The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> PAUL MITCHELL: Well, good afternoon. I'd like to thank you all for coming, and encourage you -- is this better? I'd like to encourage you to come forward. So I'd like to see if we can make this as interactive as we can. Although we have some panelists here, a lot of the value in the multi-stakeholder environment is sharing ideas across, you know, as many people as possible. So get yourselves in a position to where perhaps we can be more interactive going forward.
We've had several changes of panelists and the details will be provided as we go along. What I'd like to do is try to first of all set the stage for what the basic topic is and why we're here. Possibly you will know everything I'm about to say in which case, that's great, you'll know it even better. But after that, we're going to break this into three sessions basically on three different themes each relating to multi-stakeholder collaboration and the sustainable development goals.
So first of all, I'd like to see a show of hands about which stakeholder groups do we have in the office. So if you're civil society, put up your hand? Okay. A couple of those. Private sector? Some of those. Technical community? Good. Government? No government? Okay. Anybody I missed that doesn't want to identify with one of those groups? No? Okay.
Well, if you are in -- feeling like you want to tweet, use the #WS30 and the other IGF-related hashtags if you want. You might consider tweeting some multi-stakeholder practice you've been involved in that has worked well or multi-stakeholder challenges that you think are needing to be addressed.
So just as a setup, and feel free to come forward and take seats closer to the front of the room than the back if you want to. Say the humans have sort of been distinguished from other life on the planet because we have this unique ability to purposefully evolve our own existence. We can imagine a specific future and then we can go about creating that future in a number of ways. We can dream impossible things, we can figure out how to make them happen. And the fact we're all here today is in no small part due to the innovations and imaginations of researchers and scientists who made much of our modern life possible. But as you all know and is the topic of many of the sessions here at IGF, the disparities and development around the world are legion. And for some daily existences, it's just a continue wall struggle.
So it's remarkable then as background in 2000 world leaders adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration committing the nations to, quote, global partnership to reduce poverty and setting out the timeline targets with a deadline of September of this year. They were known as the Millennium Development Goals. It's pretty remarkable. It's even more remarkable that in 2003 and 2005, the U.N. convened the two-part conference the World Summit on the Information Society at which delegates made a declaration. And it's worth reflecting on what was actually declared at the time. Declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented information society where everyone can create access, utilize, and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities, and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting the sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premise on the principles of the charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights. So that's pretty amazing aspirational statement. And it's very difficult to argue against any aspect of it. Making it real is -- is the goal.
So as a sort of historical background, we put into place 11 action lines aimed at addressing the goals and it created the IGF. This is the last IGF under the current mandate that was created at that particular event.
So critical outcome was, in fact, IGF, and the recognition that all sectors would have to work together to achieve the action alliance. And there's these reviews for the past 10 years every year and that's culminating in December in just about three weeks in a high-level ten-year review that will in large part determine the future of this particular conference. I think you've heard about that in previous presentations today. So in 2015, we have to take stock ourselves, and while much progress was made, the millennium development goals were not, in fact, universally achieved. So there's still more work to do. And you can see on the slide up there and you have a handout there are 17 new sustainable goals with a total of 169 targets read them all. But the goal is to see if we can achieve 169 targets that are the measurement of these 17 goals by 2030.
Thematically, they break down to people, planet, peace, prosperity, and partnerships. And that's how we're going to have the conversation today. We'll focus first on the people and planet themes and then peace and prosperity and then on partnerships. So our panel will get a couple of questions to start with and have the -- and have the opportunity to make an initial intervention. And then we'd like to take questions, comments, interventions, from the floor. And try to involve this as the dialogue. So to the first section on people and planet, we have as far as our original panelists, we have Andrew Wilson, from the Center for International Private Enterprise. He’ll be the first intervener and he's coming to us via remote.
So, Andrew, you there? Andrew? Andrew is not there. Someone in our remote Paul Mitchell booth is going to solve this problem. Good to go? Okay. I can see you up there. Oh, I got to look up. But we can't hear you.
>> ANDREW WILSON: Okay. There we go.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: There we go. Andrew, go ahead.
>> ANDREW WILSON: Sorry. I just managed to connect. So if you can update me where we are.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: I just introduced you to make your first intervention.
>> ANDREW WILSON: Okay. I'm glad I managed to connect right now then.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Go ahead.
>> ANDREW WILSON: I was going to say looking at the -- the goals of the program, of issue and talking on issues here, a couple of things I’d like to introduce is one the part of the chamber. We work on public dialogue and issues around the world. We develop the U.S. chamber. A couple of things I thought we'd bring to this if we're looking at the people aspect of the sustainable development goals is if you go over and you look at the different goals, I -- going through them, you know, the stuff that really matters to us in delivering the people through the SCGs, if you look at goal number one, access to basic services for people, or moving down the line, governance goals, corruption, public access to information. These are important enablers of growth and of providing economic empowerment to people. If the countries don't work well, no matter what we do to promote private sector growth, if you listen to a lot of the folks at the U.N. or the world bank, you know, private sector growth is going to be the -- is the engine of delivering economic growth to people in the SCGs or the majority of it. So for us, the governance angle is very important. And I think also recognizing potential that e-governments and technology has to play in leapfrogging governance challenges within governments.
So one of the angles we're taking on this, I hope we'll hear more from some of the other participants later on is looking at mechanisms that exists to improve quality of governance and the ability of governance to deliver services to their people. And the open government partnership certainly is one of the angles that plays into this. And we've been -- we used to be working with Microsoft, with Reuters and the government of Korea to set up a private sector council to work with what's called the open Government Partnership, which is a public-private partnership in about 64 countries around the world right now.
And the civil society government sit together and map out priorities for the government in terms of creating more open access to data, more access to information and greater transparency within government procedures so we can also apply things like corruption. The element missing from this has been the private sector. OGP's been going for about four years now, five years, and the way it's set up is that countries put together partnerships for a two-year stretch. The government sets some goals and in the end of the two years, the private -- the civil society evaluates the performance of governance. But the private sectors are missing from that.
What we've done is formed the private sector council on open governance. We're with the OGP's secretary and others bringing the country into the dialogue, a development dialogue, not only in terms of what services, what form should the government be undertaking to improve its services and its openness, but also what can the private sector bring to the table to help government reach those goals in terms of expertise, in terms of software applications, or other things, to really help government to understand the potential that egovernment has and the potential synergies that can build in cooperation with the private sector.
Great example of that here in the U.S. across different types of sectors is Amazon, for instance, providing cloud storage for land-sat, satellite data, the photographs that people use for satellites to do all sorts of applications. They're storing that for free for the government, and in turn, providing access to anybody who wants to use that data to create applications. You can imagine if we start doing that with healthcare data, with other economic data, with agricultural data, what implications that can have for government planning but also private sector developed programs, products, and services that can help people take advantage of the government data.
I'll leave it there right now knowing that we've got some time constraints moving forward.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Thank you very much. I wonder if I can turn now to my left and ask Matthew to give just a brief overview of successful multi-stakeholder practice. That's addressed one of the SDGs, the SGDs in the people and planet theme.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thank you, Paul, this is Matthew Shears with Department of Technology. I'd like to build on some of the comments that Andrew made. I think when we're looking at -- you mentioned the MGDs and you talked about the processes, the background for this. And I think one of the challenges that we face right now and we have faced throughout the MGD process and the linkages to ICTs is that there weren't really any specific linkages between them. And I made this comment yesterday or the day before and that what we had before us now between ICTs and the SGDs is a much greater zing row nicety for how we can leverage the ICTs on the SGDs and meeting the targets. So we may have been aligned. The disconnect was there.
The action lines we created were probably more valuable in terms of putting out their guidelines for countries to measure how they were doing. But they were not specific enough nor were they tied enough to the MGDs to provide a real agenda, a real way forward, a real structure with how we would achieve and meet those targets. Now we're in the same situation again. Except this time, the SGDs have just been approved.
So we are in a perfect space to look at it going forward and saying, okay, we've come to the December meeting. We have this new commitment to the ICTs, what's the plan to link them concretely to the SGDs. So this has got to get beyond merely writing a declaration to link to the SGDs, this is really a multi-stakeholder opportunity to make the linkages a reality. That's my first point. The situation is the same but we have a much greater opportunity to deliver on the potential of ICTs for the sustainable development.
My second point is that when we're talking about people and as Andrew kind of touched on, it's about everything at the end of the day. I mean, you know when I looked at the SGDs and I say what do we need at the end of the day, we have four issues, I think, that are key. We can come back to these in more details. There's the recognition -- first and foremost is the recognition that the realization of one's human rights is absolutely essential to economic development. If you don't have people who are empowered through the realization of their rights, they don't have an education. They don't have good healthcare. They don't have the opportunity to get good work. So these are at the core of what we -- of the sustainable development goals and the sustainable development goals are all about as the Secretary General said about human dignity and really the realization of rights is essential.
Then you have the affordability and accessibility of ICTs. It's not just about ICTs, it's about how easy we can use them. How easy -- do we have digital literacy to support using the ICTs? The next one is about -- and Andrew mentioned this -- it's about governance. We have to have in place good government systems and the rule of law. So there's a predictability not only for business, but there's a predictability for the empowerment of the people and their rights as well.
And the last one I would say is a more general issue that we spend a lot of time talking about, probably more than the others which is perhaps a little unfortunate. But the importance, if absolute importance of having enabling environments so that market entry is easy, so there's competition, so there's good investment climate.
So these are all kind of the very fundamental basics that we have to look at when we're talking about empowering people and people, this concept of how important people are and really realizing their opportunity within the sustainable development goals. So that's -- I wanted to kind of put that in there as a mix of issues that we need to bear in mind. It's not just about talking about multi-stakeholder processes, it's much more fundamental. I would like to hold off on the multi-stakeholder example to later because it's very specific to policy opportunity. I'll just leave it there and see if anyone else wants to jump in, thanks.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: I will flip over to my right and introduce Anne from the OECD and ask if you would like to intervene on anything that Matthew said or Andrew has said or on the general multi-stakeholder process.
>> ANNE CARBLANC: Yeah, just following on the last point with regards to the process being more than just a process, I think the OECD definitely recognizes that and we've institutionalized how we engage with stakeholders. So in early on, in -- I think it's 1962, we actually formally created the business and Industry Advisory Committee and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to formally engage with us at various committee meetings on specific subjects. in the space of digital economy.
So how we create policies for innovation, growth, and social prosperity in these areas, we've recognized that it was even more important to have the internet technical community in civil society. So we also formalize that engagement as well. So we have bodies that sit in all of our meetings that represent both of those stakeholder groups. And it's not just about attending the meetings, but they're engaged in every aspect of the process.
So whether we're developing new council recommendations that become guidance for government policy or organizational policies be, all of these groups have an equal say as the governments that sit around the table as well. And to think that especially in the digital space that this is fundamental to ensuring that what we're doing is going to benefit the growth of the digital economy and that policies are going to be interoperable and relevant to different organizations, including business. So, yeah, I absolutely support that last remark.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: And to my left, Ankhi Das from Facebook.
>> ANKHI DAS: So I think just taking that forward in terms of talking about the partnerships and frameworks of industry instead of working on in terms of making sure that the multi-stakeholder principles are brought in to address this we see this most actively being implemented in the areas of addressing questions of building access because that requires the participation of multiple stakeholders whether it's industry and private sector on one hand to government which has you know sort of engaged in multi-stakeholder process for policy making as well as users and consumers on the other side.
There is a stakeholder voice on every side which is going around. Industry's role is very important in this because as a key mover in terms of making the investments in the sector where the last infrastructure side or also in terms of creation or for services and applications that there's the system or the small local content or an SME which is engaged in this area of creating the goods and services of this area, these are all equal system places coming together and all of them have to have a voice in terms of how policy making is done so that the burdens -- the burdens which can sometimes be -- be consequence of natural policy making, that does create a degree on the cycle and in terms of just making sure how enterprise or the private sector engaging with the processes.
What we've seen in terms of taking the SGDs, once we look at it from implemental country level planning, the south Asia, for instance, we're seeing this momentum of various countries, India, Bangladesh, or in Pakistan, they're all coming up with this digital road map so you have the digital blueprint that actually is mapping on to a lot of the SGDs in terms of making sure that services are available in terms of spectrum licensing, having robust multi-stakeholder processes in terms of just having a conversation with the access infrastructure provider. We're seeing similar kind of country plans being built which are design level incorporating all of the consultation processes where everybody has a seat at the table and it's gone really effectively in terms of the policy making up to date.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Thank you. Before I go any further, I would just like to open it up to the floor. If anyone has a comment that they would like to make? Anyone? If not, I'll go round robin again, and back to Andrew. And Andrew, if you're still there.
>> ANDREW WILSON: I'm here.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: If you're still there, I wonder if you could give a little bit of an outline of a particular project and that you have been involved in or have seen put into place that has -- has ruled in some actual change in one or more of the SGD related topics.
>> ANDREW WILSON: We certainly do a lot of work on public-private dialogue around the world. One of the things I would like to comment on first before moving forward is what we find when you try to have private-public stakeholder dialogue in any countries, any particular emerging markets, is that it's often unequal dialogue. The private sector itself is often poorly prepared to organize its collected opinion, to provide thoughts or input, prioritized input to government officials, and quite often government officials, to be honest, aren't really well prepared to enter into dialogue with the public sector.
A lot of places, these types of relationships, these types of productive dialogues are -- are not second nature to people. And there's a big trust issue that needs to be overcome. In order to make that sort of thing happen. You know, the way we approach this when we're working with partners in the emerging markets is to really sort of focus on the process to a certain extent. You know, whenever you get to the table, how do you talk to either if you're in an association or representative body, your membership, how do you get a good strong sense of what they need and how to move forward? Then how do you enter into a constructive dialogue with policymakers? And then what we do find is that once that relationship trust is established, and policymakers realize that there's a win-win relationship at hand, quite often you'll see quite a bit of impact of the public-private dialogues.
In Pakistan, for instance, there are south Asian colleague we worked a lot with the Pakistan Association of Software Houses on a sort of sectoral agenda in Pakistan. In addition to the say intellectual property, how do you encourage the growth of a domestic I.T. sector? In the case of Pakistan, one of the big issues that was at play was how can you collateralize thought or intangible product? Helping students get loans from the banks because the central banking regulation was so tight on them they couldn't use intellectual properties as collateral.
Like Bangladesh, we worked a lot with women and women's business groups, the Bangladesh Women's Chamber Of Commerce, for instance, on issues like access to credit. You know, women, small businesses, microbusinesses, microbusinesses can do microloans. Small businesses were having a lot of problems getting bank loans, again, due to central bank regulations and whatnot. Women were having problems coming up to the collateral requirements that were required. Banks were interested in working with women entrepreneurs and providing funds for their small businesses. And we did work -- the BWCCI did work with 5,000 small businesses across Bangladesh. We were able to work in partnership and advocate to the government to put in changes to the banking regulations to make it easier for women to get a bank loan and further on for banks to create positions within branches focused solely on providing credit to woman-owned businesses so there were people within the banks whose job it was to start doing that.
Again, that's working at the policy level, the top level of the environment. And these problems weren't being solved until these associations and these groups got what they needed in terms of the abilities and the skills to talk to their membership, figure out how to advocate effectively and be able to go to government with -- with a solid plan in their hands to say this is what we want this, is what we need, the time frame we'd like to have it in. We've seen concrete results in both kinds of environments, you see it all over the world in different approaches.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: So, turning to you folks out in the audience, I wonder if any of you have been involved in a particular project. Either, you know, building out some infrastructure, solving application problem, realizing the attainment of health outcomes or some other project using ICTs that required you to work at a collaborative cross-sector environment as Andrew has just described? Anyone? My, you are a quiet group.
Well, so -- yeah, I -- it's the lunch thing. So in the main session this morning, there was a lot of discussion about how funding needed to be made available in order to create applications and services in as it were in local languages or would meet the needs in developing market communities. One of the ideas that was floated was the idea of essentially and affirmative action program for applications and services. There were a couple of other ideas that were at least hinted at regarding taxation and other ports of funding and then the idea of outright gifts. I wonder if anyone in the audience or if you're up at the table, or Andrew if you've been involved, could have some -- have some thoughts on the funding mechanisms necessary to realize what appears to be an applications and services gap in developing -- developing countries relative to sort of local market needs and languages?
>> ANDREW WILSON: Thanks, Paul. I think one of the challenges we face and we saw it through the process was the issue of identifying a way of funding and not delivering a solid fund. That leads us to in terms of a conclusion is pap perhaps the traditional technology transferring mechanisms are not delivering what we need. That leads us to a point where we have to say can we think of new ways, no innovative financing mechanisms, new innovative ways of funding?
Some of this is important. If you think about SGDs one through six. These are fundamentalist that really the ability to address these and the ability to know and to curtail it to the individual country level challenges will rest with country level approaches many times. This means that you have a challenge. Because the sufficient information and entrepreneurship to identify the challenges and identify locally appropriate solutions to them. I think this is an area where it really lends itself to thinking differently about financing and funding. I think this is perhaps there are techniques that are being used elsewhere to stimulate innovators and entrepreneurship that can be used similarly to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in the local level to look up solutions to the sustainable challenges. So I think the suggestion in that regard would be that we really need to expand our horizons in terms of financing and funding approaches and think about it far more innovatively and far more beyond the traditional donors or funders, thanks.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Did that stimulate any thoughts from anyone in the crowd? Yes, we have a winner.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I think the government and how I say the companies are founding the university. We have a lot of students who knows to do something, who are innovative so they know of the problems and they know how to solve them, but they don't have money it's difficult to ask for money. Now we have forms that you can do that, it's like a website, crowd funding. But your idea has to be so good to people give the money. I don't know, something like that.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: So this is an access to capital problem. When you speak, identify who you are and so people can know you and take the benefit of that. Access to funding and I heard you say particularly for students who -- who will have the ideas and potentially to understand the way to make the solution, but don't have the funding in order to be able to do it. And you mention a potential mechanism like crowd sourcing or crowd funding but in order to get a successful crowd funding operation seems to be particularly high.
I wonder if there's people in the audience today who had experience with unique methods of funding for new applications and services, particularly crowd funding, or new ways of accessing venture cash that would like to try it? No takers on that one. I'd like to turn to Facebook now because Facebook's been involved recently in a number of projects aimed specifically at trying to address the needs of people and developing markets in -- in treating those markets as unique. And I would like -- I would wonder if you'd like to talk a little bit about how those would come together and the partnerships involved.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Yeah, I think our strategy of looking at this has really been in the partnerships model and overall at the highest level, summarize it under our internet and our program was launched last year and now scaled to various countries. And the hypotheses is that there are three barriers to connectivity, which we see -- which we see. One is the first one is that an access point. There is no access to infrastructure in many parts of the world, 4 billion people who are not connected and that would require tremendous investments by lots and lots of people. So there definitely needs to be sort of thoughtful strategies in terms of working with access infrastructure providers as well as looking at other alternative technologies such as UAVs and satellite-based communications to provide the requirements of access.
Then there is this entire thing of affordability. There is symmetry in -- and it sort of has to do and it exists with the world. And clearly I mean that needs to be addressed. There's a very real affordability challenge that needs to be addressed in a lot of these countries. And the third element is that even when people come on-line and give access to the internet, there's the point of relevance and irrelevance. What you do because it's not as intuitive as voice and making sure that people have awareness in terms of what's some of the applications and services that can be accessible to people who are coming on to the internet for the first time. And internet.org has a company and strategy to address all of those. We are of course partnering with a -- with our entire committee of operators because those are going to build out networks. You're also looking at underserved areas and traditionally not the networks, none of the investments in terms of lighting up those areas. Those areas then become important areas for us to look at when we look at alternate technology such as satellite, etc.
Those in those areas may have read we recently announced a couple of weeks back, about a month now, a partnership and provided satellite connectivity in 18 countries in Africa. And so we are in the early phase in terms of completing the first test cycle of firing UAVs it's been flying for the next few months. Then flying a little bit and it will be grounded and we have tested the market that this thing works and then figure out what's the strategy in terms of getting it to underserved, underfunded areas. Similarly going there and inactivity labs and that. There's the entire piece around affordability which is why we have free basics program which is to the full internet. It's an open platform, accessible to any number to build a thin layer of applications on so it can be available to everybody who's accessing the internet for free. And we already launched this program in 25 countries.
In -- for example, the connectivity and launched with a nonexclusive program. The creators of this program, not exclusive to any operator. In an ideal world, we like all operators to provide that. In the Philippines, there are two operators that are providing that. Then it's open to all. As you know, these are two-sided markets, user side and connectivity side. From the time that it has been launched, it's brought 15 million people on-line. Which is, you know, incredible number, but it's still a big number and the program has been around for a limited period of time. As we scale the program and as we talk to more operators and figure out ways of getting more and more operators to provide that, this will be good in bringing more and more people on-line. Those are the types of things that Facebook is doing and, of course, doing this in a partnership and partnering with satellite companies and operators and, of course, the system including new startups, etc., in job services.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Going to go back to my right to Josie now. What Ankhi just talked about was a lot of innovation and a lot of risks, actually, in terms of experimenting with new technologies and new ways of delivering things and in fact even mention experimenting with some things that are politically sensitive around what constitutes the internet and access. I wonder from a perspective of the OECD how you would think about risk taking and management and and sort of forward for projects like this?
>> JOSIE BROCCA: A lot of the work that the OECD does, we're made up of 34 member countries in the different situation than emerging nations. But because of the nature, particularly in our area of digital of the policies we're working with, we have to reach out to nonmember countries in order to be able to implement or move forward, I guess, with -- with our policy making so just -- this is a little bit of a side bar to what you're discussing but just to show we have the digital engagement.
Part of what the OECD offers is a forum to get together and share best practices and ideas and we do that by reaching -- within our own membership, obviously, with the stakeholders, the four groups I mentioned as well as inviting nonmembers to engage with us, especially in the area of digital policymaking. So, for example, we have a Ministerial meeting coming up next June in Cancun, Mexico and we have invited 19 nonmember countries as a part of this dialogue. And one of the issues we will be looking at is trust and risk. We really have this new way of thinking of looking at risk from the risk-based management approach.
So, for example, we just recently revised the 2002 security guidelines, an extensive process that was undertaken and it was a multi-stakeholder process. We believe the inclusion and openness of these discussions is the way we're going to get our policies implemented as well as to move forward with projects of varying types, whether it be for connectivity or for digital innovation or new business models and any type of growth. In terms of the processes we follow for our revision, we had an open call for input, so stakeholders were allowed to provide whatever -- whatever feedback they wanted to in a very open manner. There was no formality to it. And once that was collected, the decision was made that we were going to undertake a more formal process.
As part of this formal process, again, the previously identified stakeholder groups for acronym purposes we called the ITAC, CTAC, all of them are channeled through them. They're established entities where all of the business community that wants to be represented to, they share the focal point with BIAC and there's discussion. Details such as wordsmithing, what should be part of the guidelines, recommendations, and policy principles. In the case of these digital security we have a new recommendation released this fall by council, the risk management for economic and social prosperity. And really we couldn't have done it without the input of stakeholders.
These policies and guidelines are used mostly by governments and in some cases businesses and organizations to develop their own regulations and laws that are common and that are in more interoperable and they are all based on the same fundamental principles that have been agreed to by the stakeholders, the governments, and those nonmembers that choose to sign on to that.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: I want to check and make sure if we have any additional remote participants or anyone who would like to intervene?
>> ANDREW WILSON: This is Andrew. If nobody else is there. I have a comment I would like to make.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: There you are, hi.
>> ANDREW WILSON: Hi, this is Andrew. I have a comment I would like to make going back to the broader comments that Ankhi was making in terms of putting together some sort of an ecosystem for this. And this is a challenge and a lot of emerging markets and developing countries, not just for the -- for the tech sector and developing applications, but just in general in starting a business.
It's compounded for people in industries that are requiring of support. If the basic laws and practices are in place to help somebody put a legal framework around their activity so they can go out and get a business loan and go bankrupt in the end and not be thrown in jail as a debtor, if countries aren't addressing the basic entrepreneur issues as far as the overall landscape of Eck co-systems, then I think others -- there are so many barriers that exist that makes it even more difficult for people who want it developed in the tech sector to do so in country. I think of -- I think of a group I knew in Pakistan who are developing a -- just gaming software. And they had developed a -- a cricket game software that they wouldn't sell in Pakistan. You know, so all of the work was being done in Pakistan but they wouldn't sell the software in Pakistan because the intellectual property wasn't protected in the country. They were selling in the other parts of the world but wouldn't sell their own product in their own country.
So if you have systems like that that are hostile to intellectual property and business setup and establishment and don't provide even basic business, skill training, and support, you know, you don't deal with those basic foundations of entrepreneurship, it's going to be a lot more difficult even with the -- with the infrastructure, the technology infrastructure platforms in place to encourage those types of startups to exist. People will immigrate to countries where they can do startups. They'll leave a market if they're true entrepreneurs if the barriers are too high.
Now this is a discussion that we've been having with the entrepreneurship community. There used to be a stream of thought that said entrepreneurs will find a way to survive. They're naturally born strugglers, they have great ideas, they can make it work. In the last two years, people are starting to come around to the idea, you know, maybe that's not quite true. Maybe there are barriers in place that even a hardened entrepreneur can't crack. And lord help you if you're just coming out of the university and colleges with bright ideas and trying to enter into that sort of situation. So I think we do need to pay attention to the broader issues such as can we do business as a small business entrepreneur before we can get to the questions of are the right platforms in place? Thank you.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: And I'll turn it back to Matthew.
>> MATTHEW SHEAR: I would like to pick up on a couple of points. Particularly about ecosystems and partnerships. We -- in trying to contribute to achieving the targets for the SGDs, we're going to have to think differently as stakeholders. We're going to have to think holistically, we're going to have to think about partnerships around stakeholders, and we're going to have to think about ecosystems generally because there's no way we can meet these targets and solve these problems if we don't do that and it's been too easy in the past to actually look at the challenges from a stakeholder's perspective, from a business perspective, or a human rights perspective or a small or medium sized perspective.
It's time we realize the challenge, realize we have to reach out and we have to work across stakeholders. And in many ways, we almost need to do what we do with the national regional IGFs, but more worldly. Perhaps we need IGFs for reaching and contributing to sustainable development goals. Because if you think about the organizations coming together in the regional IGFs, national IGFs and here. You have the stakeholders necessary for addressing these and b ensuring the ICGs are the fundamental enabler for reaching the targets.
Let's think of it more broadly. Let's think about creating -- let's think about taking that model and say, okay, we have a challenge, we have to have a clean water challenge. We have a fundamental education challenge. Let's take that same kind of multi-stakeholder if you will, let's take that same kind of approach and see how we can bring all of the stakeholders to the challenge, if only from the ICT perspective but perhaps even more -- thinking about it from a more ambitious perspective which is how to get it beyond ICGs, we tend to think of what we achieved on regional and national ICFs and some of the challenges that countries face and I think we need to think bigger.
And what brought that on is your comment about how Facebook is using these networks and partnerships to build the ecosystem. And then it will be essential and it will take governments working across agencies, which they don't necessarily typically do. It will take businesses reaching out and funding innovations locally. Civil societies stepping up and saying we need to talk about the education system. We need to talk about the building. So it's just taking what we know and what we love about this environment and the experiences that we have and let's think about that a little bit more. What more can we do with this model? And I think that's really kind of taking that multi-stakeholder model which is what we're talking about here, and thinking, okay, where can we use this? What -- what can we do with this beyond just ICTs or as a minimum, how can we use the ICTs to work with the SGDs, thanks.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: The question he said basically all of the stakeholders are here, right? The question is if all of the stakeholders are here to solve the problems, what the impediment to them being solved is. Why is that not actually happening?
>> Really interesting before I came in the panel. The value of the regional and national IGFs, and having been to a number of them, I can see on the ground the impact and the value. But what was really stunning is we looked at the governance forum and I could find an analysis what the value is, it really wasn't that clear. So I think we're missing something there in terms of even realizing our own potential. There's the factor of trust.
This is where stakeholders have to be able to move beyond their own single stakeholder space and start to reach out and build the levels of trust. Because that's the only way that's going to work. And that is a whole other discussion. But that probably is one of the biggest challenges I will say to solving some of these challenges. But that requires us stepping out as well. So in working partnerships, working across stakeholders. There's opportunity to do that. We don't want to miss it.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Comments from the floor? Or remote participation?
>> AUDIENCE: Hi, can everyone hear me?
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Yes.
>> AUDIENCE: Okay, excellent. Thank you very much. I'm just intervening here on behalf of one of the panelists, remote panelists who couldn't unfortunately make it due to technical issues. But he has sent through a comment which I will read out. The panelists is with the continental project affairs associate and a founding member of the Nigeria IGF sent the following comment. On the subject of how can the internet help enable open governance in developing nations, he's written overview -- in terms of the overview of MGD challenges, key sources of setbacks of MGDs in domestic and external developments such as increases of global food and energy prices as well as global financial downturns that inversely affect food inflation.
On the domestic scene, rising unemployment, high income inequality, and rapid population expansion. For instance in developing nations such as Nigeria, unemployment has remained one of the most challenging economic burdens. The poverty situation is underpinned by the high national unemployment rate. Estimated at 23.9% in 2011. In order to reduce poverty and unemployment, economic progress must outpace demographic expansion in a progressive manner but the inability of economic expansion and employment generating interventions to catch up with 1.8 million new entrants into the job market every year pose a major challenge to poverty reduction efforts in the country.
So moving forward to sustainable development, a new Universal agenda which seeks to address what the SGDs could achieve requires a up in framework for good governance. Good governance is essentially imperative for laying the foundations of sustainable development. Good governance stimulates positive development. However for it to achieve this outcome, it needs engagement, needs public process and interventions. The framework of open government is anchored on the whole of the nation being include in a government that's open, transparent, and accountable. Plus the internet plays a key role for multi-stakeholder convergence for good governance. It's necessary for us to enable active engagement of stakeholders and policy processes. It connects us, enables us, activates us, and so much more provides us with a local but Universal space to help share our voice, community, and contact leaders in government about our feelings on discrepancy and economic development.
Therefore, considering the SGD statement of principles and prosperity which says we are determined to ensure that all human beings can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives and the economic, social, and technological progress occurs in harmony of nature. Sustainable development will be a visionless statement agenda if critical governance issues are not continually addressed. Access, trust, internet resources, on-line freedom of expression, privacy, and broadband connectivity, there are those issues of disparity amongst nations. And finally, we look forward to where it's commencing the operation of the new goals and targets that will come into effect on the first of January, 2016 and will guide decisions we take over the next 15 years. And we must ensure the internet and good governance are essential to the success of these goals. That is the end of the comment. There are two short comments that he's sent through which I can intervene at a later stage at the relevant moment to make those two. Thank you.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: I think I saw one other hand up when I asked last time. Is there -- go ahead.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Very briefly, those are wonderful comments. I would note that the process, the United Nations commissioner survey and the invoices survey were the invoices brought. And one of the most important outcomes kind of key takeaways from that report was that good governance was essential. I want to put that in there. This is a big challenge. As was outlined. But the -- but it's a big challenge and everybody knows it's a challenge.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Okay. Anybody else in the room that would like to intervene or comment on the last two comments? Okay, then I'm going to go back to my right and ask Josie to talk just a little bit more about how the decision-making process works in the -- in the multi-stakeholder model that you work in. You described it a little bit, but one of the things that I take away from it is that it is a very ordered process. It has -- that the -- that the goals that it has set has processed by which consensus is achieved, process by which it's not, and then as I was listening to Ankhi talk about her projects, which also involve stakeholders, they also have a variety of processes and a different process. But also process and there's two different examples of multi-stakeholders and I would like that.
>> JOSIE BROCCA: Given the fact we're an international organization, we're guarded by convention. Due to that, we're a little bit more formalized than other types of multi-stakeholder participation. And the OECD is consensus based. So it's not really a voting institution, it really is a dialogue that happens among countries to agree upon guidelines, principles, recommendation, etc.
Declarations, tools that we use as I've mentioned previously to build government policies, regulations, legislation, in the end. In terms of it was other participants and stakeholders, they sit at the table like all of the countries, they have an equal say. They are -- they participate in a manner that is equivalent to the member countries. As I mentioned, though, they do in a diversified group, for example, like civil society where you are going to have different types of civil society, they do have to reach a consensus of some sort amongst themselves before they come to the table. So we only have one voice speaking at that time. However, when we have meetings, usually these discussions are based on papers or in the case of the recommendation, the actual text that needs to debated and we also accept written comments so we get a lot of different viewpoints from both the written processes as well as a verbal process.
And in addition to papers, we hold workshops, forums, Ministerial meeting, we have a number of interactive-type dialogues that will happen in the course of a process in order to achieve whatever it is -- the objective in a we're trying to achieve. So while we do have formality around it, it is still an open conversation where we welcome a variety of viewpoints and trying to engage in an open manner so we understand the viewpoints we're getting from the stakeholder communities and the governance as well. Because despite the fact that we are most -- we are a membership of developed countries, we do have different viewpoints in terms of the types of policies and directions that we want to take, particularly when it comes to implementing it within our own countries, so...
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Just to clarify, in the end, it's a -- consensus process but it's a consensus of governments formed by consensus among stakeholders.
>> JOSIE BROCCA: Sorry, an official tool gets produced so a council recommendation or a declaration, it has to go through the formal OECD council. And the council is made up of only the member countries, an Al ambassador that makes up the member countries that makes the final decision. But up to that point, it's a consensus of the member countries. Any nonmember that's been invited to participate or requested to participate, and the four stakeholders.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Okay, so now it's your turn, Ankhi, to talk more about the multi-stakeholder process that you've used.
>> ANKHI DAS: I think where it's had the other areas. You discuss the partnership framework where it's grateful to have a vacuum and a lot of this innovation spaces, they as you know they flourish when there is ambiguity. That's the nature of the beast. And we need to very seriously talk about the question of our role of governments in that because we found that when it comes to solving the SGD problems, the governments have an important rule there. But when it's compounded particularly in the innovation is happening in high technology sectors and trying to solve these problems, there is no law and therefore -- one level it's innovation and there's no innovation and that vacuum is helpful to hoist innovation because it's enterprised and at the same time it's the creating the concerns that a lot of that can be -- it can be put on that because they act unilaterally.
In a lot of the developing countries, it's not very clear as to how -- what is this input/output process going to be from the multi-stakeholder principles' perspective, how do you design framework in terms of the consultation, or is it the obligation of the governments and they receive input from the various stakeholders to public how they arrived at certain outcomes. Often there's a high degree of density in terms of how does this decision making process work. It's not very clear if there has been a movement of a particular position, how that's moved along. So I think the main thing you need to be concerned about and engaged in the multi-stakeholder framework is that it's a global problem and more in the developing countries.
The capacity issue. But also there's a global vacuum and a lot of these questions there's no precedent there. It's compounded on the country levels is that the design in terms of the conservation process itself, there -- its's not developed and therefore what you talked about to rule out the committee use of the power of the regionalized ICFs to become a framework to provide that so people can come and have the discussions in an open and -- open and democratically reach. If that's allowed to exist, I don't know if there would be appropriate pressure points in terms of opening it and having these conversations.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Your comment on that?
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: I think the notion of regulatory vacuum and encouraging a multi-stakeholder approach is a -- it's a very good one. So the model that I'm going to suggest to you is a model for multi-stakeholder -- I will call it multi-stakeholder but relatively shaping rather than decision taking is one that builds trust between stakeholders and governance which is what we're talking about. This is a model in which there is a recognition that there's a decision making and rests for government. But the value of interacting with stakeholders is such that the expertise is brought to the table what the government is going to do in terms of the regulatory responses.
So I'm going to give you an example, an actual example and if you're interest in in a, I'll point you to more material on that. I'm a member of the UK governance multi-stakeholder advisory group on governance which is called MAGGIE for short. It's a multi-stakeholder entity, about 30 representatives from business and civil society, and it's led by the UK government. It is a tool for building trust between stakeholders. It's also a tool for encouraging a wide ranging discussion and deliberation on a whole host of regulatory and policy issues.
It was set up in 2013. It's got as I said 13 members. I'll just read one of the first principles. Because I think it's quite telling. The first principles in terms of reference for MAGGIE to work in a collaborative spirit to contribute to UK inputs to major conferences and meetings relating to international internet governments and issues on a regular basis.
The issue we talked about, the deliberations we have had in MAGGIE have shaped UK policies in this area, also the preparatory work for that. In fact, after the members, MAGGIE is not government representatives actually took to the floor and represented the UK government in those meetings. We talked extensively about the whisking process and the process leading up to the discussions that you have on here to December. And on the accountability and ICANN issues. These are substantial issues. I can say because I'm a member of this group that it's been taken into account. That's the first step.
But obviously it's a very first -- it's a very, very important first step. And there aren't such structures or entities, this is a -- this is an easy step for governments to take to bring stakeholders to the table. There's plenty of guidance out there. The models. I think it's a very important thing, trust is a very important thing to hear stakeholders in society issues. Usually the last stakeholder to be invited to the discussions. These are key. We're thinking of how to engage the process on ICTs and SGTs. These are the kind of proposals to make. You go and say what the process is. We need to engage across the stakeholders to talk about the SGTs. Let's follow this model or something similar. This is a small step. Big trust building. It's the model that we should look to promote if it doesn't already exist.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Andrew, do you have a comment?
>> ANDREW WILSON: Yes, I do. I would like to comment to Anki's observation.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: I don't think the other two remote comments that came in.
>> ANDREW WILSON: I'm here. Okay, you got me? I have a couple of comments. One to Ankhi's comment in being able to work in sort of a policy vacuum area where there are established interests in government and I think she's spot on. I think in terms of sectors where there aren't established -- long established, it's a lot easier to have these kinds of dialogues. And I'm -- I really am supportive of the multi-stakeholder approach that Matthew put forward.
But I would say in our experience, jumping in to these dialogues and sort of underdeveloped democracies, and I'm using the democracy terms here, is more difficult than it seems. Governments and a lot of places in a lot of emerging democracies are not well accustomed. When I look at the OGP experience that we witnessed which is a cross a variety of democratically oriented countries, OGP itself is supposed to be based on a multi-stakeholder dialogue. Civil society and government are to sit down at the beginning of a process, put together a map and a consult in the process and the government goes away for two years, does the implementation and civil society is supposed to be there to monitor it.
If you look at OGP's own internal statistics brought out a couple of weeks ago in mention Cho city in the Ministerial meeting, only 25% to 27% of governments are having some type of stakeholder dialogue and this is in a framework that's designed to be based around stakeholder dialogue. If you talk to the NGOs involved, the civil society in the dialogues, the quality of the dialogues that exist is poor. This is an issue that might come back where a consultant may show up for a dialogue.
Civil society might show up. The government is a preordained conclusion. It's written the paper. It's looking for support Hoff its own views rather than starting at a grassroots level and building dialogue over a longer kind of dialectic process, if you will. So it's getting governments into the habit of not coming to the table already with their list in hand and coming to listen before they start writing papers such as the OECD process. Very difficult in practice to put in place. And a lot of work needs to be done to acclimatize government officials to take this approach and also the private sector and others be able to participate in a productive way. Thank you.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Thank you. There was a hand in the back of the room? There's a roving mic.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I'm from Berlin. I have a provocative question. Because following the multi-stakeholder approach for quite some years and seeing how this is sort of spreading around if world and even let's say less democratic countries. I'm wondering by the examples you're giving whether this is just a different name, really, for what we've always experienced the last 30, 40 years of having consultancies with NGOs, with stakeholders, with agencies that implement the work later.
Governments have been selective on whom they choose to sit on their tables. We have parliamentarian hearings, we've had a multi-stakeholder process for hundreds of years. Nothing new, let me put it this way. And I'm a bit afraid that the potential that was in the whole multi-stakeholder approach when it started that not stakeholders or different stakeholders stick on the table and provide and discuss with the governments and also they take the shared responsibility when implementing but it can hold a conduit -- the governments more accountable. So this mutual accountability that can be put into the game this vaporizes this debate.
So what you're explaining I can see everywhere flourishing, they need NGOs, they need external agencies to do their job. So I fear we put the name multi-stakeholder on it to get the job done and the credit taken by the governments in the end. This is consciously a little bit provocative but I'm wondering what you could respond to this.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Take the other two remotes and anyone else with the hand we'll try to respond. Okay?
>> AUDIENCE: Hello?
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Yes.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. I was trying to summarize the question of the audience member there for the remote participants because unfortunately they couldn't hear it. So I just missed what you said. If you'd like me to intervene with the intervention, though, I'm happy to do that. It relates to a example of successful citizen intervention using an open E-platform. But I'm not sure this is the right time to do that.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: It's probably this time or no time if you want to put it on the record.
>> AUDIENCE: Okay, then, then I'll do that. This example is of a successful story of a citizen intervention on open budget aided by the use of the internet. So a local intervention through the use of internet with the IGT initiative was conceptualized by young Nigerians and hacked in the governance. A 48-hour gathering organized by the co-creation hub in February of 2011. Budge-IT as a tool aims to redefine participatory governments, many Nigerians with little or no knowledge of public accounting knowledge are lost if they see if they get the chance to the arms of the government, most releases of the Nigerian budget have the macrofigures as the details that trickle down to the citizens such as neighborhood projects are not fully explained.
The maze of millions and billions of big budget documents tend to confuse and unclear how to put context on how public funds are spent. But I.T.'s innovation in the public circles comes with a creative use of government data by presenting them in simple TWEETs, interactive formats, or info graphic displays. It's believed in every democracy, every citizen has the right to know his or her taxes and expand in the delivery of infrastructures and services.
The open access to governance is entrenched and in institutions and such budgetary information is a vital asset needs to be understandable and accessible to all Nigerians. This initiative supported by many partners offers mobile and on-line initiatives to trigger discussion and take the budget beyond the news item to a focal point of debate among Nigerians. It is indeed working and made possible through the effective use of the internet.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Thank you. There was another hand up. Green shirt in the middle and white shirt closer to the back?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I'm an ISOC ambassador. I want to share about the multi-stakeholder model what we're exercising there. We have a council, we have formed a council called the internet governance council and it is an advisory body. We included all of the stakeholders there. So we said that it's difficult to bring to the table the civil society and all of that. In fact, in this, we do have all of the voices collected and we do -- what's essential about the council is it will work throughout the year. So we do have this IGF thing which is not twice a year, not everyone to speak of once a year. And we'll gather all of these values, all this interest. And since it's an advisory thing is it will have an impact of bringing or making a suggestion to the government of Armenia. So I think that a kind of a implications or result will come through this console. So the multi-stakeholder model will work in this case.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Thanks. And then the one right in front.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm one of the internet society ambassadors. I strongly believe the term "multi-stakeholder" is more than what we are defining, it's the concept where that integrates the bottom level approach. Previous practice has clearly shown that there was a gap, there was a gap between what we wanted to do and what was achieved. So the government -- especially if you look at the things about millennium goals, if you look at south Asia or those kinds of countries, then there was a gap. Stakeholders meant something like the government was to choose. Stakeholder is something where it is enforced, right? So all stakeholders would be there. So I would -- I think it is the best policy and it is not just adopted here in the IGF that proves to be well going on. But it will certainly help the SGDs to move on without greater impact of proving more successful rate because there will be integration at the lower point as well. So it has more -- more, you know, more efficacy, I guess.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Thank you, and with that, we've actually run out the clock on this particular session. Just a couple of things to sum up and I'm going to give each person an opportunity to respond to that last question. So you can go out with something stimulating in your mind. So we -- we heard -- we covered a lot of ground, we had a lot of successful requirements that the idea of ecosystems being required for success. We've heard a couple of different models of the multi-stakeholder decision making both on real world project and policy documents. We heard about the UK example which many of the other governments follow. Similar types of programs. Impediments, lack of funding, lack of ability to get at funding. Lack of sustainability in funding.
Affordability came up through the interventions. Also the -- the difficulty of organizing particular voices and Andrew talked about the difficulty of organizing the private sector voice. To be able to be effective. As each of these is being impediments to sort of realizing the multi-stakeholder participation. But we also heard about positive projects that are actually delivering value on the ground. We had several examples of that across the room. And hopefully this has all been useful food for you to be thinking about through the rest of the conference. There's a question in the back which was provocative about whether or not this is just a new label on something old. I think it is -- it warrants a response. Go from my right to left, give each panelist one last word and then you can have coffee.
>> JOSIE BROCCA: I liked that question. I thought it was a good one. I think it doesn't matter what we label it or how we approach it. I think that it is a step in the right direction and it is -- the recognition that we need different voices around the table in how we develop our policies or programs, etc., and while we may not have perfected it yet and speaking of my old job in the national government, yes, frequently, we ended up with the usual suspects as we like to call them when we consulted on issues. I think it's important that the different stakeholder groups continue vocalizing and approaching governments and approaching organizations to ensure that the views are shared and hopefully as it continues to happen and it's more probable in today's environment with all of the different ways you can connect in these types of entities we'll see an evolution in what we're calling multi-stakeholderism. And one plug, we have a forum on Friday where our stakeholder groups are going to be talking about their perspective about the upcoming Ministerial meetings, so I encourage you to attend that.
>> ANKHI DAS: I think the biggest thing is I think there's an entire concern that this should not become a self-selection process. The multi-stakeholder problem cannot -- it's not just a problem to solve. Its's a global problem. Like there is a disease, if you will, that should not become self-selection process. And therefore I think when we -- particularly when we look at the technology sector, there's something we have to learn. I think that there's the design we have to see. That's according to the IGF and that there has to be done something in terms of creating or making sure that we have an additional scheme and there's a degree so that by design you ear bringing on your people.
And the start of getting new blood into the conversation and we have to think about maybe sort of creating appropriate systems or processes or having a framework with the open forums is a good way of thinking of it but think about frequency on doing stuff like that so you're thinking about where that type of startup -- finding the voices in the multi-stakeholder model is specified and we want to make sure that the principles do not become hostage to the self-selection process.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: There is no doubt that we do throw around the term multi-stakeholder with some abandon. I think this causes problems. But on the other hand, it's not that -- it's quite a new concept, right? It's quite a new concept, it's quite a new term. It's a new governance model. It's going to take time to figure out how it works, what spaces do it work? What variation of it work best in what areas and what policies? So I think, you know, yes, we use it probably too much. But at the same time, I think we're figuring out how it works, where it works best, and what the models are and what the ape approaches are. So we have to give it a little more time. But I completely agree.
But I'm heartened by the other two comments about, you know, there are processes that are under way that are delivering only in the advisory capacity, that's important. And to the point for the gentleman that, yes, that's one of the key elements of the multi-stakeholder model which is that it is supposed to be by design. That's not something that exists typically in any of the government structure. So we need to give it time. But we do need to be wary about how we use the term, thanks.
>> PAUL MITCHELL: Thank you very much. Enjoy your coffee.
[ Applause ]