VI. Principles and Functions of Digital Cooperation
VI. PRINCIPLES AND FUNCTIONS OF DIGITAL COOPERATION
In the course of our outreach, many stakeholders suggested principles to which digital cooperation mechanisms should adhere and functions they should seek to serve. Drawing also on work of previous initiatives in these areas, this annex summarises the principles and functions we suggest are most important to guide the future evolution of digital cooperation.
KEY PRINCIPLES OF DIGITAL COOPERATION
- Consensus-oriented: Decisions should be made in ways that seek consensus among public, private and civic stakeholders.
- Polycentric: Decision-making should be highly distributed and loosely yet efficiently coordinated across specialised centres.
- Customised: There is generally no “one size fits all” solution; different communities can implement norms in their own way, according to circumstances.
- Subsidiarity: Decisions should be made as locally as possible, closest to where the issues and problems are.
- Accessible: It should be as easy as possible to engage in digital cooperation mechanisms and policy discussions.
- Inclusive: Decisions should be inclusive and democratic, representing diverse interests and accountable to all stakeholders.
- Agile: Digital cooperation should be dynamic, iterative and responsive to fast-emerging policy issues.
- Clarity in roles and responsibility: Clear roles and shared language should reduce confusion and support common understanding about the responsibilities of actors involved in digital cooperation (governments, private sector, civil society, international organisations and academia).
- Accountable: There should be measurable outcomes, accountability and means of redress.
- Resilient: Power distribution should be balanced across sectors, without centralised top-down control.
- Open: Processes should be transparent, with minimum barriers to entry.
- Innovative: It should always be possible to innovate new ways of cooperating, in a bottom-up way, which is also the best way to include diverse perspectives.
- Tech-neutral: Decisions should not lock in specific technologies but allow for innovation of better and context-appropriate alternatives.
- Equitable outcomes: Digital cooperation should maximise the global public interest (internationally) and be anchored in broad public benefit (nationally).
KEY FUNCTIONS OF DIGITAL COOPERATION
- Leadership – generating political will among leaders from government, business, and society, and providing an authoritative response to digital policy challenges.
- Deliberation – providing a platform for regular, comprehensive and impactful deliberations on digital issues with the active and effective participation of all affected stakeholders.
- Ensuring inclusivity – ensuring active and meaningful participation of all stakeholders, for example by linking with existing and future bottom-up networks and initiatives.214
- Evidence and data – monitoring developments and identifying trends to inform decisions, including by analysing existing data sources.
- Norms and policy making – building consensus among diverse stakeholders, respecting the roles of states and international organisations in enacting and enforcing laws.
- Implementation – following up on policy discussions and agreements.
- Coordination – creating shared understanding and purpose across bodies in different policy areas and at different levels (local, national, regional, global), ensuring synchronisation of efforts, interoperability and policy coherence, and the possibility of voluntary coordination between interested stakeholder groups.
- Partnerships – catalysing partnerships around specific issues by providing opportunities to network and collaborate.
- Support and capacity development – strengthening capacity development, monitoring digital developments, identifying trends, informing policy actors and the public of emerging risks and opportunities, and providing data for evidence-based decision making – allowing traditionally marginalised persons or other less-resourced stakeholders to actively participate in the system.
- Conflict resolution and crisis management – developing the skills, knowledge and tools to prevent and resolve disputes and connect stakeholders with assistance in a crisis.
Recent Comments on this Site
3rd July 2023 at 2:58 pm
I agree with Michael’s comment.
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3rd July 2023 at 2:56 pm
This first message makes no sense. Please take into consideration the comment made by Torsen.
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3rd July 2023 at 2:37 pm
3 The Ukrainian Internet resilience is impossible without worldwide cooperation, help and support. There are very good examples of such cooperation, and not very good. These lessons also have to be documented and analysed.
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3rd July 2023 at 12:14 am
In responding to the points around the impact encryption, I would ask that the comments I made around the UK’s Online Safety Tech Challenge Fund and academic paper by Ian Levy and Crispin Robinson are added to the key messages.
I referenced a paper by Ian Levy and Crispin Robinson, two internationally respected cryptographers from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, which set out possible solutions to detecting child sexual abuse within End-to-End Encrypted Environments that companies could be exploring to balance both the rights to privacy and the rights of children to grow up in a safe and secure environment free from child sexual abuse.
The link to the paper is copied below:
[2207.09506] Thoughts on child safety on commodity platforms (arxiv.org)
And the UK Safety Tech Challenge Fund:
Lessons from Innovation in Safety Tech: The Data Protection Perspective – Safety Tech (safetytechnetwork.org.uk)
It is important that we balance the concerns about the breaking of encryption, with the possibilities that should be being explored to prevent child sexual abuse from entering or leaving these environments.
Andrew Campling also made points about the right to privacy not being an absolute right and the need to balance this right, with other rights- another point I think that is worth reflecting in this final paragraph.
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3rd July 2023 at 12:00 am
I agree with the amendment Torsten has proposed to the initial text.
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2nd July 2023 at 11:58 pm
I would be careful about saying these images have been created consensually. Just because an image is “self-generated” it does not mean it has been created through “sexting”. Children are being “groomed” and “coerced” into creating these images as well.
I agree- however, with the rewritten text above regarding what companies currently do and what they will be required to do if the EU proposal becomes law and is clearer than what was written in the initial text.
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2nd July 2023 at 3:21 pm
The Internet has changed how war is fought, and how it is covered by media. At
the same time, the war has put “One world, one Internet” to a stress test. The foundations of global and interoperable Internet should not be affected by the deepening geopolitical divide, even though it has fragmented the content layer.
No one has the right to disrupt the global network that exists as a result of voluntary cooperation by thousands of networks. The mission of Internet actors is to promote and uphold the network, and to help restore it if destroyed by armed aggression.
The war has been accompanied by heightened weaponization of the content layer of the Internet. New EU legislation is expected to curb at least the role of very large platforms in spreading disinformation and hate speech.
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2nd July 2023 at 2:36 pm
I kindly suggest the following changes:
Please add these two important points that were said by the speakers/audience:
– There is an initiative on the Nordic level to protect children from the harms of the Internet, and this initiative has already been promulgated into legislation in Denmark.
– As the role of parents is crucial in educating children to use the Internet in a savvy way, also parents need education. That’s why we need adult education also from beyond the formal education system, just like the adult education system in Finland already provides training in basic digital skills.
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2nd July 2023 at 2:35 pm
I kindly suggest the following changes:
– governs => governments
– Replace this: ”Therefore, the contemporary political landscape requires three-level trust: political power; knowledge organisations; and individual.”
– By this:
– ”Therefore, the contemporary political landscape requires three levels of trust: trust in basic societal functions and structures of the society, trust in knowledge organizations, and trust between one another as individuals.”
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2nd July 2023 at 2:32 pm
I kindly suggest the following changes:
Replace this: ”Thus, one of the key priorities is to enhance citizens digital literacy and education going beyond only digital competencies and including cultural aspects.”
with this: ”Thus, one of the key priorities is to enhance citizens’ digital literacy and education by going beyond just digital competencies and including also ethical, social and cultural dimensions.”
Add this important point that was said by the speaker: Responsibility for digital information literacy education lies not only with the formal education system, but also cultural institutions, NGOs, youth work play a key role.
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