Digital Economy WG presents priorities to civil society
Digital Economy? A name that could refer to your savings in a virtual bank or investments in cryptocurrencies, but in this case refers to the G20 working group that deals with diverse and connected themes.
The Digital Economy Working Group (WG) is holding its first official meeting via the Sherpas Trail this Wednesday (31) and Thursday (1) by videoconference, based at the official G20 headquarters in Brasilia, the country's federal capital. The previous week, the WG already held a first meeting focused on starting debates with civil society.
The meeting occurred at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE) on Thursday (25) and gave around 150 people the opportunity to participate in person and by hybrid means, to learn about and discuss the group's priorities and meeting schedule. Participants included representatives from the private sector, the academy, the technical community, government institutions, ministries and the G20 Social, Business (B20), Civil Society (C20), Think Tanks (T20) and Science (S20) engagement groups.
As for the thematic priorities presented, they are:
Connectivity: It is proposed to discuss the development of indicators to measure meaningful connectivity (safe, enriching, productive and affordable), as well as innovative mechanisms with the aim of achieving universality at a global level.
Digital government: Improving the relationship between governments and their citizens, providing high-quality public services and seizing the opportunities of the digital economy require a secure, reliable and inclusive digital public infrastructure.
Information integrity: Debate the different governance approaches available to deal with the issue of the integrity of 'online' information, the role of digital platforms in this process, the worsening of the problem due to the use of artificial intelligence systems and ways of contributing to the multilateral debate in this area.
Artificial Intelligence: It will focus on the use of AI systems by governments and companies with the aim of improving the living conditions of different social groups, especially the marginalized, in order to concretely improve people's lives. Also on the table will be ways of ensuring that the data sets used to train Artificial Intelligence systems are representative of local contexts, and faithful to the linguistic, cultural, racial diversity of particular geographical contexts.
Technical meeting
The meeting on Wednesday and Thursday will be closed, with a briefing at the end of the debates on February 1. For Brasil, the group includes representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE); Ministry of Communications (MCOM); Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services (MGI); Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI); Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic (SECOM); Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP); National Data Protection Authority (ANPD); and National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL).
Next meetings
After this first official meeting, the next dates for meetings of the Digital Economy WG are April 18-20 in Brasília, June 11-13 in São Luís, Maranhão, and September 9-11 in Maceió, Alagoas. These will take place in person. The dates of the unofficial events are yet to be announced.