Dynamic Coalition on the Internet of Things (DC-IoT)

Introduction

The first meeting of IGF stakeholders that led to where we are with the Dynamic Coalition on IoT today, goes back to 2008 and was held in the context of the 3rd IGF in Hyderabad. Since the IGF in Hyderabad, the Dynamic Coalition on the Internet of Things (DC-IoT) has engaged in open meetings at all following IGFs and at meetings in between IGFs on the usefulness of Internet of Things, its necessity to help address global and local societal challenges, and the challenges that need to be addressed in order to ensure the Internet of Things is developing in a way that serves people around the globe. 

At the IGF 2023 in Kyoto, the DC-IoT will meet again in order to progress the work done over the years, linking into the work of other Dynamic Coalitions for as far as relevant to IoT good practice and further identifying the relevance of IoT good practice in contribution to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Agenda that was introduced in Joao Pessoa in 2015. Aim is to do so from a global multistakeholder perspective, that is across sectors, cultures and nations.

We will build upon the debate that focused in 2023 on questions relating to the right level and form of governance, to become more concrete about the most effective addressing of security good practice and exploring the level of collaboration across the value chain (in particular collaboration between network operators with device manufacturers.).

An updated IoT Good Practice Paper will inform the discussion that has been progressed since Joao Pessoa, and all stakeholders are invited to take note, contribute online, and join us in Guadalajara. In preparation of this update, a number of open meetings will be organized during 2023. You can find the current one here.

For more information on the Dynamic Coalition, and supporting documents, see  https://medienstadt-leipzig.org/dciot  

Action Plan 2024

​The below highlights the Action Plan 2024 for DCIoT, which should culminate in conclusions for further updating of the Global Good Practice document for IoT following the Annual Session during the IGF 2024 in Riyadh.

Background DCIoT

The first meeting of IGF stakeholders that led to setting up the Dynamic Coalition on IoT today, goes back to 2008 and was held in the context of the 3rd IGF in Hyderabad. Since the IGF in Hyderabad, the Dynamic Coalition on the Internet of Things (DC-IoT) has engaged in open meetings at all following IGFs and at meetings in between IGFs. Focus was on the usefulness of Internet of Things, its necessity to help address global and local societal challenges, and the challenges that need to be addressed in order to ensure the Internet of Things is developing in a way that serves people around the globe.

During the IGF meeting in Istanbul (2014) the following issues were put on the table (see 2014 meeting report): the need to ensure privacy, security, ethics, and spectrum issues, and to develop standards that take both social and economic sustainability of networks into account. Networks should be developed in a way people want (people centric values) and in such a way that upgrades, changes of services providers and new applications are possible and affordable.

This led to a discussion that leads to a first version of the IoT Global Good Practice paper published n 2015 and discussed during the IGF in Joao Pessoa, as a vehicle to increase our common insight in how global good practice for IoT looks like. During the successive IGFs the DCIoT continued to further reflect on this paper, and in the Open Meeting during IGF 2018 in Paris DCIoT participants concluded that understanding that legislation alone will not be able to guide development, and may even hamper innovation (if too restrictive, aiming to prevent further damage to society and citizens). 

This resulted in a call for industry and the technical community to comply with the IoT global good practice principles as reflected in the IoT Global Good Practice paper that was adopted during the IGF 2019 in Berlin. It invited all stakeholders to further “spread the word” and have a continued dialogue on good practice, considering the wider application context including Big Data and Artificial Intelligence.

Fast forwarding to the IGF 2022 in Addis Ababa, being the first one where the Dynamic Coalition membership met in person again after the COVID period, we re-engaged in a discussion with a focus on taking stock and looking forward. During the IGF 2023 in Kyoto we set out for the agenda presented below – building on lessons learned during 2023.

Action plan for 2024 activities

In 2024, DCIoT intends to build upon the take-aways from 2023. All stakeholders are invited to continue to contribute at equal footing, as the world needs IoT, and for IoT to serve humanity well, we will need to ensure commitment to global good practice. In the end, it is always about people.

At the IGF 2023 in Kyoto, the DC-IoT met again in order to progress the work done over the years, linking into the work of other Dynamic Coalitions for as far as relevant to IoT good practice. The points that came out to focus on in the coming year:

  • IoT Data governance: IoT data, especially AI-enhanced, should be understandable, accessible, interoperable, reusable, up-to-date and clear regarding provenance, quality and potential bias. At the same time, guarding privacy is a clear priority in this – but not only privacy. How can we ensure both in a world that is full with IoT devices, many of which are connected via a global Internet, and increasingly governed by AI systems; 
  • IoT Labeling and certification: At the level of devices, there need to be robust mechanisms for finding, labelling, authenticating and trusting devices (and classes of devices). These should survive retraining, replacement or updating but be removable when necessary for functional, security or privacy reasons. To ensure IoT functionality, trustworthiness and resilience, market information and incentives should be aligned. Labels provide a powerful tool; many countries have developed and adopted IoT trust marks, and the time has come to start working towards their international harmonization.
  • AIoT governance: Functions are not all confined to single devices, designed in or provided by system integrators; they can also be discovered by end-users or emerge from complex system interactions in cyber-physical systems (CPS) and IoT-enabled services. Governance requires methods for recognising, protecting and controlling these functions and their impacts. This is even more true when CPS and services are AI enabled.
  • IoT Capacity Development: IoT has been coming up rapidly, and good practice applications can inspire use of IoT systems and services around the world – also in the regions where IoT application is currently lagging. How to make this happen, best? How to ensure those regions that truly need IoT enabled systems, for instance to achieve SDGs, can make effective use of it?
  • IoT and Sustainability: IoT relates to sustainability in two ways: (1) IoT devices, systems and services should be set up with environmental impact in mind, both in terms of energy use and materials use, including use, re-use and recycling of devices and materials.; (2) IoT systems can monitor environmental impact and help manage environmental impact, as well as provide early warning in case of natural disastersituations. IoT, in short: it can save lives, in short term as well as in longer term, when accompanied with the right actions. Activities planned to evolve our common understanding of IoT global good practice:
  1.  Volunteer work to update the current IoT Global Good Practice document that was adopted during the IGF meeting in Berlin. A proposed update will be shared with the DCIoT mailing list that is open to all that have an interest in healthy IoT development;
  2. As in 2023, the DCIoT aims to organize open sessions during relevant open IGFs, and will set the agenda accordingly, focusing on 2 or 3 of the priority topics, and sharing the update work on the IoT Global Good Practice document. Aim is to have at least 3 open sessions prior to the IGF. If and when deemed useful, zoom calls will be set up to facilitate dialogue between stakeholders.

At the end of 2024, DCIoT will prepare an Activities report and submit this to the Secretariat, as to ensure ongoing transparency on what we do and what progress we make, together.

People interested to contribute to the work are always welcome to participate to the open meetings, and/or post and reply on the DCIoT mailing list. If you want to do a step extra to support the work, and/or if you are able and willing to financially contribute to making additional work and/or meetings possible, and/or if you are willing and able to host a meeting, please reach out to Maarten Botterman, current Chair of the DCIoT (maarten [at] gnksconsult [dot] com).

Mailing List

Mailing list address: [email protected]

Subscribe to the mailing list: http://mail.intgovforum.org/mailman/listinfo/dc_IoT_intgovforum.org

Stakeholders

The initiative for the DC IoT originates from the 3rd IGF in Hyderabad and was taken by 

  • Francis Muguet (University of Geneva), chair
  • Bernard Benhamou (French Government) 
  • Michael Niebel (European Commission)
  • Anriette Esterhuysen (APC, civil society)
  • Sophie le Pallec (GS1, private sector)
  • Bob Kahn (CNRI, private sector)
  • Caroline Greer (dotMobi, private sector) 
  • Avri Doria (Lulea Technology University, academic technical community)
  • Wolfgang Kleinwächter (University of Aarhus, academic technical community)
  • Brian Cute (Afilias, academic technical community) 
  • Latif Ladid (IPv6 Consortium, academic technical community)

Since then, many other stakeholders participants have actively participated, as is clear from the reports, demonstrating that all stakeholder groups are represented in the work of DC IoT. A larger group passively participated over time, and all that have participated have been invited to join the mailing list. Per August 2015, a new public mailing list has been created, and all participants to the original mailing list have been invited to join this list, which is open to any stakeholder with interest in IoT.

Documents/Reports

Contacts

For more information regarding the DC IoT please contact one of the following people: