The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin, Germany, from 25 to 29 November 2019. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: (Speaking off mic)
>> Oh, the mic.
>> MODERATOR: (Speaking off mic) Okay. It's on. Okay. Thank you. So, in this session, we are going to talk about closely about implementing of the SDG, Sustainable Development Goals as we know, so there are a lot of data concentration for the kinds of use which can contribute to the advancement and also the element of human life and also society kinds of aspects, so we do already realize the importance, the significance of data and its contribution of how to refine, how to make the most of your data to improve our life, so we are thinking about a methodology over partnership, how to build this partnership to improve the connection between multi‑stakeholder and different driving forces.
So today, we are going to be talking about the policy, legal and also technical issues which are closely related to big data, which contributed to the implementation of the SDGs, so we want the speakers from different view, from different continentals as well, and so ‑‑ I'm sorry, I can show you quick about our agenda.
So, this session is organized by CAST, the Chinese Science and Technology Association, which Civil Society from China and CAST has been actively engaging in the promotion of open data and activity in China and overseas, and so actually we have been successfully held a series of workshops in IGF and other platforms, different forums with joint effort from the community, so today we are very pleased to invite speakers from different stakeholders like private sector community, and also government, so I will give you a brief introduction about our speaker. I want to deliver the real points about the issues I mentioned and followed by short discussion, and then we have our concluding remark about our Big Data SDG workshop, so the speaker, Professor Liu Chang from China. She's the Secretary General of Big Data Working Group Geography Society of China also Editor and Chair for publishing.Also, we have Dr. Andrea Vice‑Chair of NGO Committee of Sustainable Development from Europe. And Professor Ricardo Israel Robles Pelayo from Mexico, and Dr. Vincent Dunker, President and CEO of Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation. Professor Cherif Diallo University in Senegal and head of SCT partner facility, and Former National SCT Director of Senegal. And we also have Dr. Hans Kamer, he's from Committee of Data and International Council for Science and Technology, and also he's Secretary General CODATA Germany. And I'm Zhou Xiang From Chinese Committee of Science and also a member of Commission Board of Asia and Ocean Geo, which I'm going to talking about regional cooperation and big data tools in support of implementing SDGs. So that's the brief introduction of our speakers and I would like to invite the first speaker, Professor Liu Chang to deliver her presentation, please.
>> LIU CHANG: Thank you. I'm so delighted to have this opportunity to focus on my topic, and big data solution from us to practices for SDGs.
>> MODERATOR: I'm sorry. Professor Liu, can you use your controller, to play presentation here for you. Please just wait a few seconds. Yes, please.
>> LIU CHANG: It's there? No?
>> MODERATOR: Yes. It is.
>> LIU CHANG: It's there?
>> MODERATOR: Yes.
>> LIU CHANG: Oh, good. Yeah. The solutions from governments to practices for SDGs. Okay. Yeah. So, we are five years ago, we have international workshop. We make sharing principles in Nairobi, so we call in Nairobi Data Sharing Principles. So, in the several organizations assigned these principles, 10 principles that focus on the openness, so quality, timely, open, and free and open and the standard of regional and so on, so all of this is principles.
So, it's the focus on the make data openly available for all, so not only for the local institute, for the national, but for the international.
And so this is the basic principles. How to make this principle to be action, so we worked with several organizations, so make this as an example, and based on this example we develop a guideline, so this is we can focus on the global changes, research data publishing, and sharing. So this is the main part of the website, the data site publishing and the data paper publishing also.
So this is the journal, so we review all the dataset and data paper and data describes this, so all parts are reviewed to make the data quality control so that then we publish the data and make the data working, so we call this acting locally, not working globally, so we make the older data as a DOI and this is a Digital Objective Identified, and then we go to the data system and the DCI, Data Citation Index, and also we work on for developing country, and so this is the ‑‑ right now there are, also we work with generals, there are 60 generals on this panel including in China, USA, and Japan.
So, these are the users, so in five years, 97 countries users downloaded data, so you can see almost all over the world except in African next time, so you'll join this, and so user can share the data.
So this is a benefit, and then I think there are many people like this. So this is the example, this we want to know, so this last year and ‑‑ this year I have ‑‑ there are some material there and there is a very ‑‑ it's a new dataset, it's a global cross line and ‑‑ so this dataset you can see, and so this after this crisis, how many islands, how long, and how long of the shoreline in the world and all the data in resolution based on the images.
So there is all this, so everybody can free download, and I think this is only, so we can hypothesis can go but data stay forever, quality timely data, and so I think this is the example.
So now, this call data international Committee on data for science and technology has a meeting in China in Beijing, so they developed the Beijing Declaration on such data, and then in this Declaration they decide on more and more research discoveries we are dependent driven by the data, so data is more crucial, and so in this case, so we emphasize and we call all of you to jointly, to have to join as a partnership for enhancing the open data and the knowledge environment in the world. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Professor. Actually, I have ‑‑ an update list of panelists, my fault to forget to introduce one beautiful lady as our panelist, Mrs. Andrea yeah, I'm sorry, from Ministry of Education in Tunisia so she's going to talk about capacity building and education. Welcome.
So our second speaker is ‑‑ I just ‑‑ too much work for me. Okay. Another beautiful lady, Andrea, you have the floor to speak.
>> Hi, everyone. I'm delighted to be here with you today so that we can talk about the SDGs. Most of the time when people talk or heard about the SDGs, they don't understand what it means, which if you don't work inside the UN or you have nothing to do with an organization working with the UN, you don't have no understanding.
The SDGs goals are brought by the United Nations distributed to the governments first, to the governments and they said this is a goal by 2020 how are we going to move the planet or move the world.
And, as a stakeholder and NGO at the same time, I try to see how inside and outside can work together. A climate reality lead, I work with Vice President Al Gore and inside the UN I work as Vice‑chair of Committee on Sustainable Development and work closely with all stakeholders as we can debunk what the SDG means.
The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, if you work with the UN, you understand. If you don't, the core principle of the agenda is universality, leaving no one behind, interconnections and vulnerability, and increasedness and multi‑stakeholder partnership. How is that going to happen if you don't know what is means?
And the core principle of my organization tries to make sure people understand what it is, and the agenda, we are committed for all countries irrespective of income levels because sometimes we make agendas out or the UN puts in rules without understanding.
I don't think the agenda can work for the same way we work in Africa and in the United States or EU because we have a different income, we have different form much life.
The core principle leaving in one behind, and we want everyone to be inside. I always say, you don't understand my, the way I work, because you've never been in my shoes. How we can together understand even the single model, the student, the person working with municipalities, the person working in the government, how can we together put ‑‑ work under the same idea to go forward, that's what the SDG can be.
We have to get everything to be correct, and most of the time when we go to the annual report on data, what the Civil Society says and what the government reports say not the same. Most of the time discrepancy. How the stakeholders and people and societies and students, and how we can even individual, but how can we collectively understand the SDGs?
I always struggle inside the UN when they're talking about the exclusiveness and sometimes, I feel I'm not included. And I don't think it's the only me. I think they have a lot of people, when they go to the website, when they listen to the UN GA, when they listen to a lot of agendas and they say, where did I fit in?
Multi‑stakeholder partnership, this is the one I really love about all the 17 goals. We need partnerships. We need everyone, students, sometimes the citizens ‑‑ yes, they understand because the era of ‑‑ some era, the kids, the youth are more active in certain aspects of the society. They want to be involved. I remember when my age, I couldn't ask my parents certain questions. Now the kids are so open, and it's up to us to give them the answer and what are the answer that we're going to give them?
And in our organization, we put all the seven things with five. If you can remember to work with the five pillars, you will cover the SDGs. It's people, planet, partnership, peace, and prosperity. These all conclude the 17 goals. If you don't learn anything about anything what I say today, just remember you need to be assigned with the five pillars, people, planet, partnership, peace, and prosperity.
Included in partnership and peace is a win‑win situation from all of us because if we respect my right and your right, respect my need and your need, I think that's the way the SDG can provide and reach the goal in 2030. Because when you put all the goals together, sometimes you say, it's not possible because they still have people in the part of the world who cannot eat. We still have problems with health, they still have gender inequality, we still are using so much food and wasting so much food by the time a lot of people cannot eat. You've got the planet, you've call we call it emergency, and some people still don't understand it.
How can we make that 17 goals possible for 2030?
Partnership, we have to revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development. The government cannot do it by itself. We cannot do it by ourselves, and the kids can put us all the way, but if we do not use the correct data, also change our policy toward a certain goal, I don't think it will be possible.
What is this? We need everyone to come together, governments, Civil Society, science, academia, and the private sector to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Other resources, they're online, but a lot of people don't think it is that important to go through them. They have a lot of ‑‑ play video, the UN put out each time to see how people can understand better and how outside of the UN for people who doesn't work inside the UN can understand and that's the why we can do it.
Every year they have a progress report that attracts data about the SDG and every country sent to the UN GA, and the UN GA is the assembly they do at the United Nations in New York where all the governments come in to give the data and what the progress the countries have been doing.
Most of the time, the Civil Societies are not included on it. If you work for the Civil Society, reach out to your local government and see how you can put the data you have, the actual fact that you have, that's the why they can put it in their data when they send it to the UN, it can be more accurate.
The implementation of the SDGs is all of us. Who are the SDGs' goal? We are. Because without people, they do not have SDGs. If all of us think as individual and as collectively who the SDG was created for, who can apply it, who can implement it, I think we can move a better direction and also, we can have a better data. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So, I still have a few speakers and we're a bit behind. May I remind our speakers to keep your speech in 8 minutes, if you can save time that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. So, next speaker is Ricardo from Mexico. Please.
>> RICARDO ISRAEL ROBLES PELAYO: Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Ricardo from Mexico and I'm from the University and thanks for the information. I will talk about the legal frameworks from data exchange and indeed cooperation at regional and global levels.
I tried to answer the question ‑‑ okay. Okay. The consideration will let our frameworks to be developed for the rational development and use of big data for various proposed at national, regional, and global levels.
This says, and according to my area of expertise, I will focus on the regulation aims at education at one of the goals of the Sustainable Development Goals. Education has found on the Internet a powerful tool for its proper development and use. Leaving aside the issue of race in the use of the Internet for another workshop, I will focus on the benefit of the use and regulation of big data and effective tools to obtain quality education in Latin America and of the international community policies.
It is a fact that Latin American countries have created laws that intend to regulate the proper use of the exploitation of data obtained from the network and the protection of the confidential information has been one of the important goals that governments have tried to regulate.
As I say, last year in Paris, Mexican laws regulate and recognize the protection of personal data such as human rights. The same happens in large part of Latin American countries. I have noticed that the protection of human rights and the protection of personnel data has been a recurring theme in several spaces of this forum; however, I consider it's important to create laws that promote the protection of personal data obtained from the networker and big data.
But it's also ‑‑ it is necessary to create thaws that promote use of information for public for use of data for their benefit.
In this way, laws must be created to promote the proper use of big data as a tool for quality education.
The question is how can data exchange and big data meet this goal? Thanks to the big data difference, academic institutions can obtain personalized information from each of the students to make a specific and a special improvement. In addition, it can be guaranteed that obtaining data can be anonymous, just to detect the trends and statistics of the information obtained from big data.
Moreover, the academic community can participate in observing the ideas of interest and apathy and design and strategy to increase the adequate quality of education at different levels.
Among the proposal to promote quality education, is a use of technology ‑‑ technological tools, such as Blockchain, that also serve as instruments to obtain data as well as control and protect the information contained in many virtual education platforms, including mobile network, WebEx, et cetera.
These will bring peace of mind, not only to the students, but to the parents to the students in case of underage students. It is a fact that the private sector has had had considerable active role in Latin American countries, specifically in Mexico. However, it is also important that the proposal that the governments of the different countries of Latin America need to create domestic laws that promote the use of information obtained from the big data to increase the quality of the education and celebrate multilateral agreements to exchange data with the other countries in Latin America and the international community.
We must remember, finally, that these political affairs and legal framework must remember always the protection of personal data and achieving quality education in developing countries, thus, increasing the quality of life in society. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you, Ricardo. Our next speaker is Mr.‑‑ so please let me please with your presentation.
>> Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. I am the President and CEO of African Open Data and Internet Research Foundation and we'll be talking within the respective of Africa, and what Africa needs to do if we want to get things moving.
So, I'm looking at a team of development of the digital economy and emerging technology in Africa. So, in the context of the digital economy, the attainment of the SDGs and then the African Union and Agenda 2063 and I'll do a small before and I highlight some points.
Thank you very much. The SDGs calls for tracking progress at global, regional, national, and sub‑national levels, and leave no one behind, with indicators for global monitoring and additional indicators for thematic monitoring, as well as regional, national, and sub‑national indicators.
So, for us to be able to do this, we need a robust data production and tracking system. We need to be in every country so that achievement at a national and local level can be assessed and fit into the wider global framework.
These national mechanisms will need to be effective and integrated and will help countries to optimize their resources and actions to reach their goals. And, yes, so I have that ‑‑ the question is has Africa as a continent in its developmental agenda, yeah, some parts, yes, and or parts, no. And I'll be looking at it, so for us to be able to achieve in the 2030 Agenda, we need to align some of what we do with regards to the use of open data, and so I have this ‑‑ I have this on the screen. So, for us, Africa, to be able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we need to look at certain aspects of what we do in Africa.
The first thing is strengthening sensors and surveys. We need to look at that critically in Africa, our census, how we conduct our census, how we get our data, how we use the data and all of that. The next one is utilizing the administrative data. In Africa, almost every institution’s, data has been underused in a sense that in my country, for example, we included a Ministry of (?), they have a lot of data sitting there, administrative data sitting there, and they don't know how to use all of it. Even fitting this data into rational policies and all of that is a problem, so we have to look at that within Africa.
Data disagrees and it's another issue of exploring new types of data and not just research data but how do we get our space data and all of that, and open data, yes, most African countries are now adopting the initiative, citizen‑generated data, and we also need to look at that data coming from citizens and, you know, that big data, data communications, managing data ecosystem is another issue. Evidence‑based decision‑making, funding, and capacity building, these are all things that we need to look at critically within Africa for us to be able to reach the 2030 Agenda.
For us, if we're able to do all of those things well, there are some expected outcomes that we need to see. The first one is data producers will be very clear about their responsibility with regards to ‑‑ with regards to data production for the SDGs in the short, medium, and long terms.
Data users will be facilitating finding information and will have aware that they can also interact with data throughout the community. And then the national system will have a clearer picture of resources. These are some of the goals that, if we're able to tackle very well in Africa, we'll stumble on industrialized and resilient economy and create an equitable, healthy, and disciplined society, and you will of this is need of good data for us to be able to reach the 2030 Agenda.
And then, going for it, my organization, we've done a bit of work within Africa and we've identified three teams that need to tackle critically in Africa. The first one is addressing the data gaps. In Africa we have a huge data gap that we need to address. The first one being administrative data. When you go to various institutions or various ministries, the way data is collected is for most of the institutions, still use the manual way of gathering data, which is the hard copy. Everything should be tied, no electronics kind of data, so we need to look at this critically and address them.
The second theme is we also need to encourage data use in Africa. In Africa we really don't ‑‑ the data is available for us to use, even the tech communities, the big data that we have there, the IoT haves that I have, AI haves that we have, data is really not available and so we really need to encourage the use of data to empower the citizens.
And then the last theme is of strengthening the data ecosystem, yes. We also need to look at that within Africa. We need to strengthen everybody and bring everybody on board within the ecosystem and try to address some of the issues of data for us to be able to fit this SDG report in platforms and all of that, so we need good quality data, and then the ecosystem is very important.
So in conclusion, so the SDG agenda, the African agenda and accompanying indicators present both an opportunity and challenges for Africa in the data ecosystem, and with increased international and national attention given to the importance of data, data produces and users will have the opportunity to harness the moment to make a lasting improvement in the first that must be overcome, and so I think this is what I want to bring forth for us to see what we can do to help Africa. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So, I would like to invite the Chairs to give the next rendition.
>> Thank you very much, I'm very much appreciative of being invited here by Professor Liu Chang for giving my thoughts on the sense of topic SDGs and beyond, and challenges for partnership in the United Nations instruments operational coherence.
Now, this is some buzz word in the United Nations' language, and I want to give you my personal opinion on the background of professional lifetime in information, environmental information, risk information, SDGs, of course.
I want to structure my ‑‑ and I apologize for not having a formatted presentation because my invitation to this panel was a little bit short, only two days, and spending so much time here.
I structured my small remarks in talking about the tasks, the challenges, management principles, and then you need the roadmap, what to do, and elements of governance needed.
So, tasks, the DARs are defined, actually in the text of the core and neighboring United Nations instruments like not only SDGs but UN Habitat, UN Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations Framework, Convention on Climate change, international platform on biodiversity, human rights, children rights, we know here, and working together with the United World Food Program and many others, the Hild System and so on and so it goes cross‑cutting through more or less all of the United Nations topics.
What, as an information scientist and informatics‑oriented colleague, I took a special look on the requirements that are really written, at least in the recently updated and formulated United Nations instrument, is gaining or ensuring coherence, I say, in the technical sense. There is a legal aspect and then so on, but in the technical sense, it's information management, it's administrative legal coherence, it's about cross‑border coherence, coherence sustained with our professional practices, interdisciplinary standards, coherence with security and domains of personal field also of deep action on UN Sendai Framework on disaster risk reduction, which also belongs, has a big overlap in SDGs.
So, the United Nations with their declarations and instruments, they correspond to national or European implementation laws, regulations, and directives, acknowledge the coherence, requirements, but systemically investigations, especially new semantic methods are not supported at the moment in adequate ways.
Nevertheless, the task formulated is a little bit complex, but nevertheless, it's ‑‑ our work is based on existing experiences. The previous achievements in fields of environmental information and information in detail show that there are certain complex domains that we already have the possibility of going into the detailed data definition for special clearance of that.
The challenge is that underlying information management efforts need to cope with the complexity of actors and organizations involved. And what I want to mention is it's not just the indicators, sorry, the indicators are the top level of the top‑down approach, but those people, the colleagues practically working with the data on the indicators, they have their own problems at the moment with the technical definition of the indicator system. It's rather complicated, but if you start data from top down, it's no ‑‑ it can be anticipated already that you run into a little bit difficulties when you come from basic data to aggregate to these indicators, and so what we need to keep in mind is that below the indicators, there is a real world that is ‑‑ that myriads of effects lying around in databases and need to be made operable.
The complexity of data available certainly calls for test eds of best practice to verify different analytical and decisions supporting environments. These kind of testbeds, as you can imagine, from the point of view of big data, the testbed for SDGs, let alone the overlap with the other instruments, the testbed of that way is not just a small venture and so nevertheless, I think it's necessary to get a little more belief you have this data to analyze on any contents of research group they can match their kind of analysis to the analysis results that other groups made, and this certainly would be something that citizens would appreciate very much to see that it's not just a single study, but it's a general reference frame of data that we're talking about.
Then a systems management and engineering approach convincingly that shows the approach of necessity of transferring procedures of documentation. Documentation assessing decision‑making support, action, and goal‑reaching control on the data level side in very dynamic situations of highly complex actors, specification, and boundary conditions.
This allows providing complete comprehensive, objective, trustworthy information to all actors, and what I want to mention in special is including media, investigative data journalism that is our control institution on their independent of the typical data organizations.
Nevertheless, data journalism is going into exactly the thing to verify that everything is in order and apprized to the ethical principles and so on the management best practices applied, there is a set of management best practices, supports critical thinking, enabling extensive reporting, transparent analysis, compliance to regulations and other boundary conditions and constructive goal‑reaching control. Not just we are aiming at something, but to control it upon a real, realistic level. These control obligations include phrases of retrace, audit, re‑examination, analysis, avoidance of malpractice, data malpractice, you wouldn't believe but there is data malpractice around, so we have to be a little bit sure about it, and indications on weaknesses, vulnerabilities of an information system.
Another well‑known and identified challenges is strengthening of data integration based on accepted information infrastructure concepts and comparable to existing complex implementations, and now that is what I said we have that experience on in the field of general information and environmental information, and there we go really and drill down until the original field measurement, not only field, but remote sensing.
>> MODERATOR: Can you make it quick because we have a few speakers.
>> No question. No question. It's 8 minutes go back.
>> MODERATOR: I'm sorry.
>> Let me conclude then to be short, the open science and open government is a culture to strengthen mutual trust and innovations through transparency and cooperation in the interplay of the institutions involved, and especially with Civil Society and in the private domain to strengthen the resilience of these relationship for the future, then that is a goal that these relationships will remain robust in the future and state institutions, services, and infrastructures will be more appreciated through openness because only the State cooperation allows knowledge and empathy between different organizational cultures.
It is United Nations best practice to enable cross‑organizational information availability and coherence for international/national, regional, local actors, strategies, decisions, and actions. So, the United Nations Data Revolution Group, you're maybe not aware, but there was a Data Revolution Group only in 2014 and they had a very interesting report about one of the central statements was that data is a life blood of decision‑making and the raw material for accountability. Let's do something together about it and join forces for making that an operable venture. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Next, we welcome Professor to give you a presentation. Please.
>> Thank you very much, Moderator. Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here to talk about capacity building and education on big data for SDGs.
My speech will focus after introducing the big data and data revolution, I will talk about opportunities before talking about capacity building development.
The amount of data in the world is more and more increasing. By some estimates, 19% of the data in the world has been created in the last two years and it is projected to increase by 40% annually, by year.
And of this output is data, we can say that critically, it is big data, which is a product by data from mobile phone, credit card processing, and social media.
Data is growing because it is increasingly being getting by numerous information sensing, mobile devices and because information capacity for storing information has roughly doubled every fourth year.
The data revolution is already a transforming society, advancing in competing and data science now make it possible to process and analyze big data in realtime. The integration of this new data with traditional data, produces high‑quality information that is more detailed, timely, and relevant.
So, what the opportunities from big data and data analysts. Data collected by the private sector will help predicting epidemics, spreading, burn pandemic, more propagation in social network, movement of people in it, so big data analysis can help in saving lives.
For example, from information whereby a mobile operator, for example, it would be possible to improve road safety.
Then, certain medical analyzers of data could also have better refined resource into genetic and non‑genetic factor for manifestation of certain disease.
Data is a livelihood of decision‑making as you said the previous speaker, and the raw material for accountability. Today in the private sector, analysis of big data is common place with consumer profiling, personal services, and predictive analysis being used for marketing, advertising, and management.
New sources of data, new technology, and new analytical as upload responsibly can be upload more efficient and evidence‑based decision‑making and can better am measure progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, in a way that is both includes can I have and fair.
So, big data for Sustainable Development Goals, we can understand that in 2015, the world embarked in a new development agenda under prints by Sustainable Development Goals. This goal integrated action on social, environmental, and economic assertions.
Many governments ‑‑ I'm sorry. I forget to see the slide. Okay. Many governments still do not have access to adequate data on their entire population, so big data ask satellite on disparities in society that were previously hidden. For example, women and girls who often work in the informal sector or at home, suffer social constraint on their mobility and are marginalized in both private and public decision‑making. Most of the big data has the most potential to be used for public good is collected by the private sector, and as such public/private partnerships are likely to become more widespread.
Then what is the goal in capacity building and education team in big data, for sustainable development goal? First, we can talk about fostering and promoting innovation to fill data gap. Finding and mobilization research to overcome inequalities between developed and developing countries and between data poor and data rich people.
And then leadership and coordination to enable the data regulation to play its full role in the realization of sustainable development. You can also talk about developing and supporting projects with local resources like universities, local business. And then developing resources on big data for development and general capacities among resources in support of the SDG, then building the path for SDGs reporting and delivering fair access on data and tools for everyone.
In this topic, we can also add work on uploading big data for developed ‑‑ for development innovation, including big data analysis and capacity building in close collaboration with private sector companies and policy‑makers.
Also, develop capacity among resources, focusing on activities linked to more progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Decline in prices and improved functionalities of data analysis and software will help data users, and so in capacity building, we can also answer to promote what is in order to broaden the mechanism for people to conduct big data analytics outside of appropriate and software applications.
For last two points in the capacity‑building topic, one must work to develop perspective on shoots related to big data and marginalization, right it takes in competition, and then government service delivery, complement with statistics and facilitate development in sectors such as health, urban development, transportation, and others.
To conclude, as you can see, information provided through big data can help countries overcome information gap, and by officers’ statistical operation and then general evidence‑based policies.
For example, big data can help predict optimum climatic condition for crops, reducing the risk of economic losses for farmers. Also, as a use of dig data, also it can identify critical areas of crime or conversation providing information to help policymakers treat their policies to other resource challenges.
In this way, capacity building and education on build data could help us strengthen current uses and application of big data for sustainable development. To us, it would be to develop resource on big data for development and general capacity among resources in support of the sustainable development goal.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much.
(Applause)
So, next, I give the floor to Inis.
>> Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Inis from Tunisia and I work for the Ministry of education and thank you very much for the invitation. This is my first time participating with the China Association for Technology and Science in a panel, and so today I will be talking to you about SDG 4, the quality education, which I believe as a teacher is a pillar to many of the other SDGs.
So, when we talk about big data, I am talking today about the impacting challenges on education and the way forward for developing countries as I am from Tunisia a country developed at the education system but an economy still developed as a developing country.
So first for us in Tunisia we need more background and education and lobbying to the ministries of education because we're still in need of a big data center, so first we have to explain how this is a growing and promising field of knowledge, and that it has already affected many industries, and how it can affect positively the educational system.
So, the advantages of big data are in education. So we have it provides a numerical representation of academic resources and outcomes, so as teachers, let's imagine that you have this set of data, this huge amount of data where you can have and know what are the weaknesses of your students, for example, in writing, language, listening, comprehension, et cetera, and so this will help you a lot in your teaching practice.
It offers the ability to focus on specific groups of students. For example, the fast learners, the slow learners, the students that we have who have some difficulties in education, difficulties in pronunciation, and also, for example, the students who have some disabilities.
It helps determine how effective certain policies and initiatives are, for example, the initiatives where they were made by the Ministry of Education but we do not really have a follow‑up on this and we do not really know how effective that was, and did we gain anything from that policy? Schools and universities have enormous amounts of data and so with the academic records and tests results and grades, this can help the universities, for example, I teach at the high school level and we had my colleague from the Higher Education, and so this can help higher education institutions to tailor actually the courses and to see what is trendy and what is interesting for the students for them to follow at university so that they don't have too much loss of resource, for example, and of teachers.
So, this could help in the students' learning, and also the adoption of technologies and I'm always a fierce advocate of the adoption of clauses in education to improve the effectiveness of test score data, analysis. This will help us as teachers to tailor education to each student's needs, his level, his pace, his speed, et cetera, and this will also help parents, especially of high school and primary school to be more involved in the education of this ‑‑ of their kids.
This also will help us to have better assessment of quality education, and as I am also a teacher trainer, this can also help with better training for teachers. And for governments, of course, this will offer more organized allocation of resources in terms of financial resources and human resources like teachers, et cetera.
So, there are challenges, of course, and this I have to focus on this because big data is still not very well developed in the international system in Tunisia so the challenge has to be explained to the Ministry representatives. We do not have enough big data on education yet, and in the Tunisian educational, it can only be assessed judging using other fields from other countries. This is also a big challenge that you go to the Ministry to lobby about something but you don't really have results and you're just going to give a comparative research from other countries and other applications.
And, also, the fact that missing data fuels heated debates on the privacy, policies, statements, and students and pew pip's privacy rights and we have fairly limited technical capabilities on that.
So, what is the point, the point of the preparation today is to look about a way forward for big data in developing countries. Let me first start with a fact from UNICEF. According to UNICEF, 60 million children won't have the opportunity to attend primary school by 2030. 60 million. Not a number, these are students. They will not go to school by 2030, which is right here we are in 2019. The global rate of school enrollment is stagnated since 2007, so what we need to do, is promote better data gathering, improve the effectiveness of technical measures in data compilation, big data should be applied for social and educational groups and we have to show the impact of big data on the educational sphere, and using big data for mapping every school tanned assesses overall performance relating to far gets and witnesses of the schools, first in general, and the students in particular. This mapping, by the way, will have a lot in allocation of resources from big organizations and companies and governments as well.
We have to work on agreeable privacy policy it's that balance between the add advantages of big data and why protecting the learner's privacy because this is the right to be ‑‑ the right to have some privacy online and to be safe online, so we have to agree on this privacy rules.
And finally, and most importantly, enlarging the stakeholder discussion and opening up to the public and private‑partnerships to bridge the digital divide through big data so it actually bridges the digital divide and does not enlarge it. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Inis. So that's my presentation, so because we don't have so much time, so I just want to give you a very ‑‑ I mean, a practical example of how we do realize the importance of open data on implementation of SDG. As you may know, resolution plays very important laws for evaluating and assessing the performers or the progress of implementation and SDGs in local, regional, or global level, and so as I mentioned, the international or inter‑government, international organization, is also very important power to promote this kind of activity, and so here I would like to introduce activity. As you may know, Du is intergovernmental organization with 100 member countries and 110, 37 organizations around the world and we have been doing a lot of work on analysis of evaluating the power of supporting of SDG, so there is the example of where you can see where we tried to align the power of this technology to the objective of SDG, 2, 3, or 4, 14, 15. I mean, all of these ‑‑ the implementation of these goals can be ‑‑ we all support it by the data as mentioned.
I also mentioned we have a survey, use for SDG, but member country has mentioned that you can see there is the growing concern for all different countries, and you can see from the from right bottom figure, this is very specific indicator, so for the current use or separation for SDG and there are a lot of countries, they're wanting to use the assessment of SDG, so it's a huge organization, but worry specifically focusing on the work of it, so it has three areas, and today we're talking about sustainable ‑‑ oh, I'm sorry. I've made ‑‑ okay.
So, SDGs, one of (?) and also disaster and climate change are expected to play more important roles for it, so how do we link the activity in different levels? Because as I mentioned, we have different phenomenon over different action over global network, original network, and we found it's very effective over each very powerful methodology to promote the implementation of operation in the original, so because the Geo was operating in mechanism, so we choose AO as target and we try to build original network, publish in magazines and to promote of this activity and original network, and so just like the colleague mentioned, the real focus on the improving the or observing of this region is also to promote the data reuse by developing data products and information extraction and process and capability.
Also, very important, the data service is to reduce the gap between the different countries, and also a network for promoting the technology and method are very important, very important seen for this region, every country is focused on the advancing technology, especially as it was ‑‑ so we build a structure. This can be in different layer, so we have a foundational task focused on the data hearing, data processing that aim to promote the ability of each country by the linked activity at the original level, and they also have some regional issues to tackle with like agriculture, sustainable agriculture, disaster, and ecosystem monitoring. Then we choose the three sub‑areas, mountain area, small island states, and also the basis system to try to make originality of this research target, so we come here and as this methodology and try to use observation tools to support realizing SDG, so as you can see, we build and we aligned each goals of the SDG to the activity of our regional initiative.
So the concrete activity included a workshop and also the training workshops in different countries, like China laws, Nepal in last year and this year next month we're going to held another training class in Sri Lanka, so there were also a lot of projects conducted to promote the use of and utilization of the regional information to try to help the local people, so for the next, I totally agree with the proposal from our colleague here with capacity building and it is a very important issue for us to think about and take measure to go forward ‑‑ to go very forward.
So, okay, thank you, that's my explanation.
(Applause)
So, we do have quite a lot of presentation, but we still have a few minutes for discussion. Maybe if you have a question or comments to the presentation for the speaker, please. Any questions? Maybe from our panelists? Yes?
>> I just want to make a statement that I'm very much appreciating the discussion about the educational fields that are so diverse, also. I'm very happy that you started from school to university to scientists, and even scientists need education in these new techniques that we still don't have, so we have a full education curricula on all levels, let alone people in the administration, people in technical organizations that support disaster risk involved in climate change and then sustainability issues. This is something where education is so essential that we somehow should organize a little bit more strategically.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Yes?
>> Thank you very much, indeed. I believe that we are really in need of real partnerships. For example, between developing countries and developed countries, because we are ‑‑ we have a huge thing called big data and it is very lucrative economically, socially, and at the educational system, but at most developing country, we are still at the level of explaining to please let's use big data, please we can find ways and frameworks for protecting the privacy of students and at the same time we can gain a lot from this practice, so now we are still at the level of lobbying and raising consciousness and also we need exactly to provide education to government officials on big data and I'm really looking forward to maybe today actually to find some partnerships to do that and to achieve that. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you.
>> Thank you. Yes, I just want to add to Inis. There is this initiative of Global Open Partnership, and I don't remember the name fully, but that is where almost every country signs on to commit yourself to start a process of opening up your data within your country. I think once that is done, then the agencies can begin to look within your country and to see the kind of support that it can give you.
I think the World Bank is very much supporting countries that are opening up data, so if your country has this open data initiative, you can as well be looking up to the World Bank or the World Bank can even come to you and say that we have this amount of money for you to kind of promote your open data initiatives and all that, so I can give you information on that and how area country can sign on to that partnership.
>> The most valuable tool that we have now is the Internet, and if you look at it, 30% of the world youth are digital. I don't see anywhere going out to the developed country, everybody has a digital phone, and that means it's easy to access to them, to access them online.
And 4 billion do not use the Internet and 90% of them are from developed countries, so how are we going to use data to reach out to those people? And I think that's why partnership and collaboration is very important.
>> Okay. Any comments?
>> Yeah. Actually, there are other experiences, we have two ways to be involved in the partnership. One way we have a joint project, or we can join the meeting, the conference, something like today. This is one way.
Another way, we don't know each other at all, but the data, product oriented, and right now in the data partnership, we have almost 1,000 data contributors and most of them, I don't know at all, but we check the data, we communicate through Internet and then the data makes us to be work with teamwork, and also users from 97 countries, we don't know who ‑‑ who is who, how they work, so we debate to make us together as a team.
So, I think as a partnership, we have in a way, we can go way through the Internet, and so the data or data sharing and the data principles that make us work together. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you. Any questions? Any comments? Okay.
>> I just want to add to what I just said. We also have this organization, International Aid Transparency Initiative and this is an organization that is promoting open data, and then they have a lot of funding for countries that want to do projects on open data in that country.
And also, my organization has been champion in this open data within Africa for some time now, and then in a country that is finding difficulties with open data policies with the work and can help, and we're now currently now in countries and hoping that this year we're going to cover the rest of the African countries and see if we can hold them kind of simultaneous partnership and also try to help with the programs, capacity‑building programs and all of that.
And also, we're also opening up to the China association for partnership in Africa to see how we can help our people come out from some of the just basic things that we need to solve easily moving forward.
>> MODERATOR: Okay. Good. So, anyone want to say something? No? Okay. I think we have very good and impressive talk from our panelists. If I remember right, I think we got very good points from this workshop.
Firstly, I think the data no matter if it is scientific or technology and the data for the different industries in the private sector, so we can think about how data should be open widely and utilized efficiently, and that means we need to develop the legal framework which can provide some support for the ‑‑ I mean, data sharing and even the data principle especially for developing countries to find unbalanced, authority, to support people for better life.
I think there is one first, I mean, first common concern from our panelists that is very important, that big data will play very important roles for society and economic development and also implementation of SDGs, and the second, in my understanding, is the implementation of SDG requires different ‑‑ I mean, the contribution or effort from different stakeholders, multi‑stakeholder government and Civil Society, private sector, even the individual that's, I mean, it's not easy but this, I mean, needs everybody to contribute to this work.
So, I think our panelists propose very good methodology and solution of capacity building in education is very important, still very important for the developing countries, and that's why I mean, on this issue ducker the IGF, I think its common concern as well.
Certainly, as I think as I mentioned, it's a very huge task which requires the different forces to come in, different resources like human resource, intellectual property and different input to promote the implementation of SDGs by using of big data, so it will require some different methodologies, like I mentioned, and maybe we can do it at the local level or exchange ideas or experiences to enhance partnership between the different countries at the regional level. Then scaling up to the global level to find better solutions for mutual development. I think it still requires everybody effort to make it happen, so I think today we have very good workshop and even we had a very large issue to discuss, but we do realize that this ‑‑ I mean, this issue from the legal, from the technology, from the best priorities and even some suggestions for the next step, so firstly, I say thanks to our panelists for your very impressive and good contribution to this workshop, and also thanks everybody for your participation and the interest to this workshop, so now I will say this is ending of our workshop. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> Yes. I would like to ask our panelists to take a group photo here. Thank you.