Session
Organizer 1: Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Organizer 2: Technical Community, Intergovernmental Organization
Organizer 2: Technical Community, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 1: Krisstina Rao, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 2: Schoemaker Emrys, Technical Community, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 3: Davies Tim, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 4: Susan Mwape, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 2: Schoemaker Emrys, Technical Community, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 3: Davies Tim, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 4: Susan Mwape, Civil Society, African Group
Format
Roundtable
Duration (minutes): 60
Format description: The best session format would be a 60 minute roundtable format. We would present, facilitate discussion and document substance. We would emphasise participation and insight from participants, prioritising participant generated content and discussion over organiser input and presentation.
Duration (minutes): 60
Format description: The best session format would be a 60 minute roundtable format. We would present, facilitate discussion and document substance. We would emphasise participation and insight from participants, prioritising participant generated content and discussion over organiser input and presentation.
Policy Question(s)
A. What role can holding environments play in making DPI governance safe and inclusive?
B. At which steps of the policy process, and in what format, can holding environments be embedded in policy-making for safe and inclusive DPI?
C. What examples of multi-stakeholder governance should efforts to operationalise the holding environment take into account?
What will participants gain from attending this session? Through this session, participants will leave with an operational understanding of holding environments, and their strengths and weaknesses in affecting the governance of data exchange, digital identity systems and digital payment systems, through means of multi-stakeholder collaboration. In the process, they will benefit from a critical understanding of DPI governance, its challenges and pitfalls. Through the exercises of the workshop, they will also benefit from an ecosystem mapping framework to review the state of multi-stakeholder collaboration in DPI-related policy processes of their countries. Participants will also benefit from contributing insight and expertise to the operationalisation of the holding environment concept. This will help ensure that the development of the holding environment will reflect a diversity of perspectives, particularly the diversity represented in the IGF.
SDGs
Description:
As governments navigate the promise of digital public infrastructure in pursuing economic growth, public-sector innovation and social outcomes, they are faced with its tradeoffs with digital rights. Many governments have underestimated the importance and level of effort needed to build multistakeholder support for DPI initiatives. Unlike traditional siloed digital transformation, a 'societal scale’ infrastructural approach to digitisation can affect stakeholders across public and private sectors, but more importantly, civil society. The risk this creates is that the opportunity for displacement is society-wide, and contests may arise where support does not exist. To help governments cultivate effective multi-stakeholder governance mechanisms, holding environments can be a responsive solution. By holding environment, we mean an institutional and social framework for mediating interests, potential harms, and losses that specific members or communities may incur during a change process. The formal structure may vary across social contexts, ranging from a council of elders to multi-stakeholder oversight bodies. The concept has been referenced in the UN Universal DPI Safeguards Framework (https://www.undp.org/press-releases/un-releases-universal-dpi-safeguard…). While interest in more inclusive and consultative governance mechanisms is increasing, accessible guidance for constructing and operating these collaborative mechanisms is not readily available. The proposed workshop aims to operationalise the concept of a holding environment: Which civil society actors are critical to the success of a holding environment, and how best can their participation be facilitated? Which policy processes can these holding environments be embedded in? What lessons are there from past and current multi-stakeholder governance efforts? Co-Develop, along with Caribou Digital, have been stewarding the effort of bringing marginalised voices to the centre of the policy-making process for DPI governance.
As governments navigate the promise of digital public infrastructure in pursuing economic growth, public-sector innovation and social outcomes, they are faced with its tradeoffs with digital rights. Many governments have underestimated the importance and level of effort needed to build multistakeholder support for DPI initiatives. Unlike traditional siloed digital transformation, a 'societal scale’ infrastructural approach to digitisation can affect stakeholders across public and private sectors, but more importantly, civil society. The risk this creates is that the opportunity for displacement is society-wide, and contests may arise where support does not exist. To help governments cultivate effective multi-stakeholder governance mechanisms, holding environments can be a responsive solution. By holding environment, we mean an institutional and social framework for mediating interests, potential harms, and losses that specific members or communities may incur during a change process. The formal structure may vary across social contexts, ranging from a council of elders to multi-stakeholder oversight bodies. The concept has been referenced in the UN Universal DPI Safeguards Framework (https://www.undp.org/press-releases/un-releases-universal-dpi-safeguard…). While interest in more inclusive and consultative governance mechanisms is increasing, accessible guidance for constructing and operating these collaborative mechanisms is not readily available. The proposed workshop aims to operationalise the concept of a holding environment: Which civil society actors are critical to the success of a holding environment, and how best can their participation be facilitated? Which policy processes can these holding environments be embedded in? What lessons are there from past and current multi-stakeholder governance efforts? Co-Develop, along with Caribou Digital, have been stewarding the effort of bringing marginalised voices to the centre of the policy-making process for DPI governance.
Expected Outcomes
This session will contribute to the development of guidance around the establishment of structures and processes that help operationalise the concept of the holding environment. Convening this session at IGF will help ensure the experience and expertise of the IGF community contributes to shaping the holding environment concept and guidance.
More concretely, the session will contribute to a subsequent processes of consultation to inform the operationalisation of the holding environment. The session will also be written up as a short policy blog published on a policy or academic publication.
As organisations actively building out holding environments in the policy processes of digital identity and digital payment systems, both Co-Develop and Caribou Digital can meaningfully leverage insights from this workshop to inform real-world implementations of this concept.
Hybrid Format: We will ensure that questions are posed onsite and online, and adopt facilitation that is mindful of online interaction, for example through monitoring online participants’ contributions and ensuring online questions in text format are brought into discussion by the organisers. Practically this will mean that the organisers have to play an active facilitation role, ensuring onsite discussions don't dominate.
We will design the session to include online interactive tools - for example shared discussion and content organisation. This could include using tools such as a Miro board and Slido poll for onsite as well as online participants to share content, such examples of multi-stakeholder governance, that the session would invite participants to share.