The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. 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 event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: So, good morning, everyone who has come along to this session off the Dynamic Coalition on public access in libraries. We're one of the various Dynamic Coalitions at the Internet Governance Forum built around the idea that as we look to ensure that everyone has the possibility to connect to the internet, that public access, and this is access understood as access through public centers such as libraries, but plenty others, also telecenters, has an important role both in giving people who don't have the opportunity to connect at home the chance to get online but also as a complicate to private access.
So, we bring together people who are from the library sector, you can guess from the title. I'm from the National Federation of Library Associations and Institutions from IFLA who works a lot to develop libraries in developing countries and others across the NGO sector who are particularly interested in the potential of this. Now, a year or so again, evidence from Stanford's deliberatative polling exercise showed that of all of the getting the next billions online, public access was one of the lowest hanging fruit. We have this preexisting network. The questions was how do we use it, how do we leverage that possibility and I hope this session today will help us move in this direction. So, I'm going to hand it over to Valeria Betancourt who is going to be or moderator for today.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you, very much. We have Esmeralda who will introduce that and will frame the discussion of the panel.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: Good morning, everyone. So, the session is centered around this public access toolkit that the International Federation of Library Association and the DC PAL lists and develops over the past few months. The idea is to provide librarians at the national, regional, local level a set of rules, a set of tools to advocate for public access this their regions. And the reason why we developed it is that we know that public access, public internet access in libraries is real, good, and libraries have been providing that access for centuries, right?
But, access to knowledge, I mean, but of course with the advent of the digital infrastructure, things got a little bit more complicated, if you will. And so, the landscape now includes in our opinion, and we're here to seek suggestion of any kind, the landscape now includes infrastructure.
So, how it is important and how it changes public access includes finance, of course, and includes regulatory bodies in general and then privacy and legal aspects.
So, we structure and we created this, we developed these four topics. Always having the libraries in mind and we are now on our second draft, I would say. The second draft would be available on the IGF website for you to comment and send any suggestions you may have to make this really worthwhile tool for libraries.
So, the first round was sent to the DC PAL list and to IFLA, ICANN international federation of library association committees and we incorporated those suggestions. So, now, the second iteration is also the reason request we're here. We have experts and we hope to gather from them important information but from all of you. So, please, if you have any suggestions, send it to us via the link that you will find on the IGF website or contact us just to meet with us after this session, and hopefully, the toolkit will be ready in a few months and will be useful for libraries and librarians alike worldwide. Thank you.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you very much, Esmeralda. As you have heard, the toolkit aims to provide librarians with the knowledge needed to provide internet access so the panel will focus on identifying issues and recommendations to overcome the financial and cultural barriers to provide public access to internet and we have a set of four experts that will touch on different aspects, particularly around what it entails to make public access easy, affordable and scalable, and will suggest some ideas also on what policies should be prioritized.
So, I will ask each speaker to introduce themselves when it's their turn to speak, and then to address any specific issues. So, let me start with Don Means. So, Don, if you can please introduce yourself. And also, let us know a little bit what are the most promising developments at the moment in terms of technologies, particularly at the level of infrastructure that could bring libraries and users online. So, you have the floor, please.
>> DON MEANS: Thank you, Valeria. Good morning. Libraries are fascinating in that they represent an intersection of perhaps more issues related to connectivity and access and speech and privacy and infrastructure than maybe any other institution or possible topic. I just wanted to touch on the infrastructure component for a moment, if I could. And that is the connectivity infrastructure is always composed of both wired and wireless elements and most all of us connect directly end users with wireless, but there's always a wire line somewhere behind that. Whether it's the cell connections or the Wi‑Fi routers that were connected to here right now. How this evolves in the economics of it, I think someone else is going to address, but generally speaking, the wireless offers the cubicity and mobility, generally, and then the wire line offers the reliability and the capacity that the networks rely on. And I want to make this point about connectivity versus capacity as we look to reach farther out into communities and markets, and that is that wireless is generally less expensive and can reach farther, faster. People would like to have 4K cat videos, of course, or whatever all the time, but generally, the applications that are most valuable to most people don't require the greatest capacity. Mail, basic web pages, even video conferencing can be done at a half a megabit per second very well. So, the point is to extend the infrastructure farther as soon as possible and allow that wireless will pull fiber behind it.
We have an example of one of our projects in Kansas that was using wireless to extend a, luckily a fiber connection to the library out into hot spots in the community, and these were public places, senior center, a public park, and a recreational center.
And, they were very popular. This is library Wi‑Fi. Hundreds of millions of people depend on library Wi‑Fi for their access, either entirely or the at least partially.
And everyone likes it. It's extremely popular, and what happened in this case was that at certain periods of the year, more data was flowing through these remote access points than through the library itself. What that did was allow the community, the city government, as a matter of fact, to justify running fiber connections to these facilities as an upgrade.
And so, this is kind of the point is that libraries can act as lead users, advance users of technology and demonstration sites for other technologies and for building out infrastructure to and through the library, we like to say. So, this is, last point I would want to make about infrastructure is that the more shared infrastructure is, the more efficient and effective it is. And we, these are things we build in common, our roads, our other systems. We all use them and it doesn't matter whether that's water in a public facility or water in a home, it's the same system. It's the same with communications infrastructure and the efficiencies are to build shared infrastructure and using libraries and other anchor institutions, schools, clinics and so forth as both end points serving at least half the population, at least in the US, then offers a way to interconnect with those points and extend it further to reach homes and offices in the whole community, so called middle‑mile.
And this has proven a very effective way to develop infrastructure and an important role for libraries to play. Thank you.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you very much, Don. Certainly infrastructure strategies is a must, and particularly in the context of developing countries so thank you for those remarks. Next, I have Roger Baig. Roger, if you can also let us know where you come from, a little bit about you, and if you can provide some examples of countries where regulation favors development of public access solutions, it would be very nice for the discussion. Thank you.
>> ROGER BAIG: Thanks for the invitation. I'm coming from a new state not even recognized by the UN called Catalonia. I was invited not for this but because I participate in a community network. Community networks is linked with what Don was explaining at the last. It's the people, the citizens taking action to build their own infrastructure to reach the closest internet access. And in most of the cases, at least in the early days, this connection was the library. The local library in the villages.
Yeah, these rises a lot of questions regarding legal aspects and regulatory aspects. Especially for those who make the connection available, huh? We have this civil liability, the secondary liability. The secondary liabilities about if somebody infringed copyrights, for instance, copyright and rights, the first liability that will one who made the illegal use of the copyrights, but the secondary liabilities, those who made or helped to make this possible and in this case, if you make available the internet connection that was used to infringe the law, maybe you have problems. One of the questions we were proposing is where to start with, where to begin with. From our experience, we can say that the best way to start with is just do something. Shared something, then we will start facing problems, and little by little, it, we will build knowledge. I can understand that a village librarian is someone that has many other occupations and to be a law expert, the citizens are neither law experts so it's just by practice that we can learn.
In most of the countries, and this was the second question I was proposing, if I could provide examples of countries where regulation favors the development of public access solutions, in most of the western countries, I dare say that the regulation is good enough to go for extending the public access to the citizens. The only problem is that it's not the law, the laws themselves but how they are interpreted by the dominant actors or players in the telecommunications field. That is a strong interest in making or delivering the message that very few things are allowed, and they are, by going to them, are those that the big telecoms can do. And this is not exactly true. We have learned that there are many other options. It has not, so, from what the legal perspective is possible to what is implemented in reality, there is a big gap which can transform into opportunities, and this is what we have learned with the collaboration of libraries and other public access points.
So, this would be more or less what I would like to say. Now, I hand over to you, Valeria.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you very much, Roger, particularly for reminding us about the power of collective intelligence and shared knowledge creation and development. That's crucial aspect of ensuring and expanding access for sure. So, next, I have Peter Micek. Peter, I will also ask you to please say a little bit about you and also share your view about possibilities to offer public access. Is it a condition on installing filters or identifying users, what impact does this have on the effectiveness of public access solutions?
>> PETER MICEK: Thank you. Yes, so, first, I am Peter Micek. I'm general counsel at Access Now. We are a global human rights organization that works with the intersection of human rights and technology and advocates for digital rights. A couple things that we do that are relevant I think here are first convening the right con event series, we'll be going to Tunisia in June of 2019. And hopefully, welcoming a lot of these subjects here. But, we also work closely on data protection regulation advancing that in both Europe and worldwide. And I think that's a really key issue that libraries and public tax facilities can lead on is explaining to people their data protection laws and helping them exercise those rights. Of course, public access facilities should also do their best to respect data protection and privacy rates. So, from the legal perspective, I think there's great capacity for public access facilities to provide notice to users, to individuals, to their communities, notice of what their rights are, and opportunities on how to exercise those rights.
So, starting with notice, I think we want people to understand the basis of what their rights are, so as a human rights organization, we looked to the global human rights instruments. I think this toolkit is an opportunity to distill some of the basic international norms from things like the international could have intent on civil and political ‑‑ covenant on civil and political rights but also the new sustainable development goals, 16‑ten, for example, which provides access to information. That's part of freedom of expression. So, the rights at their base are data protection, privacy and freedom of expression, which includes access to information, from our perspective. And taking them in that order, we can look to laws like the General Data Protection Regulation and the EU as a place that fairly, it is a complicated law, especially in its interpretation, but at its base, the rights are fairly simple.
I think that these public access facilities can show people how they have the right to know the purpose for which their data is being collected. They have the right to access the data, their personal data that's held by entities who have collected it. They can modify and delete that data, and they can object to its processing, which could include turning their personal data into profiles or could include sharing with other entities. This includes libraries strive to minimize the data, the personal data they collect on individuals and should make it very clear how people can access the data that's held on them and modify and delete and object to processing of that data.
And so in this many, many countries, I think are starting to pass data protection regulations and create these independent authorities. Just as individuals can go to, say the public access facility to exercise their data protection rights, they should also be shown where the local data protection authority is so they can go and get the government of the public body's support. I do, yeah, another question was about sometimes these facilities are required to put in place privacy invasive measures and technical filters that impact peoples' rights to privacy, data protection and freedom of expression. I think this again, yes, there are, there can be legal requirements that we think often folia foul of international human rights law and norms but nonetheless are required. In these cases, I think, again, going back to notice. Making people aware of these filters and of the requirements to, you know, surveil your networks is one step you can take to build peoples' capacity to know their rights and to exercise them. Explain how a filter works. What it means that you don't get full search results in a certain database because of censorship requirements and filtering. Explain a little bit about online privacy and the fact that when you're connecting to third parties over internet, there are various points of vulnerability and, you know, if the law allows, it's best to explain to people how their own government might be taking advantage of these vulnerabilities, including at these public access points.
So, I think, yeah, building that capacity for people to know what their rights are when they go into online spaces is one clear way of, and I hope this toolkit does provide some examples. Just to point to some Access Now materials and opportunities, we have built a guide on how individuals can exercise their data protection rights under laws like GDPR so we have a fully accessible database had a that should be adaptable in many regions and we have that in French and English at our booth here in the village, for example. We also provide a help desk, a digital security help line.
So, that's a 24 hour service that operates in at least eight languages for free, providing Civil Society and we interpret that very broadly with free of charge, 24 by seven digital security support and that can be advice, it can be assessments, and recommendations on what tools like secure browsing tools, encrypted messaging and networking, and email tools. Or, it can be actual intervention when something has already gone wrong. So, we aren't the only service that provides a digital security help line like this, the help desk, and there are more regional and local help desks that are growing and we're trying to foster a community of sharing, of best practice in this area.
And again, happy to show that with the toolkit. Thanks.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you, Peter. I think it's interesting, the link that you established between libraries and the exercise of human rights is important to, I think recognize that not only they are contributing this public facilities to access to information and knowledge, but perhaps creating this enabling environments for users to have control of their personal data and also reinforce the exercise of other human rights online and offline.
So, next, I have Leandro Navarro from Pangea, Catalonia. And Leandro, I could like you to please let us know a little bit more about, clearly many libraries and public access centers will look at traditional funders, local government, Ministries, responsibility responsible for digital affairs for support. What other potential sources of funding are there and how you K what you can share from your experience in terms of the stability, financial stability of these initiatives.
>> LEANDRO NAVARRO: Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, when talking about like new forums or alternative forums of financing and investment, probably we need to broaden the role of libraries. I was looking at Wikipedia for the definition of libraries, and I liked it very well. It talks about collections of materials available to the public. Later on it mentions that there are physical and digital materials so it's a lot of fruitful thought in terms of that we recognize that the technology substrate of the libraries has changed a lot and currently, as was said, we need infrastructures to access either paper books or digital materials and they have to be universal. That's the main objective.
One of the aspects we have working on with the guifi.net and also working with group is this University models so libraries sit into the communities and infrastructure sharing is one way of in fact financing by review reducing the cost of the infrastructure and the foundation proposal of municipal ordinance, which promotes the sharing and the between public, private and community infrastructure so let's say the public land doesn't become privatized when someone deploys infrastructure. So, communities can benefit from the reduction of cost in this case.
I don't know if you heard, but there are somewhere I found initiatives like they talk about digital exchanges which are like infrastructures, like where you find small racks where content produced locally can be stored. Like, imagine a kind of public CDN in a way or at the local level. So, this kind of infrastructures of course are profitable, not, let's say in the sense of economic profit, private operators like the Googles and the Facebooks have demonstrated that it's possible to provide free service, let's say, in exchange of something. But, also, there are social profits and this social profit is benefits for where everyone can contribute, everyone can benefit. That's the opportunity for libraries.
And regarding the sources of income to support that infrastructure, the typical model that the private industry uses is they earn money from reselling our private data and it seems to be quite profitable. The typical way of public services is taxes and obviously, there are many opportunities. Since we have social impact, seems reasonable to go to some kind of, sometimes global funds of that work with the, they call it social impact funds, social impact investment, typical funds and things like that which I want to invest in economic but mainly in social profit. There's a well criticized universal service funds model which the industry pays to itself and sometimes it's paid to the one that is the main responsible of the problem. And but I've seen that there are interesting initiatives, like, for instance, what they call it, connectivity bonds which is an amount of money given not to the provide but to the consumer so that he can use that bond to find access to knowledge, content, and whatever on its own which promotes local developments and that can include also public libraries.
Of course, the tax of these taxability operations that happen create value for a few but not for everyone.
And finally, an interesting possibility is there's a recent discussion about, they call it the universal basic income and another kind of bond could be given it people to produce and acquire knowledge, because in the end, when they produce and acquire knowledge, we all benefit, people make wiser decisions and creates more value for society. So, universal basic income could be used to support this, let's say knowledge workers that can be useful for the local libraries, but also for the local, the global movement.
So, I mean, this is kind of a review of some opportunities.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you, Leandro. Definitely in terms of funds and stability necessary to think out of the box and come up with more innovative solutions. Last but not least, I have Maia Simonshivili from the Democratic of Georgia. Maia, going from civic to Democratic republic. Is the library more important now to providing public access?
>> MAIA SIMONSHIVILI: Thank you for giving me an opportunity to present my access here, thank you to all people. The National parliamentary library was founded as public library in 1848 but it became later during the war period for parliamentary library to defend book store it's and to defend all facilities of, from selling and from other problems so we are operating as a public library.
The role of the library through the transition period was not so big at the beginning because it was war and people needed to defend the buildings and books and everything. But, I went today, I compared our development for 20 years, it's really clear and we have some evidences. Now, so, internet was expounded, and I'm proud to say that Georgia is one of the most Democratic countries in the world, in post‑soviet region, well. For example, we don't have any terms of shipping internet. Everybody can look and write whatever they want. I don't know if it's good, but, I think it's good because people can overcome any problems and any issues but they begin to think about it.
And now for today, we have very ‑‑ digital library with new collections where we have new catalog systems and the most important, we have public access. You note ten years ago, it was idea that libraries are not needed anymore because there's internet and everybody can find something in internet. But, today, we see it has changed and people trust library much more, saying, for example, sometimes because of sources of we have to be responsible for sources. We have to defend our copy rights and copyrights what we are presenting. And during this period, also, since 2012, the library began new project, equilibrium, and it create more than 150 libraries with computers, with internet access. In villages, they are not by access expanded yet. In our library and in the city, we almost all have Wi‑Fis at home, too, 80 percent of the citizens in the city have internet and 50 percent in the villages have internet. But, we need to, this broadband connection to remote ‑‑ to expand it. And what I want also to mention, as the library now gun to cooperate with business sector, it's a really big problem about regulations because we don't have the love of philanthropy. What means is that business in the post‑soviet world, you know how business is made mostly and people don't want to give money not to have gain, of course, it's clear.
And therefore, we need philanthropic laws so they are able to give culture more funding and to give education more funding. So, we would be very happy about it because it's on personal levels, it's on business men agrees to fund to cooperate with us. But we have quite normal for this.
Although the other issue is that library education was collapsed at the Soviet, collapsed. It was not perfect, but now we have the library education in only one institution, but we don't have PhD anymore, yet. So, I have to say that this type of initial parliamentary library, with 400 people, are the only staff who knows this librarianship from the beginning until end but what we really need is new technologies. For example, we really, we have digital collections but we need new technologies, we need, you know, some digital ‑‑ have video access, public access, interview model, everything connected and involved in one packages sometimes. I'm talking about the best digital libraries in the world so we need this technical facility, of course, and we need all those on training so to expand and to develop and so if you have any questions.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you, Maia. Yes, let me open the particular for reactions, questions, comments to the interventions that we have heard from the speakers before, yes.
>> Thank you. This is a very interesting point about the dynamic between public services and commercial services and the view that libraries take away business from commercial interests is an old one, if misplaced. Going back to books themselves, why would anybody ever buy a book if they could get it at the library. What happened, of course, was that libraries created readers that wanted their own books and I'd say that the model applies today in the digital environment where people have an experience of technology and library and appreciate the value of it and then can justify spending their own money for it.
So, for us, it's really a natural partnership that the library opens a basic level, not unlimited, of course, of services and products that can then generate demand for. I also had a question, if I may, for Leandro on the provisions of infrastructure. I know that the models and developed markets do not necessarily apply in other places. What we've seen in the U.S., anyway, is a change in the rules under universal service where they were, as you say, companies providing services and paying themselves to do it through these funds. What was changed several years ago was that rather than restricted to commercial services providers providing connections to libraries and schools, anyone could do that. So, libraries and schools could build their own networks with the same funds or other nonprofits could provide those same services like the research and education networks and even municipalities themselves could qualify for those funds and that has made a big difference in the motivations for what kind of services to provide, and I was curious whether your thoughts on that process change normally managed.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Let me check if there is any other questions so we have a round of responses if possible. If there is any other question or comment, now would be the time to pose it for the panel.
>> Just a comment. I'm from the division foundation. It's a very inspirational talk, actually. I would like to share my experience in Myanmar. We have a project called Beyond Assess. It's leveraging organizations, if there's one on them, actually, so what we just now, the gentleman pointed out here is that the stability of the public library is to important so we have to prove one thing, which is the ownership, ownership to the community. If you can give the ownership to the community, that's solve a lot of problems so let's see, I would give you one example, through these projects, we provided actually three things, one is internet. Two is devices, and three is attaining. And then, we support it through this community library, with four tablets. Cost about maybe total, $500. Then communities started to show these, the knowledge from the online contents to the nearby school that students started to come then always these libraries crowded with students then once this community started to see, they put up their own funding to build a new classroom for ICT training so that's just one of the things that you would see, it's very inspirational, sustainable, I would say. At this moment we are working with 150 libraries across the country and that's why we have to give the ownership. We say we are going to give only four tablets, internet, that's it and we train them then they carry on by themselves. So, that's this kind of model, the ownership model, it works in our country. Thank you.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Okay. So Leandro, I think there are a couple of questions for you, but the other speakers are also free to jump in and provide a perspective.
>> LEANDRO NAVARRO: So, one quick comment is I think the problem of universal service funds is that the name is too nice. But, the, in most cases that I know, it's used to simply reduce the costs of some connections and then governments choose the biggest telecom provider, which is typically the case. The cause of the problem. And they get that tax reduction paid by the other telecom providers in the country.
So, it's very unfair mechanism. Simply called universal service.
And I am really glad to see that there are more examples of users of those funds which are quite big, so the alliance for internet access has one article saying that there are about more than $400 million sitting there waiting to be used. And let's not talk about in the ones that they're used. So, yeah, I think it shouldn't be, I mean, universal access is a public problem, not just a private business, and it's important to give these funds to the trusted entities which are really interested in solving the problem. Preserving the problem for the future tax incentive.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: We will take one more question or comment and then we go to the final remarks.
>> Thank you, Valeria and thank you, Don, for also bringing the questions here. I very much agree with, I am really interested in the concept that Leandro shared about universal models and how libraries are actually everywhere and they solve a problem that happens everywhere in a very similar fashion. But, also, I'm curious in this sense how libraries will be a key actor in the public access in general, problem. And I think we, every part of the actors that are involved in this problem needs to play a role and we need to identify exactly what the role of the libraries are going to be and in this this sense, librarians, I believe, can be the actor within the communities that facilitate a process of engagement with the communities like the governments will be those or need to be those. They need to step up.
To provide the conditions for the people to be connected, but the governments can be on the field. They are not there with the community together, and this is actually the case for libraries. So, I'm eager to listen more about the progress of this space in particular because the librarians are there in the fields. So, yeah. That's it.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: So can I ask the speakers to just provide the final remarks in less than one minute each so we can make it. In terms of the time of the session.
>> MAIA SIMONSHIVILI: You were talking about connection between libraries or schools. We have some poorer students who are not able to buy books, school books, and therefore, our library provides the books, we are online. We are public access and they can not buy anything from the library work pages so every student who are not able to buy this books from schools, they can study or library. So, it's what we can do now.
>> Thank you. Don was discussing the relation between public services and commercial services, and we have a practical case in my village why we use the library to connect in the houses and now, more than 90 percent of the households how to connect it to professional services delivered on common shared infrastructure. This is a nice case makes clear that the library helped to spread the digital work among population but at the same time, it dries up a market so this is imperfect case and we are talking about the village of 350 inhabitants, no more than 100 houses all together.
And then a comment regarding the Myanmar gentleman, we also have a case here. He said he proposed to transfer ownership to the community as a solution to legal problems and definitely again is a case of this. Where he set up a foundation in 2008 and now the foundation takes the liability of those infrastructures that are made available by third parties like libraries so instead of if there is any legal problem, instead of going to each specific library, they go to us and we have gathered some knowledge regarding these issues and we can provide a better response to that. Thanks.
>> I just would like to quickly respond to Nico who asked what is the role of libraries and librarians and I think, it's a very difficult question because libraries are so heterogenous and they are influenced in the place in the world where they are so there's not an answer for all. It's a very localized answer we have to look for. And in my experience one way to find the answer is to carry out in depth community needs assessment which not only highlights what that community really needs because they might not only need a certain kind of connectivity. They might need something else and in that process, you also have the ability to assess what the community has to offer and in that moment, with those two elements what the needs are, what the community has, you can find a solution that is, as we heard many times, bottom up because the topdown solutions don't work for many realities. So, to me, the way the libraries and librarian can facilitate that is like to provide that sort of knowledge together with, of course, other source of expertise.
>> It's interesting while I was hearing you, I believe that also, I come from the community networks territory and we have so much to learn about the librarians. This process was not like from the night to the morning, right? It's not like libraries appear there. It was a progressive thing that covered the whole world so there's another collaboration there in the experience transfer. Moving from what the libraries are, to where they are now. How this happened and if there's a chance set‑up, I think it's extremely valuable to find these spaces to discuss.
>> I don't want to take all the time, sorry, but I just want to say that IFLA is working on this interesting tool that is the library map of the world and essentially we providing an online tool to gather some facts and number about libraries and we are now at the point where, and we still counting, we have sort of a number which is above 2 million in the world of libraries of all sorts.
So, I mean, there is a lot of richness in there and I think together, we can really address these issues.
>> Sure. Thanks. Yeah, I think this was a really rich discussion. On the funding piece, I think we all know how important information technology is to the future of libraries and public access points. To date, that has largely been an area of innovation controlled by the private sector so I do think it's incumbent on the businesses have a responsibility to support public access facilities and building time and through tech transfers and in funding. We've seen, you know, efforts by companies like Mozilla and Microsoft and others to fund development projects extending connectivity.
And this should be, this should continue and increase. However, I do think that many of these projects can suffer from this sort of topdown issues and not really take into consideration the local context and for these reasons, you know, I would support that more of this of sort of funding go to power local communities to better understand their legal rights and risks and then find the right toil solutions which are often open source technological solutions which are often open source based projects using alternative energy and energy use storage to have a more sustainable and kind of rights‑respecting approach to connectivity.
And then, yeah, I think the other place that I see real human rights science is in understanding this fire hose of information that can really get unleashed on people and a lot of the human rights discussions, you know, people are concerned blue print disinformation and willful misinformation and that just want to emphasize that we really depend on these figures in local communities to help people sort through information. Thanks.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you all the speakers for the insights of and I think now I hand it over to Esmeralda just to let us know where it exists in terms of handling the toolkit and then we close this session.
>> ESMERALDA MOSCATELLI: So, as I said at the beginning, the toolkit is now on its second iteration and it is available on the IGF website for comments. I think the Secretariat placed my e‑mail address as a place where you can send any comment you might have so I am, we're looking forward to receive your suggestion and feedbacks. Hopefully, if those could reach us before the Christmas holidays, that would be great. And so that we could spend the next month to integrate the comments and solidify the toolkit and share it again for final revision so if you have any questions, of course, you can talk to any of us or myself after this and I thank you very much for being here. And thank you for your participation.