCO and partners actually doing in this digital capacities navigator.
So I will stop here and thank you for the attention. If there's any question or comment, I'm happy to take on board.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you, so much, Gianluca and thank you for joining us in the middle of your night. Feel free to stay, but I understand you have to leave and sleep at some point as well.
>> GIANLUCA MUSURACA: Yes. Thank you.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: So we will open the floor. The first prompt is really around, what kind of digital skills and competencies that you have seen are needed in governments from your perspective in different parts of the world? What are these areas and how can we as a global collaborative collaboration work towards this. I'm also glad that we have some members of parliament here. It's really multistakeholder grouping today. So I will open the floor. We don't go by any particular order.
So anyone who wants to take the floor, just raise your hand and we will pass on the mic.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes thank you. I'm Otis I'm with digital Uganda. So I'm coming more from a private sector perspective. I think a lot of the discussions around AI this week has gone around balancing regulation and also innovation. I will touch more on the innovation.
In terms of the regulation, I think the discussion we had even earlier this week with the parliamentarians is around the fact that lack of competencies around the digital skills and the AI skills leads to prohibitive measures or prohibitive laws instead of permissive and assistive laws.
So I think in terms of regulation, lack of those competencies could hinder the adoption of AI in the public sector. But speaking on the innovation side, I think that on all levels, if there are no skills in terms of understanding, identifying the benefits what artificial intelligence could bring and balancing and identifying the risks that it poses, the first is the managerial buy‑in. So if you go to a government institution and you are working with the private sector company, I think the first phase is the buy‑in from the management. And the misunderstanding of this technologies, first and foremost hinders either by overlooking the benefits or by not putting in safety nets that really could make sure that these technologies are safe and are safe to use. and also moving past that, I think one thing that we have seen is from the private sector and moving now from the buy‑in to the codevelopment of these projects and ‑‑ and handover, one of the things that we see is once we stop co‑‑developing with the private sector and then we have to handover this project, is that the lack of ‑‑ of these technical skills of the teams hinders this project's sustainability. Making it hard for the developers who are mostly in the private sector to hand over to public institution to cover the projects and internalize and fully operationalize them.
So I think across all the spectrum of development, the life cycle, coming for the buy‑in and the development and the handover, it's really important for these skills. Also knowledge advancement which is one of the competencies that is in this framework, to be able to fully digitize or have a true digital transformation.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thanks, Otis. Anyone else would like to take the floor?
Yes? Okay.
So ‑‑ okay. That's wonderful. So we go over with Miriam first. Please feel free to introduce yourself and then we'll come from here to you.
>> MIRIAM STANKOVICH: Okay. So ‑‑ yeah, it is working. So my name is Mimi Stankovich, it's nice meeting you all. I'm a digital policy specialist with AI. Piggybacking on the previous comments, I would like to also stress the need ‑‑ I work with different governments and we work on capacity building. We work in Southeast Asia, we work in Africa, and, you know, I have worked with different civil servants, different managerial levels, et cetera, et cetera.
What I skim through, Prateek, the AI and Digital Transformation Competency Framework and I agree with the previous discussant that we need to have competencies along the life cycle of digital technologies. So this is really important, and especially in the context of AI., I think this should be even more granular.
You talk about digital management and execution, and I would add another phase and this is monitoring, evaluation and learning. So the MEL phase. And then I have seen in eastern Europe, in Southeast Asia, in Africa, you know, everywhere I go, you know, donors, they insist on public/private partnerships but this is very challenging. Very difficult to achieve. And what we need is digital champions within governments.
So we need more contextual, more granular, more targeted approach to these competencies. So, you know, we need one approach when addressing digital transformation, and AI issues for, you know, higher echelons of civil servants or the managerial echelon and then norm people working for the government. So there is another type of skills and competencies that we need for ‑‑ for these type of civil servants.
So what else?
So ‑‑ and a model that is ‑‑ that used to function in practice, with respect to digital champions in government is the model of digital transformation officers in Ukraine. So you could take a look at it and see how these officers have worked. Those are ‑‑ those are basically appointees from the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine that are embedded in different teams throughout different ministries and agencies in ewe grain, and this is really important to have champions within different agencies and ministries that are going to champion the cause of digital transformation and how digital transformation can be ‑‑ how digital services can be improved and what does this mean?
And I want to ‑‑ I want to put the focus on simplifying things, because what I have seen is that we come up with all of these wonderful terms. So algorithmic transparency and ethics, but when you work with, you know, civil servants, government, different government entities, public officials, they say, oh, these terms are wonderful. Okay? So ethics, accountability, and transparency, but what do they mean in practice? Okay?
So we talk about human‑centric approaches but then try working in institutionalizing capacity‑building programmes in different countries around the globe and equipping civil servants with different digital skills, it's not easy at all. Okay. Just putting that out there.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thanks, Mimi. That compliments a lot. I think we have a strong private sector setting the stage for the need for public sector to be able ‑‑ for digital transformation along the life cycle.
Okay. So ‑‑ so I would first like to pass the floor to some women speakers because we have seen a lot of men speaking first. So perhaps I go to Umbrita and then to Resper.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you, Prateek and thank you. Apologies for being late. I think my name is Umrita Chadry. I represent a civil society organisation, CCUI from India. And looking at it from the civil society lens and I agree with what you just mentioned. A few more things. Obviously capacity building is important but before any government or any department of a government goes in for a digital transformation, I think they need to actually do a deep dive study on the impacts. That's very important, and having a multistakeholder discussion at that point of time, not only the private, public, but even the individual ‑‑ the end users into consideration would have a more than one understanding of what the ultimate product would be.
Because many times intentions are great, but the execution at the end is not seamless. So I think that is very important. Buy‑in between, like, if I'm looking at countries such as India, you have state ‑‑ you know, you have the center which implements something but states also implement something. So there has to be synergy between the state there. Has to be a buy‑in from the civil servants in the state to that. It should not be ‑‑ and for that, the capacity building is important that this is going to help you. It's not going to take away, you know, ‑‑ it's not going to harm you. Different age categories think new technologies, new processes, you know, they have a pushback in their mind. So I think that needs to be demystified.
Similarly, just as, you know, capacity building on technology is important, having a rights‑based approach while implementing is overlooked. It's not a conscious thing but unconsciously those are not looked in. So I think those are important, and countries such as us, which is multilingual, having it in different languagessen‑to‑end is important.
For example, many of our websites are on different Indian languages, but if a citizen wants to do something end‑to‑end, some parts, for example, the payment gateway is in English. So if you can have an end‑to‑end in a particular language, even voice‑based, because not many people read. They don't like to read. So, I think, you know, using those kind of innovative technology, what people will adopt, because at the end of the day, anything you bring in is for people to use it.
It's not used, it will not work. And thank you.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thanks, Umbrita for that insight.
Resper.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, my name is Resper, from the Lawyer's Hub from Nairobi, Kenya. Recently we ran our annual conference which is called the Africa Low‑Tech Festival and we were focusing on the public digital infrastructure. We look at the different facets, the linkages with the AI and technical issues. One the things that we were running with codevelopers is trying to look at how we can first do an assessment and then also create awareness, particularly for policymakers and CSOs.
And so we ran a survey. We did a number of workshops and it was very interesting. The same things that we are finding in the room whereby first the level of involvement and awareness on most of these issues was actually really low for many of the participants. So we tried to run it across 24 African countries with representatives both from the CSO community, and some members of parliament, and a higher percentage of them actually had no involvement in ‑‑ say, in the case that you are looking at, DPIs. So they don't really have conversations or understandings around, you know, whether it's data governance, whether it is digital ID, you know? And getting into having that as a starting point, I think, is actually very important, like she was saying. The assessment would come really key. But I think what I would like to emphasize also is that multidimensional aspect of it and that's what we find in the public sector.
So you find that there are very many rising issues or conversations and sometimes we try to have, like, a linear line to it. And yet, we are facing very many simultaneous issues. For instance, in Kenya, we are having so many cross‑cutting conversations. You are looking at blockchain and digital ID and we want to have a straight jacket approach to it. I think it's important that we consider the public sector actually operates cross‑cuttingly on these issues so that even as we are trying to curate solutions around it, then we are informed how they operate. Yeah.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you, Resper and then Ola. We go to the gentleman there.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning and good afternoon to everyone online. My name Parligalis. And I provided my service to develop the data talent nationalist strategy. And as a bottom‑up process in a multistakeholder way, we came to the conclusion that we could not have this same strategy for everyone in the public sector. So we divided this in three different users or audiences.
First, we have in the public sector, methodologies or geeks. I mean, people who know about technology, who are in the IT area, and definitely need different kind of capacity building.
Then we have the users, who need to reiterate consumers, but not really ‑‑ they don't need to be experts. They need to understand the technology that they are using, why it is important, and also super important here, grab some capacity building on the ethical aspects and privacy, because we ‑‑ we received many concerns from academia and civil society that sometimes when they use the technology that they were offered by the Peruvian government, they would ask too many information in the form. When we ask them, hey, why are you asking the ID here? No, because we ‑‑ we are used to this.
So, yeah, actually, that's what we need to ‑‑ I also engage the Ministry of Justice. And then the third layer is the decision‑makers because they need to know enough about technology to make decisions, and to bring this culture that was very well explained in the video Prateek and we were all talking about. Data transformation is not using tech. It's actually the shift in mindset.
And also for that, and while we were developing the national strategy, we created the detailed talent platform, where we created it easy for Peruvians civil servants to learn this.
Female public servants were the ‑‑ the servants were the least enrolling in these courses and finishing these courses. So what is happening here? Of course, there's not enough motivations and female servants have other tasks at home that don't allow them to have the time to complete these courses. So here what I would like to stress is first, let's think about our different audiences when we're thinking capacity building in the public sector.
Second, always wear gender lenses when we are thinking about these policies. And third, hearing motivations. I was discussing with friends from the UAE and Colombia, they have fantastic motivations. For instance version, very briefly in the UAE, they have like, badges that will be earned only when they finish their certification and when they apply the certifications to their role which will be counted in the annual evaluations. So these will make them eager to have these. In the Peruvian case, I believe now in the government, they are working on it, is how to create these motivations so they can make ‑‑ create more time because this is something apart from the daily tasks they have, right? So these are my main three points.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you very much, Ola. Over to you, sir.
Do we have a mic there? If we can just pass one around.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. My name is Udolf Littler, I'm Director‑General for central affairs that encompasses HR, IT, and other things in the German ministry for digital affairs. First of all, I want to thank you for organizing this Open Forum, and also to say that everything I'm hearing here and everything that has been presented, it's very clear that these issues and these challenges are the same everywhere, Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America.
I think we are all more or less in the same situation that we have vested civil servant structures, public service structures that have been functioning in one way or another for decades, and now that we are at this point, where we want to go to the digital transformation, I think it has been said in several interventions before, and I want to emphasize this also from my personal experience and our administration, at the beginning, the transformation has nothing or very, very few to do with digitalization. It has to do with the cultural mindset and how do they work, what are the players of administration that we have created over the decades for ourselves and are they really necessary?
And only if we look at these processes at these internal ways, how we operate, and only once we have optimized those ways we can then go into digitalization. Because if you ‑‑ if you take the old way of doing it, and you put a computer on it, you still have very poor process behind it, and it doesn't ‑‑ and it won't ‑‑ and it won't create good results. So people will say, oh, you see this digitalization is ‑‑ it's worth nothing and it brings only harm and it brings work. So that's one point.
The second point is, we are trying to always have a double gain when we introduce new digital tools and this double gain has to be for the customer, for the citizen, for the user.
That is very important, but it has also to be on the administrative side. So because then you have a chance to take the civil servants on board, and to convince them that it's a good thing to do. I mean, in Germany, other than perhaps other countries, we have very poor demoography, we are older and older. We don't have so many young people on the employment market. So we need these computers and machines to help us to provide the same services and the same quality as we did before with, like, 100 persons now with 80 or 60.
So we have to ‑‑ we have to have, again, on the administrative side in order to take people on board, and in order to start this cultural mind shift.
And so, thank you very much for this. And I ‑‑ I ‑‑ I'm really learning a lot here from all of you, and I'm looking forward to the continued exchange. Thank you.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you. I see there are several more hands and I will come back here first and then go back again this side.
Yes. So Peter, over to you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning, everybody. And indeed very interesting conversation. My name is Peter Marion. I'm working for the European Commission and IMPA, I am I'm team leader for digital governance.
A few comments from my side. So at IMPA, digital became a priority a few years ago, and when we started looking at that, we, of course, were in the middle of the COVID, post‑COVID situation, when this was this huge shift, even more than before, one could argue, towards having society moving online and n many aspects of society.
So as we worked with our partner countries, because that's part ‑‑ a lot of our mandate is to work with partners outside of Europe. We wanted to make sure, let's say, that we're all together seeing the benefits of this digital ‑‑ these digital shift, let's say, but also that we manage the risks. So both were important.
And also, we looked at this from a ‑‑ let's say a global perspective. So we were not focusing only at national digital transformation, for example within certain administrations or other aspects of society which is important, but also how do we see the global aspects of this, when you talk about the data transfers, privacy, and eventually also, you know, sovereignty of nations' information, access to information, those things.
So, of course to have these kind of discussions and I fully agree we need to have them internally in our organisations as anywhere else we need this capacity to be increased. And that's ‑‑ so there I just wanted to share a few things that we have been doing. So just a few more things before I go into some examples. So we ‑‑ as I said, we wanted to make sure that we reaped the benefits but also avoid the risks and these risks to be, you know, blunt about it are also geopolitical. So we wanted to make sure that the capacity is there, that ourselves and our partners avoid being captured, captured by states methodologies and by companies. And their value sets that go with that, and I heard already the term "human‑centric" here and so for us, this is very important, this human‑centerric approach, where we put the individual at the center and not the country or the state.
When we thought, okay, how do we go about this? We linked this also to our objective to support and work with our multilateral institutions. So this is just for context. So we put this into context of working with multilaterals and specifically also with the UN ‑‑ the United Nations agency, and, again, based on the principles of the UN Charters and the human‑centric approach.
So what have we been doing concretely? Just to give a few examples, we have an agreement ongoing with UNESCO on the topic of AI. So this is a few million Euro. I won't go into too much details but a large objective here is also to work on these topics of if I can call them capacity building, you can call it more or less. But let's say it includes capacity building on the topic of artificial intelligence and working with partner countries around the world.
We have an agreement with ITU and UNDP together, a few million Euro. It's just recently been signed and it's to train a few thousand civil servants around the world. So it's global. UNESCO is also global. And that ‑‑ that is training, we can argue for years about this. It's training online and offline. So it is online and different types of online training, but it also includes offline training. And that training, I would call it like digital diplomacy‑type training.
And it includes training on AI, and for that, ITU and UNDP will work also with UNESCO.
We also have another project that just started recently, where we are working and this is specifically in Sub‑Saharan Africa with regulators. I also heard regulator question coming up. So that's about 34 million Euro at the moment, where we are also working with other EU Member States and the idea there is to work with regulators in Sub‑Saharan Africa. And indeed, this approach will be much more based maybe on the notion, I could say, of working with champions, and with working with the notion of change management and I completely agree with what was said before about this not just being about digital and computers but, indeed about, you know, what was said by my predecessor.
Also to emphasize that we have absolutely realized we need capacity building in our own unit, in our DG and also in our delegations around the world. We have delegations around the world, offices, embassies and everybody needs to be skilled, and, again, it's not about using computers but all of these other aspects.
And so we are trying to do that actively. And then maybe just to respond because, of course, we have many partners here at this session today. It was about civil servants but I think civil society there is key, and we also have under the same general umbrella, a program that we're just starting with two consortia of CSOs globally, to work on capacity building for digital and that includes for them to be able to join discussions like this one. So we are explicitly asking them to join discussions at IGF, ITU, ICANN, ITF and so on so that they are part of this discussion.
Thank you very much.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thanks, Peter, for sharing is the multilateral dimension and the global work you are doing. I think we move to some parliamentarians. So over to you. Of yes. The gentleman ‑‑ yeah. And then to you, sir. Yes.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much. My name is Sam George, I'm with the parliament from Ghana.
I think in having these conversations, we need to say that the different demographics in different sectors, when we look at the public service, for example, if I use Ghana, it's made up of the civil service and then you've got the executive government machinery, you have the judiciary and then you've got parliament.
Now, the approaches to introducing digital tools in various sectors of public service cannot be the same. When we tried to approach this with a one cup fits all you have problems. Ghana's demographic is different than Germany, but we have the same problem where we have a very aged civil service. In fact, many of them will tell you, they are BBC, born before computers.
(Chuckles).
And so the approach to digital uptake is different from if we were talking, for example, to the private sector are if you were talking, for example, to parliament, where you've got a mixed demographic. Now, the challenge with parliament, where I sit will be that a lot of the capacity building is tailored for members of parliament. And that's fine. But then that is just half of the solution. Members of parliament face attrition, and many African parliaments, the longevity is maximum eight years or maximum two terms. So when you invest a lot of capacity building in just the members of parliament, and not the parliamentary service, which is the technical bureaucracy, that survivors longer than the members of parliament, because there are technical persons in parliament would have been there for 25 years, 30 years. This he see various iterations of parliament, that is a key that we need to focus on because they provide the technical support for members of parliament in pushing legislation and all the technical work. So I think that that's an area we need to look at.
The same happens with the judicial service. There's more longevity for a judge would gets appointed to a bench. If you give them the requisite training, then they are able to have better interpretation of legislation and all of that. Then when you ‑‑ and I get the benefit of having worked in the civil service, and then transitioning into the government machine working in the office of president before finding myself in parliament now six see the various iterations there.
The last point I want to make is the fact that we need to understand the life cycle of introducing digital, especially on the African continent. A lot of government in Africa are talking about digitalization. Because that's the "in" thing. A lot of European and western funding is there for digitalization. The main concept of digitalization itself which is the next phase of digitalization is lost on many African governments and many governments frankly across the world, and then the whole concept of digital transformation.
So being able to have that complete life cycle established for the public sector, that digitalization is just one step of it, it's just one small minutia of the whole process. We need to get to the digital transformation through digitalization. It's a critical part of getting this actually implemented so that we don't just have check boxes that are ticked so that our countries appear to be compliant, but implementation is actually zero.
And that's where I think a lot of focus must be on.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you, sir. I think this conversation will go on, but we have about half an hour left. Please take the floor. I will not totally stick to the script because I like the conversation is flowing and we are learning from each other. Keep the remark as brief as possible so that everyone can have a chance.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm Damian Sempeda and I'm a Senator from Mexico. The topic, when you want to push and have an agenda in civil public service and government and parliamentary, you ‑‑ you need to look at two specific things. We need information and we need resources. Resources, access, funding or whatever it costs, benefits.
In information we need information for the cope of opportunity of the technology in specific topics because most of the countries, they are underdeveloped or like, not fully developed. The members the government or the government servants are thinking about health issues, security issues, education issues specific problems of the people right now, not like in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. So what we need to do, I think so ‑‑ is to put the information that makes it reasonable to take an agenda in pushing ‑‑ in Internet, artificial intelligence, technology, in all of these areas, to make a specific benefits to the people.
You need to identify key players, not everybody, key players, key members of Congress, key members of government, that you need to convince that if you invest in this technology, it will make a specific benefit for the people.
That's one thing, information of opportunities.
The other thing is information on the risks because all the people that are making the decisions are always worried about what can happen if you open up all the technology without correct regulatory measures.
Things of personal data, information, biometrics and all that stuff. Things of the right to privacy, for example, what about public and private security surveillance? So I think when with you do these gatherings or if I was UN, UNESCO, or whatever, I would give specific information to how to use it safe.
And the third thing, I think, we need to get into it, is specific costs. We need infrastructure. We need to make investments in schools, public places is, whatever to get access to everybody. If you don't do that, for example, in Internet, you ‑‑ what happens is that you open the bridge between the people that have access to technology information and the people that doesn't have.
So I think if we give the information to policymakers and to key decision players, we can get, like, the objectives done.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you, sir, for those thoughts. I will come ‑‑ I will come here to Mr. Teixeira and then we go there finally. And this ‑‑ oh, please come here. Don't stay at the back.
Please come in the front on the table. Please.
Sir.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for being invited here as a speaker. My name is Takahera, I'm with the information analysis located in Tokyo, in Japan.
Before I have founded my own think tank, this institute is a totally independent think tank in the private sector, but before having founded this think tank, I was a diplomat. In the capacity between bureaucracy, civil servants on one hand and on the other hand, private sector, I would like to make three very short proposals.
While I'm very pessimistic in terms of the digitalization or digital transformation in ‑‑ particularly in the Japanese bureaucracy, after my Japanese civil servant friends have left the room, I'm ‑‑ I would like to make a very short statement, very honestly. First of all, I think by nature, the bureaucracy is very reluctant to be digital. Because as civil servants are working on the politics, and politics by nature means in transparency to make deal with all the possible stakeholders.
So I think before getting into the discussion in detail of the competencies, we should differentiate between the explanatory tasks done by the civil servants to others. For example, as I said, I was a diplomat, but in bureaucracy, I can't imagine that generative AI will make a statement for a foreign minister. So we should be very realistic. We should be very realistic.
So first point is, we should differentiate different tasks done by the civil servants and maybe there are some peers which are very relevant to the DX and AI, but others are not.
So the second thing is we should enhance the public engagement because I'm terribly sorry, but I'm a newcomer to this forum, but UNESCO works in terms of this, and it's invisible enough, particularly in Japanese society. We should involve much more ‑‑ much more public opinions so that we can boost this movement in terms of the introductions and to the civil servants worth.
For example, in Japan, maybe old friends and colleagues coming from the emerging markets and emerging countries cannot imagine how acute the deep learning issue is, especially in Japan. All the Japanese social sectors are urged in introduce AI, or DX because of lackness of the human capacity.
So this sentiment shared by the public opinion should be mobilized in connection with our works done by this forum.
And last but not least, I'm still wondering, what is the AI? I myself, a global AI specialist, I'm still pessimistic because the AI technology is just pattern matching calculated, just calculated by the computer. So we need much more elaborated AI technologies so that we can maybe ‑‑ maybe the public or civil servants cannot rely on the very sparse outcomes of the calculation done by the AI in the current status.
So I would say, UNESCO and our DC alliance should help how can I say? The items done by the academia and the private sector, to make much better AI, and the technologies that it is. Thank you very much.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: We will go over there. I'm sorry if you can please keep it very brief.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. Thank you, Prateek. Yes, it was my turn. Thank you, Prateek for inviting me to speak in this open forum. And first of all, I would like to thank UNESCO for, you know, putting this together. I know you have put in a lot of work to bring this for discussion.
That is number one.
Number two, I would like to raise my hand and as you can see on the screen, my fingers are not the same. So all governments are not created equal. So we really have to know this as we ‑‑ we ‑‑ we begin this discussion.
And I would like to urge that, you know, we don't have to discuss this as if we're concluding it today. We have just begun. And this is a conversation, and I believe, you know, what we have to do is to create partnerships with the government locally, for them to be able to, you know ‑‑ to express what the needs under terms of capacity ‑‑ digital capacity building for the civil servants in terms of what we want. The question is and the question that you asked was: Is there really a need for ‑‑ what sort of skills and competencies that we need?
I believe that to be able to get a set of skills and competencies, will vary from one government to another, from one public sector entity to another.
I will try to share what is happening with my government in Tanzania. Tanzania is implementing what we call Digital Tanzania. And you will find that they have created a Zoom‑like, it's called Emiquchannel where interrally they organize meetings using this platform. So $a lot of things that are happening with governments, you know, around the world that we need to learn from them, as we do this capacity building as a coalition. I would like to say one of the skills government is the issue of the data governance training because, many governments are now implementing data protection acts. Handling data is very important.
Number three is the issue of, you know, digital customer service. In 20, 20 I write about 50 emails to different government agencies. And what do I get? Some of the agencies reply to my emails. So some reply within fewer hours. Others reply after several days. So what does it mean in terms of the capacity building?
The issue of attitude change and that has been previously alluded by our friend from the ‑‑ from Germany.
So I think there is a lot that will go into this, in terms of making sure that we also create capacity in terms of the government officials to learn about digital customer care and whatnot. And lastly, I would like to say that as we move forward with this, it is very important, number one, we create did, so that, you know, what you are doing, it doesn't appear that it's an imported menu that's shoved into the government in terms of their capacity building.
So with that said, again, thank you for what you are doing to ‑‑ for the capacity.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you. And I think it's all of us doing, not all of us alone. And it's just the start of the conversation. To the gentleman over there in ‑‑ in white. And then I come to the lady here. And then Mike.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much. Good morning. I'm Honorable Eligi from Gambia and I'm the vice chair of the African Internet Governance. I came from the tech sector to be in parliament which is really a very different world from what I used to know.
In any case, the digital transformation, first of all, I think it's the most for governments now. There's no going back. So we need to move forward. And in doing so, the governments must take the bull by the horn in trying to understand the capacity gap that they have. And to do that, first, you know, we talk about the civil servants, which is crucial because at the end of the day, the policy making rests in their hands, even though there's a big debate, whether parliamentarians do policies, you know is debatable so I think the two need to work very closely together, so we know what it means to get those policies to work.
Now, in doing so, we ‑‑ for me, I think there are multiple opportunities that we can use to make sure that we bridge this gap. First, let's look at our education, the curriculum, in our schools. I think this is a key area that we can start to build now for the future, because like he said, we have, you know, civil society or public sector, actually, the age gap, in many countries is not very good. So to do that, we need to start building the younger generation to move up.
Then the civil society that we currently, have I think there needs to be an understanding of the various gaps. It's not one thing that fits all. Me personally when I interact with some of them, I can easily sometimes you have very, very big gap in some of them, but the other way around, you see some that are up there, they just need to go to the next level. So I think tiering them and knowing their level of competency will help in the capacity building.
And the last one, actually is what we are doing in Gambia. And I'm sure my colleague will say something about that.]
The government is actually on a very rapid transformation, in fact, just last week, they transformed our one education of learning into a college for the civil service. It will help them to train them so they can move to the next level in terms of developing the needs of the country. Thank you.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: In fact, I was in Gambia earlier this year for training of the judiciary and we had about 50 magistrates on AI. If it's also from Gambia, can we wet a bit.
>> A different approach.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Okay, very quickly.
>> I'm from Gambia NRI, my approach, ‑‑ I'm looking at it from the perspective of being a computer scientist, looking at it being technologic, people and processes.
Now, if you look at most countries, especially in the Global South, taking the view from Africa, who are the nearest civil servants who deal with the people are those in the municipalities. So the strength of any digital transformation process my start with the municipalities.
If you look at Seoul, the capital of South Korea, what they have done with digital transformation is amazing on how the common person can get services who reside in Seoul. I think if we focus on building bottom‑top from our municipalities, a big change will happen.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you. That's extremely important.
Ma'am, the floor is yours.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm truly impressed, this room is a field of wisdom. I wish I could talk you to individually. I'm from the United Nations University, so I don't know how many of you have heard of UNU, the headquarters in Tokyo, and we have a ‑‑ thank you. 13 research institutes in 12 different countries. Every institute has its own specialty, and the one that I'm leading, the institute in Macau is specialized in digital technologies. So right now, our research, training and education portfolio is mainly related to AI governance, modeling for disaster management, online child protection so digital technology is our bread and butter.
We have, actually, different types of champion Eng, because we are interdisciplinary research team, like this gentleman just said, we have a room full of computer scientists specialized in AI and we have been just launching a series of generic AI plus series talking about ChatGPT's impact on education, on actually ‑‑ we're going to work on a series with UNESCO on the education on the environment and the future, the responsibility. We have a series of generative AI plus. We have a computer scientist and psychologist economist, but we want to hear about the real country context so that our ‑‑ our knowledge can make sense.
So we also have a training catalog, ranging catalog, I will be happy to share it with you but we need context for you. I would like to call for collaboration and both for training that we are offering but also for the next conference that we are going to run in Macau in April as a UN AI conference. We will be ten times smaller than IGF, but our approach would be very focused, problem‑driven. You have a specific issue, we bring private sector, our academic research network together just to focus on one specific issue. Hopefully everybody goes home with something concrete. So I would like to call for participation and collaboration and please come to me. I would love to talk to you for one hour, each one of you. Thank you.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you so much.
Mike, you wanted to take the floor and then the lady next to you. And so let's keep it to one minute. I know it's hard. But there's a lot to talk about.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I will be quick. I'm Micah, and I worked in AI policy for, I think, five or six years now. So I can bring the perspective of people drafting the national AI strategies or working on AI regulation. And I just like to bring up that it's very easy and everyday work to write plans and strategies and how to develop skills for, you know, workforce or citizens or universities or really anyone else than yourself.
And with it comes to this part on competencies of AI policy officers, it's actually kind of civil and can be scary because starting this discussion means, like, inviting everyone to analyze, can I do my job and can our team actually do what we're supposed to do? Do we have the skills? So it's ‑‑ it can be really hard, and I feel like maybe this pressure comes actually from a misunderstanding, and it's really clear that we would need to put more effort into clarifying that this is not really about turning civil servants into technical AI developers. Not everyone needs to a Ph.D. in AI to write AI regulation, for example. And we should stop say things like let's bring the real technology experts in or, you know, we don't need to be experts in AI, because AI policymakers are also experts. It's just, like, different, an emerging field of expertise and I think that's what the competency framework is all about.
So that's going to be a really good tool for encouraging this discussions. Thanks.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you, Mikey. I move to Alexander and then come back. You can.
>> ALEXANDER BARBOSA: Thank you, bat trick, and good morning everyone, I'm Alexander Barbosa, said of Cetic. Wow, I don't have much to say, after all of this wonderful debate. But I would like to mention that we are involved in measuring the socioeconomic complications by the different sectors, including public sector and we do run surveys every year with government to see the level of adoption. It's really clear that having data, we give visibility to the problems and to the issues that we have to face and to address. Without data, we don't have visibility. So ‑‑ but more than have data like, UNESCO is really making a very wonderful job in making assessment, and to revealing the state of the adoption among civil servants, but we need, as our colleague from Ghana and also from Tanzania has mentioned, government is not homogenous body.
So we need to have segregated data so we can understand the different inequalities in terms of digital skills among the civil servants in the government. We have different structures like a central government, provincial governments, local governments within those levels, we have different powers, like legislative, judiciary, executive, and the level of skills development is very different. I would say that among all countries here represented, we can say that it is not the same. So we don't have one solution that we will solve the whole problems, but it is clear that when we go ‑‑ start to discuss how or what are the challenges in empowering civil servants in engaging in the digital transformation, we need to have disaggregated data. We need to understand what are the differences among the civil servants.
Besides the lack of digital skills that I guess all of us agree that we have an issue to be addressed, I would like to also mention three other things that was already mentioned in terms of cultural change.
Governments are the oldest type of organisation and the only type of organisation that touches every aspect of society. So the cultural resistance to change is really enormous. And besides, that I think that we need to develop a culture of continuous assessment.
Many of you have mentioned the need of assessment and I think that we need to rely on institutions such as UNESCO's to help Member States to really put in place effective frameworks able to capture, able to measure and produce reliable data.
And last but not least, I would say that we have to work in other set of skills, not only digital skills such as collaborations, and best practice sharing. So those are a few points that I would like to address, and once again, Prateek, I would like to congratulate UNESCO for this initiative. Really very important. Thank you.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you. I think the point of measuring digital skills is extremely important. Actually, we don't have a global measure of this and the kind of proxies which are still being used, they are not very sure they measure education. I think we will continue but I think we can tend by five minutes if the folks in the technical team allow us to.
So we start while I figure out.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. Yeah? Okay. Well, thank you, everyone, for a rich discussion, my name is Caroline, I'm with a human rights organisation called Access Now. There's a lot of shared sentiment in this room but to highlight on a few things, one, when we are talking about digital capacity building, we cannot overlook the ‑‑ the major gaps that still exist and just knowledge about the relationship between those technologies and their human rights impacts, and how human rights law applies to those particular technologies. So I think just making sure that we are keeping base between the technology itself and also the human rights framework that it needs to operate inside of it.
When we talk about a human‑centric approach digitalization we need to understand that that's not just about end users versus governments or private sector but about people versus the technology itself, just the language of digitalization, or digital transformation, I think, lends itself to moving in a direction of seeing implementation of the technology as the end goal, or the point and it's just really not, and so I think ‑‑ and it can be disruptive to a design process and can limit our capacity to really understand the problem that we are trying to solve in the first place. I think keeping people's experiences and to the Senator's point being very specific about the problems we are actually trying to address to avoid overreach and misapplication of certain technologies.
I think just as a final point, really understanding the ways that these technology impact people at risk that are very different to the way they apply to, you know, end users in general. And those people in community at‑risk are the most who have been least effectively served by so many of these government agencies. And so really centering those communities' perspectives from the very beginning of the process and not seeing it as kind of something to be tacked on at the end, and really think about co‑creation, accountability and co‑design with those communities who perhaps have the most to be gained in some cases, but also have ‑‑ stand the most risk of harm.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: (No audio).
Okay. So it was not cut.
>> (Off microphone comment).
I feel very effective and I work for the European Parliament. My only thought is I see a lot of focus on how digitalization is used for accessing services from the public, but there's other aspects that are important, at least from my perspective is how digitalization provides us to do new things. I think just an example, I work with silicon text, and sometimes we have to see ‑‑ for instance, I would love to have digital intelligence. So I think it would be very useful as part of the conversation. So not only access to public services but how we do business inside the house.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: I think that's very important.
We go to Jose Jessa.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much. I'm from civil society in Brazil, from the Public Policy and Internet and the federal administration on data governance, representative of civil society. And just to share a thought on, like, how can we even be more productive when we think of digitalization of the public sector and resounding the voices that mentioned communication and feedback also. We get to the feedback of civil society, and people who are using the systems. It's fundamental otherwise all the work can be counterproductive.
And in Brazil, we have many cases that went to the judiciary to question issues related to ethics or to the ‑‑ the compliance with, for instance, privacy and the data protection issues that could have been solved just with the further dialogue with civil society and specialists.
And just finalize, something that was not touched on much here today is also on the capacity building the judiciary, because the judges are the ones for responsible when something goes wrong in the administration, the policy making, they are the ones that tackle the issue, when rights are being violated. So thank you very much, indeed.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you, Jose. We have a judge from Tanzania joining us.
I come to the lady there.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I will be very brief. I think many things have been said. I'm wondering about ‑‑ my question is: Why people are scared from digitalization? I think we have to think in multidimensional level. The first is that people have to learn too much new things very quickly and fastly in global world. When you have to deal with regulations you face regulation coming from Europe, from the United States, and China, and from everywhere.
So within capacities, I will just think very quickly about complexity and certainty, and this make capacity something very difficult in this new moving world.
My experience is that in Morocco, which is a part of Africa, we have also to face to the problem of literacy, civilian will deal with people that cannot read that cannot ‑‑ cannot write, et cetera.
So something that could be very interesting to ‑‑ to study and to put in the framework, we don't talk a lot about this, but I think that building capacities is not individual matter. It's collective one.
And we should put frameworks that we can bring together techniques and methodologies to learn individually and also at the global level and AI can bring also the tools that are not very well known, but tools based on simulation. We can also study the behaviors of people, of collective ‑‑ in collective learning setting, and we can provide new approaches to learning because for most people, digitalization means tracing. It means surveillance, it means that everybody will know what I am doing, et cetera.
So I think it is very important to demystify what does it mean. In fact, if we ‑‑ if we have ‑‑ if we must have these tools, we can be more comfortable with using them.
So just to be very brief, because I don't have time, I know. I think that technology is going very fast, regulation is going very slow. And this distortion is putting people in very uncomfortable situation. So there's three things, I think very important, if I want to summarize, the first is raise awareness and demystify, at all levels. The second is lifelong learning. People should learn all the time, because the technology is moving. If you remember, November '22, everybody was surprised, but the tsunami of ChatGPT. Even people working in academia and very advanced in research and technology, we were really surprised by this huge tool.
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The third adaptation to all of these things, regulations. We started with GDPR and now we just ‑‑ we put ‑‑ we developed executive master to learn about governance of AI. Two years after we have to change the ‑‑ the courses because we are not dealing with GDPR anymore. We have to deal with AI. That means you have to learn how to qualify the risk of tools. And I am ‑‑ I agree with you. If you don't master the technology, you cannot understand what is going on with this regulation.
So there are a lot of things to debate.
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: Thank you, everyone. I think just as some very quick concluding remarks, I know there are more people (No audio).
>> PRATEEK SIBAL: We explore forming a Dynamic Coalition to the IGF, with kind of three broad objectives, which can be defined with the community and what we will try to serve is more a Secretariat to facilitate that cooperation.
First, would be a community of practice for knowledge sharing. So what all civil society academia, governments, private sector, experiences they are having, we can share them around the world, as someone also mentioned. The experiences in Germany to the experienced in Tanzania, they are quite similar. And this is a real chance for all of us to learn from each other.
There is also, perhaps a need for developing knowledge tools. So this is not only a fora for discussion but collaboratively working on some products which could be, for instance, an assessment methodology, for civil servants which whatever UNESCO will produce is available for free for everyone to use, contextualize and so on. But we can collaboratively work on tools which everyone can take forward. And then also to have a network of experts which can actually support governments, provide technical assistance. And this will be from learning from Brazil and Ghana and facilitating that exchange.
We don't have much more time but what we will do is follow up with an email and with the formal processes of the IGF and open this up for people to join the coalition, and then we will follow up with more discussions. Thank you so much for your insights. It was a pleasure hosting this discussion this morning. I have a wonderful day. I thank you.
(End of session.)