Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 29, 2011 - 09:00 AM
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> HERBERT HEITMANN: I suggest we start in about one or two minutes. We are waiting for one additional panelist and then we are ready to go.
So I suggest we start. They will join soon. My name is Herbert Heitmann. Very pleased to be here today and moderate the workshop that the Government of Kenya and ICC set up. I'm chairing the ICC in particular here, in the IGF context in the global voice of business. We try our best to represent businesses of all size, small, medium, large ones. And not only the ICT industry but also the users of ICT. And I'm particularly pleased that this is the second workshop that we jointly do with the Government of Kenya.
So based on my own experiences, I would strongly encourage we do this as interactive as possible. So I will reduce my moderation to the minimum. We have a very impressive lineup of panelists. But most importantly, we want you and those who participate remotely to benefit from this session the most. And my experience is that is going to happen if you engage, if you bring your questions forward or your experiences, your observations. And so let's try to do this as interactive as is possible.
The workshop itself is about mobile and cloud services, the opportunities and challenges. We will look into three different dimensions: the political framework, the individual situations, as well as the economic development opportunities. And when you think about cloud services and mobile and in particular the younger generation, meaning all of us, is going to benefit from this, then social media is a subject that definitely needs to be added. And you will see in the discussion this comes through again and again.
But before we go to the topic, let me quickly introduce the panelists. I'm very happy to have Alice Munyua, the chair of the Internet Governance Committee representing the Kenyan Government. Thank you very much. And this gives me opportunity, I hope it brings best luck to congratulate you on the great beginning of this IGF here. I'm very pleased to work with you also in this workshop here.
To my right, Pilar del Castillo, member of the European Parliament. So you see Government, local and European is kind of represented through these two panelists.
We have then big global business. We have Theresa Swinehart, Executive Director Global Internet Policy, Verizon.
We have Jeff Brueggeman, Vice President Public Policy from AT & T.
And we are waiting for Pedro Less Andrade, the Senior Policy Counsel from Google.
And then last but not least, I asked Erik to put his helmet on the desk to demonstrate that he is a local co-founder and Director of operation strategy of Ushahidi and the founder of AfriGadget.
So you see we have a nice spectrum here. I know the spectrum in the room is even more impressive. So really, please see us as catalysts for the discussion and then introduce yourself into it here.
Having said this, I would like to start our conversation with a first round of the panel here to get an understanding of what are the expectations, what are the needs for a regulation, for policy framework. And you can imagine the Government on the one hand side and the representatives from the corporations might have slightly different views on this. I hope it will give us an opportunity to dig deeper into this.
But I would suggest we first start with the Government, and maybe we start with the host and learn from Alice what her thinking is about the framework that is needed to give the combination of cloud services and mobile applications a promising future, but in a kind of a controlled fashion.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much. And again, I would like to welcome you to this Kenya IGF. We're very pleased to see the huge turnout not just to the main sessions but also to the workshops.
Now from a Kenya Government perspective we are actually very excited by the thought of mobile cloud computing because as you know [for] most of our citizens, the mobile phone is the first communication tool. I think most of us, especially, you know, my generation and the generation after mine, seem to have missed the landline completely. So I think we use the tool not just as a communication tool --
(Audio lost).
>> And providing customer services at a global level without impeding that.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Thank you. You mentioned data privacy as an area that requires regulation cross-border data transfers, [and] I'm wondering how AT & T is dealing, what kind of favor environment are you looking for or what experience did you make to cope with these kinds of challenges?
>> JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: Well, I think one of the challenges with cloud as we're talking about is you're taking information and data and it's becoming disassociated with geography -- to do this cross borders and we're seeing a lot of momentum with governments working with the Private Sector to try to establish frameworks that will provide a baseline of privacy protection but also allow for mutual recognition and the transfers of data so the European Commission is looking at Cloud Computing and then through the APEC organisation that the U.S. participates in is looking at ways to establish country-to-country agreements with a baseline of an accountability mechanism to say if companies can demonstrate that they are protecting data and securing it that with some accountable verification that countries could then rely on that to trust that data can be transported across borders.
I think the other important thing is we want to do this because our customers need that assurance, as well. And we don't want customers afraid that their data is going to be stored in a country where it's not protected. So the other piece of this is actually to make sure that in the countries there's also an assurance for the ultimate customer that their data will be protected-- this isn't about making it easy for us, it's about providing assurance for the customer.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Thank you. Maybe we move from here now to the consumer, to the individual and I think one thing that I heard throughout many other kind of sessions here is that the role of broadband in that space seems to play a more critical role than I initially thought. It's a central element here. And you mentioned Theresa that 4G brings lots of opportunities and maybe you can bring a few really specific examples of how practically the users are benefiting from these kinds of things particularly in the context of cloud services.
>> THERESA SWINEHART: Well, I think they are benefiting -- I mean this is all the growth that we're seeing is being driven by data so consumers are demanding higher bandwidth. And with the LTE and with the mobile it's not just the fact that you have increase in speed but also the latency drops in half so you have a -- you can provide a wider range of services to the wider range of the community. And I think --
(Lost).
>> THERESA SWINEHART: When we talk about the policy frameworks that exist whether it's domestically or globally we want to make sure we don't impede those opportunities for anybody. So I think those are just some areas.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Okay I can easily imagine in downtown Manhattan with the latest Android or iPhone we don't want to promote any kind of special device here whatever you have that makes perfect sense. But I wonder when you're in the outskirts of Nairobi, Erik, is that something that's still practical maybe you can share with your experiences how you built up Ushahidi in that context to take advantage of the opportunities such as technology offers.
>> ERIK HERSMAN: Yeah we have to deal with the lowest common denominator which means someone with a Nokia 1100 in their hands so the realistic use of Cloud Computing on that kind of a device isn't --
(Audio lost).
>> ERIK HERSMAN: -- unique kind of environment at all. But what Cloud Computing does is allows you to cross those borders much easier; you can centralize things out of the major hubs like Johannesburg, Nairobi and it makes sense and then as the devices at the same time become more -- the simpler devices are now data enabled now it becomes interesting now we can have some data passing back and forth and the costs are decreasing what we looked at two or three years ago is not the same landscape we saw then is not what we see now so our reality then is not the reality that we have now --
(Audio lost)
(Technical difficulties)
>> The kind of thing they need in these public goods and services.
But on the other side, this is what deals with the telecoms if there's no last mile provision for that data connectivity then it doesn't matter so we need to actually look at both of those and look at the gaps.
>> PILAR DEL CASTILLO: Yeah. I would like -- because this is one of the things which I'm not sure about at all which is the problem of the applicable law. When you have a dispute.
So what do you do? Which country is the one -- which law -- of which countries they want that you have to apply. I would like to say something about the European Union not related to the cloud but on the rights, on the consumer rights protection.
In this moment we are in a situation and we have 27 different laws to be applicable on consumer rights. And the company which is operating in Europe, the European Union, so they can have programmes in Romania or in Spain and the law applicable is the Spanish one.
The problem is that in the context of having them, a senior market, this is a real, real problem because you have to operate with a fragmented market in terms of laws regarding consumer rights and many other aspects, so it's really difficult to develop a real single unit in terms of market. The market is so fragmented. But up to now, there was not a solution enough -- there was not enough harmonization and we were in a situation where I guess then we come in a situation in which disputes regarding the clouds --
(Audio lost).
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. I'm David Gross. Taking the point that was just being made, I have a couple quick questions or questions in the form perhaps of comments.
It seems to me in resolving those jurisdictional issues there's a fundamental question about how important is this? There's only a certain amount of bandwidths that governments have- these are very difficult disputes. Is it true and I sort of pose this question to the room. Isn't it true that this is extraordinarily important? And therefore, time and effort needs to be made to work on those norms to try to resolve those disputes.
And isn't it particularly important although the focus on the cloud has been primarily in the Developed World, isn't it true it's more important for the Developing World for some of the points that Alice and others were making?When I first started working on these issues from a policy perspective, the most significant issue I was told for why we didn't have more Internet access in the Developing World was not necessarily the connectivity. Although the last mile has always been a problem. And it wasn't access to computers. It was the high cost associated with buying and maintaining software, security and the like.
Doesn't the cloud help solve that problem for the Developing World by taking the high up-front barrier costs away and increasingly have low costs in the cloud?
And then if the last mile piece is important and if it's particularly important in the Developing World, isn't it extraordinarily important to put pressure on governments to allocate sufficient amount of spectrum so we don't have the connectivity problems again in the future because spectrum obviously in a data world will be in very short supply.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: I would like to comment and then I would like to call in Nasser. We have content providers here and maybe you can step in, Erik, as a consumer you can make a comment as well.
>> JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: Thank you I just wanted to reiterate cloud creates an extremely complex market but it's not just about jurisdiction so if for example if a customer buys a phone from AT&T they have a relationship with us they are entering in a relationship with Google or apps platform then they are purchasing an individual app that could be developed anywhere in the world that's a complicated situation for the consumer but it's what consumers want they are buying billions of apps or downloading billions of apps. So I think we have to create a structure for enabling trust in the cloud from security and privacy perspective that will fit this very complex model. And so the issue of the national jurisdiction I think is one piece of it.
But really, in order to -- in my view the only way to effectively accomplish this is to have the governments work with the industry to create the trust environment through a combination of a regulatory back stop but also I think more importantly is good business practices that consumers will know if I see a company participating in this programme I can trust it. If not, I'm on my own. I may choose to do that anyway. But we need to continue to work on these frameworks. And to David's point, I think we see some opportunity to do that as a way in the international context. To help get governments more comfortable with the cloud while recognizing that we do have to have this trust environment, as well.
>> NASSER KETTANI: It's fascinating. Because we -- I mean there are so many things that we are talking about. But for me, the most important is we just don't know where this is going. And that's my -- really the point. I think we are just now and we have seen in the last five years you know SmartPhones coming. Thousands and tense tens of thousands and probably hundreds of thousands of developers picking up the opportunity and creating new companies, new jobs, new applications, that are actually combining several clouds even.
So the -- I actually -- I'm actually most interested in the innovation part of it, more of the -- you know with the opportunities than actually -- I understand the challenges. And I understand there are security and privacy and standards and all of these things. Whatever.
I'm also very interested in understanding what policies are we making to enable, you know, this growth. And this set of innovations to happen? I just want to echo Theresa here because this is a very fundamental problem and I see various things from my perspective that needs to be addressed. We talked about the spectrum stuff, we talked about the lifestyle. We are seeing in many cases it's not working. No matter who is actually providing the service, you know, the cloud service. But I also think that there are in a lot of countries there are skill searches and I would like to see policies developing more skills in order to have more developers and more people accessing and developing and innovating. We'd like to see more policies promoting innovation and investment in innovation. I think these are very important ones and we would also like to see Government leading by example as in the case of the U.S. But we should not focus on actually who owns the cloud. The reality is there will be more cloud providers. There will be local providers as Rwanda is doing by building local and there are many countries are doing that. And the reality is we will see a mash up of clouds, it's not going to be one -- and the application that we will see they will combine several clouds in several smart ways that we haven't even thought about right now. And so perhaps the case of (off microphone) will be important in some of the scenarios but I would like to focus our energy there not ignoring the issues around security and privacy I think these should be addressed in a very important way but as we build the policies and regulations let's think about the growth opportunities that this whole work is driving. I think it's just fascinating. That's the comment I want to make.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Thank you very much, Nasser. I would like to ask Erik, because you mentioned at the very beginning the side costs related to the regulatory framework for setting up a business we heard now the cost of the services and solutions can be -- I wouldn't say prohibitive but not necessarily supportive. On the other side we can sense just by the numbers that were shared there's a huge business opportunity for local plays as well as for global ones if the price is in the right kind of range here so what do you experience with this topic.
>> ERIK HERSMAN: I would like to address what David was saying. I think he's absolutely correct. I would focus on making the enabling environment even more friendly. I think that's the way to go with that. And speaking to Jeff's comment about Android and everything, I would like to bring up a point that there's not a single country in Africa in the whole continent where you can register on Google Checkout and sell paid applications. That's a major problem. Right? This is a big issue. If we're going to say that emerging markets have equal standing in the cloud then we need to provide the ways they can do that, the channels right now we will always be consumers unless we create the mechanisms for producing as well.
>> REMOTE PARTICIPANT DAVID APPASAMY: What space?
>> ERIK HERSMAN: You have to ask Google that.
>> DAVID APPASAMY: Can you hear me now?
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: David, we can hear you, you can proceed.
>> DAVID APPASAMY: Can you hear me now?
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Loud and clear.
>> DAVID APPASAMY: Loud and clear. Great.
I would like to go back to when you asked about connectivity in the outskirts of Nairobi or in you know areas further out. Here in India, you know, at Madurai which is a micro finance plant I run. We work with Google and when I say Google really they own this the good news is there's mobile connectivity even out there in most places so we are using the mobile platform for a number of things. And there's pretty low bandwidth connection it's not necessarily broadband but it is data connected. We track repayments for example using a mobile application where the cashiers enter the detail and then upload it back into our servers here in Chennai and this has worked very successfully. We are now rolling out applications for doing a list service and various other applications. And you have to remember that most of our staff of about 750 women are from the village and have very little application so all of the -- have very little education.
The applications have to be so simple that if anyone can text a message that's all they have to do and that's what we're doing and it's working well and we see a change of how we capture the feeds and this works to speed up the process which means we can give more loans and more women have a chance of socioeconomic upliftment. The other interesting thing is we are now using a bureau (when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘the micro finance companies in India’), we [are] uploading the details into something called high mark and there are 15 million borrower details there so what we can now do when a borrower comes to us saying I would like to borrow money from you, they can go to the credit bureau to see their credit behavior to see if we can give them a loan or not. All of these applications which are less than six months old (the reapplication and the borrower programme are about six months old) are changing the way in -- the way in which we can work so this gives you an idea of remote connectivity that is to say that is not broadband there are applications that make a real difference in enterprise or from a user’s point of view from being able to borrow money where the speed with which the process is, you know, executed is much faster than it was six months ago.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Thank you very much, David. Very impressive to see examples that sound very similar to what we discussed here but come from a completely different part of the world and show that what we discuss locally is in this kind of context is always relevant globally.
Once again I would like to look around and see what topics in this context come to your mind. What questions do you have? So that we make sure that the content is relevant to you that we are sharing here. And Heather you indicate to me if there's anything more coming from the Web there.
I think what we touched when we looked into the benefits -- an indication? Yeah, please.
>> AUDIENCE: Okay. My name is Hygen from the International Covenant for Educational Institutions. These are schools within slums and my interest in this particular workshop is because we have started a programme that has provided basic education to youth in these lands and we would want to -- we are using video conferencing as a starting point and we want to enhance that problem by providing education through mobile phone. One reason is because it could be able to be accessed by so many children within slums and the first questions I have are these children having the headsets? Can they be made cheaper? And the cost of using a mobile phone? And the content, as well. We are negotiating with the Ministry of Education to be able to use at the first stage to be able to use past papers of KCP and KCSE that's the primary and secondary level of content for purpose of providing the students that we are working with that information in their mobile phones, and that way it can be able to enhance their process of video conferencing added to mobile phone and enhance the quality of education we are offering.
Quality is a challenge in slums and access is also a challenge and we are seeing technology as being a solution so we are looking forward to this conference providing a solution and technology enabling more Kenyan children to access basic education. Thank you.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Thank you. Theresa, Jeff, do you want to directly respond to this from a global Telco perspective?
>> JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: I would just say I think what we have talked about is we need a combination of the local content and strong local infrastructure. But again, I think the cloud provides an opportunity to incorporate that with the broader benefits of complimenting that with the -- complementing that with the global cloud capabilities as well, but I think we are hearing a recurring theme here that the content and the applications are a key piece of the puzzle. And one thing I would mention is we really see an opportunity for development countries not just to develop local content and applications for within their own region but also to become part of this global market and one of the great things about today's world is we have an online application programme and anyone anywhere can take part in. I know Microsoft and Google and others do, as well.
So the innovation that is here can be harnessed to participate in this global market, as well.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Thank you.
>> THERESA SWINEHART: I just want to reinforce that. I think again in the workshop that we were involved with yesterday there was one observation that university content that was coming out of Nigeria by some of the universities there or MIT for example in the United States was extremely valuable for some of the universities in Uganda and in Kenya.
So I think that may be at the university level but it can also be at the primary levels, as well.
I think the second point is also that as we any devices over time once these shifts in prices [for example], right, so as I was growing up and not to state my age a small simple calculator was $300 in the United States and that was a lot of money. It still is a lot of money but at that time in particular now people give them away.
USB sticks one used to pay for now, they are given away. So I think it's over time. And it's a combination of the enabling environment. It's a combination of the generation of content, it's the combination of simple devices, and I think one just has to be patient that I think it also is a requirement to be fully engaged to help drive that. It's not going to happen on its own. It has to be driven.
And so I think those would be just my observations on that.
And in the context, also, just briefly on the spectrum discussions, I would completely agree we need to look at that and there has to be harmonization and looking at that from a good way because that is also the medium over which in the future a lot of the communication is happening.
>> AUDIENCE: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mark Pasiko. I'm a student at Strathmore University doing a master of science programme and (off microphone) which is a research centre opened recently. Now my question is in terms of standards for mobile phone devices. See currently in Africa with everything going towards the cloud, we are expecting a lot of mobile web especially from our end because we use mobile phones so much. So I was wondering, is the governments, is it going to come up with standards for the way mobile web is going to be structured? Because currently it's like when people develop mobile web applications they just come out from the way they feel they should come out. So do we expect a standard that is going to be looked at from a law level?
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Just to clarify, is it that you experience incomprehensibilities which raise for you the awareness there needs to be a better common standard?
>> Okay. If you look at the Internet itself, it's easy to browse through the Internet because it's been given from the west and from Europe but from the mobile web perspective, you can't really look at the west so much because the content comes from here. And so I was wondering, is there a way that can be structured, I mean from your end, from your perspective, so it can incorporate the whole of Africa, the whole of the world?
>> ALICE MUNYUA: I'm not sure we understand the question or the challenge. But I think one of the things or the attitude that you know the Government seems to have taken, and I think Erik here had said it at the beginning is, if it doesn't need policy and regulation we are not going to -- in fact MPS is infamous for saying please go ahead and do it we will catch up with you if you're breaking the law and we'll catch up with you if there's an issue of Quality of Service, but please go ahead and do it and if you don't do it, the Government then does it and I think this is one of the reasons why you know Kenya and the Government in particular has created such a wonderful conducive environment in terms of just enabling innovation. You know we are focusing a lot on the supply side at the beginning. And that's where we focus so much of our attention in finances and resources on ensuring that we build broadband infrastructure.
Ensuring that there's no taxation on ICT equipment and all of that. It was in a way trying to provide affordable access, now I think we've gotten there. We still have issues to do with pricing and we still feel that perhaps at some point if market forces do not bring the prices down we may have to actually come in and regulate, especially to do with access to Internet to broadband because we feel that despite having all of those international cables it's still not getting there, and that's a topic we are actually hesitant to even begin to think about right now because we still think you know people like Erik and other business people should actually try to ensure that there's enough completion.
But I think with phones, it's not something we are thinking about right now. We are still focusing on creating that conducive -- I think your question is also linked to content and that affordable content going back to providing that environment. And I think that's what we are focusing [on] right now. And there are quite a number of initiatives, very many initiatives currently, to you know not just expanding connectivity but also fostering content development and promoting educational content, even going as far as having been the first country to have, you know, public data out there for free. So there's a public open data initiative that we launched in July. And the Government gets very frustrated by our industry not being able to take the opportunities that are being provided and take advantage of them from an economic perspective.
I think so it's not something that we will be thinking about in terms of regulating. What we are looking at is providing that conducive environment by opening -- by coming up with an opening spectrum or location, having an open you know process for that. And ensuring that local content is developed and working with the various stakeholders. Thank you.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: It sounds like a very entrepreneurial approach that the Government is taking then.
>> ALICE MUNYUA; Yes, very.
>> ERIK HERSMAN: Yeah, let me -- I think I actually do understand what you're saying. But let me state very unequivocally that we don't want the Government of any country involved in markup language.
So HTML, CSS, JavaScript- there's bodies already for that W3C work for them, in fact you can volunteer as a student and be involved with them and coming up with the standards that are used across the web. We want that open and free. You know there are some really good tools out there already. And the benefit of mobile web and I think that's where it's going to by the way is that there's a lot less friction and that it's open to everybody. So if we can keep it that way, I think we're all better off.
>> AUDIENCE; I'm Rajan from Nepal. ISOC Ambassador here.Developing Countries have emerging markets in Cloud Computing business which does not have -- EU is focusing on creating competitive market in Cloud Computing business. Thinking from the outside of -- in Developing Countries where companies have looked in the investment how they can join in this competitive market, so what sort of common standard you will develop to assure their existence in this Cloud Computing business?
>> JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: Well I appreciate very much. You are in the same line where I am. Well I just said at the very beginning I was surprised myself yesterday in another workshop on Cloud Computing that, you know, from the very beginning -- from the very beginning of course we need broadband. Without broadband it's very difficult to go anywhere. Even though it's impossible to go anywhere in this field.
But once we are developing that, we have not had to wait until other legs of the process are developed. From the very beginning we have to assure, in my view, that we are facing a competitive market. And in doing so there's many factors that affect competition. But one of the factors which is for me one of the most important ones is without that, the freedom of choice, and the possibility for each user that -- it can be an individual, a company, with the Government, whatever, the users have the possibility of really moving to another cloud service provider. And in doing that, we can have a real competition. Because without the possibility for real choice at the consumer level, competition is impossible. The main thing for competition is the freedom of choice. And then in that sense, common standards.
In all of those aspects, in all of those aspects that affect portability and then choice are crucial in order to get this. And I think common standard should be -- it is a problem that should be managed by the industry, by the companies, by the Private Sectors. A sector in which, you know, the relation should be put in place. -- regulation should be put in place because it could be put the wrong way. And we have many examples onof the industry being together and trying to find a solution to that. But then still there is you know lack of I would say common standard for example the API you know of the companies are -- all the companies are different president and then when you move to another one, well you have problems when you log the balance and all of these -- well you have problems when you move politically in that sense that's my view.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Thank you, Jeff.
>> JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: Yes I just wanted to make the point that there are standards, efforts, under way on cloud which is a positive sign and sometimes there's a healthy tension between wanting to standardize everything, but also allowing a divergence, as the technology experts would know, allowing a divergence of technologies to develop to create competition and choice. We recently were one of 72 companies that signed onto a TechAmerica cloud commission paper that said data portability is key,which I think you mentioned. I think that's another important point so as long as you can move from one platform to the other; it may be okay that everything is not completely standardized but the customer will be able to choose. So I think those are two interrelated points often made about cloud is both the interoperability but also the data portability.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Thank you. There's a question over here.
>> AUDIENCE; I'm Robin Atella, I'm from Egypt and I have a business here in Kenyacalled Telesystems. We develop systems and other things. But I have a question concerning the freedom of expression on the cloud. Because somehow we discover something through the crisis that happened in Egypt and the beginning of this year some of the bloggers were shut down their blogs by big companies concerning connectivity with that company with the governments at that moment. Is there any regulations from the UN to the control of the governments on the cloud?
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: I'm afraid we don't have the UN represented here on the podium. I'm not sure that the UN has an answer to that question. But I'm sure that my colleagues here around the table have their own views on this. And would invite them to share them with the broader group. Because I think it's an extremely up-to-date and critical topic. Who is in control of the cloud? For what reason and when?
I must say that certainly when the events in Egypt happened, we collectively were interested in how can they do this. And then just recently there were micro riots compared to what happened in Egypt and London and the first thing you heard was “oh let's switch off the BlackBerry messages.” Why is it so different here than there, but it seems to be a universal temptation for some people to play around with this and the desire for us to prevent this, so I invite my colleagues here for their views on this. Erik, Jeff.
>> ERIK HERSMAN: Thank you for cracking the door open on that discussion. I didn't want to start it. So the elephant in the room is who owns it. And I think it was quite clear last year wiki leaks was the first of them where we realised that the companies, you know, own this decision and not the governments. That was shut down for no legal reason. And then further down the line we saw what happened in Egypt and we saw -- again I'll bring it up I brought it up yesterday, UAE versus RIM- things like that are happening. Who is in charge? When the company is in a certain country, when the entity base is there, then the Government definitely has the upper hand, but when it's not, it doesn't and it comes down to money so I think that's the wide open discussion. And there's no -- I don't think anybody has an answer to it right now.
It's an unhealthy tension. Right?
But it's a strong one. And if we don't figure it out, privacy, security, right to data-- those are big items. Really big ones.
>> JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: Thanks. Erik made a good point, there's no centralized authority that tells the Government what they can do with the infrastructure on the -- in their own country on the one hand. On the other hand, these examples have shown that we need to continue to push for international norms that you will not do this and create the pressure to have clear rules in those cases where there is an emergency of some type. And I think, to me, one of the lessons even in the London cases is we need to develop these now before the urgent situation happens, because one thing that you see is that the governments are reflexively doing things because they haven't thought about what the process should look like ahead of time.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Yeah, I agree, I think based on my own observations I think there is a collective learning and every time someone tries something and fails or has to collect all of the collective universal blame on this here, the next one will be even more reluctant to play with that so maybe over time maybe this is positive thinking, this will move silently away but we'll have to watch this.
I look around for other contributions. There's one over there. And then one over here.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Simon Goya from Kenya. I wanted to share some experiences, especially from the mature markets. In terms of career scales. Because when you deploy Cloud Computing, somehow it changes career skills. Someone who is used to, for example, auditing a standard loan (so to speak) environment would have a challenge auditing a Cloud Computing deployment.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: We need to use the microphone as well. Who feels comfortable commenting on this kind of skill advancementskill development that is needed to provide opportunities in the cloud environment for classical jobs who now need to be applied in this space here? Is there any expertise here or in the broader room? We won't limit this to the podium. Yeah, please.
>> THERESA SWINEHART: I think there are -- I mean we will certainly as we go learn more about what are the -- what expertise is needed. But I think fundamentally what we need now are developers. That's the first thing. We need more developers in order to be able to innovate and drive more applications. That's the first thing. And we see there are a lot of, frankly speaking, shortage of skills all over the world, whether it's in the U.S. or even Developing Countries. That's one thing. And the other thing is around, you know, issues where I believe there needs to be some breakthroughs. As developers are thinking, creating new applications-- there needs to be education in place in order to help them understand how they put privacy by design as they build applications, so it's not an after the thought. How they do security by design as they build applications in the cloud, how they do accessibility by design as they think about, you know, those kind of things.
How they do interoperability by design. So how they think through initially -- we don't teach them those things and I think there is an opportunity there, as well as how we build capacity. And the other aspect is what he mentioned, audits. I think this is a very critical one. Because you know we at a large corporation, we run large data centres. You know, and cloud infrastructures. And as we -- we need to gain the trust of customers. Right? This is fundamental for us. And for that we need to meet certain standards.
And to meet those standards, we cannot just say we meet them. There are certification authorities out there that are -- that can come and audit, and they say, “yes you meet those checklists those standards”. And we need to have expertise there, as well, that needs to be developed over time. Et cetera.
Where we don't only say and claim but there is, we can go and say you know we are compliant with ISO 27,000 or whatever, that meet expertise there because not everybody can go into our data centre and say I want to audit, that doesn't make sense in fact-- that breaks security rules. We need expertise there as well. So these are kind of high-level thinking in terms of the expertise that is needed.
But you know, again, there will be also expertise needed. I just want to pick on one example which is education.
We need to reinvent education. Completely. We need to reinvent how we teach and how we learn.
And it's not about, you know, digitizing the stuff, putting it on a PC and saying it's there. We need to invent that. And I think a lot of innovation has yet to come there. That's one example. And who is going to do that? What skills are needed? et cetera. There's one example where a lot of you know -- a lot of investments in terms of you know those innovators are interesting.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Yes, please, Jeff.
>> JEFF BRUEGGEMAN: I agree with everything you said. And one of the interesting opportunities of cloud is we see even large companies outsourcing these issues, because companies like Verizon, Microsoft or AT&T, you know, we have dedicated security staff. We have the expertise. The but you can let the business people go off and do what they want to do, and application developers do what they want to do, but one of the things we are trying to do is educate small businesses about how to make decisions about the cloud and incorporate it and I think that is -- you mentioned the application developers, I think the other part is, as the users of the technology, there's a real need for education, as well. But there are a lot of materials and things that we can build onto that I think.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: The second remote participant. How many remote participants do we have right now? Four. Okay.
>> HEATHER SHAW: We have four remote participants. We have a question actually -- well one of them is a hub so we might have more than four participating.
We have a question from the Vanuatu hub. They are asking who will police the cloud and what are the international policies to deal with issues and problems there?
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: That's a very good question. And I think it touches on what we discussed in the previous setup and you can see we have our own individual ideas but not the ultimate clue how to answer this.
But I'm wondering, if I don't want to put David too much on the spot here, but having been so close to big governments, maybe he has an idea of what kind of thinking is floating around in that space without making any kind of precise commitments or statements. But what's the collective thinking?
>>DAVID GROSS: Oh you put me on the spot, have you?
You know, I think -- well, first a disclaimer, I don't speak for any Government. Especially not for my own anymore. But I think that you have -- you know there's a tremendous amount of tension on all of these issues. And we have seen that reflected in the conversation I think this morning.
And for -- you know, I'm struggling a little bit. Because I want to be optimistic about how all of this -- how all of this plays out. And I think it does. Let me change it around a little bit, if I may, and focus on the fact that I think a piece that is missing here in the discussion, and implicitly tied up perhaps by the question, is the role of the people in this room. And those who are listening in.
Governments are by nature quite reactive. I think that's true for all governments. And I think that's not a criticism. I think that's actually just a historic truism.
And they will react to the views of people here. And others who have interests.
There are -- and I think this was made clear earlier. There is – governments, like companies and individuals, have very limited resources and they have to focus on that, which is reflective of those things that they think are important.
And I think it is incumbent on people here attending IGF and listening in and others to really identify what is important. And why it is important for their future. And I think what we've done here is identified a number of things. The norms of privacy. The norms of importance of connectivity, and therefore in the case of mobile spectrum it is important that those norms be internationally developed. Large governments, as well as small governments, play a relatively equal role in these things. I think there is often a sense that the Developing World lags. There's no reason for them to lag in this area. As I think it was made clear by a number of comments that the importance of this issue is probably greater in the Developing World in many respects than it is in the Developed World. In part because of the issue of choices.
So I guess turning it around, it's not so much about big governments and so forth or small governments or Developed World versus Developing World. It's really a question of trying to articulate what those issues are and how they should be addressed. Whether it's in the security area or whether it's in the area of privacy or whether it's in the area of connectivity. Did I dodge the question well enough?
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Absolutely. Thanks very much, David.
>> Well done.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: I would like to move back to a topic that was touched several times-- it was about capacity building skills. We need more developers, Nasser said [and] I recall in the introductory comments Erik said. Innovation, I think, was the name-- here [we have] 4,000 developers, and I wonder where do they come? From what kind of educational background do they have, and what are they working on, and what kind of innovation do they have?
>> ERIK HERSMAN: The iHub in Nairobi was an open space for developers to come in and in the best sense hack on new ideas-- there are over 5,000 of them. I would say about 65% of developers, about 30% are designers or bloggers or researchers and the other 5% are miscellaneous. And what they are working on is, it differs. So we had a big conference last -- in June, called Pivot 25 where we had the top 25 applicants out of 100 plus from all over East Africa with all of their ideas on mobile apps and services, and they stood up on stage and had to pitch their idea in front of a panel of a jury. And [over] which they got grilled by afterwards. And then -- and also in front of 300 other people. And out of them, some of them went into the incubator, others got funding, others went into the U.S. to demo in front of the Silicon Valley crowd, and this is the kind of thing we're seeing.
So while there are web site kind of apps being built, that's true because of the mobile web kind of push these days. Really, what our competitive advantage is in East Africa, especially in Nairobi, is mobile. So anywhere you see mobile payments, mobile entertainment, that kind of thing happening, you see some of the best guys operating from Nairobi and that's what we have.
>> What kind of background do they have? Are they -- are they internationally educated?
>> ERIK HERSMAN: Yeah who are they, no not internationally educated, by and large, but they do come from a more middle class Kenyan income because they had to have access to some type of computer growing up. Many of them go on to university and the reason why membership is free at the iHub is because the guys with the best ideas and the time are usually university students or soon after university grads. And that's where we see the kind of creativity come.
Now what the mix is that's needed -- and this comes from the big corporate partnerships we have; we do have corporate partnerships with Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Wananchi, Samsung-- they can help bring the business perspective that some of these same app dev[eloper]s don't have. They have workshops, and teach about new services offered by their companies and what else is available out there, so that kind of partnership between big corporates in the tech space and the developers isn't everywhere. But we can say that we at least have it here in Nairobi.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: I think I have really a shining star in the continent as far as innovations, and I think other countries are looking at you for examples [of] how we can do the kind of innovation fostering basically. Regarding the membership you said, 5,000 people, right, mostly students. How do you connect them? How do they -- how do they select them? Is this free? I mean all of this -- you don't want to answer that here, I will go and grab you and get the information. But I think these are very important for us to learn because we really want to have like a -- the only way we can bounce around the ideas and free and open environment is great broadband and so on, but that's the proper way and then other places can fail and learn from that. I think I actually have a similar approach. So if you could share with us that would be great.
>> ERIK HERSMAN: I'll make it quick and say we stepped back a level earlier this year and said, what have we learned and what have the other hubs and labs coming in across the continent that we can join with we have the A -- we have five labs ranging from Ethiopia to Uganda Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa, and there's more all the time so the idea there is so the lessons learned by one can be shared with the others.
You know how do we choose? It's open membership. Anybody can sign up, but the space has a finite amount of room so that means we have to have tiers; to be one of the green members, there's only 250 of them, [so] you have to pass through -- you have to do an application and be approved by the Advisory Board which is made up of your peers, people from the community.
And you have to be working on a prototype of something or at least done something very credible in the tech space to be in there.
And that makes sure that the membership, who actually comes in and uses the iHub and resources on a daily basis, are really being proactive; they are not just the talkers they are the people who do things. I can also get into detail with you on this later.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: Very quick because I'm afraid time runs by. Please.
>> Just real quick, a new trend I'm seeing is the desire to promote applications for specific uses. So we have what's an M health programme, which is designed to encourage apps developers to develop health care apps. We've also seen some interest in energy efficiency apps so I think there's a real opportunity with governments to try to take areas you would like to see on the development, and our question was why do all of the apps go to gains and not to some of these other issues? So I think that's an interesting way to think about how to try to pull the demand in a certain direction.
>> HERBERT HEITMANN: I have to unfortunately close the workshop now. I would like to thank all members here on the panel, Alice, everybody here around me. But the whole group delivered what I hoped: that we had a very lively conversation around the topic. I was supposed to try to do kind of a summary, I think the best way of doing this is, I think the combination of entrepreneurial spirit from Government to the young developers was this optimism, was even on the very delicate questions we saw being demonstrated here is probably the best recipe that is a promise to Government that we are following not just a couple of opportunities. It's going to continue, I wish all of us a good continuation of a very successful IGF. Thanks for joining. And have a nice rest of the day.
>> Thank you very much.
(Applause)
(Session ended at 10:31 a.m.)