Shaping the Future: Lessons from 20 Years of Digital Cooperation

Last week, global leaders from governments, civil society, the private sector, the technical community and elsewhere convened in Geneva for the annual meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to reflect on the past twenty years of digital cooperation. This year marked a special edition; a High-Level Event to mark WSIS+20.

In a rapidly expanding sea of digital policy acronyms, WSIS is an important one to know.

Twenty years ago, during landmark meetings in Geneva and Tunis, leaders from around the world and across all sectors agreed to what are known as the WSIS outcomes, articulating a vision for a world where digital technologies would empower individuals, foster inclusion and spur global development—a vision where all actors have a role to play.

This was an ambitious and impressively far-sighted agenda. At the time, one billion people were online, just 16 percent of the world’s population. Those who were online then were finding their way into vibrant and new ecosystems—Facebook, Reddit, YouTube—with excitement and optimism. The first iPhone was yet to make its debut.

The remarkable speed and scale of the development of digital technologies in the intervening twenty years means that these tools have become central to nearly every aspect of life. These advancements hold immense potential for driving innovation and development, but they also pose new challenges and risks that policymakers must navigate to ensure a safe and equitable digital future.

Though it may be unfamiliar to those who have come more recently to the digital space, the WSIS process and its multistakeholder community has played a pivotal role in global digital cooperation over the last two decades. For instance, research has shown that the Internet Governance Forum, an outcome of WSIS, has played a central role in the growth of Internet Exchange points, particularly in the Global South, while also fostering a global knowledge sharing community.

In an increasingly complex digital policy landscape, WSIS plays a unique and complementary role to other multilateral forums and initiatives focused on digital technologies. This includes the growing digital portfolios in existing institutions like the G7 and G20 as well as newer initiatives, like the Digital Cooperation Organization. Moreover, at this year’s UN General Assembly, world leaders are expected to agree to a Global Digital Compact as part of the Summit of the Future. The WSIS process will have an important role to play in delivering on the Compact’s ambitions for “an open, free and secure digital future for all.”

As WSIS turns twenty this year, it will also undergo a review at the United Nations, an opportunity to both reaffirm its role, but also to reflect on how it might update its mandate and areas of focus (called ‘action lines’ in WSIS parlance) to ensure that it remains as relevant in its next twenty years. Reflecting on the work of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to support digital development in more than 120 countries, three areas emerge as critical for advancing digital cooperation.

First, delivering an inclusive digital transformation necessitates policymakers who have the knowledge and skills to craft policies that spur digital advances and manage their risks. Although already a WSIS focus area, more attention on digital capacity building, particularly for developing and least developed countries, is needed as well-equipped officials will underpin the digital transformation. This should include how to leverage data for effective policy-making, as well as support for cyber-resilience skills, which are prerequisites for thriving digital communities.

Second, while the visionaries of WSIS anticipated the transformative impact of digital technologies, the AI revolution has ushered in a new era of possibilities and challenges. As AI is integrated across a dizzying array of applications, its benefits should be equally distributed across nations. WSIS can add urgency in ensuring that artificial intelligence serves as a tool for global development. Last week in Geneva, the WSIS high-level event ran in parallel with the annual AI for Good Global Summit, an event organized by the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in partnership with forty UN agencies and the Government of Switzerland, focused on leveraging AI to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This conjunction of events demonstrates an emerging critical inter-relationship between internet governance, digital development, and AI for sustainable development.

Third and finally, the last twenty years have seen a marked escalation in the global climate crisis. AI is poised to accelerate this trend, as training and running AI systems requires significant computing power and data which contribute further emissions. The WSIS outcomes identified the relationship between our natural environment and digital technologies; however, adding a greater emphasis on climate change through the WSIS review, both in the natural resource requirements and emissions produced by digital technologies and their potential to help deliver solutions, will be important to deliver on both the digital and climate transition together. 

There are other areas where the WSIS outcomes could be refreshed as well. For instance, recognizing the critical role played by digital public infrastructure in development, and remedying the absence of a gender perspective. In short, there is much that can be done, while still recognizing the enduring relevance and importance of the WSIS outcomes today.

When the first WSIS meeting took place in Geneva in 2003, leaders from all sectors committed to working together to realize “a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented digital society.” WSIS has played and is poised to continue to play, perhaps with a few tweaks, a central role in delivering on this vision.

Robert Opp is Chief Digital Officer of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). UNDP is one of the four co-convenors of the annual WSIS Forum, along with the ITU, UNESCO and UNCTAD.