The issue: In an increasingly interconnected world, the ability to transfer digital information across borders has become an essential component whether to enabling economic growth, facilitate access to education, healthcare or other social services or just simply empower people across the world to access information and connect with each-other. This can be easily observed in the spread of e-commerce, the increasingly global nature supply chains and via business and consumer use of the cloud and other emerging technologies. The workshop aims to bring IGF participants closer to identifying policy best practices around enabling global flows of data for inclusive economic growth and enabling the participation of SMEs in global trade. It will also consider what policy elements are needed to ensure these flows are secure, respect human rights and are in the service of equality and inclusion. The workshop will uncover how cross-border data flows impact SMEs, what data-enabled technologies do SMEs use their day-to-day activities, how cross-border data flows help enable SMEs to join global trade flows as well as discuss fundamental data protection and privacy considerations. Participants will be prompted to consider, what kind of data SMEs use and provide, how data is being gathered and processed along the supply chain and who are the actors involved. The workshop will raise and aim to answer questions around data collection, transfer and processing and explore economic, technical and human rights considerations.
The format: The session will be organized in a fishbowl format, which is a technique especially beneficial for ventilating “hot topics”, such as data governance or sharing ideas or information from a variety of perspectives, as this workshop aims to do. Invited speakers will sit in a group in the middle of or facing the audience (depending on the room possibilities) and in their midst will have an empty chair – this is the fishbowl. Audience members, sitting outside and observing the fishbowl will be invited to join in by occupying the empty chair at any given point in the conversation where they wish to add a comment, ask a question or challenge the current speaker. The moderator will guide the conversation through the various stages and facilitate interaction.
The conversation: Each invited speaker will be asked to address one of the three main elements planned for the workshop: 1) data-enabled digital transformation of SMEs, 2) data flows connecting SMEs in a global supply chain, 3) privacy, data protection and human rights considerations. They will also be asked highlight the main policy considerations, possible obstacles and desired responses specific to their topic. Following each speaker’s presentation the floor will be open for audience members to take the empty seat in the fishbowl and provide further perspectives, to complement or challenge the speaker’s point of view. Online participation will be aided by a remote moderator, who will be occupying the empty seat to signal the wish of a remote participant to join the conversation.
Expected Outcomes: The workshop will provide participants with an improved understanding of both the technical and policy elements necessary to support cross-border data flows to enable the participation of SMEs in global trade. The summary of the workshop will feature a list of case studies mentioned by speakers and participants and will provide a menu of good practices for policy approaches. Lastly, the workshop will aim to highlight areas for future action and potential questions to be explored in future IGF sessions.
