The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this session on the regional perspectives on digital governance. I am Nadia Tjahja, and I'm very happy to welcome our currently three speakers, Nibal Idlebi from UNESCWA who's joining us online, Luis Barbosa from UNU‑EGOV, and Jamal Shahin, to my left. I'm happy to introduce our online moderator Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen so if you are online, please do not hesitate to ask any questions so we can have an active discussion about today's session. In today's session, we would like to address three key questions: How can you and regional commissions and other regional actors contribute towards managing the global public good?
The second question that we would like to address is what ways do regional actors make it, the discourse and policy to national reactions or so‑called digital sovereignty. And lastly, what differences exist between global discourses on cooperation and action and beyond. If you have any questions, doubts, solutions, please do come up and ask us a question online or ask us a question by coming up to the microphones in the room. We are very happy for you to join the discussion. We are keen to listen to the input from the wider global audience. So we'll start with question 1, and then we'll ask Jamal Shahin to start preparing his first thoughts towards this. How can regional commissions and other regional actors contribute towards managing this global public good?
Perhaps you can give a little bit of an introduction to how we can look at this concept of global public good. Jamal.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: Thanks, we are happy to be here and participating in this open forum. In the open forum, I should be brief and I've already taken up my two minutes, but in the spirit of this, I would like to rather just raise a few minutes and then pass the baton on to my colleagues. So we ask the question about governing global public good, and I want to get to that, that kind of unpacking that concept later on, but maybe I could start by saying that the intention behind this panel and the discussion that we're having here is to really try and address how global issues can be addressed more successfully at the regional level or can be substantively implemented at the local level. We talked about UN region conventions and we're happy that Nadia is on the core to share her ideas on this. In addition to the UN regional ‑‑ you have the Internet registries. You have also economic actors that work at the regional level such as the European Union or different regional trade associations that work together and I think that's one of the things, you know, the beauty and the diversity of this idea of regional plays in there. UNU‑CRIS is where both Nadia and I work. We have been working on a project financed by University of Brussels. When we look at regional and multi‑stakeholder institutions, and we look specifically at those kinds of institutions that engage with different actors rather than a ‑‑ a multitude of actors rather than looking at the diplomatic or economic framing themselves. And in that, we actually try to develop or one of the things that we try to do was also look at how norms, principles, and practices flow from the local level to the regional level, and we term this "cascading governance" and we look at how these ideas that are transmitted at the global level can be pushed through. Some scholars have termed this "following through on policy" or, "following the policy," let's say. This allows for specific flavors of those global norms to emerge in the regional setting, and that is one of the things that we're seeing in the contemporary global situation where we're seeing that global norms sometimes don't really hit the floor running when it comes to different national implementations, and so we think that using regional commissions as a kind of translator of these local norms can help that. I think there's a few caveats that we need to add to this idea, so regions must share common interests and values, and they must be able to adopt, and the actors that play within those regions must be able to adopt those flavors of global norms in submittal ways. I said I'd get back to the global public good issue. We're talking about global public goods, right, and the IGF has shown, I mean, just walking around and participating in some of the panels today, you realise that the notion of the Internet as a global public good is actually quite contested. We don't have the same kind of feeling that we maybe had 20 years ago in this space. And so I think that's one of the things we also need to address when looking at how regions actually interact with Internet governance and the sphere in general. My computer turned off, but we do know that the notion of the global interconnected network is a global public good, and and that needs to be ‑‑ we need to make sure that we're clear in what we're actually trying to govern or what we're actually trying to cascade in our governance mechanisms. I think Nibal and Luis will have much more to say about how that plays out in these regional public settings. And I've spent five minutes. I'll turn it over now.
>> MODERATOR: I would like to move to Luis Barbosa. Could you share your remarks?
>> LUIS BARBOSA: Sure. Good morning, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. We have a more practical experience, we have not this (?) But I will start to say that there was a well known mantra from the '70s, think globally, act locally, if you remember, that although it was coined for very different purpose, that still makes sense in this context. Actually, there are a number of fundamental issues and global challenges that require to be articulated at the intercontinental level, and Mactar has not shown up until now but I think it's particularly sig95 cant. Africa is dealing with issues from from west of China. And they have put one of its main objectives to have fund and investment for supporting additional infrastructure and IGF could see it as the same kind of statement is a message very clear for us. We have some experience mainly working with countries but we also have some experience in trying to work at the more rational, interconnected level. Some years ago, we managed a big project within Africa, other countries, and later I can share some lessons learned from that process. And this year, we actually what we call the west Africa digital governance forum that was a way to try to bring countries on the same table, try to discuss some pressing issues and mainly to foster synergies and discuss what strategies can be drawn at that more integrated level. Just to highlight ‑‑ and I will end up for now, although this regional, continental, international level is really very important, one of the lessons learned that we have is that even if countries share a number of common problems and common concerns, they need to be addressed in different ways in different context. And this contextualisation is something that cannot be swept under the capture when we discuss the integration level. Multi‑stakeholder involvement in concrete, contextualised use, would appropriate prorecreation mechanisms for strategies and action plans, is something very essential and that should be taken into account if you want to think at the more global, global level. And the second issue is that actually I think there's certainly more things to say but I think integration or even before integration and coordination efforts are often difficult to achieve and they require crystallized objectives and crystallized practices, and not only on the political level. Political, of course, policies is always very important but also at level of citizens and the different societies in the different countries for that, so that strategies, processes, policies can be validated, not evaded, and we can build trust around these things, and trust is actually something that actually moves people. We work across borders, and the Aspen problem that goes from Europe to African countries and even to the states, so we try to multidivide the design of the portals that somehow allow these people to have their lives simplified. And the presence of the citizens of the associations dealing with the Aspen at the process of different levels, in Portugal, in capeford, even in the States was very important for the substance of this initiative, so I will do this, requires the clear but also socio‑political civic wheel to go around, and anything we do should be articulated within the context of the countries involved.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. It's important to be able to share these also kind of practical examples of how things are working on the ground and kind of the feelings that we're engaging with, that it's not always about the manner in which we design concepts and ideas and how we have these perspectives but also learn from lived experiences, and this is why I would like to go to our online speaker, Nibal space Idlebi from UNESCWA, I would love to hear your remarks.
>> Sorry, there seems to be a small problem with Nibal picking up the connection. We are trying to let her into the forum. She's there but she is not picking up.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: It seems our online speaker is not available right now. I want to encourage all the people in the room and those joining us online, we were looking at three questions here today, and if you have any comments or thoughts or doubts or even perhaps solutions or what you want to see for the future, we do encourage you to accompany and join at the table or the microphones so we can have a little bit of a discussion about these three questions. So the first question that we started with was how UN regional commissions and other regional actors can contribute towards managing the global public good, and we heard from Jamal Shahin from UNU‑CRIS and Luis Barbosa from UNU‑EGOV. Looking at the ways regional actors can mitigate the discourse in policy towards national reactions or so‑called digital sovereignty, perhaps we'll go into this second part and perhaps you could even bridge between the two questions, Jamal Shahin, please.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: Thanks, Nadia.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: Yeah, so the ways regional activists can mitigate this shift towards the national reaction, well, we've heard from Luis that actually these national implementations are quite quite crucial so the lived experiences, as you mentioned, Nadia and kind of the national way of implementing this is actually very important but I would want to make an argument for actually this kind of, as I mentioned before, this cascading, so there's bringing down of the different norms from the global to the local via the regional. One of the reasons why I think this also has a very important role to play in the discussions that we have is that although we talk about the Internet or the connected digital network as a global public good, there are many instances in which national states or national actors are actually taking it upon themselves to manage this global public good in different ways, and that may be on different layers in the Internet field. Nibal should be with us now.
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: Yes, OK?
There is problem in the video but I'm here. Good morning, everyone, and I'm really happy that we are here.
I mean, it's early in the morning in Beirut but, I mean, I'm here. And thank you for including UNESCWA in this discussion, and actually the global public good and Internet and Internet governance is really important and UNESCWA, we have been working on this aspect since very long time, in fact, and we have noticed the importance of regional aspect as compared also to international. Let me say maybe you are aware, and some people are listening and aware that UNESCWA together with the legal state, we have created what we call a regional platform for the discussions discussing all issues relating to Internet governance. And in this regard, we have noticed the importance to discuss, to disseminate, to promote the global idea at regional level. It was really, I mean, very important because people, many people, or many stakeholders in the national level are not aware about some concepts, or they really feel far away from the international discussion or the global discussion in this regard. Therefore, I believe the first and the most maybe the first rule in this regard was really to disseminate the idea, to discuss the idea, to explain some idea which are taking place at the global level, and that we need to be first of all, to be explained, and to be contextualised, I would say, considering the regional perspective, the regional social dimension, and the political dimension in some cases to reflect on how this will be integrated, how it can be integrated. And then, I mean, then the prioritisation at the regional level also it is really very important. I expect we discovered maybe some challenges or some idea that are taking place and maybe they have a high priority at international level. They might be different at regional level because maybe some basics are not yet quite established at the regional level, and in this case in the outer region. Because UNESCWA is working on the outer region level. And the prioritisation, it is really very important also and to see what matters for the region considering the level of development. Although sometimes we have ‑‑ we witnessed some issues because the region itself is not harmonised in terms of development in many areas, I mean, in technology and in some other areas as well. Then it is really this prioritisation is really not important, and it is important to reflect it at the global level. I would see that I would say that the regional dimension is important for two ways. For taking an interglobal and making contextualisation to the regional level but also to be the voice of the region in the international folder, and to make the voice of regional aspect be heard at the global level because the matters might be different and might be ‑‑ might reflect other dimension that might not be really at the the international dimension discussed well. For example, one of the issues that we have identified in our last Internet Governance Forum, it was access, I mean, meaningful access to Internet, I mean. And maybe this access is not a problem in Europe or in the working countries, it is still a measured and a measured problem in some other countries, not all, in some other countries. I will not spend too much time but, I mean, in addition to what I have said then I believe the regional commission and in this case UNESCWA, we have made kind of a roadmap for the public good and for the Internet and for the vision roadmap on how to discuss the Internet governance and the Internet FOLA. Legislation, one is very important. For example, privacy. Even cybersecurity is very important then because it still may be not well quite mature in many countries in the region. And then was I believe to start, I mean, as the first dimension, nation promotion and also discussion, prioritisation is really very important in explaining. The discussion with the international stakeholder, I would say it doesn't work alone. We are interacting with all regional stakeholder with all original association, either professional or NGO or even private sector association or academia sometimes and, of course, with the government, which are the main stakeholder but we include all other stakeholder, including use, there's an association for use. I think I will stop here from now and I will return back to other aspect later on.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Well, thank you very much for your insights, and I find it very important what you raised regarding these two ways, the first one providing the context in which these concepts and ideas are on a regional level but also representing the voice of that region and it's admirable what you're doing with the Arab IGF and what you were saying about the roadmap. We would love it if you could leave us the link in the Zoom chat and send that to us so we could send it to the IGF web page so people can actually learn what is this roadmap and what from your region have you found is progressive ‑‑ will allow us to progress towards a more inclusive future. Then I would like to go into question 2. Question 2 looked at examining the ways in which regional actors can mitigate the current shift in discourse in policy towards national reaction, so‑called digital sovereignty. I would like to return to Jamal Shahin to make any further comments if he wishes.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: Thanks, Nadia. Maybe bounces off something Nibal said, I would like to emphasise the importance of the two‑way street. It's not just about disseminating global or filtering global norms but it's also about ensuring the regional interests to get brought up to the floor. Maybe if I go back to this issue of digital sovereignty. Of course this is a term that's been used the last couple of years around the IGF, around different fora to actually try to show how states themselves can actually build their own approaches to understanding how to regulate the global public good that we're talking about. And here you see that there are tensions, the model that kind of links the global, so we think global and work locally, but if we do too much work locally, then the global may be forgotten, and then we forget to think globally. We don't forget to think. But in that sense, the regional as a kind of filter can actually show that international cooperation does work. And I would be very interested also to see how the different regions learn from each other so, I mean, Nibal, you're rather representative of all of the regions, and you actually mentioned that you do work with different stakeholders, and I assume and I know you work with ECA, ECLAC, and so on and so forth, it would be really interesting to actually find out how those interactions work in order to actually nuance the discussions that we have on digital sovereignty. Maybe one thing I could add, and this is linked to ‑‑ Sophie has just walked into the room so I have to reference her now. I can't plainlyinger ‑‑ plaiger it. You have regions like the European union where digital sovereignty is about managing complex interdependence, and then you have in the African union you have the fund for digital sovereignty which is actually promoting national strategies in this area but that's a regional organisation doing that. So you actually see this concept being brought up in different ways as well according to different regions.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. I was wondering if you would like to provide any further insights regarding this question.
>> There is a path international organisations can do with three different dimensions, and one is exactly representative, the voice saying that the model of governance is very important. The other is sinner synergetic. The way to address this discourse is to address this key localisation that is essential for people, infrastructure, connectivity, mobile payments across countries, across modern problems, all these kind of issues, and the other is for the (?), if I can use this term. Going into question 2, digital sovereignty in Africa is typically framed as an extension of sovereignty, OK, and we took firm roots in this political conception that comes from the Chinese model, if I can say so. And, of course, it is also an economic dimension, they tried to protect all these kind of things and it is very clear from all the documents from African union, for example, national strategy of South Africa policy and data and cloud, this is very clear that the stress on self‑economic, self‑determinasion, ownership and cultural data sets. But we all know that this is different interpretations. For example, data localisation is very important in all these strategies and for countries as well. It's a coin with double face because often it is, well, OK, we all know our own data. We are protecting our citizens. Or maybe you are just having an easier way to spy on our citizens. So does it make sense to discuss localisation in small African states by themselves. Can we do some ped go logical way of going further and mining resources and mainly trying to put in action a more civic citizen‑oriented way of understanding what digital sovereignty means. I think all these three dimensions, representative of the synergetic way of taking into account of going around the discourse that is dominating at least when we talk with ministers and agencies.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: So we find ourselves with more questions to our question. That makes it more interesting. Nibal would you like to share more insights regarding work within your regions?
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: Yeah, OK, thank you very much. Thank you for the active discussion.
I mean, exactly. We have more questions than answers. This is the era that we are living in. And I would like to be turned back to this national sovereignty in the context of Internet and the so on. I believe there is a ‑‑ it's my work at the international level is to start the discussion at the national level between the stakeholders. This is not something that happens all the time naturally, let us say because some aspects ‑‑ some of them are unstable in some countries and then there is, I mean, the need to activate the discussion among the stakeholder, and this is really very important, and we notice that sometimes there is reluctance at the beginning but then later on people, government, and other stakeholders are quite well engaged in a way there is some insistence on this regard or there is some, how to say, the need to educate the discussion and to explain as I mentioned earlier, and this is really, really important because we understand the importance of this. And I believe another dimension maybe that is maybe in our context towards important is to build capacity, to get capacity‑building, some capacity‑building are very important because people need to understand maybe some aspects in better way. For example, we work with many countries at legislation level, and the implementation, and the enforcement of legislation that is really needed in some cases. Then I believe that discussion with high‑level decision‑maker is really very important to provide some justification or maybe sometimes explanation of this, of what is taking place at international level. Putting the stakeholders together, I mean, and making them interacting together, it is not easy sometimes, and this is where sometimes where the regional commission or some other regional stakeholder might play a very important role because sometimes we notice that discussion doesn't take place at national level unless there is external intervention, let us say, or external intermediator to have the discussion taking place. Sometimes, there is a need for some guidance to have this discussion. And then this is what I would say at this stage, and I believe in the outer region, based on some study that we have made, some discussion, what we have discussed, that there are a lot of better awareness, let us say, amongst different stakeholders on this aspect that are really important and some NGOs or some citizen, they are raising more of their voices towards ‑‑ to get some rights and to have their rights on the Internet in better way, especially in terms of freedom and the Internet access, to Internet and the freedom of expression, and, of course, cybersecurity and the related topics. And I will stop here for the time being, not to monopolize the discussion.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Well, we're very glad to hear your thoughts and ideas, and it's a clear request and a clear need for more meaningful participation, and I believe also that Jamal wanted to provide further input or further reflections. It's a discussion, and we also welcome members of the audiences. If you have any thoughts, ideas, questions, or perhaps solutions that you would like to see for the future, then you are very welcome to come up to the microphone or to leave a question in the chat. So in the meantime, Jamal, please go ahead.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: I wanted to bounce off some of the things that have been said, and thanks very much. One of the things I think also the added value of the regional approach is that in some parts of the world, between 2015 and 2017, I was working on a project with the European coalition, which you won't have heard about, but this observatory was set up with the idea of providing information to all actors, all actors around the world who wanted to find out about Internet governance questions that were being discussed at the global level, and one of the reasons for this was that many countries that maybe don't have an established framework for understanding or leading or guiding in these areas would tend to go back to their imperial ‑‑ their colonial leaders, right, and would then implement and kind of ‑‑ yeah, post colonialist version of a digital strategy that have been implemented in the form of colonial country, the form of colonial master. There was some form of neocolonialism in a sense emerging where countries were taking on the flavors, not of their region, which is, you know, what we're seeing. There is a sort of regional specificity but taking off the always European type of digital strategy which maybe doesn't fit with the culture and the engagement actions there. That's what I want to raise, that regional actors can actually bring together the regionings to actually enable them to work together. That's what Nibal was saying and what you were referring to as well in your comment.
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: I mean, thank you, Jamal, and I would raise another dimension that there is this regional aspect where we interacted with other region, and in a way we copied or we borrowed some of their output in order to bring it to the room, for example, this is something that sometimes hurts a lot. I was active for a long time in cyber legislation, and I would say that we really took benefit of the older cyber laws that took place in the European Union and it was enacted, I mean, it was drafted and, I mean, prepared for the EU, and really it was very good, I mean, material that would rely on to have the experience of EU to be copied or customized. I would say it is not copied as it is. It is never as it is. But it is taking the benefit of this long experience in cyber law. For example, we were able to customize it or to have some lessons learned from it and to customize it. We have some collaboration with ECA and some stakeholders in Africa who have some regional activity in this regard and where it was also interesting to exchange experience and to exchange even some lessons learned. This is what I want to say.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. And with this, I would like to actually go into the next question so that we have a little bit of a time to have discussion about this. So the third question looks to reflect upon the differences between global discourses on cooperation and practical levels, from local to regional and beyond. Let's start with Luis. Perhaps you could elaborate about you and EGOV's thoughts and ideas on the study and cooperation.
>> LUIS BARBOSA: Sure. I would like to stress it is very essential in having success in going ahead with cooperation and integration experiences. This was very clear from our experience with digital governance west Africa forum. The needs to involve other stakeholders rather than governments themselves. This has to be a dialogue with multiple voices, and often, these kind of stakeholders coming from the single society, from the economical, cultural, socio‑ecosystem make a very interesting contribution in fostering the discourse. And the other is the need to articulate this debate, and it was also very clear on that experience with African countries to frame this debate or articulate this debate with very clear and broader development objectives in terms of promoting additional economy ecosystem and not deviating from that. Of course, there are several ways of addressing that question and doing what or taking this path, and certainly different regions have different ways and multiple ways to articulate different forms of governance across different sectors on the more vertical, horizontal way. We have a project, not at tech level of original integration, but we conduct a standard actually modern with here, on the different models in different countries, in Asia, in Europe, and America, around the organisation, the information security that may bring some insights on all these things that are articulated different. I would suggest that Morton can say something about that in that perspective.
>> MORTEN MEYERHOFF NIELSEN: Thank you, Luis. It's an interesting issue particularly around the specific elements of governance, so obviously cast call is data governance. We want top framework, what are legal and regulatory framework on a domestic level. We see in particularly federalized countries, Australia, China, Brazil, where we're supporting the ministry of human resources on social security on this specific issue, brings some additional complexity that we also see on regional levels, levels of autonomy. My data or the data sovereignty issue as in it is my data as a nation. It is my data as an organisation, and we sometimes forget when we talk about this data governance or sovereignty that, well, actually, isn't that what citizens sometimes tell government, that it's not government's data. It's my data. It's data on me, my family, my income. So these elements play out. But what we saw very clearly is it's not just about what we are already talking about about the governance model, about the frameworks, about the legal and regulatory systems and standards so we can map out the data. It goes to skills, formal internal processes about what do we do if we think the data is maybe incorrect?
How do we do that formally?
How do we report back to the sister agency or the country next door where we get the data and say, sorry but you know, Jamal, you don't look 130 years old and sorry, morten, why did you have an income of 23 billion last year?
That seems a bit odd. What is the process for fixing that so we don't have errors?
Because errors are both bad service. It's also bad for decision‑making and politically it's also sensitive because there's nothing worse than telling the old lady that she can't get a pension because she's only 33 billion Euros when in fact she's earning 2300. So those are the type of things that came out very clearly in social security but particularly on the interorganisational exchange or even national regional exchange, and then when you see pilots like the Spaniards exchanging data with Uruguay on social security, we see it in the European context or African context, these elements become more prevailant and complex because we're suddenly not talking about national partners. We're talking about cross‑border partners. Or we talk about federal countries where provinces and state have levels of autonomy so central government cannot necessarily, you know, specify or mandate a certain approach and need to be that flexibility within the framework. So these are some of the things that came out in some very diverse cases from China to Denmark and even looking at the EU influence on national legislation on this topic in countries like Denmark and France. It's very clear that although the national approaches are different, they are aligning to what is thought as being the approach for the region at large, and that then allows that my local, regional central government data can be exchanged in a meaningful way with a country somewhere else in the because we have a common framework or certain reference thing about certain things.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you for these examples and I would invite a member of the audience to join us at the microphone. If you could share your name and organisation.
>> Audience: I have from Sri lanka. This is on digital governance. We have almost drafted a new strategy. It's all about citizen treatness. Citizen has the control. As we said, how do you empower the people?
How do you stand on the government. How do you do less in businesses. It's all about the utilization. The question I have for the esteemed panelists, we had one institution who is accountable for this digital transformation which is not successful over the last 20 years. Now, when it comes to drafting a new strategy, this strategy must be governed by a set of organisation or organisations. So what sort of characteristics or what sort of data this particular institution must entail?
I would like to hear different perspectives from the esteemed panel. Thank you.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much for your question. Let's turn to Nibal online for your first remarks regarding the questions that were raised.
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: I believe this is really very important question, I believe, and it is really many countries are struggling even with this, I mean. I believe that such a strategy, whatever the strategy should be really done or formulated in a way, in a collective way or discussed in collective way before its adoption. This is one of the lessons that we have learned that when you involve the stakeholder, the stakeholder at the national level for the discussion about any future action that you are doing, especially strategy, it is very important to involve them from the beginning and to have them on board. Maybe they will not address like you like the government, for example, but at least they interact with you, they give their idea, and then their buy‑in later on in the future for the implementation of such strategy will be much bigger, I mean, and their involvement will be much bigger, and the involvement of all stakeholders from the beginning, from the start, and to have some interaction within regularly. This is done, I mean, this is first, and I believe there is in such for to have in a way trust in the public, in the ‑‑ in this strategy and its implementation. We have witnessed ‑‑ we have noticed that whenever there is a kind of coincidence in the implementation of the strategy or in the implementation of this transformation, then if there is quick wins where people see the result of these strategy, they can hope to say they entrust the government much more, and they believe in this, and they will be more cooperative with that. I believe having a kind of comity for looking after the implementation, at national level, not only for the government, I mean, it will have a kind of multi‑stakeholder comity where many, many ‑‑ many partner at national level are involved in this comity, they will supervise all to follow, at least improvise the implementation. It is really very important, and it gives some ability to the government as well as the ‑‑ in that process. This is my two cents for that to answer this question.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. Perhaps I will move to Luis.
>> LUIS BARBOSA: Thank you for your question. We actually have a long experience in supporting member states in designing and implementing strategies for digital governance. We are not a consulting company as you know but you have this mandate of supporting member states in that direction. And your precise question on who is going to take care of this. This is crucial, I think. In terms of of course different countries have different suggestions, different models. There are agencies, strategy committees, whatever. What I think is very important is to have a clear mandate for whatever commission or committee is going to have with this. Clear mandates strained by a clear political will from government and capacity as well. Often you get some stakeholders that are more political, representative of different sectors, and this does not ‑‑ the other two points that I would like to emphasise and Nibal has already talked. The first one is absolutely crucial, the involvement of multiple stakeholders in designing, not only designing but also in implementing and monitoring the strategy. I used top say in some of the countries that we have been supporting, that often the process of thinking about the strategy, designing it, is even more important than the final document itself because it is able to put people in dialogue to build trust and to multivariant institutions, so we have some elements of our experience that I would be happy to share with you at a later stage. Yeah, there are some other aspect that I ‑‑ Internet omission, information, actually. I forgot at the moment.
>> If I may if I put my former civil servant hat on, I agree. But I wanted to add an important detail. One thing that many countries forget in the consultation process is including regional and local authorities. In some countries local authorities have a very small service roll. It may be fixing potholes and a few garage collection things which are nonetheless essential things in a smart, sustainable city and community context, and often we see in infrastructure roll out, such as intra data distribution, electronic service standards, local and regional authorities are utterly forgotten in the national strategies. So there are also internal stakeholders. On the mandate, it doesn't matter if it's a ministry of sport that has the mandate for digital or if it's an agency for digitizeasion. The name doesn't matter. It's the mandate and the recognition of that mandate and that requires there is actually a compliance mechanism. There's a carrot and a stick. Many government agencies, particularly large traditionally powerful ministries tend to run circles around newly‑established agencies for digitizisation, et ceterao the way you position it is, again, not relevant. It's the mandate and the strength of that carrot and that stick that comes with that mandate so the cross‑governmental entities and collaborations forums are extremely important to get all the ducks lined up in a row. About EU integration, it doesn't matter how big or how small the ships are as long as they have the same port of destination in mind and we all get there at some stage, and so that's the same with digitizeasion. That's really important especially when we talk about regional cross‑border governments because regions and cities are the ones that have neighbors on the other side. It's not the capital city.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. As we start going into the final moments of our session, I would like to ask Jamal if you could highlight the practice between the global public good, digital sovereignty, and cooperation.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: Thanks, Nadia. I will try, and I will use the discussion that we've had just now, and thank you very much for your question. I'll try and incorporate some responses in here as well. I think one of the things that we've realised here is that regional cooperation works as a kind of two‑way mechanism between the national level and the global level. So reflecting on how we can filter global norms and global practices or global norms, rather, and how we can use the national practices to influence or to shape those global norms as well. And you see that has been one of the key issues here that sovereignty in the United Nations system, for example, is something that everybody recognises. So sovereignty itself is kind of interconnected just like the global public good we're trying to at least conceptually. One of the other things that comes out of these questions about the regional and the global and the shift towards digital transformmation in the sense that you were talking about is that regions can help with capitalising on experiences that have taken place elsewhere, so I think a lot of the issues where regions can help, and I know this is how I think ESCWA does work, is on the peer‑review basis, something that the European Union has done, the LECD, it's not a territorial group. The OECD does this. They carry out peer‑review processes, allowing like‑minded states or states that have common issues to actually share information. And that has been done at the WSIS level, right. But this is a massive exercise, right, when trying to manage that at the WSIS level. The regional level can actually help facilitate because they can actually bring this stuff forward, and these countries that work to get to live together do actually share common interests and common challenges as well. So see that as being very important. Also that peer review process, is the common capacity‑building structures that then emerge, and I think that's very important to raise here, that countries where, you know, this is the essence. I was born in Europe, and I'm now, again, a European citizen. But we realised that we needed to work together because we could not solve the problems around the world, so that kind of common frameworks actually do actually help in that sense. And then that kind of calls into your ped go logical issues that I think you raised. I'll stop there because I need to.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: During this session we looked at theoretical concepts of global public good, sovereignty of cooperation, and also brought that into practical experiences and examples kind of understanding and allowing us to comprehend how it actually works in practice and the lived experiences of people. Nibal mentioned the roadmap that was created, and we hope that it will be shared and you can find it on the IGF web site but also I encourage for you to join all the news letters to stay up‑to‑date on what kind of developments are helping and how you can contribute to projects. As we enter this last minute of our session, I would like to ask each of the speakers to perhaps give one key take away and one action point from this session that allows us to think about how do we move forward from here?
One key take away and one action point. Perhaps we start with Nibal online.
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: Sorry for that. [ Clearing throat ]
I think that the most important thing that I would like to say that it is sometimes forgotten, that really that from regional to go to global, that regional actor or to be the voice of the region and to make here the challenges, the national and regional challenges to get them to the international fora. I think it is very important to stress on that.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. Luis.
>> LUIS BARBOSA: Two very concrete things. One, to evolve academia in this process. We have been making efforts to networks and universities to build capacity but also to discuss these issues at the regional level, the continental level from the point of view of academia. And the second is more in a shell. I think there are a number of emerging ‑‑ not emerging because they have been there for awhile ‑‑ problems but cross‑cutting problems collated with vulnerable, displaced people, refugees that actually acquire a more global action, and this is a challenge, I think, at this level of integration we are discussing.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. Jamal.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: I am stressing now because I've got minus one minute. The key take away that I got is really there's a two‑way dialogue regions, shaping but being shaped, and the key call to action is I really want to pick up on what was said about this framework. I think the multi‑stakeholderism, the multi‑stakeholder model has been proven to be worthy of consideration at the global level, this kind of issue at the regional level might be also very interesting to look at. Thank you.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. So here, I would like to close this session and thank all the speakers joining here online and on‑site and, of course, the audience that are here and online, but also the staff here in Kyoto that are working really hard to make sure that this session is running smoothly and, of course, the captioners that make sure that these transcripts become available on the IGF web site for the people who would like to learn more about this topic but were not able to attend in person, so thank you for the captioners and perhaps any translators that have been working here with us today. So I wish you all a really, really lovely final day of the IGF, and I look forward to seeing you the next time.
[applause]