Session
Data Governance & Trust
Cross-border Data Flows and Trust
Organizer 1: Cynthia Lo, 🔒
Speaker 1: Cynthia Lo, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: Carolina Pierafita, Intergovernmental Organization, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 3: Mike Linksvayer, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 4: Helani Galpaya, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Henri Verdier - Ambassador for Digital Affairs Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France
Cynthia Lo, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Cynthia Lo, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Cynthia Lo, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Birds of a Feather - 90 Min
1) What are the data needs and challenges that international development, public policy and economics researchers have that are currently unmet and how can private sector data fill this gap? 2) What are the current indicators of technology maturity, technology ecosystems, and digital literacy in a country? How can private sector technology platform metrics create a more robust and nuanced picture of these areas? And what are their potential limitations? 3) What are the challenges in obtaining, using private sector data for development purposes especially in 'data deserts'?
What will participants gain from attending this session? Participants will gain a stronger understanding of best practices for internet platforms drawing from research, with a goal of expanding their own network that can benefit from the metrics, potentially through the creation of an informal working group or mailing list for a diverse community and accessible for marginalized groups. We aim to develop more open source opportunities for participants to engage in. New knowledge on data deserts or regions where government data-gathering potentially has missing data for civically essential information is an insight we aim to bring forward more. Furthermore, we plan to create a virtual community to build upon the discussion of this event and publish the key findings.
Description:
Internet platforms and service providers have data invaluable for informing public policy. This panel session will be co-hosted and have participants from GitHub Inc., the Inter-American Development Bank and LIRNEasia. It will focus on the theme of ‘Data Governance & Trust’ and how private sector data in general and technology platform metrics in particular can inform research and policy on technology maturity, innovation ecosystems, digital literacy and the monitoring of progress towards SDGs at the country level. As a component of evidence-based policy creation, such metrics can help governments, multinational organizations, and private companies make better-informed decisions on issues such as which low- and middle-income countries can support new technology projects and products, or which countries would benefit from new technology-oriented capacity building initiatives. This panel will highlight how data sharing, privacy and protection is integral for a shared, sustainable and common future. Inter-American Development Bank will focus on the open data sets they use to inform public policy and urban planning challenges in Latin America. LIRNEasia, a Sri Lanka based think tank, will highlight the work using open data for digital policy work in Asia, specifically with public-private data collaborations. This session will also identify practices that other stakeholders can emulate and encourage private sector organizations to release data sets or develop metrics in an effort to encourage data governance. The aim is to highlight a collaborative model of engagement for private sector technology companies in international development, public policy and economics to capture a more robust picture of technological activity in every country, regardless of income status based on the qualitative research done. Proposed agenda: 40 minutes - moderated panel discussion 40 minutes - open Q&A from the audience 10 minutes - concluding remarks from each speaker
IGF is an optimal forum to discuss this new engagement model to leverage platform metrics from companies and organizations in the disciplines of international development, economics and policy. The aim of this session is to create a stronger understanding of best practices for internet platforms drawing from all the GitHub, the Inter-American Development Bank, LIRNEasia research, with a goal of expanding the network that participates or benefits from the metrics, potentially through the creation of an informal working group or mailing list. This session will lead to a publication of improved data sets to be used for partnerships such as the World Bank Development Data Partnership. Lastly, we plan to create an online forum to build upon the discussion of this event and publish the key findings.
Hybrid Format: Facilitation between onsite and online speakers and attendees will be managed through the moderator, who will field questions from both in-person and online participants. The session is intended as a hybrid in-person and online event with an interactive element. We aim to provide accessible slides for a visual component and explore the use of Slido to capture live polling questions from the audience. There is a potential for audio and visual materials to be presented through Zoom. In-person attendees will have an opportunity to explore previous research reports with short printed summaries in English, Spanish and potentially in Japanese, virtual attendees will have access to a digital version. Lastly, we will capture the Q&A discussion questions on an online forum to help facilitate online engagement and provide a space for individuals to network.
Report
Interest on data sets such as GitHub's Innovation Graph: https://innovationgraph.github.com/ as a way to approach private sector data for public sector research.
Discussion on challenges with skills technical staff within government to implement open source tools and how to tackle the myths some may have about open source.
Some topics were too broad and could be narrowed down for more in depth discussion.
There was interest in the process of simplifying the process of using private sector data for policy making
Connecting open code with policymakers to development
This session built on the work of numerous different agencies with speakers from the Government of France Digital Affairs office, GitHub Inc., and LIRNEasia. This session focused on the theme of ‘Data Governance & Trust’ and how private sector data in general and technology platform metrics in particular can inform research and policy on technology maturity, innovation ecosystems, digital literacy and the monitoring of progress towards SDGs at the country level. GitHub is the world's largest platform for collaborative software development, with over 100 million users. GitHub is also used extensively for open data collaboration, hosting more than 800 million open data files, totaling 142 terabytes of data. Their work highlights the potential of open data on GitHub and also demonstrates how it can accelerate AI research. They have done work to analyze the existing landscape of open data on GitHub and the patterns of how users share datasets. GitHub is one of the largest hosts of open data in the world and has experienced an accelerated growth of open data assets over the past four years and ultimately contributing to the ongoing AI revolution to help address complex societal issues. LIRNEasia is a pro-poor, pro-market think tank. Their mission is to catalyze policy change and solutions through research to improve the lives of people in the Asia and Pacific using knowledge, information and technology. Joining the panel was also Henri Verdier, the French Ambassador for Digital Affairs within the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. Since 2018, he leads and coordinates the French Digital Diplomacy. He previously was the inter-ministerial director for digital information and communications systems (DG DINUM) of France; and he was the director of Etalab, the French agency for public open data.
The session opened with an overview of what connecting open code with policymakers and the previous efforts made on this topic. There has been research done on this and the panel highlighted GitHub’s work on Partnering with EU policymakers to ensure the Cyber Resilience Act works for developers. While in France, there has been policies on the implementation of “open source software expertise center” set up in the Etalab which is a part of the interministerial digital department DINUM. It is a part of an effort of setting up open source offices in governments that can be observed throughout the public administrations in Europe. The expertise center will be supported by other initiatives of the government such as projects within the TECH.GOUV programme aimed at accelerating digital transformation of the public service. Other efforts such as the French government’s roadmap for developing open source to make it a vector of digital sovereignty and a guarantee of “democratic confidence” is part of the conversation. Leading to the topic on the challenges from unmet data needs that can be supported by private sector data for development purposes which GitHub announced the Innovation Graph. The GitHub Innovation Graph dataset contains data on (1) public activity (2) on GitHub (3) aggregated by economy (4) on a quarterly basis on GitHub public data.
Finally, the panel session concluded with discussion on data privacy & consent as well as efforts to promote and support open code initiatives globally. There was extensive interest by attendees on how to encourage participation and capacity building locally, and encourage more open source development within governments.