Computerworld: Congratulations on the appointment by the UN Secretary-General for a 2-year term on the UN High Level Council on Digital Cooperation, i.e. the so-called High Leadership Panel level of the Internet Governance Forum. It’s a great honour. You organized the UN Digital Summit IGF 2021 in Poland last year, which was a great success.

Christopher Shubert: Last year’s United Nations Digital Summit, which we organized in Katowice – IGF 2021 (6-10.12.2021) was the 16th such event. It takes place every year in a different country. We had to organize it earlier, unfortunately it was postponed for a year due to the pandemic and finally took place in a hybrid version. As Poland, we proposed a number of changes there compared to previous summits. First, to move away from the formula associated with the name, ie Internet Governance Forum – Internet Management Forum, because this name restricts the current subject. This is a digital summit with a wide range of topics: both on the Internet and everything related to it, regulations, new technologies, equipment. In short, everything that happens in the digital world. This resulted in a proposal from the Polish side that the forum should end with the adoption of a common document. Previous UN digital summits always ended with a summary, although they were published several months late. These were voluminous documents containing forum statistics, such as how many people had participated in sessions, and they covered less substantive topics. We proposed that such a short document be adopted immediately at the end of the summit, so that the most important conclusions are known immediately. Eventually it was adopted as the “Katowice Protocol” or Katowice IGF Messages. It is a 10-page document that talks about the most important conclusions of the Katowice summit. Nearly 11,000 people attended the IGF Digital Summit 2021. people from 175 countries, so it was a large and very diverse group. There were 300 side panels, sessions and discussions. Their topics can be narrowed down to 6 main areas: 4 major thematic silos were everything related to network and access infrastructure (5G, 6G, broadband networks, satellite access) – from the perspective of the UN , it is clear that half of the world’s population still does not have access to the Internet, although in Europe we are considering other speeds. The second silo concerns topics related to the services of the digital world, whether provided by public administration or by companies, that is, so that more and more things can be handled via the Internet, to which we are getting used to it more and more. Globally, in many areas, however, people are primarily consuming, say, light content, shopping or watching movies, playing games, and less doing business. The idea was to draw attention to the issue of accessibility of digital services. Their greater number also generates Internet traffic. Another area is digital skills, i.e. young and old, more or less familiar with technology, at different levels and to varying degrees – so that they all feel confident and safe. I call it “Cyber ​​Hygiene”. The fourth silo is widely understood cybersecurity – attacks on critical infrastructure and data theft about disinformation, influencing opinion – which we can now see clearly during the Ukraine-Russia war. In turn, two large horizontal areas were the financing of all this, that is to say the question of funds for digitization. We have different perspectives: national, European, global funds, venture capital funds, private equity funds. There were lots of ideas for different types of digital finance. Without funding, the goals of digital transformation will not be achieved. The second horizontal area that runs through all of this is international cooperation. For example, in the field of cybersecurity, the exchange of information and experiences between countries. The cooperation of public administrations is crucial here. I had the pleasure of organizing and closing this summit. The document summarizing it was highly appreciated, it appeared on the UN website and began to function as IGF messages from Katowice. As far as I know, the next ones will be released this way.

What has changed since that peak until today, in 8 months? What, for example, does the issue of propaganda and disinformation look like from the perspective of the UN?

KSz: It is certainly very important. There are several strategies at the United Nations level and they touch on digital issues in many areas, for example the digital economy or science with the use of modern technologies. From a European perspective, never before has there been so much funding for digitalisation. President von der Leyen announced a “digital decade” at the start of her term. This was very visible in the previous six months, during the French presidency – as the topics of digital strategy and domains as well as funds for digitization were at the forefront at all official events. It is also very often said that we support entrepreneurship in Europe, that is, we try to create an environment in which European technological “unicorns” will be created, which will compete on the world stage.

The perspective of the UN is also visible in its firm determination to stimulate the development of a digitization in the broad sense, recently a high emissary for technology, the so-called Tech-Envoy at the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, with whom I will have the pleasure of working on the forum of the United Nations High Level Council for Digital Cooperation, i.e. the so-called High Level Leadership Panel of the Forum on Governance of the Internet.

Is the Council’s work plan already known for the near future?

KSz: Not yet, but his first inaugural meeting with the UN Secretary General will take place soon. The Council formulation process itself took nearly a year. Its composition was to be announced last December during the summit, so we have a considerable delay. 15 people from around the world have been appointed to the Council, representing the so-called UN stakeholder groups, i.e. administration, business, technical organizations, non-governmental organizations and the world scientist. A representative from Poland had never been in this body before. I hope we can work. We must first select the areas carrying the trend of sustainable development on which we will focus. Many United Nations Sustainable Development Goals touch on the issue of digital technologies.