General Data
Session Type: Workshop
Title: A BRIC hit the Web: Finding patterns in digital policymaking
Date & Time: 11:20 to 12:20
Organizers: Mark W. Datysgeld; Ilona Stadnik
Chair/Moderator: Mark W. Datysgeld
Rapporteur: Agustina Callegari
List of speakers:
- Speaker 1: Mark Datysgeld, Private Sector, Latin American and Caribbean Group
- Speaker 2: Luca Belli, Academia, Latin American and Caribbean Group
- Speaker 3: Ilona Stadnik, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
- Speaker 4: Dr. Govind, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
- Speaker 5: Yik Chan, Academia, Asia-Pacific Group
Theme: Development, Innovation & Economic Issues
Subtheme: INTERNET FOR DEVELOPMENT & SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Key messages:
- There are similarities in digital matters between BRIC countries that need to be further explored;
- Policies that better inform the digital education of BRIC youths could improve outcomes;
- Multistakeholder cooperation in-bloc is very low and could be improved to basic levels.
Session final report
Report from GIP: https://dig.watch/sessions/bric-web-finding-patterns-digital-policy-making
Luca Beli started by sharing the CyberBRIC project which has opened a call of applications for researchers of BRIC countries to focus in data protection, as it’s a key topic in all five countries as it has an impact on e-commerce. After that, the introduced the Brazilian political system and he mentioned key events related to the Internet such as Snowden revelations that target the Brazilian and also Russia and NetMundial and he focused on the data protection law that was approved in August in Brazil after more than nine years of debates. He highlighted that some law aspects were vetoed by the President like the elimination of the data protection authority which could make difficult to implement the law and make it efficient. As regards cybersecurity, he mentioned some practices that could be negative, like that cybersecurity is coordinated by the military.
Ilona Stadnik talked about the situation in Russia in relation to the digital economy that is not covered by the media. She gave an overview of the involvement of the Russian government in the digital ecosystem from 2010 to now as she mentioned that there was not interested in the topic until 2010. She mentioned that in 2011 the data protection law was approved and that the interested of the government in the digital economy started in 2016 where there was a conference about the Internet where the president attended. The outcome of that and other conferences on the matter was the creation of the national programme entitled: “Digital economy” that started in 2017. The programme, that included different topics, begun as a multi-stakeholder initiative, however, as Ilona mentioned, this year the government wanted to give back the power to the government, and other stakeholders don’t have a clear role within the programme.
Dr. Govind started by sharing some numbers that showed the size of the digital economy in India (1.5 billion mobile, .2 billion unique identification numbers, thousand billion transactions, etc) and he mentioned the Digital India programme that aims to prepare the country for the digital transformation (for example, digital skills for start-ups). The programme also includes cybersecurity as a cross-cutting theme: security in the digital space is ket for e-commerce and also for social media channels. With regards to data protection, Dr. Govind referred to the bill that is currently being discussed in the Parliament and will continue in the following months. He mentioned that the discussions use the multistakeholder approach (government consulting civil society and business). At the end of his intervention, he highlighted the importance of strengthening the cooperation between BRIC countries.
Yik Chan believed that cybersecurity had a negative impact on Internet connectivity especially in humans rights and freedom of expression and framed the discussing in relation to country sovereignty in terms of defining which areas belong to the government and which do not. She mentioned three topics that are important for the discussion: infrastrucrure (both in terms of hardware and software), online applications (most of the countries developing apps do not have access to the international market), and the importance of security, political systems, social order, and cultural diversity.
During the interventions from the audience, Ambassador Benedicto da Fonseca from Brazil, mentioned that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil had requested the government to create a national authority for the data protection law. He said that, like GDPR, Brazil had given 18 months to implement the law and that will give time to create the implementation body. He also commented that one of the most important CERT in Brazil is hosted by held by the CGI which is a multistakeholder body.