Keynotes 02 2018
6 June 2018 | 09:00-9:30 | GARDEN HALL
Consolidated programme 2018
Keynotes
- Mr. Yushi Torigoe, Deputy Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau and Chief of Administration and Coordination Department, ITU |
- Lawrence E. Strickling, former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and Administrator, NTIA, U.S. Department of Commerce |
Transcript
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This text is based on live transcription. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, and/or live transcription are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. This text is not to be distributed or used in any way that may violate copyright law.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Hello. Ladies and Gentlemen, please we are going to start in. So thank you everyone for arriving at this early hour considering that we had a long party last night. I hope you enjoyed it. And I appreciate very much that you made it to that session. We've got some very interesting keynote speakers rather late. They had been announced only two days ago but I am more glad and happy I am now to announce them. The first man is Yushi Torigoe. He is from the ITU. He is the Deputy Director of the Telecommunications Development Bureau and chief administration and coordination development. Mr. Yushi Torigoe, please the floor is yours.
(Applause.)
>> YUSHI TORIGOE: Thank you very much for your kind introduction. Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my great honor to be here today on behalf of the International Telecommunication Union. And I would like to thank the host organization for a wonderful evening yesterday with very fantastic performances. Thank you very much.
I would like to briefly speak about ITU and its work. So much progress has been made in information and communication technologies over the past two decades. ICTs have transformed people's lives around the world. And they have a critical role in assisting and achieving the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. This progress is thanks to the World Summit on Information Society. As you know this year is the 15th anniversary of the first phase of WSIS in Geneva. This process emerged as the Internet Governance Forum and the WSIS Forum. And these two platforms have been working side by side since then.
ITU fully supports this open and inclusive discussion at IGF and has been actively participating in all IGF additions. In this regard EuroDIG plays an important role that matters globally in scope as most matters relate to the Internet. And my heartfelt congratulations to the host Government of Georgia for hosting this EuroDIG and very timely for joining the ITU region of Europe. And cooperation is what brings us here today. Cooperation, coordination, collaboration at the heart of the 2030 Agenda which will shape our digital future. And together we need to face the challenges and opportunities of the digital revolution. And I promise that ITU can play its part.
So I would like to briefly introduce our activities. This remote is here. Thank you very much. About ITU. Next, please. Next slide, please. Okay. Thank you very much. As you know ITU is the UN specialized agency on telecommunications and ICT. We have three sectors, radiocommunication, telecommunication standardization and telecommunication development. Under the Plenipotentiary conference held every five years, these are the five elected officials. ITU is a Treaty based Intergovernmental organization. Membership is the same as United Nations, 193 Member States. And the uniqueness of ITU is active involvement of private sector and academia and SMEs. We have more than 700 membership.
ITU is headquartered in Geneva and we have five regional offices. These are the global presences and a couple of area offices under the regional office.
And my sector, ITU development sector, primarily the goal is international cooperation providing assistance to Developing Countries and implementing a specific project, partnering with World Bank and international financial institutions.
We organize a telecommunication development conference, setting up the priorities, action plan, Declaration, attracting a very high level of participation. Here is the WTDC in Buenos Aires last year attracting 3200 participation. We organize advisory boards, reviewing the implementation, getting advice, strategies, action plan and operational plan.
Here is the key activities of the development sector. 12 areas I wish to quickly go through. One of the priorities is ICT infrastructure. We still have a lot of areas not connected to ICTs. So our goal is very high. Including next generation network, mobile wireless, broadband and rural communications.
Spectrum management in close collaboration with our radio bureau. We provide local spectrum management software for Developing Countries. Another area is the interactive map. This maps the territorial and satellite links, submarine territorial, satellite stations and those networks. Another area is knowledge sharing of policy and regulatory experiences. We organize a global symposium for regulators. The next edition will be in July in Geneva. And we open the online platform sharing experience of regulatory and policy issues. Another area is ICT application together with infrastructure. We promote collaboration with UN agencies. I'm co Chair of the Be Healthy Be Mobile initiative with the World Health Organization. We are promoting mHealth. Other areas, e education with UNESCO, New York with the ILO and e agriculture. We promote control of tobacco, diabetes, healthy eating habits and eating life habits with hypertension. And we recently launched the EU hub to share best practices of e Health.
Cybersecurity is one other area. We set up a global cybersecurity index and training capacity building activities, cyber drills to provide assistance to Developing Countries. Recently digital inclusion is one of our also activities, not only digital divide. We organize annual events on ICT event globally. And also accessibility for Persons with Disabilities together with ILO. We launched a target of educating 5 million for educating youth for decent jobs. One of our horizontal efforts is capacity building together with partnering organizations. We provide various capacity building activities. We will host capacity building symposium next month in the Dominican Republic.
ITU is the leader on ICT statistics. We publish ID statistics every year and also hold a World Telecommunication ICT indicator symposium. And we would like to thank the Government of Georgia for hosting WTIS in Georgia, Tbilisi. These are the key deliverables of ITU. The publications, we publish a global cybersecurity index, ID statistics and a lot of case studies matching projects of ICT.
Let me go to the regional initiative. In WTDC we regularly establish priorities for each region. These are the five priorities in Europe in the last cycle. Spectrum management, broadcasting, broadband and access to Persons with Disabilities, confidence and security and innovation. And these are the projects in Europe ongoing and some key achievements, in particular European Commission. We promote mHealth knowledge hub and national third establishment center of excellence establishment.
And in the 2017 WTDC we set up new priorities. We have new regional initiative 2, citizen centric approach. And we continue our efforts. And I wish to highlight the importance of the partnership. We are already partnering with many world and regional financial institutions. And we wish to collaborate and scale up our activities. Thank you for your attention.
(Applause.)
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Hello. Thank you very much. I know you agreed to take one or two questions and I would like to ask in the audience are there any questions to this presentation? Alexander. Please come to the floor.
>> Yeah. Thank you very much. It is great honor for us to meet you here. I have the following question. I'm from the Russian Federation. And I'm really interested in how ITU controls its own forces in every development it does to its Member States and organizations. So it is usually when I visit the ITU website or listen to a presentation it seems I live on another planet. So not much of your development and ICT is supported in my country. So how your organizations controls and ensures that all these international activities goes down to its Member States.
>> YUSHI TORIGOE: Thank you very much. Hello. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. It is a very important question. ITU as a development sector is on to facilitate your needs. And in fact, the demand for development is very high. The high expectation. To in order to respond to that request we set up as I mentioned five regional offices and one European office in headquarters to facilitate a regional initiative. And recently we are discussing to enhance this regional initiative. We set up some ITU contribution to provide some startup to initiate the project and to facilitate partnership with global and regional fund, like World Bank or the Regional Development Bank. So we strengthen to partner and with core half, using the regional offices to scale up our activities. This is our plan.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you. Any other questions?
>> And there is a mic here. So I will come over to you.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you.
>> Hi. I have just a straightforward question. Where is the youth engagement or what can youth be doing to engage with ITU? Thank you.
>> YUSHI TORIGOE: This is very important. I am very pleased to announce that recently this academia membership is growing. Very pleased to inform you the success in Argentina and some Government. The Government started to subsidize the membership of academia membership. And I talked with some participants who showed interest to activities and talked to Government for some academia membership. And in fact, academia membership is minimal to members. Some very high institutions, very well known institutions is already a member of ITU. So once you are admitted to ITU you have the freedom to participate three sectors activities, also General Secretariat, various radiocommunication standardization. And you have free access to the information. Thank you.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you very much. And also thank you for the questions. And any other questions? Thank you.
>> YUSHI TORIGOE: Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: And the next keynote speaker is well known in this community because he was responsible or he made the INANA transition happen. It is Larry Strickling for the NTIA. Larry, the floor is yours.
>> LARRY STRICKLING: Thank you, Sandra. Okay. Everyone, stand up. I know you had a late evening but we have got to get some energy in this room.
(Laughter).
>> LARRY STRICKLING: You should have thought about that last night until you stayed out until midnight. Okay. Have a seat. Let's get to work.
Because I'm here today, I come before you today to deliver a call of action to each and every one of you. A call of action that each of you commit to get personally involved in a multi stakeholder effort to address key Internet policy issues to find Consensus approaches to dealing with the issues and to implement those solutions. Now is that too much to ask at 9 o'clock this morning? I don't think it is. But to do this you are going to need some help and I am going to provide some help for those of you perplexed and confused by the multi stakeholder. What is the multi stakeholder process and what it is not. There is no single model of the multi stakeholder process, but for purposes of this discussion let's focus on the key attributes that define an authentic multi stakeholder process. One, it must be stakeholder driven in that stakeholders determine the process and scope and direction of work.
Two, it must be open and inclusive. Both in terms of allowing broad of participation and ensuring that all issues are addressed. Three, the process must be transparent and accountable to all stakeholders and to the public. And four, outcomes must be Consensus based delivering positive value to the greatest number of stakeholders.
Now a multi stakeholder process that exhibits all of these attributes. Just as important as what is a multi stakeholder process is understanding what it is not. And one it is not an ism. The multi stakeholder process is simply a set of tools to help people collaborate to solve problems. It is not a philosophy or a political ideology. And we do the process a disservice to refer to it as an ism because it encourages people to argue about it and take sides about what should be a set of tools that can provide and help everyone.
Secondly, beware of those who haphazardly or manipulatively attach the multi stakeholder to what is multilateral or topdown processes. When a Government or a business runs a consultation that is open to input from all stakeholders but keeps the decision making to itself it in no way is running a true multi stakeholder process and do such efforts allow for collaboration among the stakeholders much less decision making by them.
So having described what is a multi stakeholder process and what it is not, let me turn to my second point which is that people are reluctant or afraid to take the initiative to establish multi stakeholder processes. Part of that fear stems from people not knowing how to organize and manage a multi stakeholder process. And that could be easily overcome. The Internet Society's collaborative governance initiative is developing training materials on how to run multi stakeholder processes and there are already lots of instructional materials available. We in the Internet community may like to think that the multi stakeholder process was born with the Internet but that's similarly not the case. And there are many instructional guides and manuals available worldwide to anyone who needs some help. But trust me, when I tell you that the keys to successful multi stakeholder process they mostly reflect simple common sense and basic stakeholder management principles. It is not rocket science and it is easy to learn.
Another part of the fear and reluctance to bring forward multi stakeholder processes stems from the sense that the problems today are so large that protecting privacy, battling cybersecurity threats and the like, these are so large that people are intimidated about trying to organize a response. Also there is a predisposition to want comprehensive enforceable solutions to these problems which translates in to waiting for Government or some other organization to take the initiative. I urge you not to let that fear deter you from taking action. The existing Government processes to enact comprehensive legislation or write legislations or negotiate Treaties are not well equipped to deal with the fast changing issues of the Internet. These processes are slow. They usually don't result in any outcome. And when they do the problem that they intended to address often no longer exists. And if they get it wrong, it is incredibly difficult to undo bad legislation or regulation. Instead I encourage each of you to think about how to address Internet policy challenges in smaller bits. Can you define a piece of the issue in a way that a group of stakeholders in your own country or region could address the topic, find a Consensus solution and then have stakeholders implement it? We need to encourage experimentation around the world. We need to encourage finding ways to make incremental progress on issues by solving parts of the problem and then building on the small successes through iterations of the process over time.
You will need to be creative. You will have to focus on elements of these issues whose solutions are within the power of the participating stakeholders to implement. And let me say that implementation is key. Too often participants in multi stakeholder processes claim success when they reach Consensus on the solution. But then they fail to address who is going to implement the solution and how it will be implemented. You must focus right from the start to define the problem to be solved in a way that allows the parties to the process to implement any Consensus outcome. As an example of what I mean, take the issue of disinformation or fake news online. Some of the responses being discussed involve creating comprehensive regulatory frameworks for deciding what is disinformation and what to do about it. Absent a Government convening the multi stakeholder process to create such a framework, there is little use to having you organize your own process to develop such a scheme. You have no authority or ability to implement the framework. And because of that fact you would have a hard time sustaining such a discussion for any length of time. But that doesn't mean it is an issue you should stay away from. What if you convened a multi stakeholder process to develop and implement an educational program on media literacy? You could identify a set of stakeholders who would have the ability and incentive to design and deliver such a program.
Now none of you can do this by yourself. You need to work together with others in your community. You need to recruit stakeholders who will represent all of the key views that have to be addressed, but it takes a catalyst, someone who steps forward and takes that lead to initiate the discussion and each and every one of you can play that role as a catalyst. No matter how you limit the geographical extent of the discussion every successful multi stakeholder decision that is implemented provides input in to new norms for answering the challenges before us. Over time they will combine and compound in to broad solutions. And if and when Governments decide to legislate a comprehensive, enforceable approach, they will be guided by the aggregation of these individual solutions.
Commentators refer to the Internet as having allowed permissionlessness innovation. Allowing experimentation with new technologies without requiring Government or competitor approval. What I'm urging all of you today is to engage in permissionless problem solving. If we all make it our responsibility perhaps we can spur the next great leap forward for the Internet to better recognize and respect Human Rights, to better deter cybercrime and attacks and to better meet the needs of citizens around the world. And all I ask is that you give it a try. Please do it. And I thank you for listening to me this morning.
(Applause.)
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you very much. And before I even could ask if there is a question there is a question over there.
>> Good morning, Larry. Renata, Internet community. I know you are not responsible for the NTIA anymore. But I am interested in your insight regarding a recent course of action from the NTIA which is to issue a notice of inquiry that poses certain questions about the state of Internet policy. It is like a public comment essentially. And one of the things that it is asking for is about the effectiveness of the multi stakeholder approach. And under that set of questions is the is a question about rewinding the IANA stewardship transition and the global Internet community spent two years working on that. And my understanding it was a Consensus effort. I would like to know your insights for what would be motivating that from the NTIA, whether that is a signal for the U.S. Government to withdraw from being a collaborative actor and supporter of the multi stakeholder approach. Thank you.
>> LARRY STRICKLING: I don't have any insight on what's going on inside the NTIA right now. The IANA cannot be unwound. It has happened and it is done and over. And there is no feasible scenario that I can devise to allow the U.S. Government to back on that. If you read the newspaper there may be certain people in Washington who disagree with the transition going forward and may still be hanging on to that opposition now almost two years after the fact. I don't think you have anything to worry about in that regard. The idea of issues, a notice of inquiry is quite common in Government agencies in Washington. It helps set the agenda for the agency based on the comments they get. So I wouldn't read anything in particular to the idea that they are asking about the multi stakeholder process generally. And I think if anyone is so motivated I would encourage them to respond to the notice with a set of comments that very robustly defends the multi stakeholder model and very much reaffirms what I just said which is that the IANA transition is a Fait Accompli, can't be unwound and would not be wise to try.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Any other questions? Please.
>> Hi. Thank you for your kind words on the multi stakeholders. I just have really a straightforward question. You mentioned the need to we need to take action and we need to step up. I want to ask you about how it is how difficult would it be to motivate the society itself to embrace these kind of multi stakeholder approaches, especially in less privileged countries where even the way of regulating is even through dictatorship and the society itself is used to that approach.
>> LARRY STRICKLING: It is not going to be easy. What we need are missionaries. I am trying to recruit a room full of missionaries here this morning. But each person I can convince to take a step forward and take an initiative and hopefully that person can convince another 10, 20, 100 people to do the same. That's how we eventually get change accomplished in this world. And I think the challenge we face is that it has got to be done in small steps. The idea that it is somehow going to be done universally, that somebody is going to magically appear and dictate that this is the way we go forward. It is not going to happen. It is only going to happen by each of you as part of this movement to take it upon yourself to find opportunities to find stakeholders, to just work and figure out what can we solve, what's within our power and our competence to make advances in and do it. And then you have now set an example for everyone else. And we need to have things like EuroDIG where those successes can be celebrated and broadcast to everyone. But it starts with each of you deciding that you want to be an agent of change and that you are going to take some responsibility to be that catalyst. Michael.
>> Thank you, Larry. My name is Michael Oghia. You are absolutely right when you say that the Internet community was not the first to pioneer multi stakeholder methods. And so I guess my question is really about has there been any kind of concerted effort to connect with communities outside of the Internet space, particularly the connection the community of mediators and facilitators around the world such as mediators beyond borders, et cetera, that and other groups like that that actually have made multi stakeholder dialogue a science.
>> LARRY STRICKLING: And the answer is not enough but it is one of the things that we are committed to doing at the Internet Society through the collaborative governance project. So to your point about drawing on the knowledge of mediation and facilitation. There is a lot of work that's been done in that space on facilitating multi party negotiations. That is basically a multi stakeholder discussion. And so in crafting the training materials that we are going to be rolling out starting in July, in fact, we are going to be utilizing the European summer school of Internet Governance and some of our first set of experimentees to present the training to them. We are developing that in consultation with the Consensus Building Institute, which is made up of people who do arbitrations and facilitations and mediations.
The other thing you find is that in this business we refer to this as a multi stakeholder process. You will find that there are probably a dozen terms to describe these same techniques. You have got collaborative governance which is actually the term we have adopted for this initiative at the Internet Society.
Direct democracy is another term. And you have academics around the world who have been thinking about these issues and the context of land use planning or nanotechnology or health care. And we are also as part of this project figuring out how we bring all of those people together in a network to help design a research agenda for this going forward.
>> That's great to hear. I'm glad you are working with CBI.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: I see we have a question from a remote participant.
>> LARRY STRICKLING: Yeah, microphone.
>> Microphone for the remote moderator please.
>> Thank you. We have a question from a remote participant. Her name is Amalia Mitchell. And the question is how should we include the emerging AI technologies to the current framework of ICTs for IGF. Thank you.
>> LARRY STRICKLING: That's for another session I think.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: There will be a session on Artificial Intelligence later this evening, not evening, but today. Liana is responsible for that and maybe you keep that in mind and try to answer this.
>> LARRY STRICKLING: Anything else? Great. Well, I expect to see you I look forward to hearing of all of the great processes that you all find ways to initiate. Let's get started on this. Thanks.
(Applause.)
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you, Larry. And now I would like to invite Maarit Palovirta from ISOC. And she will be the moderator for the next session. And the question how to ensure sustainable development. Maarit, the floor is yours.
This text is based on live transcription. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, and/or live transcription are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. This text is not to be distributed or used in any way that may violate copyright law.