The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid some of the participants are still having some technical problems, but it is already the time to start so let's get started.
I hope that the problems will be soon resolved. So good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody.
It is my great pleasure to welcome all of you here today in this virtual IGF open forum on Promoting Trust on the Internet through Osaka Track. I'm Yoichi Iida, Deputy Director-General for G-7, G20 Relations from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. It is honor for me to be here and moderate the session with the distinguished speakers.
In the very beginning, let me introduce Mr. Shintani Masayoshi, who is the State Minister of our ministry for our opening remarks.
(Captioned video)
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you very much for the message, Mr. Minister.
Today we will discuss trust on the internet. The Osaka Track is an initiative by the Japanese government launched last year on the occasion of the G20 summit to contribute to international discussion on cross-border data flow and the digital economy at large.
At the same time, we also proposed a concept of data free flow with the trust which emphasizes the importance of trust in the digital economy.
The fundamental idea of this concept is to maximize the benefit of the digital economy, it is critical to promote open and free environment for data flow and data utilization.
But at the same time, digitalization brought various challenges to the society. So when we strengthen the trust in the internet and digital economy at large, people can participate in the digital economy more actively without concern and data free flow can be promoted.
It is very important to generate this positive cycle between freedom and trust. With that, I would like to introduce Mr. Vint Cerf as keynote speaker. As everybody knows, Dr. Cerf is famous as the father of the internet. Because of the time difference, he sent us a video message for keynote.
>> VINT CERF: Hello, my name is Vint Cerf. I'm Google's chief internet evangelist, and I really appreciate the opportunity to participate in the Osaka Track of the IGF 2020 open forum.
The topic of this discussion is trust in internet space and how can we achieve it, who will be participants in establishing that trust, what actions need to be taken, what stakeholders have to be involved. It's my view that trust in cyberspace starts with respect and trust for the multiple stakeholders who must establish policy that will create this trusted environment.
When you think a little bit about this process, we can learn from one organization called the Global Commission for Stability of Cyberspace. And in that organization, there have been something like a dozen proposals made for what I would call norms in cyberspace. These are not treaty agreements or anything, but what they do represent is common agreements among a number of countries about behavior that they would endorse or behavior that they would reject in the cyber environment.
The first one that they came up with had to do with the protection of the public core of the internet. By this, they meant the routers, the underlying infrastructure, transmission facilities, optical fiber cables and things of that kind, and domain name system components and servers and resolvers and so on. All of these are considered to be part of the public core of the internet.
The idea here is to agree on a global basis that none of us will attack and interfere with or undermine or destroy the operation of that public core. And why would we adopt such a norm?
One answer is that the internet has become a very, very critical part of the economy of the world. It is not just digital economy in the sense of buying and selling and supplying of digital goods and services, but it's also the role that the internet plays in facilitating economy of all kinds.
The more we can trust that infrastructure, then the more we can build on it. The less we trust it, the less likely it will be that economic development can rely on that underlying infrastructure.
And so our job, I think, in this discussion, is to figure out what norms and what other practices and perhaps even more treaty agreements might we want to establish in order to assure that this infrastructure can be used for economic development, for education, for research, and for entertainment and for all of the vast array of other things we have learned that we can gain from having this global infrastructure at hand.
The current statistics show that only about half the world's population has access to the internet, so we already have a big challenge to make this available to everyone on reasonable, affordable and sustainable terms and conditions.
There are policies to be adopted about investment, for example, in competition and openness with regard to train and exchange of information and data flows and all of these things are really vital. But how do we get to the point where these complex environments are trustable? Well, for one thing, we are going to need tools for strong authentication.
And I'm not suggesting that therefore everyone has to self-identify in a strong way for every use they make of this infrastructure, but rather that if at need, we can establish strong authentication and it is extremely valuable.
Imagine that we are exchanging contract agreements on the net and then we want to authoritatively sign them. What we want is digital signatures that are recognized as authoritative in all of the jurisdictions of the world in which that contract needs to be satisfied.
And so if something goes wrong, we want to be able to identify the party strongly so that they can come to some agreement in a jurisdiction and in a venue suitable for resolving whatever dispute may have arisen.
There are equally important opportunities here for educating the general public about its role in establishing trust in the internet.
For example, we have to learn to use two-factor authentication in addition to passwords because passwords alone are not good enough. We need to insist on cryptography end to end in order to protect information at rest and in transit. We need to establish not only the technical standards but also the practices that will achieve those objectives.
I'm sure I could keep going for a while, but the point here is to have a discussion about these issues. And perhaps in the course of our discussion identify specific actions that we could try to undertake that would lead to a more trusted environment in the online space and therefore opportunities for economic improvement literally everywhere in the world.
So I thank you very much for allowing me to start this conversation. And I look forward to the remainder of the discussions and hopefully to the identification of ideas that we can put into practice.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. So I really thank Dr. Cerf for this very insightful message.
He mentioned tools, identifications, authentications and standards. But in addition to those elements, I think he emphasized the potential norms by multi-stakeholders and also he mentioned practice or actions.
So now I would like to join to panelists and listen to their points. First, I would like to invite Dr. Gridl. Dr. Gridl is the Head of Division VIA5 managing Internet Governance and the International Digital Dialogue in The Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy of the German government.
Dr. Gridl took the leading role in Germany when the company hosted IGF last year in Berlin and guided the conference to a great success. He also actively engaged himself in the consultation on global cooperation when Germany took the role of co-champion for recommendation 5A and B of the high-level panel on digital cooperation report.
That resulted in the option paper on possible improvements of the internet governance mechanisms. So, Dr. Gridl please take the floor.
>> RUDOLF GRIDL: Thank you very much, Mr. Iida.
And distinguished panelists, guests, participants, good morning from Berlin. I'm honored that I can participate in this very important open forum organized by the MIAC, our dear partners in digital dialogues and policy throughout the year.
I would like to emphasize on the experience that we made during the preparation of our IGF and also what you also mentioned, the options paper.
And I think we identified two factors that needs to be fulfilled if you want to advance and have a trustful and meaningful and a faithful discussion and result on internet governance issues.
And these two factors are inclusiveness and transparency. I would start with the factor of inclusiveness. And when we started to prepare the IGF 2019 in Berlin, we came from a place in Germany where internet governance was known to I would say very specialized and very well-informed group of experts and many multi-stakeholder groups, but it was nothing that was known in the public.
And so at the very beginning, we had to face some position by Civil Society, by smaller businesses, and by people from the parliament saying what are you doing there? Is this some big business conglomeration or something that you are making up with just a few countries of the west or something like that?
So what we were aiming at for this IGF was to be as inclusive as possible. And so we built up structures that would allow SMEs to bring in their view and to participate. We invited members of the parliament, which was a very important step in my view because with the parliament you automatically have the Democratically legitimatized people on board to the modifiers, to the Civil Society. Of course, the Civil Society was something which was very important to us, also the global south.
So we make experience that by getting more and more inclusive with our preparations and with the IGF, work, of course, became more complex and it took us much more time and we had to, you know, respect many more views, on the one hand. But on the other hand, the support and the success finally was also gaining day per day.
Especially I would say also with the global policy we had seen very unpleasant scenes at the IGF in Paris, with the global south feeling sidelined and felt a little bit not respected. So we took that very seriously and together with all of our partners from all of our stakeholders from the MAG, from the United Nations, from the other nations, I think we managed to be as inclusive as possible.
And that created a big layer of trust into what the IGF is doing, into where this is heading and what it can do good for the world, for the people, for the companies and to society.
The second aspect which is interlinked with inclusiveness but it's not the same is the aspect of transparency. And that is something that I also would like to highlight when it comes to our work on the options paper for the recommendation 5AB that you mentioned.
We were mandated around one year ago to co-champion together with our colleagues from the UAE this recommendation and to find solutions or to find answers to questions that have been raised by the high level report on digital cooperation that came out in July of 2019.
And I have to say that there were different voices in our system, in the global system, on how to achieve this goal. There was one very strong school of thought saying okay, now we have an IGF, we have multi-stakeholder consultation already with the high level report, now we are sitting together a small group of experts and we are filling out of what we got and what we think the line to take for the next 10 years. And so that was the debate that was going on.
But finally, the other school of thought conveyed -- and that is very important -- and that school of thought said okay, we cannot sit together behind closed doors and write something down and then at the end present it to the world and saying that is the final solution to all of our problems. We need to do this in a very transparent way and take onboard the views of all of the stakeholders.
And that is why we started this in Berlin, but I think at the end also quite successful process of implicating the most possible number of stakeholders and to be as transparent as possible.
For instance, we asked for written contributions. And every written contribution that we got, we immediately posted it on the website on the options paper so everyone who wanted to follow the process was at all times in a position to see what was on the table, which stakeholder had which position. There was no secrecy about it.
Another example is that we started the citizen's dialogue, a worldwide dialogue with those citizens interested in this digital cooperation theme. And we are also very transparently and very openly on the internet.
All of these stakeholders could get their views and we could also reach stakeholders that would perhaps normally not have been reached.
These are the two elements that in our experience are besides all of these technical things that you need to have like Dr. Cerf said with identifiers and so forth, but this the transparency and this inclusivity of the processes of internet governance are in our view and our experience two major pillars of building trust and thus creating a foundation, a solid foundation for what we are endeavoring for the next years.
Because even with the headline of like true multi-lateralism and true multi-stakeholderism or genuine multi-stakeholderism that is really truly at the heart of this endeavor. That would be my contribution, and I'm looking forward to the discussion. Thank you very much, and back to you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Dr. Gridl, for very impressive presentation. Actually, I recognize that inclusiveness cannot be achieved without trust and trust will not be meaningful without inclusiveness. So it's very convincing.
Now I would like to invite Ms. Rinalia Abdul Rahim. Her focus is on making a bigger and stronger internet possible. She has more than 20 years of experience in ICT for development and was instrumental in driving that agenda in developing countries.
Previously, she was a member of ICANN Board of Directors. She was elected to the position by the global community of internet and users at large.
So, Ms. Rahim, please take the floor.
>> RINALIA ABDUL RAHIM: Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss this very important topic. Trust is something that we in the internet community really care about.
Together With our community around the world, we champion an open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy internet for everyone. The internet is as we all know is an amazing thing. It is a complex decentralized system. So in such a system, trust is integral to success. And I think that you will hear this message over and over again in the discussion.
The interconnected networks that make up the internet continuously evolve, and what keeps the networks connected in exchanging data is essentially trust. The pandemic has shown us that the internet is highly resilient with its decentralized and distributive governance that involves multiple players with different roles and responsibilities, the internet has delivered on connectivity, speed, and resilience on a scale that has never been achieved before.
There are many ways to foster trust on the internet. I will highlight three with a few examples of what people may consider to be good or best practices.
The first way to foster trust is through the adoption of norms and agreements about governance that make the internet secure, and Vint has certainly touched on this earlier. The point that I want to make is that without security, there is no trust.
In an environment of decentralized and distributive governance, norms that reinforce trust need to be adopted and practiced by all internet stakeholders to ensure security.
So Vint has mentioned importance of norms that protect the public core of the internet to have resilient, reliable and predictable internet infrastructure for everyone, those who operate and manage network infrastructure in particular need to adopt and practice norms that promote security and trust.
So here is one example. MANRS. MANRS stands for Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security, it is a baseline industry best practice. We promote MANRS among network operators and to providers of internet exchange points and content development networks.
Those who adopt norms for routing security do so based on a sense of shared responsibility for the internet. This is essential for security that builds trust.
The second way to foster trust is a through a strong commitment to policies and practices that support the widespread use of robust security technologies. We need strong multi-stakeholder commitment to this. Government commitment is key together with the commitment of industry and consumer groups.
To support widespread use an adoption of robust security technologies, a focus on users is really critical. Users need tools and technologies like privacy controls and encryption to be secure when using the internet. Whether for individual users or for internet infrastructure, end-to-end encrypted services and protocols support trust.
What is alarming is that more than 80% of users currently don't use encryption. This is based on a global survey that we have conducted. To address the problem, we need the tools and the technologies to be available and affordable and we also need user education and encouragement to adopt. A multi-stakeholder commitment makes all of this possible.
Emphasis on privacy by design is also important. Privacy needs to be embedded in the design of systems and processes in the transfer of data. As an example of good practice, the APAC framework for securing the digital economy has recommendations on how countries can collaborate, empower users, secure personal data and make use of digital security technologies.
The third and final way to foster trust that I will share in this discussion is to ensure that policies that are developed and harmonized across countries do not harm the critical properties of the internet that have enabled its growth and innovation.
When it comes to the internet, the inclusive multi-stakeholder approach to develop policy and reach decisions is important to foster trust. The openness of the policy making process matters greatly. And Dr. Gridl has mentioned this as well in his intervention.
In developing policies that enable the free flow of data to support the digital economy or anything that relates to the internet, for that matter, it would be useful for policy makers to know whether policies that are being considered have the potential to harm or enable the internet.
The internet has been strong and resilient because of five critical properties. Something that we at the internet society refer to as the internet's way of networking. We developed an internet impact assessment tool kit as a resource for policy analysis and development.
With the tool kit, policy makers and stakeholders can assess and be informed by the impact of proposed as well as existing policies and regulations or business decisions on the critical properties of the internet.
These are three ways on which trust can be fostered on the internet. As a panelist for this session, I have been asked to express voluntary commitment to the IGF on behalf of my organization.
So I will end my statement by saying that the Internet Society either directly or via the Internet Society Foundation will continue to support multi-stakeholder processes in the global, national and regional IGF to foster an inclusive approach to internet governance discussions.
We will also continue our support for capacity building activities such as the IGF Youth Ambassadors and the schools of internet governance. And we will continue to educate people on topics related to internet governance through the provision of online via learning courses at ISOC initiative.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to share our views. Mr. Moderator, over to you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Rinalia Rahim, for your important three ways based on your rich experience. And it is very impressive to have the good practices.
Now let me turn to Ms. Timea Suto, a knowledge manager for innovation for International Chamber of Commerce where she manages International Chamber of Commerce BASIS initiative, which stands for Business Action to Support the Information Society.
ICC is the largest private sector organization representing businesses from all sectors and societies in every part of the world. ICC BASIS has a view that ICT technologies and the internet are enablers of growth, development and inclusion and for our citizens.
So she will speak from business perspectives. So Ms. Suto, please take the floor.
>> TIMEA SUTO: Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Very many thanks to Iida and colleagues of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for inviting me to participate in this panel.
To start, let me quickly introduce my organization, the International Chamber of Commerce. As Iida mentioned, ICC is the world's largest and most representative business organization with members from all sizes and sectors in over 100 countries across the globe and works to promote open trade and commerce as enablers of global peace and prosperity. A mission that is now more relevant than ever.
As we look at how we cannot just recover but build back better from the COVID-19 crisis, BASIS takes its role very seriously, working with governments and all stakeholders to inform and partner for better policy and outcomes that serve our shared interest in sustainable economic and social development.
In Osaka in 2019, it was already more than obvious that access to digital technologies and the benefits that they bring are a prerequisite for this agenda. COVID has turned this into a necessity as we moved almost every aspect of our professional and personal lives to the digital space.
Already in April this year, Microsoft reported that they saw two years' worth of digital transformation in the space of just two months. Our future is unquestionably digital, and data is at its core.
As the pandemic slowed down the flow of goods and people, digital trade based on global data flows has been a lifeline to keep our economies moving. Allowing these flows to continue is essential to the efficient functioning of our increasingly interconnected economies and societies.
Trust is the single most important element that safeguards the interconnectiveness. When we look at what trust means in this context, I would like to highlight three elements.
The first goes back to what Vint opened with in his keynote. Trust means respect for the multiple stakeholders involved in the policy-setting process. This requires openness to the input of all stakeholders in the policy-making process at both national and international levels.
Openness to participation enables stakeholders to better carry out their roles and responsibilities because it ensures transparency, awareness, responsibility and accountability in addressing different facets of public policies.
My second point stems from this openness, and it is about understanding. Again, going back to what Vint said in his opening remarks, we need to understand how the technology works to be able to build on it. And we need to understand what technology enables, what cross-border data flows mean for our economies and our societies.
It means that a young entrepreneur in the early stages of conceiving a product can use nearly infinite pool of knowledge and information online to develop an idea. Then to convert their idea into reality, they can access new forms of financing and credit which increasingly use AI-enabled tools.
When the product is ready to be launched, they can draw on the experience of graphic designers, marketers and other professionals from anywhere in the world and cloud technologies that can reduce the reliance on expensive computer hardware and software. And finally, when the product is ready to be sold, they have access to a global rather than a local customer base.
In the same way we need to understand the technology, we also need to understand the policy development process. We need to be mindful of how the policy action or regulatory measure that we take in one area can affect other areas. And need to ensure that we have a holistic approach in the policies that we design and that the policies enable rather than defer further innovation.
For example, several companies have framed their national data policies to restrict cross-border data flows through digital sovereignty regulations.
This will require businesses that operate globally to adapt. Instead of having one global business, transnational companies need to deintegrate the operations and their corporate structures to comply with new rules by rolling one business two systems or many systems approach.
Billion dollar companies might be able to find the resources necessary to do so to remain competitive, but digital protectionism will increase the barriers or even make that insurmountable for the small businesses and startups that need to participate in the digital economy or are looking to join global value chains.
And my third and last point is that we must ensure that the enabling policy systems that we design are globally interoperable to help companies navigate today's extremely fragmented and complex regulatory environment.
The APAC cross-border privacy rules system and the OECD guidelines on the protection of privacy and transport of personal data offer useful examples and templates to foster cross-border transfer of data.
At the same way, trade agreements that address data flow should also support and emphasize their importance. They need to prohibit unjustified or blanket restrictions on data flows and establish fair inviting rules to facilitate information flows across borders.
So to sum up, fostering trust in additional space for me requires three things. First, openness to multi-stakeholder participation. Second, concerted efforts to share information. And third, strengthen international cooperation. Which really are the three pillars of the IGF itself. So maybe I could have just been very brief and instead of taking up this much time I could have just said fostering trust in the digital world means the IGF. Thank you very much, and back to you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Timea Suto, for your very comprehensive presentation.
We actually lack of understanding, mutual understanding even over the simple wordings and concept are often witnessed and always make discussion and the communications difficult.
And intra-operability is one of the key elements to foster the trust in cross-border data flow and we see a lot of efforts ongoing over the world. So thank you very much for this presentation.
And now I would like to invite Mr. Kone from Smart Africa. Mr. Kone is Secretary General of Smart Africa, which is an innovative commitment from Head of State and the government in African countries to accelerate sustainable socio-economic development on the continent.
Leading Africa into a knowledge economy through affordable access to broadband and usage of ICTs. The Smart Africa has 30 Member States and acting with five pillars of policy. Access in government, private sector entrepreneurship, and sustainable development from its manifest.
So I would like to listen to the points from Mr. Kone. So Please take the floor. I am afraid you are muted.
>> LACINA KONE: Thank you very much. You can hear me, right?
>> MODERATOR: Yes.
>> LACINA KONE: Hello? Can you hear me now?
>> MODERATOR: Okay. We can hear you.
>> LACINA KONE: I will have to mute the video because the bandwidth is not stable.
So if you can all hear me, that is very good. So, first of all, I really would like to express my gratitude to the organizers of this IGF 2020 under these difficult circumstances as the world is facing -- it is important to have this international conversation on the governance of (break in audio) so critical to our economy and society.
To talk a little bit about Smart Africa, of course, as part of the trust, we believe that first of all, trust is important for Africa.
There are many reason. One of them is, among them is there is new story to be told about Africa continent. Six out of 10 -- six Africans and six out of 10 fastest growing economy. And five of the top 10 performance of the World Bank ease of doing business are in Africa as well.
We have a young fast-growing organizing populations with a big unmet need, untapped resource, wealth and new innovations.
Most of all, we believe that in the leap frogging opportunity represented by the rapid introduction of the digital and mobile technology and which already made Africa the world leader in the mobile market.
But we still have challenges when trying to fully seize this opportunity. One of them is that our digital markets are still fragmented and mostly national. An example of that, you know, in the European union 68%, the intratrade and commerce between the EU countries represents about 68%, in Africa is only 18%.
The vision of Smart Africa is, therefore, to make Africa a single digital market by 2030, which is only 10 years away.
We are not simply an international organization made of international governments. Our alliance was actually founded because we believe that a multi-stakeholder approach is a fundamental requirement if we want to leverage ICT to accelerate the socio-economic development of our countries.
We are convinced that this cannot be done by government alone. Socio-economic development caused by digital technology requires a true multi-stakeholder dialogue which includes the private sector developing and deploy technology, governments in their role as a regulator, and citizens who use technologies and are affected by this transformation.
Our alliance is made up of 30 countries but also of international organization associations and a major representative. Smart Africa provides the space to create the right synergy amongst stakeholders in Africa from infrastructure, this project on supporting inter-Africa connectivity, which concern the infrastructure to the layer of possible services deployment or the support of innovation intact in a locally consistent and digital literacy for users.
So talking about the approach to data free flow with trust is very important. How do we pose the question of digital governance, and more precisely the question of free flow of data in a trusted environment?
I appreciate all of the possibilities and all of the panelists, you know, who actually spoke before me, particularly Dr. Vint Cerf when he talked about, you know, it is about trust in the core infrastructure and the core protection, the core network and trust and talked about authentication and talked about end-to-end encryption.
For us, digital governance framework are not yet harmonized across Africa, but we play an increasing role in the support of emerging technology like artificial intelligence or, as a matter of fact, IoT.
And more globally, in the socio-economic development of the country, we need to ensure that we do not recreate borders that are not necessary in the digital world.
The digital world has really no borders. They are basically mainly governed by the law governing data flow between countries. One example, we need to make sure that the right resources are in place to make it simple for a startup from Ghana, for instance, to get authorizations to organize data transfer from Kenya. Otherwise, we lose the opportunity offered to our companies by the scale of our continent.
In order to increase the use of the value and the value derived from the data, capacities to make smart use of available data must be enhanced on African continent. Both in the public and in the private sector.
Infrastructure for the circulation of data must be developed, which is the core network. Access to public data to be improved, which also will require a fundamental other element that I would like to add to Dr. Cerf, which is I call it KYC.
As a matter of fact, to talk about statistics for some of you who are familiar, there is about one billion population around the world. Although we have 53% of the world population connected, we still have a 47% unconnected. And by talking about unconnected, I mean by that, they have no sort of infrastructure and so on and so forth, but that is not the point.
Being connected is one thing. Trust in the core network is one thing. But what goes into the core network is trusted that is where the key comes in to play. So one billion population around the world do not have any form of digital identification. And half of those half billion are actually in Africa.
So the detail becomes which are the conditions because before you do the two-way authentication, you must be trusting the person who are actually putting the content on the network. So for us, that is a challenge right now and that is what we are working on.
So these efforts, however, need to be carefully compared by the design of the governance system and rules that ensure, one, that the protection of right and freedom of African citizen.
With the implementation of the privacy rule in 2014, the first Pan-African framework was adopted with the African Union Convention on cyber security and personal data protection. The convention almost six years after the convention was signed out of 55 countries in Africa would have about four countries have signed and there is only about 29 countries have developed a national law in digital.
Number two, the protection of business and organization who need a trusted environment and legal certainty for the update of the digital product and service use. According to 2018 statistics, Africa report, cybercrime cost African economy $3.5 billion in 2017, which is quite a huge amount.
And the last point is the protection of African State sovereignty and interests, ensuring that value creation benefits African economy to this end with the dependency on foreign infrastructure need to be reduced. For instance, through the deployment of the backbone or the creation of data centers in Africa.
If you look at the African map today, we can barely count how many exist in general so increasing number of the data centers will push the information to the edge. Now the contents of African content will remain in Africa and this in turn will also accelerate, make the internet faster and more cheaper.
So to conclude, private sector first, multi-stakeholder dialogue, setting up a framework respective of a sovereignty of State, this is the way forward.
Where many organizations involved in internet governance have, indeed, complementary role to play. We need to recognize this autonomy and keep valid in the mutual participation.
Thank you very much for your attention. I'm happy to explain in more detail what projects Smart Africa is working on to achieve this objective. For example, in the field of digital ID. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Mr. Kone, for the very rich presentation. And it is interesting to know the current situation in the African countries.
We believe in Africa it is the continent of hope and the data flow not only across the African countries but also between African countries and the rest of the world should be more promoted and the digital economy should be developed all together with the rest of the world. I look forward to listening more details on other opportunities. So thank you very much.
And let me now turn to Professor Murai. For the interest of time, just a brief, Professor Murai is known as part of the internet in Japan. And also outside of Japan he is known as internet samurai.
So in 1984, he developed the first Japanese university network, Japanese university Unix network unit, which is the Japanese Internet Research Consortium.
And then he has been long engaged in research related to internet technology platforms. He was also very active in all aspects of the government not only in Japan but also across the world for the development of internet. And he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013.
So now he is appointed as advisor to the Japanese cabinet office to lead the digitalization of the whole government as well as the whole nation. So we would like to listen to Professor Murai.
>> JUN MURAI: Thank you very much. Thank you very much for inviting me for this very important panel about the trust in the internet digital space, cyber space. So I'm very much honored to be participating.
So my voice is okay?
>> MODERATOR: Yes, okay. We can hear.
>> JUN MURAI: Okay, great. All right. Well, thank you very much for the invite over these very much distinguished panelists because you already mentioned most of the things that I wanted to share with you.
So it is a very even for the point of view, the intra-operability of the data and the transfer to be understood by everybody. So the data architecture, like Lacina said, the security based on the security, the security by design and the data sharing architecture with very much in kind of strong security technology is going to be a key for the kind of trust on the cyberspace.
So let me add some of the, you know, points I mean to be shared because it is very important to be shared based on all of your discussions about the kind of trust in the data exchange and everything.
So one thing is about the -- we need to do the internal, internal to the Nation State and then the international to the Nation State. So each of the Nation State need to be, you know, kind of internal country need to be, you know, well designed in terms of sharing the data, open data kind of thing, and then also the security thing.
So otherwise trust among the Nation State could not be, you know, achieved. Therefore, this is a basis. Therefore, if there is a kind of a relationship with our other Nation State international cooperation and other things would be extremely important not only from establishing the international relationship, but also from the kind of supporting each other on their -- on each of the internal data regulated policy and the governance and then the advancement of the technology which is also very important.
And also the three points I would like to share especially with all of the panelists and the audience as well, the first one is about the internet inclusion accessibility. So Vint mentioned the world population, almost half, beyond half of our population is accessing the internet.
But it is -- I have a detailed data and finally this year in October, last month, the world population of the internet exceeded the 60%. So 50% was the last year, but 60% I got the statistic was the same one as Vint mentioned. For the first time in more than 60% of the world population now accessing the internet.
And, therefore, do you understand that if -- how much time left for doing this, right? So this is one of the subjects I want to talk.
So I kind of thought that the world population of the internet users starting from year 2000, which was 6%, and 60% in 2020. And when do you think we will have like almost 100% all of the world? When will that be happening?
So it can be, according to all of the graphs you can draw based on that history it will be not later than 2030. 2025, 2030, I mean mathematically, right?
And, therefore, I don't think we have a lot of time left until the most of the people around the world accessing the internet, you know, to that time comes.
So this is kind of something we should know. So action about the data flow with the trust type of a thing. We need to kind of rapid action toward that kind of thing because of that reason, because the population especially -- we just got our friend from Africa reporting about Africa, right.
Africa is like in this year's report, Africa is like a little bit more than 50% of the population in Africa. And in Asia, it is 60%. 55% actually in the Asia region. So the rest of the places, Europe and North America, it is 90%, 95% and that kind of thing, the penetration of the internet users.
Therefore, you know, it is a lot of room for growing in Africa and the Asias. That is the kind of situation.
So from the internet inclusion point of view and also the mutually supporting for the development of the internet in the coming five years, should be centered on those two areas, that is one point.
And the second point is about the technology thing changing in the coming five years, 10 years, very much. I mean internet technology is evolving and changing all the time.
And so we already mentioned that IoT and the artificial intelligence type of the technology for the kind of data, utilizing the data and then also providing the services on top of the internet. But that is changing, right?
And the IoT use or data use, censor use is just beginning and so is the artificial intelligence is rapidly changing its kind of power and the technology over time.
So it is a very important that, you know, we have been carefully understanding about the changing of the technology year by year. And that then we try to understand and that then they are making those new technologies to be transparent among us and then understanding and then also emphasizing on the security on those new coming technologies and the services, which is also very important.
And that then we hear the new infrastructure even, we are pretty familiar with the cable and the wi-fi, 5G. But, you know, it is a lot of development these days is coming from the space. And then even the stratosphere space is coming to cover the entire globe which is another alternative way for accessing the internet for the 100% of the surface of the planet which is changing, completely changing the pattern of the internet space and the cyberspace in this planet and for the human being as well.
So these kind of technical development and revolution to be shared and to be understood among us. Lastly, the abusers when the new technology coming in, they are always the abusers are new technologies, right? And then we really need the proper use of those nice advanced technology.
And that then we need to discuss, right, and so -- and also we need the proper use rather than abuse, and ethical use rather than abuse, which is very important. In order to achieve that, we really need the space to discuss and the sharing that kind of the what is the new things happening? What is the issues? What is the new security issues, security technology to be shared?
So we need a place. And I sincerely hope that IGF is going to be exactly is a place to do that and there could be many other ways. But the place in the sharing among this like this time is going to be very important. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you very much, Professor Murai, for a very rich presentation. And it is very impressive to know, you know, 60% of the population is now accessing the internet.
So I wanted to make a question and answer into action, but because of the time limitation we have to close the session within one minute. So sorry for the poor management of time for the panelists, but I hope everybody enjoyed the very good presentation from the five speakers.
And at the end, as the moderator of the session, I would like to thank all of you. And we are hosting IGF in year 2023. And we will make best use of the -- every piece of information you provided during this session. And we will make very productive and very sustainable transparent inclusive IGF.
And one thing which came very clear through the session was IGF will be a very powerful tool for the inclusive trusted and sustainable internet and digital economy. So I believe we keep working together continuously and we will see each other very soon. Thank you very much for your participation, and hopefully see you soon again. Thank you very much.