IEEE at IGF 2015: Advancing Technology and Policy Connections

IGF Header panoramic conference image

By Karen McCabe

The 10th-annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in João Pessoa, Brazil, 9-13 November 2015 provided a unique opportunity for IEEE to introduce its activities and connect with the IGF community. With the goal of fostering greater information exchange, knowledge growth and capacity building, IEEE played a key role guiding discussions where public policy and technology intersect.

One of the IEEE hosted sessions, “IEEE@IGF: Advancing Technology for an Open Internet,” gave an overview on IEEE’s mission to advance technology for the benefit of humanity, and explained how IEEE works with its partners globally on issues related to open standards, Internet governance, cybersecurity and privacy.

The IEEE Internet Initiative was brought to the forefront of discussion, promoting the value of the Internet in innovation, market and economic growth and social prosperity and the importance of information sharing and greater understanding between policy makers and technologists. This serves as the foundational goal of IEEE Internet Initiative, which helps connect the technical community to global policymaking for Internet governance, cybersecurity and privacy—to inform debate and decisions and to help ensure trustworthy technology solutions and best practices.

The session also helped illustrate how technical experts continue to work through IEEE to expand Internet interoperability, fuel innovation and hone solutions that support an open Internet and sustainable development. Standards play an important role, and by facilitating development of standards for the Internet that span wired and wireless connectivity, encryption, data security, and more, IEEE is a leader in this arena. And, with many initiatives to drive forward interrelated, emerging technology spaces, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, cybersecurity and big data, IEEE can work with all stakeholders to advance technologies across a variety of domains.

Another IEEE hosted session at IGF 2015 was “Internet Governance, Security and Privacy in 2030,” where participants addressed Internet security and privacy issues related to today’s evolving digital world and economy. With an eye to the future, IEEE presented four Internet privacy and security scenarios envisioned in 2030, exploring both positive and negative impacts. With two panels discussing various points of view on how the Internet will evolve, the resulting key observations included:

IGF 2015

  • An expectation that governance of the Internet will likely be indistinguishable from governance of society in general. Addressing political and economic issues on the Internet will be more difficult than addressing technical issues.
  • An element of resignation about security, whereas there is otherwise a lot of optimism about the future of technology, so that insecure systems could get deployed with hope that “someone else” will fix them.
  • Consent for data collection and use may not be the right model if it imposes a burden on the end user, and accepting terms of use of data doesn’t mean end users understand it. Potential benefits of data analytics and algorithms are compelling, but better understanding of ethical data use is needed.
  • Trust is essential, but it is difficult to know how to achieve it and to measure it.
  • Fragmented governance systems may require policy efforts to be layered. Some issues can be addressed locally or regionally, some globally.
  • Transparency is an important principle—not necessarily for universal understanding, but to allow technical experts to properly evaluate options.
  • Those polled would surrender all personal data, and voluntarily be implanted with devices, even facing a very small risk of death from a hack or malfunction, for an ensured lifespan of at least 200 years.
  • Risk analysis is key to resolving the challenge of fast technical growth versus the need for policy to catch up. Making recommendations for when risk analysis is needed will help create one-size-fits-all solutions
  • Technical boundaries could be expanding the same way that social boundaries did in the 1970s. The evolving Internet could present the same kind of generational challenge and the same type of tectonic shift.
  • Laws are becoming more intrusive than in past years. This raises major challenges to privacy, and may also differ based on generational and cultural differences.
  • Security is a major concern in emerging economies and countries, and building a positive infrastructure to address this is important.
  • Bandwidth and lack of IEEE 802.11™ “Wi-Fi®” connectivity in many emerging economies must be addressed for users to truly understand privacy and security issues.

IEEE invites stakeholders globally to continue the conversation, and there are many ways to engage. Please visit http://internetinitiative.ieee.org for more information about the IEEE Internet Initiative, or please visit http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/ to access more information about IGF, including IGF 2015 output documents.

 

Related Articles (in Portuguese)

Cyber segurança e governança da internet vêm em um pacote único, diz diretora do IEEE | TELE.SÍNTESE
This report is a result of Karen McCabe's interview with journalist Miriam Aquino, during IEEE participation at IGF 2015. Karen gave her opinions about the main challenges for the next decade, regarding Internet governance. According to her, in this decade, due to the increase of the Internet of Things, the standards developed by IEEE will become closer to the ones used by the Telecom industry.

IEEE propõe maior participação de setor de tecnologia na governança de Internet | TELETIME
This report is about improving the conversations between Technology community members and policy experts, in order to better understand not only the Technology itself, but also to learn something from this matter. The report is a result from the interview that Karen McCabe gave to journalist Bruno do Amaral during IGF 2015. Comments were made about gender equality in the Technology community, leading to more women participation. For Karen, IGF 2015 was very positive, even without a document representing the principles and the guidelines to be followed, as it was done at NETmundial 2014.

Teletime report was also replicated in the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters of the State of São Paulo (AESP) website and also by the UrberGeek blog, as follows:

Associação das Emissoras Rádio e Televisão do Estado de São Paulo (AESP)
IEEE propõe maior participação de setor de tecnologia na governança de Internet

IEEE propõe maior participação de setor de tecnologia na governança de Internet | UrberGeek
This report is a result of Karen McCabe's interview with journalist Miriam Aquino, during IEEE participation at IGF 2015. Karen gave her opinions about the main challenges for the next decade, regarding Internet governance. According to her, in this decade, due to the increase of the Internet of Things, the standards developed by IEEE will become closer to the ones used by the Telecom industry.

A week after IGF 2015, Karen McCabe wrote an article entitled The Intersection of Public Policy and Technology, regarding ideas discussed during the Open Forum that IEEE hosted at the IGF. The article was translated to Portuguese and distributed to the media, with three relevant outcomes, as follows below:

A interseção entre a política pública e a tecnologia | TI Bahia

A interseção entre a política pública e a tecnologia | Information Management

A interseção entre a política pública e a tecnologia | TI Especialistas

On the same day, the outcome from TI Especialistas was also replicated by the Testes de Invasão website:

A interseção entre a política pública e a tecnologia | Teste de Invasão