The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> We all live in a digital world. We all need it to be open and safe. We all want to trust.
>> And to be trusted.
>> We all despise control.
>> And desire freedom.
>> We are all united.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you very much all for being here. Welcome to this session. Good afternoon from Barcelona. Good morning and good evening to all of you who are reaching out from the different corners of the world. I am Maria Galindo. I am the Director‑General for the Government of Catalonia. And I will be moderating this session with our colleague Arnau Serra who is also connected somewhere.
So we've seen this short video. Digitalizations big developments for us for climate change and for positive sustainability of our planet. But we must promote rights in the digital scene. And there is different stakeholders who have a lot to say in this duty, in this promotion of digital rights both from the Governments, from companies, from tech corporations as well and from citizens.
So today we will be reflecting on the importance of empowering citizens digitally, to guarantee Human Rights democracy and privacy in the current digital era.
So we have four panelists from the Government, from Civil Society and international organizations who will share with us what's happening, what are the global challenges that we are facing and what projects are succeeded in guaranteeing these digital rights. But first of all, and since the session is promoted by the Government of Catalonia, I'd like to welcome our vice‑president and Minister for digital policy and development, Mr. Jorge, who will share some words with us.
>> Dear fellow citizens of the world, it is an honor to participate in such an important event as the Internet Governance Forum. However, it is also a responsibility. From the Government of Catalonia we promote digitalization as the key to generate opportunities across our territory.
First, we promote connectivity to better rate social development. We believe that the best Social Policy is that which creates jobs. And jobs of the future will no doubt be linked to digitalization. For this reason we focus on digital talent, digital democracy and digital rights. Second, we aim for a Digital Economy and the digitalization of our economy. We are promoting innovation in digital technologies and its embracement by the whole ecosystem.
Third, we aim at being digital and green as the only way forward. That's why we work to be a carbon neutral territory and for this we use technology to promote a connected and collective transport and news forms of developing our activities such as hybrid work. We recently presented a pilot study we did on the environmental impact of hybrid work. One can save 25% of CO2 emissions by working from home half time. That's equal to removing 57,000 cars from the streets a day.
We do this for our economic and environmental sustainability. And among all, we do this for our social sustainability. To achieve this, we are promoting an Internet Governance model that places the citizens and Human Rights at the center. As citizens, we have an active role. Everyone should be able to participate in the decision‑making process that affects them. The Digital Age should facilitate the citizens' empowerment. In this respect, the Government of Catalonia coordinates the development of the charter for digital rights and responsibilities. An open innovation project that aims to define a legislative and Democratic framework. The charter includes rights to universal access to Internet, freedom of expression, access to and distribution of knowledge, data protection, digital training and inclusion or algorithm governance.
During this workshop you will have the opportunity to learn about projects and actions that are already happening which respond to what is contained in the Catalonia charter for digital rights and responsibilities. Thus we will explain what the Government of Catalonia does to ensure universal access to the Internet and to promote digital innovation.
Moreover, we will show you we tackle the digital gap and the recent pandemic has made even more apparent. Of course, we look forward to learning from all of you as well. And thank you very much for your interest. And, of course, enjoy the session.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you so much, vice‑president. And no doubt it was shared. We will have four panelists to join in the discussion and reflection today. So, first of all, let me tell you that you can participate by sending your questions, reflections, doubts, knowledge, whatever you want to share with us through the chat that is allowed here. And you can send us questions in English, in Catalonia, in Spanish and both Arnau and myself will try and have them on the table.
So let me welcome to the floor Joana Barbany. Directorate‑ General for Digital Society of the Government of Catalonia. She has an degree in journalism and a diploma in business sciences. Her professional career has focused on digital communications and strategic and organizational consulting.
So Joana, under your Directorate‑General and we've heard the vice‑president saying how important it is to protect digital rights, you have been promoting the charter for digital rights and responsibilities from Catalonia. Catalonia has been one of the first countries to launch this charter. So tell us more about the charter.
>> JOANA BARBANY: Hello, Maria. Good afternoon. Thank you for ‑‑ glad to be here today with you. As you say we are working from the Government, this charter for digital rights and responsibility. As you know tomorrow we are celebrating the Human Rights day around the world. It has been more than 70 years ago that the United Nations adopted one, this Declaration of, but now I think that we are also in a period of changes and challenges. We are living now also in this new digital age or digital era and we need to talk about and to make some perfections about that. We make it 70 years ago about the Human Rights, but we need to do it right now about digital rights.
And having a look at the pandemic and the lockdown, it has been further demonstrated that ICT can improve people's lives. I, for example, how we connect with each other, why we were on the lockdown, how we move, how we work. Like I mean that now it is important and we need to be ‑‑ it is mandatory to having people with digital competencies. And we need to work on this and his rights and the responsibilities but it is now on the table.
This direct impact on fundamental rights, digital and fundamental rights are linked. And we need to talk about what is algorithms, how we make all the rules for the machines. Who has my personal data and what they do with them or with it. Where should be people working from home, from work with which rights and responsibilities.
Being from ‑‑ working from home, from home that means that I should be able all the time, or I just can disconnect for some time moments.
So this is the time for thinking about that. And I think the pandemic has raised the digital gaps between people and territories. And we need to fight that.
So from the Government of Catalonia we ‑‑ two years ago we lead and to coordinate the development of the charter for digital rights and responsibilities from Catalonia. Because we want to talk about the ‑‑ these new circumstances and we want to ‑‑ want to be involved in that.
And then if you want Maria, I can just be more ‑‑ I can explain what we are working on. But I think that it was the time for, you know, for making the point, this kind of digital rights responsibilities.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Yeah. So I think that a lot of like most of the things that you are talking about and I think that everyone is facing like these challenges. So what to do with my data, what happens with my data. I go to work and I have this ‑‑ all these digital tools. So it is a bit of a like shared responsibility. So do you work with a specific governance model to ‑‑
>> JOANA BARBANY: Yeah. Sure. We work in how we manage the project teams itself. I mean this is ‑‑ this is an open innovation project. It is always under construction. It is not just the PDF or some kind, you know, word or paper on the Internet. It is more than a constant work and it is always working. So people from a wide variety of sectors, of society, activists, public authorities, business, lawyer, researchers, international experts, other Governments they have been contributing to the charter from the first time until now. And they have been reviewed and amended and approved the proposals. People host today in this session to be involved in the charter.
But also we are talking not only in building this charter but also in how we need to govern to make the governance of this charter, of the Internet. I mean one of our Articles of the charter we make reference to which should be the model of governance and the charter incorporates this kind of reflection. And we said, I mean people who is working on the charter said that the exercise and the defense of digital rights and responsibilities require new Democratic structure. It is not like Government and citizens they make things that we say it should be a different kind of governance.
Because the Internet global governance model is based on a multi‑stakeholder collaboration. Each one has to be involved on this project. The citizens, of course, are local and global governments, the economy, the business economy and, of course, the public authorities and all the entities, entities about digital ‑‑ the digital rights, okay.
So we, the charter itself, involve this kind of new governance model where everyone has to say something. It is not just the Government says and the citizens abide.
>> MARIA GALINDO: I think is the biggest like change. Like digital is really promoting all these tools for citizen participation, for stakeholder participation. So can you share with us what you have been done, what you are more like, what's kind of ‑‑ what set of rights you are promoting and why, what are examples of these digital rights?
>> JOANA BARBANY: Yeah, I mean it is not just the charter. But you can just find a charter, but then you need to make policies related to these Articles. Because it is not just words. But we are talking about universal access to the Internet. We are ‑‑ and we are making these from the Government. Shorter citizens of municipality in Catalonia they should have access to high quality Internet. We are working on having big cities and rural areas with very few populations because Catalonia we have a lot of few villages and cities. This is one of the most important points to have universal access to Internet and ‑‑ any difference between people who lives. And then also we are working in a network of multiple local ICT resources. So all over the territory, everyone has a place nearby where somebody can help them to regarding digital matters. We call them tickets, like ICT point and it is a public service where everyone can do courses, can get hit with processes of public administration or you can go there for using the WiFi or computer.
We are also ‑‑ we are also working in an alliance. We made this alliance with the capital, with several local and global public institutions, with also the private institutions. And the objective as you know we have a lack of digital talent, not in Barcelona but in Europe, in the world. So we are ‑‑ we want to tackle the digital gap in order to promote this market competitiveness. Because, you know, there are a lack of men and women, of course, in this sector.
Because we want to position Barcelona as a talent capital and to achieve this we are committed to training and skills. We are also working in rescaling and upscaling. Let me talk about before we finish, an initiative that we are working also in Catalonia. We have one of the first ever public digital competencies certification programs. It is called ACTIC. And we work, it's compared to the Digicom. You can get both certifications just having one of them. It is useful for Europe. And every year around 20,000 people have digital competencies certifications in Catalonia. In fact, this month we will reach the number of 100,000 certifications through Catalonia citizens. We are working hard on that. We are also really ‑‑ we are working hard on having more women in this sector. I'm leading the Platonic. It is the ICT women plan.
And the aim is to boost and recognize the role of women in ICT. And we work in two ways. One of them is ‑‑ we are promoting female digital mentorship with training and mentoring. We want to recognize the fundamental role of women in professional business and academic world of technology, but we want to offer references to girls and teenagers because I think that we are a lot of the women working on this kind ‑‑ on this sector. But sometimes we need to be more on the floor because well, not for us but for the environment, it is very difficult to reach these kind of positions. So this is ‑‑ there are more ways we are working on that. I can later talk about that.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Okay. Thank you so much. Universal access to the internet and promoting also and fighting to competence gap and skill gap and obviously to get more women on board.
Thank you, Joana. So we will have like a round of questions with the four panelists. And then we will open the floor and the debate to all the panelists to talk to them and also to all the attendees. So secondly we have with us Mr. Alejandro Kemp. He is the former executive director of ‑‑ Salvadorean director in Chile. And he is the promoter of the first book, NGO that contributes to promote the opinion of children and adolescents around issues that affect or interest them through digital technologies and methodologies but also in face‑to‑face meetings or fields which is also very important. Alejandro, welcome.
And like I heard from you this really exciting project that you are doing in Chile. Tell us more about how Chilean adolescents were the ones who started the social and political process of a new constitution in Chile.
>> ALEJANDRO KEMP: Yeah, yeah. Well, hello to everyone. Thanks for this invitation. Like English is not as good as we like. I have written my intervention. I will read. My apologies. Here I go.
The context where all this happened has been called Chilean social entrepreneur. The Twittering factor for these events was increased in the rate of the Santiago public transport, which came in to effect in October 2019. After the rate increase, thousands of high school students organized to carry out a massive intervention of the payment of the ticket of the metro. With the passing of the days the number of invaders increased. They weren't high school students anymore. Adults began to join the innovation. The facts reached continuous program. And the people without any coordination only evaded the payment of metro but took the important cities of the countries to express their rejection of a highly un‑Democratic model.
Men and women, old and young, families, lower class, middle class and a little of upper middle class modelized to reject the 1980 constitution. It is estimated that something like 4 and 5 million people mobilize without stopping day after day until the pandemic arrived.
Chilean students, University and high school students have been historical social actors. In different moments of our Republic life they have been key in order to push Democratic events. In fact, the biggest federation of high school students was founded in 1948 but we can already observe first form of civic organization of high school students in 1990. During the first years of life the Federation demanded economic benefits from the state such as reduction in the rate of transport, granting of scholarship, creation of Technical University and change in the school curriculum.
Back to the Chilean social outbreak, derive a new constitution, high school students have been pushing and demanding change in different levels by coordinating mobilizations in 2001, 2002, 2005, '06, '08, '12, '15, '16, '18 and finally in 2019.
As you know technology in 2001 was very different to 2019. So how important has been digitalization for Chilean high school students? Technology obviously has allowed a faster, deeper and broader coordination of themselves. There is no doubt it has allowed them to reach people who previously were unreachable for them. Example, the media, the mass media communication. But it has not created the spirit and their civic expression that they have shown since 1990.
Social networks and more reforms whether immense capacity were key in the management and communications of their action during the social outbreak of course. But how do they do it in the '90s, '80s or '50s or earlier? So at this point, it is for ‑‑ for this specific case, maybe technology is not as important as we want to believe. Chile high school students have a historical interest in influencing the social reality of their country. For this task they have used technology always.
In my opinion the key thing is that an important part of the other work, long before cell phones, has encouraged them in order to have a collective opinion about the reality of their country.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you so much. So we've seen that digitalization is important in the process. It's a tool to accelerate and to further encourage the participation of students, of adolescents in this older life kind of like doing. And so how do you see the art in civic ‑‑ in adolescent civic participation in Catalonia? Like you are solely Catalonia, but you are based in Barcelona. How do you see it is going in Catalonia and Barcelona and other parts of the world? What would the lessons be, the lessons learned from the process in Chile?
>> ALEJANDRO KEMP: Well, but if we talk about adolescent and civic participation, the question has been answered by adolescents. You the Government made an effort, in order to have an adolescent speaking here. This is men talking about women or feminism. But from a point of view, we should fly over two aspects in this period of two years working here in Barcelona.
The schools and the model from citizen participation. Very briefly. The schools, the investigation of three Catalonian researchers called citizen education, at the end of it success, open quotes, the aim of this work is to verify the linking between curricular statesmen and teaching directions. Analyzes by a precise and to the meaning implicit and explicit and citizenship stated curricular orientation as well it discusses the possible teaching consequence of this relations.
One of the main results is that existence of a gap what is stated in perspective and normative parts of the curriculum, almost at the level of principles, and the deduction, closed quotes. In my words the citizenship education in Catalonia is dead content. It is a content without practice. It is just ideas, very general. But has ‑‑ we can see ‑‑ we can see that the school push.
See that Catalonia schools are concerned that student learned mathematics and other subjects but not that they do citizenship exercise. Much concern is observed that their students learn and deploy civic obligation which are very important. But there were no ‑‑ there is no incentive for those same students to deploy collective actions in the field of the rights, rights that should operate in the different collective space of adolescents, the school, the neighborhood, the city and the country.
Like happen ‑‑ like having ‑‑ not only in Chile, Chile and Uruguay has very, very deep tradition in adolescent movement.
No. 2, the model of Councils. I will speak from experience of our association in Catalan in English. The Infant Council seems to be made up of only for best students. And what do we mean by best students? Well, the most studious and most respectful. In the Council that we have worked with there is always adults overseeing the conversation. And it could be understand in Council of children not only very little children. But the same has happened to us in the Council of adolescents. Surely there are exceptions, but we believe that in the model of the Council, in general, the presence of adults rather than promoting the learning and the development of adolescents as free citizens, seeks to control them.
In my solution, what do we have to do in order to change this reality is facilitate and stimulate without adult control that adolescents organize themselves feel that they are a relative social subject in society, not just a commercial adjective and technology is key, is key for that goal.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you so much, Alejandro. This is very interesting. So I think that for many ‑‑ like this can serve for Catalonia but for many countries in the world, that we must incorporate this new exercises like how do I exercise my citizenship with also digital technologies in this school curriculum. Because currently I don't know of anyplace that this is being taught, like within the curriculum, not certainly, not here.
And also I'm taking note on the different Councils because yes, it is very mainstream right now that everyone like comes up with a different Council as to get all these voices, also represented. Yes. Adults. We are always there and we are ‑‑ we seem to be controlling everything. And actually yes, limiting this capacity of people to participate. Thank you so much.
And I would like to introduce a third panelist, Dr. Christina Colclough. She is founder of the new ‑‑ of The Why Not Lab. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Partnership on AI and a member of the advisory committee of the new Carnegie Council program: AI and Equality Initiative. She is a member of the OECD expert group One AI and is affiliated with the Center for Labor Relations Research at the University of Copenhagen. Very welcome. It is a pleasure to have you here.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Thank you.
>> MARIA GALINDO: We've been discussing about rights and participation in all the process. I know that when involving citizens, when involving workers, we have the data issue here. And I ‑‑ I have heard you before saying related to data, that data should not be a commodity or data is not a commodity that we can buy and sell. So given your experience advising international organizations and unions, do you think that GDPR sufficiently protects workers' data rights?
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Thank you for that question. No is the short answer of the long response. And the reason why in a global context that this is also interesting the GDPR is the data protection regulation that includes most workers' data rights. But still we can want for more. And this relates very much to your charter here.
And one of the things which then feeds in to Human Rights, and I will come back to that in a minute, one of the things that the GDPR does not sufficiently cover workers on is knowledge about when we as subject to algorithmic inferences, profiles, predictions, possibility analysis, that affect our lives, but that have nothing directly to do with our personal data, so let me just make that a little bit less abstract and say, for example, let's say a data influence has proved that customers find an accent from upper class area of Barcelona from a female, young voice, much more trustworthy than anything else. Then Lord help the ethnic minority who is seeking a job, who comes from another area of post code in Barcelona. That person might not see the job advertisement on the Internet and will certainly even automate hiring system is being used, never get put in the may be pile or the yes pile of successful applicants.
But that person will never know, will never know that he or she didn't make it to the interview because of this particular inference.
So here I really am concerned because we as everyday citizens and everyday workers are subject to these influences on a continuous basis and more and more so.
And the consequence of this can be, of course, very narrow labor markets, exclusive labor markets if you deviate from the norm in any way, overweight or don't have the education level as the majority you will be rejected. And then leads me to the question of Human Rights. Now these algorithmic profiles, these systems are, of course, used to manipulate the choices and thoughts and opinions of people. If we look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I'm so glad you mentioned this in the beginning, worth celebration.
Could we imagine a document as valued, as beautiful even conducted by politicians today globally? No. But the world needs the digital Human Rights sort of act I would say right now.
Because these algorithmic influences are manipulating our thoughts and opinions. Look at Article 18 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Everyone has the freedom of thought. I would say this is one of the strongest attacks of freedom of thought is this manipulation of who gets an opportunity and who doesn't. Going back to the GDPR, we need much stronger rights as citizens in relation to the out of the inferences that we are subject to. We need to know what they are.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you so much, Christina. So yes, taking this from you and before to what Joana and Alejandro were saying it looks like we are fighting a lot for digital rights, but we are again like building on historical building blocks where we are missing some very important bits here.
So do you think that currently unions and the management have the necessary competences to fill these gaps? And if not, which I assume will be your answer, what should be done in order to really like build better, you know, digital rights?
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Yeah, that's such an important question. Everyone on this call and listening to this above the age of 40 let's hand in heart, hand on heart here we have walked in to the situation. We have infused that first we got color mobile screens and then apps and then came all of these services, they were all free. And we never stopped to ask how could they be free. And now we realize that we are paying with our data. But in general terms, the digital literacy amongst the populous, amongst who do not work in this field is very, very low because they have never been taught otherwise.
And the same goes with management. So workers and management, if management at all govern these technologies is from a risk perspective. Risk of being hacked. Risk of data leakage. But never from a social technical point of view.
Never from a Human Rights workers' rights point of view. Never from discrimination and bias which is so ‑‑ which is ‑‑ horribly felt by certain groups. So we need to capacity build, both the workers they know how to defend their rights in these Digital Age. And we need to capacity build managers so they know how to govern the systems that they are deploying. And this links me, if I may, just an addition I would have loved to have seen in the charter. And that's as a growing body of activism around what we call participatory algorithm design, and that is where any algorithmic system is jointly defined by its purpose. What should this system do? Do we agree on the data sources? Do we agree on the actual purpose, of course? But also the road there. What instructions, so to speak, are given to the algorithm? What can the data not be used for? Should it disappear and deleted after a certain amount of time, et cetera. Although you allude to it in the charter, I would have loved to have seen that the participatory design of these algorithms is an obligation.
And that it should be in workplaces as well as in public spaces that it covered, for example, by your charter.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you, Christina. So this is very interesting because we might be working on digital rights charters, but we also need to align that with this capacity building from both sides, from the stakeholders. And also I know that like algorithmic ethics is a big thing. The more empowered we are as citizens the more capacity we have to tackle these issues. So thank you so much, Christina.
I would like to pass on to our fourth, last but not least panelist, Cristian Lago. Cristian is a very renowned Human Rights activist for people with functional diversity and entrepreneur who has created two start‑ups in the field. He has advised the Government of Catalonia, the Barcelona City Council and the Association of Micro, Small and Medium‑sized Enterprises of Catalonia on social inclusion. And he has worked with third sector entities and is part of the Social Council of Autonoma Solidaria Foundation of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is head of research, development and innovation at ECOM.
Cristian, very welcome. We've talked a lot about like different initiatives today. And we have seen that perhaps we are ‑‑ we are putting at risk some issues that we must put on the table.
Why can a digital sphere be either an opportunity or a risk to people with functional diversity, Cristian?
>> CRISTIAN LAGO: Thank you very much. It is a very good opportunity to be here. An honor for me. I have to give my apologies. The digital era could be a opportunity or a risk. Doesn't know the credit with this credit. We don't have resources. We don't have resources in order to pay the different connections, or devices, in order to pay different capacitation for trainings. And these barriers is ‑‑ they are more ‑‑ they are more qualitative, that they are not qualitative. In fact, do we hear from me is it is a very difficult moment because, these questions, but it is important. Because if I don't say that all the process, all the projects, all the initiatives that doesn't pay attention in us, they are excluding us.
So for this, that could be a risk to improve the society, to improve the resources of the whole community, forgetting all reality.
And that could be interesting, pay attention in ‑‑ not only for us. Because if you are paying attention to us, you are paying attention in all the people that they have barriers.
So if you want to improve your society, it is important to pay attention in all the people that are living in your territory.
And Catalonia has this ‑‑ these culture in their DNA.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you so much, Cristian. And double thank you for your efforts to be here. And well, yes. I mean we're here not to exclude anyone. I think we are all here to work for digital rights as how would I say it? As the unlocking power to unlock the full potential of the digital revolution.
So Cristian, given that you are here, so tell us, what initiatives, what measures, what projects, what things you would like to ask or you think that should be taken in to account in order to guarantee the right to access to the digital era, to people with functional diversity? What specific actions we should all be taking in to account in our day‑to‑day?
>> CRISTIAN LAGO: One of the most important is to be ‑‑ to be part in the design and the development of the process. For example, in the digital rights charter, we ‑‑ I was a member of this project, and I ‑‑ in that moment, I could say what we need. Not only the different people of the ‑‑ if you ‑‑ if you are a part of the project, it is impossible to forget yourself. So this is the very most important thing.
As I say that it is important not only to make evaluation, it is important to give resources to team works inside the University with people with diversity.
If you are working ‑‑ if you have a work plan, and the resources to develop this work plan, you are able to create benefits, social benefits to your content of your territory. Do you have to be confident to trust in your people? And put in value, the life experience.
So if you do that, do we improve your society? For me this is the very most important thing. Not only to take this work plan and make it for the Government, you have to put in value this work to all the society, don't be shy to ‑‑ for this work to the territories.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you so much, Cristian. So we are embracing diversity and we are embracing everyone in to the process. I mean digital, what's different from other processes, and from other like developments of the humankind is that we have all these digital tools on the table to further and to reach our objectives. So I'm opening this question to all four panelists and also taking the chance to hear to the questions and reflections that the audience wants to share.
What would you like in each of your areas, Joana, Christina, Cristian, Alejandro, what would you like to happen in the next let's say five, ten years related to digital rights? Joana, digital society, what would you like to happen?
>> JOANA BARBANY: I think that we need to fight against, it should sound like ‑‑ against the digital gap, okay? I mean but in ‑‑ I see before in a few ways. First of all, for me is in a physical way, I mean you should be able to be connected from everywhere, okay. From everywhere on the planet. It should ‑‑ it could be by earth, by, you know, using cable or I don't know, where ‑‑ there are a lot of ways to get connectivity to crit sets, but for me this is the first one, universal access to Internet. Because if we don't have these access, we are increasing the different ‑‑ we are playing different ways, different rules. So we need to give opportunities to everyone.
And no matter where you live. For me this is the first one. And then also to give the opportunity to citizens to be trained on digital skills.
But in two ways, on the first of all, I mean in the ‑‑ for the regular life, I mean for living, okay, you need to be able to get your ‑‑ I don't know, your COVID passport to attend in a school meeting, to make some kind of process, city hall. This is one for me, one question. But the other one is how can we work for having more people involved in the digital sector, I mean as a worker. Or an entrepreneur or whatever, in the business ‑‑ in the business sector because I think that it will be ‑‑ I ‑‑ how can I say? Digital sector will be one of the ‑‑ for me the most important sector for rising on the next years. And we need people working on that.
People from around and diverse people, not just men, white men. We need to get more different kinds of people in this sector. Because they need ‑‑ I mean they, the sector needs our different points of view but also as a people, I think that it is amazing to work on this sector. And we need to, you know, to make people love this sector.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Bring this amazingness to everyone. Alejandro, what you like to happen in the next five to ten years? You are muted.
>> ALEJANDRO KEMP: Sorry. I was saying that five or ten years for us, maybe it could be a huge, a huge gap, we ‑‑ in ‑‑ we think action in short terms obviously, we ‑‑ with the very long term goal, in fact, for May of next year, we are promoting and coordinating a public and open citizen consultation of adolescence in Catalonia without going through the filters of school or youth Council. In other words, we will direct some adolescents to participate in the construction of a photo about their opinions and issues that affect them education, culture, works, digital rights among others. We have summoned different actors from Catalonia life to join in this task. We already have the support of a Catalonia company expert in electron bonding, worker's commission, the leading trade on union force in Spain and Association called CEBS. That's a very important Catalonia Association in the field of cultural consortium among others. There is still a long way to go. Maybe many years but I think we are hitting in the right direction.
So if you ‑‑ if any of you want to join us, welcome. You already have our mail. I was saying in Catalonia, in proper ‑‑ Catalans seeking more activities and several participants.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you. So ‑‑
>> JOANA BARBANY: Your right.
>> MARIA GALINDO: For the next five, ten years is to have more participatory processes for adolescence and for the young people to like build on their future which is more Democratic as well. Thank you. Christina.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Maria, I have a wish list that's so long. But I will ‑‑ I will try and boil it down. No. 1, are common politicians standing on the shoulders of giants. Just look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The world is looking at them now to take responsibility. So my first wish would be a global or actually a set of global Conventions related to digitalization that importantly subordinate digital technologies to the need of our planet and people. Profit under planet and people. Look at the catastrophic COP26. Imagine how we can tap in to the potentials of digital technologies to actually do something our politicians are failing us with.
On the digital divides, which I thoroughly and wholeheartedly agree, if we look to the developing economies we have a total lack of public sector funding in relation to helping them build their digital infrastructures, i.e., we are leaving this space for Facebook or Metas, Google and Amazon and the rest of them to econalize the countries. I would want to see more public funding towards our brothers and sisters in the Global South.
I then want to ban markets in human futures, i.e., the trading in datasets of profiles of people, which are having such real effects on their life and career or work opportunities.
And then lastly, I really, really want all digital systems to be able to be vetted. Gone is this black box talk of we don't know how in which the system. Gone is the laziness of those who are deploying these systems, accountability, responsibility and liability must be upheld to the highest, highest of levels. And my last wish is that we actually read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and put that in to a digital context and honor the rights and equality of all.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you so much, Christina. I was taking notes of all your wish lists. Let's hope this is a good occasion like on Internet Governance Forum to do all these wish lists. And Cristian, what's your wish list? What would you like to happen in the next five, ten years?
>> CRISTIAN LAGO: My wish is to create verticals and with a participation in order to include data. Another wish is to create active work and to boost and to understand this territory, like lap, in order to boost this experience to encounters for health with professional diversity focus in order to include or credit in the digital era. And no more wishes.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you so much, Cristian. So I think also this collaborative approach also with other territories and other countries. I would like to open the floor to all of you, like would you like to make some questions to the other panelists? Or now I don't know whether we've got some questions from the audience. But Christina, Cristian, Joana, Alejandro, if you have questions.
>> JOANA BARBANY: I would like to talk to Christina, how can we make policies. I'm not a politician, but I'm working on the public sector and, of course, my boss, he is a politician. And yeah, and when we were thinking on this charter, okay, we had some ‑‑ we wanted to invite to every entity or institution, I mean not public but, you know, civil institutions, to work with us and there was a kind of stopper, stop it, because they saw us as a public institution. And all things related to ‑‑ it seems like all things related to public, was like, you know, but I don't know how to explain it, but it was very difficult for us to involve all these kind of institutions or entities. In fact, we got them. We got them on the charter. But they were like if this is a politician question, we won't be on that because we want to be on ‑‑ next to you. Because we want to ‑‑ to be, you know, independent of someone. And we want to in Catalan to say to get (speaking in a non‑English language).
>> MARIA GALINDO: In the picture next to the Government.
>> JOANA BARBANY: We want to be in the picture with them and we want them on the picture because we want to change the governance of this kind of policies, but it is very difficult because they saw us, they see us as politicians because, of course, they are politicians. But we want to change that. And I don't know how to involve this kind of institutions.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: That's a great. And there is a long explanation to that probably. And I would maybe pin that down to a question of generalized trust. Politicians in Spain and the history of that. If we look aside from that, what is working in many areas of the world where I'm active right now is a question of democracy, Democratic participation. How we dare name the threats to democracy, that these digital technologies, the digital ethos is posing. And how that we humbly are saying that we are having to go down a new path and form a new ethos. And the best way we can do that is with these multiple voices around the table where the Government is one party on an equal level to everyone else. And I think this is ‑‑ this is really echoing the needs I think of maybe citizens that this is very humbly put on the table as an urgent matter of defending democracy.
>> JOANA BARBANY: I agree. It is a matter of trust, of trust, how to ‑‑ yeah. How to be ‑‑ how to ‑‑ well, to have ‑‑ to be more between us more, you know, to work together. Not against us. But together.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Yeah, yeah. I mean it is very easy just to oppose and not contribute.
>> JOANA BARBANY: I don't know how ‑‑ someone has to lead, you know, in one point, someone, I don't know who, someone has to lead this. Because if you are in ‑‑ if you are working together, sometime you need to make some policy or something that you need to work. And you can be asking ‑‑ discussing and ‑‑ but sometimes you need to say okay, I go with this. And if ‑‑ we do that as a ‑‑ I'm not a politician. But if you view that as a Government, sometimes you know, people don't trust us or I don't know why.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: That's probably a question of speed as well. You know, I think if you teamed up with some of the strong unions in Spain, if you teamed up with amnesty, you teamed with some of the strong NGOs and gave it the time then it would be possible. I would be happy to support you in all of that.
>> MARIA GALINDO: I think as Cristian was saying in one of our wish lists points, that you aim for a set of global Conventions on digitalization and on how this should be developed. So we are really bringing in to the floor the importance of this multi‑stakeholder and multi‑level cooperation in order to really change how things are being developed right now.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Maria, can I say something there? Because what is happening at the moment is everyone is waiting for everyone else to make a move.
>> JOANA BARBANY: Exactly. I was saying that.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Yeah, and your digital charter is a very, very important step forward. Actually believe it or not who would have thought the UK Government came out yesterday or was it the day before, with an algorithmic assessment tool which is looking really, really promising. So there are attempts. And I think it is important that somebody dares naming, inside the United Nations, inside the OECD, we need Government tool commitment. And because this is lacking and we cannot afford to play this waiting game much longer.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you. I think we have some questions from the audience.
>> ARNAU SERRA: Yes, just a couple of questions. Related to the last thing that Cristian was commenting. This Forum is about Internet Governance to you. Not only Cristian but to you all in the table.
What should be the Internet of governance model and we are all talking about that. But specifically can we be more concrete about that?
>> JOANA BARBANY: It is very difficult to answer this question, Maria.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you. Was this intended for someone or ‑‑
>> ARNAU SERRA: Open table.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Open table.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Can I suggest a couple of things? I just gave a speech this week at the Athens Round Table on AI and Human Rights and was asking almost the same question. We need one first and foremost on transparency. And this you actually have to have a certain extent in your charter. But it should be every citizen's, every worker's right to know what algorithm systems they are subject to, what are the instructions to these systems. What rights of redress do they have.
And on top of that transparency, there should be an open repository, so to speak, of the assessments of these tools. How have they been assessed according to Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also other, of course, gender equality or equal opportunities laws and so forth. We need that assessment and we need that transparency that would be No. 1. And then linked to all of that there is also human in the loop, human in command stuff. There should be authorized public authority at a global level to correct them, to demand. They are opened, unwrapped. If harms are being experience by any group in society, these systems should be banned. But there is lots, lots more. Lots of details. And this will never be one Convention or one agreement. It will have to be a set, but I think this I want to iterate, we can build them on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is no need to redefine the rights. It is more the means.
>> JOANA BARBANY: Maybe I can share the screen. And I can share our Article where we talk in the charter about this Internet Governance model. I can share the screen and show to the audience when we are working on the charter.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you. Go ahead.
>> JOANA BARBANY: Let me try if I'm able to. Okay. Can you look my screen?
>> MARIA GALINDO: Yes.
>> JOANA BARBANY: Here as you can see, as you can see there is an Article who talks about an open inclusive Internet Governance model. And we are talking in things that Christina has talked before, the Internet Governance framework should be open, inclusive, responsible. She talks about transparency. Collaborative, interoperable and decentralized, we are talking about. We talk also that everyone should be able to enjoy these self‑serving digital identities, okay.
Then we talk about that this Internet Government should be based on multi‑stakeholderism unequal conditions. Multi‑stakeholders should be considering existing inequalities in all areas of decision making. And that stakeholders working with such governance model should foster in one ‑‑ we talk about that. Qualitative devices and multilingualism. Then there is new, we didn't talk about that. We can think on a kind of Ombudsperson, okay? With a global scope and dedicated to these digital rights responsibilities. And ‑‑ but this Ombudsperson should be enabled from people, from citizens, not from the Government. You can just ‑‑ I think that now send a link on the chat, but you can just take a look. This is in English, of course. But we are ‑‑ our digital charter talk about that. And we are including this right as a main right.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you. And that links to what I was saying before, Governments or public authorities should take the lead and also act as a referee for like how these rights are being deployed. I think we have another question.
>> ARNAU SERRA: Yes, a question for Alejandro about his Chilean experience and it can be for all the ones on the table. What we do locally in terms of digital rights affects globally? What we do locally?
>> ALEJANDRO KEMP: Locally. Well, I think again I talk from the Ombudsman and from youth. And the youth that has no right to vote, that has a lot of obligations and not too many rights.
And locally, I think encourage the organization in different levels of ‑‑ in the case of in my work of adolescents, no.
And openness spaces, in order to ‑‑ they can develop their demands, their opinions, and their dreams, too. But always from a collective perspective. Citizenship is not an act of only one person alone. But by itself or by herself or by himself. It is always a collective action. And my opinion is that locally, and the neighbors are already in schools in case of Catalonia and from the organization that already exists is to act together, to put in contact, in order to reach collective goals. What the collective goals were, we don't know. We must adhere to the adolescents, not the adult world. I think this is ‑‑ it is not ‑‑ I'm not reinventing the wheel. It is the way that communities are stronger and the social actions, not necessarily political actions, is ‑‑
>> MARIA GALINDO: Stronger.
>> ALEJANDRO KEMP: Is more strong. Is more strong. Well, that does ‑‑ that's the idea of ‑‑ my first vote is open spaces.
Fill bridges from this local and very little organization to the ‑‑ to the bigger levels, bigger levels, maybe in a small town or in a city or in a neighborhood or in a country.
But I think ‑‑ I think that the technology is ‑‑ it is obvious. It is a compliment in this case. In this specific case of preservation of adolescents. They know how to manage their technology than all of us. They have a Ph.D. in technology use.
So to go for a kid of 10 years or 12 or 13 or 14, it is transparent. It is ‑‑ they were born.
So I think our task is open spaces. And leave the power, leave the power to others, no. I think well, Catalonia has the less path, have been ‑‑ has been walking a path in that center, in that direction. Smaller against the big structure. It is like always, like the men, men, women has to talk with others and organize and organize themselves.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Thank you.
>> ALEJANDRO KEMP: Sorry about because my English is ‑‑
>> MARIA GALINDO: No. Your English is perfect. And so is yours, Cristian, you were both saying your English no, no. Everyone's English here is perfect. And we are so lucky we can communicate in different languages.
>> ALEJANDRO KEMP: Yeah.
>> MARIA GALINDO: So thank you so much. I think ‑‑ do you have any other questions or points that you would like to raise? I see that ‑‑ I think there is a question, another question. Well, if you have any other questions, Cristian, Alejandro, Christina, Joana? Otherwise I think we will be ‑‑ okay. I think we will be ‑‑
>> JOANA BARBANY: Just a question. We didn't talk so much about that. And I think that we should work on things related to the labor, or, you know, that work, work on this new era. But I think that it will ‑‑ main topics this next years. And things related to home working and teleworking. All these things. In different kinds of jobs. And I think that it will be one of the main topics at the table this next year. And I think that as a Government, or as a, you know, as NGOs or social entities we will have to ‑‑ we will be ‑‑ it will be mandatory to debate on that. Because I think that it will change a lot of things.
How we work, of course, but how we, you know, for me it is the main topic to talk about in a few ‑‑ in a few ‑‑ I mean next year maybe. In a few years. Next year.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Uh‑huh. Yes. No doubt. No doubt. I don't know now what are the numbers. But a lot of the jobs that will be in place in ten years' time do not exist yet and are related to digitalization and to AI and to blockchain. Christina?
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Yes. That's right. But can I ‑‑ just put a critical word on this almost fictitious, I can never say that said. Fictitiousism of skills. A lot of politicians want to boil down the future of work to the right skills and they are all jumping on to the bandwagon of ICT, information and communication technologies and STEM. Some of the most automatible skills are inside of STEM. What I really urge all Governments to do is to encourage, of course, the diversity of skills, but also creativity, culture, music, all of these things which have been downplayed in our Western Societies for generations, I think should be outplayed. It is empathy, emotion, complex thinking and all of that which are the least automatible and the most human skills. So here I really want to push the STEM stuff aside, and instead, you know, drum the jumble drums for much more creativity.
>> JOANA BARBANY: I always talk from STEM to STEAM because I like to roll this A, but it is for more creative innovative. Because I think that it is a way for getting more women and girls involved on the STEM without A. Because when you are ‑‑ when we are sent, selling some kind of studies in STEM, if we just ‑‑ being the ‑‑ there more artistics or innovative, there are too many women or girls that are going to these kind of studies. So I think that we need to break this stem, this idea that people who is working on science, technology, mathematics and engineering, I don't know the word in English. Square. And we put this a little bit more to be more, you know, to have more right hand and be more creative. And this is the way for having more women I'm sure about that.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Then we have from history the strong link between physics and music. Now I really think let's teach our children culture and creativity.
>> JOANA BARBANY: Yep.
>> MARIA GALINDO: Absolutely. Absolutely. Noting that, too.
And okay, I think we are like running out of time. So like very, very quickly to close and to thank you all for your very valuable contributions, and for being here today, it has been a pleasure to host this session by the Government of Catalonia, with the Internet Governance Forum on digital rights and responsibilities from local to global and covering like a lot of aspects. I think what we are taking from this session is that we all want to ‑‑ we aim for a Universal Declaration of digital human rights, hopefully in the next five years, not so much ten years. Let's aim for the next five years. And bringing universal access to the Internet and universal digital education that takes in to account capacity building both to citizens and those are generating the digital tools, like corporations, companies, governments, et cetera, As to prevent algorithmic influence and manipulation.
And also to tackle the fact that we are now leaving some parts of the population behind. How do we bring on everyone in to the change. So we must promote that we have enough resources, capabilities and capacity to face the digital revolution. And we must be accountable, responsible and liable to all the changes. We have this endeavor. We get it from the Government of Catalonia, and, Joana, you have a lot of homework to do right from this session. But with a lot of great ideas from all of our panelists.
So thank you, everyone, for being here. Thank you, Christina. Thank you, Alejandro. Thank you, Cristian. Thank you, Joana. Thank you, Arnau, for your help in moderating this session and thanks to the IGF and everyone attending the panel. Thank you so much.
>> CHRISTINA COLCLOUGH: Thank you. Take good care. Be safe.
>> JOANA BARBANY: Thank you to everyone.