of the Syria, we welcome you and they are tiati, yawachi to Arana sila, in the mini waka, who also converge here to Wellington. We welcome you here to Al Jawa New Zealand and we know that a number of you have come from afar, and have. traveled the many ways and byways and the skies to be here and in our short mihi whakataw to you. This morning, we paid homage to King itu Haiti authi feruferu, the seventh who is laying in state in tu rangawa, aturanga Wai Wai in the Waikato Hamilton area, some of our local tribes actually have made their way there this morning in our on the marae this morning, paying our respects to kenyatu Haiti, so very fortunate that he is laying in state. But what's what's unique about it is that he was a king that brought together and brought nations and brought countries together, and even as recent as last week, at his 18th coronation, where the Pacific nation, or islands across the Pacific had come together to at the call of the king who was calling for unity so unique that we are gathered here today as Pacific nations and the many nations across the forum that makes up our forum today, and here we are gathered here in our thoughts are with makawariki, his children and the people of Waikato who are hosting the multitude. So welcome. And we come and we share the welcome of our local tribes of teotihua, who are also in Waikato today. So welcome. On behalf of internet New Zealand, I, myself and my fellow colleagues here represent internet New Zealand this morning, and we are looking forward to today's agenda in the next few days as we spend our time together here at takina and Wellington. So welcome once, welcome twice. Tina, go to nakutu, Kyoto,
thank you very much our fellows and our
internet New Zealand representative as well as the Maori representatives of the land, condolences to the king of this land, the people and the tribes, very fortunate to have the opportunity here and to feel welcomed on this land. Kia, ora naka malole Halo, aloha. Kia, Orana, bakalofa, laiatu, Maloney, Talofa, Talofa lava, good morning to you all. Thank you very much our Maori community here, ladies and gentlemen and our distinguished guest, esteemed speakers, Pacific island here our packa
GF, or Pacific internet covenants, forum 2024
fellows, participants from the region who are joining us here today, virtual and we are here in person. Warm greetings to you all, and also like to welcome our lumen. Wow, honorable lumen. Wow. Dame Winnie labon, she's here with us. It's a great pleasure to have you here as the chair of the Pacific Island instructor Internet Society, or the pikaisak, as we know. We'd like to welcome you today to this forum. So we gathered here. The Pacific islands are known for their diversity. Well, we all know we are reaching our cultures, our strong community ties, and it's this spirit of unity and collaboration that we bring us together, as we heard this morning, to address the opportunities and the challenges that come with the rapid evaluation of digital landscape. Any event for any gathering of the Pacific, we always give thanks to the Lord. So before I go further and more on this digital space that we're talking about, I would like to call our pastor, you know, our pika support. We have pastors as well. So we have our brother here from PG Savannah. He will lead us with a prayer, and then we continue with our program. Thank you. Applause.
Bulovinaka tual, just
to clarify, I'm not a pastor,
and I'm just having me the pastor from last year pick a shock in Brisbane. I'm lucky to carry that name, but please, I invite
all of us, if we just
share with us a bit of the Word of God, for we pray and ask for his blessings on this meeting that we will have in this coming week. In Proverbs, three, five and six, it says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, not depend on your own understanding. Take his will in all you do,
and he will show you which path to take. I
ask that we close our eyes in a word of prayer, Heavenly Father,
as we gather here the Pacific Internet Governance Forum,
place in you,
acknowledging our need for your divine wisdom and guidance.
Thank you. The Safe arrivals of our fellows traveling from the various Pacific nations for the presence of our esteemed guests and speakers will share their valuable insight with us today. Express our deepest gratitude the traditional owners of this land honoring their enduring connections to this region. Thank you for your generosity, for their generosity and hospitality in hosting us. May we respect and cherish their cultural heritage as we convene on their land. God we ask
to direct our hearts and minds as we engage in discussion
and make decisions. Help us to seek your will in all our endeavors, trusting not in our own understanding but in your guidance, terminate our paths and so us the way forward, so that our actions and decision aligns with your plans, justice, peace and prosperity. We are also grateful for the diligent efforts of the organizers of the this event, who have worked tirelessly bring this forum to fruition, let's bless each segment of this gathering. May the outcome of our time gather to honor you and bring about significant advancement Internet governance across the Pacific, and ask the courage to make bold decision, humility to listen and the unit to collaborate, effectively creating a safer and more inclusive Internet environment for everyone in Jesus name we pray. Amen. You.
Thank you very much, David, you don't want to
call your pastor, but you're our pastor for today. In the next on our program, I would like to invite our honorable Roman Wow, Dame Winnie with Le Pen. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation short notice this morning for you to deliver the opening remarks. So welcome on the stage of your
day true
our montauks from Papua New Guinea.
Hello to our montauks from Solomons and Vanuatu Nisa bola vanaka. Namaste to our Z's from Fiji. And I also wanted to say KAMNA Maori to our wontox from Kiribati, Yokoi, casalelia to Marshall Islands, alali to Palau, and to now to Polynesia, to value Talofa tokelo, taloha ni Cook Islands, kiorana, koutou, Kato, Tonga, maloleni, Samoa, Talofa and Kia ora. Koutou, to our cousins, the indigenous mais of Aotearoa, New Zealand, thank you for the wonderful welcome I've been thinking because I came to have coffee with Andrew and also Ray, and then they said, How about you get up and say a few words, because I actually wanted to come and support you all, and I wanted to acknowledge your presence. I wanted to acknowledge your commitment to our region, who we really love unconditionally. So first of all, I wanted to acknowledge Andrew molivray, who is the chair of the Pacific Internet Governance Forum, and also Saray, who is the chair of the Pacific chapter for our region. Also wanted to acknowledge all the donors that were up there before, but especially the Asia Pacific network, the pioneers, the visionaries who started this group of our Pacific Internet Governance Forum, and also older UNESCO internet, New Zealand, Diplo, the foundation from the European Union, and also the presence of our fellows. It's also lovely to have you here, and I also see some of the of academia who are also here, because it really is important that we connect all those elements together to support our region. Marley said, If you don't know your history, you don't know where you're coming from, and we always start with Ancestry and history. And I think about that wonderful ocean which is our home. So over 30% of the land's surface, and we actually came from ancestors who navigated that ocean, with the moon, with the sun, with the stars, with the currents. And they navigated, they traveled, and they explored from island to island. And many of them actually stayed. And so you can get Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, in each of the Pacific countries. And the ocean connects us.
And the Pacific Ocean is our ocean. It's our place. And
so those interconnectedness that internet is all about, is really takes that into account.
The other issue is that
I wanted to spell the myth that we are marginalized, and definitely at times we are, but we don't see ourselves as that, that we're not early adopters of technology. We are. You know, many of our people do it because of connectivity, and also the importance of connecting with families, the importance of connecting with each of you, but the rest of the world. We do not exist in isolation. And so your conference is important because governance is about principles, about ethics. It's about integrity, it's about safety and security and the themes that you're covering, like AI, all those themes that are covered in your program reminds us that what drives the connectivity and drives the sacredness of our connection and to preserve what we have, are those principles. We don't need to go and do a PhD on governance. People already know that governance is about ancestry, reminding us about the sacredness of what we have and what we did have, looking after the present and into the future of the generations of our children. So connectivity,
cultures, communities are actually key themes that actually bring us together. And also
what underlies specific governance is the importance of relationship, respect and reciprocity. It's
not about taking and profiting me.
It's actually about them and looking after our peoples. And I've always thought what is really important is to honor the fact that many of our people already have knowledge, capability and capacity because they live that daily reality each day, and how important responses like the conference that you are having respects fact that we do not live in Kiribati, we do not live in Papua, New Guinea, but the importance of listening very carefully, because many of those people know exactly what they need. They know exactly what they want, how we can collectively work together to meet those needs, but more importantly, to build the capability and the capacity of peoples who live in each of those specific countries, it is really important, like all the other parts of the world, ASEAN, European Union, the Americas, that our people also know that this is our place. We can lead and we can work together with you all. So all the best for a wonderful conference. Thank you. We've got a huge commitment to build capacity and capability of our people who live in those home countries. We are vulnerable because many people get skilled and they leave. It's really important that we embrace local is global, and that it's important that that leadership by Pacific for Pacific is supported, and we can only do it when we work together. Paddle our canoes together.
Thank you.
What the thank
you very much for title of your room and Val for that
marvelous welcome remarks to all our Pacific participants here.
Thank you very much.
Next on our program, we have a session with Andrew, our Vice Chair of the PICO sock, and the chair of this packer, GF, from 2024 they have sort of a panel our remarkable sponsors make
this event happened. So without their support, without their you know,
precious to us, we never going to come here in Wellington, New Zealand. We're going to stay and join virtual but without support, the financial support, technical support to us. We can't make this thing happen. So thank you very much. It's good to see some familiar faces. Uh, Kim, round of applause for us, our old people of the Picasso, people supporting us also hand
over to Andrew and the team. Thank you. Applause. Good morning. Thank you Sarai, and thank you Professor Lama, for that
inspiring message to all of us here. So our next is,
I would like to sort of acknowledge the sponsors, as Sarai said, so
we'll have them up here. They're going to be the speakers panelist for the first session.
So, of all, I would like to invite
in a mawa, his senior leadership is from the senior leadership team from the internet and said,
Next is our is the rosemary, Who is CEO of Thank you, Rosemary. And this is Pablo who is senior director engagement APNIC
would also like to invite a representative of
UNESCO,
if you are here,
you will be here, but the speaking will be done via video message. So thank you. Tatifiq from UNESCO,
they represent our partners and sponsors. The Red NZ Auda APNIC UNESCO is one that they're not present here, but I would like to acknowledge is the
European Union and Cade that also provided support
to this specific IGF.
So with that deal, I would like to first of
all invite
tamawa to give us first
speech. Thank you. Tina, Tata, Tanu tu keoko, so
firstly, on
behalf of internet, New Zealand, Vivian maider, born, our chief executive sends her sincere apologies, unable to be here today, so you, I'm sorry, but you've got your you've got her standing, so hopefully I can give a order. Now, the other thing is that my other brief was that she said, when you come down here, you've got five minutes, and can you just welcome them to Wellington? So of course, the brief has changed since I've been here this morning, but Ka Pai, we go with the flow. So IP Rangi Aotearoa is very much proud to be able to support this event. And perhaps I might, firstly, absolutely welcome you to to our whenua. And as I say, there's listening to Dame this morning and thinking of and also the welcome of Kotahi Tanga and I recently went over to the Asia Pacific IGF forum, and one of the real Stark observations that I noted was actually missing voice of indigenous peoples of Tangata, whenua, and so one of the you know, and so I'm quite curious about that, and I'm curious about as we think about what Dame has shared with us, and we think about Kotahi, Tanga, and what's happening here in Aotearoa, Where there's a need for collectivity, a need for in the perspective of Maori, to come together and to unite as one voice. And that had me think about a number of things one was about. So what does the internet mean? And what does access and equity mean in our participation in the internet and in the infrastructure, for example, in Aotearoa, and how might we as Maori actually bring ourselves together and our voice? So that's the first kind of insight and that, you know, I think about. And what do we as internet New Zealand need to do? Because internet, internet New Zealand looks after we're a CC, TLD, so we look after the internet on behalf of New Zealand, but that also means Maori, and that means that we need to be thinking about inclusivity in how we, you know, and how we enable Maori and our people only to participate. So that leads some big questions, and I think some work for us to do. And as I was over in a Asia Pacific, and largely attended was an Internet Governance Forum, largely attended by the greater part of Asia, I was thinking, Where is the Pacific, though? So I think that's an opportunity, as we think about the the broader global conversation, and how do we connect in the decision making of internet, in these different forums? And so I was quite curious, and thought about, well, what does ICANN mean? And that is the, you know, the I only know it as I can, but register the domains, you know, Canadian based, and that's where decision making happens, and it also happens in forums like this. So I was really interested in, how do we collaborate as a Pacific nation? Also, does that mean for Maori? What does it mean for Maori connecting with our Pacific brothers and sisters, and how do we actually be a part of the global conversation? And so Internet governance was really that was quite an interesting topic that I thought I really didn't understand it. But what I saw was so that from the time the internet started, was that it was a started as the coming together of technical experts as the internet, internet grew and started and it was to enable communication. But of course, now, as years have come forward, now the world has changed, and now we have to start thinking about the ethical considerations. We have to start thinking about online harm, and how do we actually ensure that the voices of people are included in those conversations? And how do we think about AI Artificial Intelligence, but also the decision making we're building these platforms and you know, technical platforms. How might we ensure that our ancestral knowledge and our language is protected in these sorts of in these platforms? So it does create some big questions, but I think some big opportunities to really think about, what does that mean for us as the our different nations and the protection of our ancestral knowledge. But how do we be a part of the decision making about how that's done? So whether that's about the rules? For example, in internet New Zealand, we're having considerations at the moment around the.nz rules. So part of our work is to think about, how do we include Maori, about when we set those rules to ensure, actually, it's Maori that are making those helping us to build those rules. So there's quite a bit of work for us to do in that, in that arena for Internet New Zealand, is that, again, can get quite seriously about our role as internet New Zealand in Aotearoa, and what is the contribution we make to our country. And we have committed, our organization has committed, as a to be, to be Te Tiriti centric. And why is that? Because Te Tiriti or Waitangi is a founding, constitutional founding foundation for us in our country, and we see that we have a role and a responsibility as an organization to contribute to who we are as Aotearoa and the part we play alongside Tangata tiriti, but we have to really understand that for ourselves, the context of Te Tiriti, and how do we play a part in that. So that means acknowledging Tangata, whenua. It means when we're thinking about our work, that we are thinking about, how do we include the voices of Maori? So that's the journey that we are on, and where we've just launched our strategy and council, our council, and want to actually fit to as well from our council, who's a big driver on our council, so that we set a vision as a as a company, as internet New Zealand, or how we are going to become Te Tiriti centric and and how we build our organization. But that also means about how we engage differently with our communities, and how do we start to reach out in different ways? But the main thing that I really probably wanted to share today was, and, you know, really, was really pleased to come here and support because I did want to understand what our Pacifica brothers and sisters inounga are doing, and then to think about, how do we share our learnings together? What can we learn from you? And I'm really interested in how we might plant some seeds and think about the broader global conversation in the Asia Pacific could be a starting point. But how do we get our voices to those tables where key decisions made? And also not forgetting that there's the wasis 2020, and then there's the UN so what does it mean for us, as you know, as the people of our nations, and how do we get our voices into those conversations, helping to set rules, helping to work alongside the our tech, you know, our Tech Wizards who are building these platforms and help to set, I think, the standards and the ethical standards that Dame talked about. So look, that's my my quick reflections. I'm not sure if that, like I said, as I came here to welcome you, and again, if you want to, if you're here in poliki, you feel like going for a bit of a walk. Then if you just to where we probably Oriental Bay, just, I'm going to point that direction, but there's a tangi tequil. So we've got a beautiful manga there that is watching over us during this conference. You'd like to go for a bit of a walk. Then, I would encourage it. That's a manga that connects to Taranaki iwi, teoti awa, Taranaki whanui. And so there's a bit of history and whakapapa and korero about this Rohit too. So again, just to really welcome you and hope you have a great week this week. Kia ora,
thank you any more for the information for some of us, internet and said, has been very
vital in supporting iced tea development the Pacific for quite some time, I think in probably three years back,
have been supporting us in a similar way. Next would be Rosemary Sinclair. He is CEO of Auda Auda
has been supporting
the Pacific for some time now, and let's give Rosemary time share with us
feel a little more comfortable in this way. Thank you so much
for those very warm remarks. And I just really want to say that we from Auda are absolutely delighted to be here. We very much enjoyed and learned so much from the Pacific IGF last year in Brisbane. So we're really honored to be able to continue to participate and be part of this journey and conversation. Our purpose in coming here really is to listen to you and how we might be able to contribute. So I wanted to point out my colleagues who have joined me on this trip. There are many of us here, and the opportunity for you to chat with people from Auda is not limited to just myself, so perhaps if I start at the back of the room, Sabina Fernando, if you wouldn't mind just standing up, Sabina, just very briefly, just so people get to Know the outer folk. Annalise Williams from Auda. Jordan Carter from Auda, Jane Smith from Auda, and
Bruce Tonkin from Auda. So
please take the opportunity to speak to any one of us about ways that we might be able to contribute and help. As I say, our is really to listen. We're delighted to be part of this multi stakeholder community. It's a model that we really believe in. It's a model that solves problems much more effectively and strongly than what I call the hub and spoke model, where you send some submission in you really have no idea what happens to it, and then the answer comes out. That's not very effective, and it certainly doesn't create very much buy in and commitment for ongoing solutions. So some think that our multi stakeholder model is chaotic, messy, it's all of those things, but it's very effective. One thing that we really do understand is for us in particular, to work hard to achieve the promise of participation. We talk about multi stakeholder model. We talk about more participation. There's a lot of hard work that is needed to be done to achieve that promise. That's an area where we feel we could contribute. It's incredibly important. And I first met Andrew at an ICANN meeting. I think we were in a workshop together, and I just want to let you know that Andrew is a very strong, very effective advocate for the Pacific that I'm sure is telling you something you already know. But sometimes you know, it's nice to have someone from a faraway land confirm what you already think Drew has been doing wonderful work in ICANN, bringing a strong message about the need and importance of Pacific participation in all the fora, ICANN is certainly listening survey in particular, and shortly we'll be all meeting zhirong. So much promise there, I feel sure. But I wanted to explain
before I finish a little about
Auda, I'm sure I could go on about Auda and the.au and what we do in Australia. Bruce can talk to us for weeks about the DNS and technical matters, but I wanted to tell you about Auda through the lens of our values. I want you to really understand a bit more about Auda than what we do technically and what we do. We have three values
at
Auda, and they are values that we try to deeply live every day. The first value is we contribute. We contribute locally and we contribute globally. So our insight, our knowledge, our resources, our time, our effort, we devote to contributing. The second is we have a deep ethos that we do our work better when we do it together, the Better Together
is our second value.
And again, we live that very deeply. We are always trying to find ways to do things together, not to do things for people or to do things to people, but to do things together. And our third value
is that we strive for excellence.
We don't pretend that we are excellent. We don't ever imagine that we're going to be excellent. We strive in everything we do to do it the best way that we can. So that's a continual journey of learning and knowledge gathering. It means that we're open to new ways of thinking and new ways of doing, because we're in this state of being and moving towards rather than feeling that we've arrived and that we're in a stronger position than a position of learning and sharing. So there's much more about those values on our website, but I just wanted to unity of your time to share with you the things that drive us and the things that will really underpin the many conversations that I hope you have with us during this week. Thank you.
Thank you, Rosemary. Our next speaker here from representing APNIC
is Pablo. He's a part of the senior management
of APNIC and his senior director
engagement.
Thank you, nako, too. It's an honor to be here with
you today in altara, New Zealand. APNIC has more than 500 members here, and we're very happy to be with them. Thank you for the great welcome,
also from internet New Zealand. It is very meaningful for us
to be here with you. The weather is not so warm, but your hospitality is the warmest that's for sure. Deep condolences for the loss of your king, unifying force. Thank you, sabanaka, for the welcome prayer, and it is impossible to match
the welcoming remarks of the first speaker
and how we were so elegant and graceful with very little time to prepare, I think I could ever do that with weeks of preparation. Thank you very much. Um, thank you so much Saray and Andrew for your great work and efforts in putting together the program of the Pacific Internet Governance Forum. It's always a super pleasure to partner with you and pikaisuk. I remember conversations
really a few months ago with Terry and Ellie,
the question of, What if we are able to sort of co host, co locate the APNIC Conference with the Pacific IGF, and now you made it a reality. So that's a really, really good thing. I'm very happy. We really welcome very much when different initiatives converge with the APNIC Conference. This is the best way to build community, build bridges between communities. So we are again, extremely happy to be able to these things together. We have fellows and participants from all over Asia Pacific, but importantly, from Oceania, from the Pacific region, and it's too late to have the APNIC Conference with that specific focus and to cater as best as possible to half of the registrations of the conference are from participants from the region. And I hope that participants from this event can also benefit and take value of the APNIC Conference, so you're very welcome as well. I think there is no other part of the world where overcoming distance is most meaningful. It's such a challenge, and how the Pacific is working day by day, in overcoming remoteness, to connect with the world through many means, but one of them via the Internet. It is one of the most important technical marvels that humanity has been able to overcome, to be that distance and connect the Pacific to the rest of the world, all of these without losing character, without losing culture, preserving traditions, and being able to also give a voice and that perspective to the world's discussions, because the Voices from here really can add a lot into regional and global discussions. For example, in Internet governance, it's very important that these forums can connect with wider forums, and that your voices are heard and amplified, because there's much to learn from here. For the rest of the world, of course, there is much more work that needs to happen to overcome and complete this challenge of connectivity, and this is part of the reason why we are here. And it's very nice to see a program of Pacific IGF that has this historical perspective with people that have been working and dedicating their lives for that, and it's so good to see you here. Then from that to sort of solving practical problems, for example, ccTLD operations, and from there, also trending topics of what to do with artificial intelligence, etc. So it's a very beautiful program that you put together, but most importantly, that you brought beautiful people here to one space that is shared with other communities as well. So for us as well, a well, we have a very technical and somehow narrow vision to contribute to the stability of the internet and to contribute with technical capacity building. Again, it's very important to build that bridge with the not so technical community, the policy communities and the Internet governance community. So let's really try to use that space outside to get to know each other a little bit more and try to understand each other a little bit more. And it's such an honor to have this shared space and convergence between those two conferences. Thank you.
Thank you. Pablo. Last but not least, we
will have our speaker from UNESCO by video, a message. We have tatiki, who's although came all the way from Paris, from UNESCO. Be with us, but I'll give her a few moments to introduce our speaker. Thank you.
Our morning everyone. I'm very excited to
be here with all of you today. And
as Andrew said, I'm joining you from Paris. It's indeed very cold who called for me, but your energy is very motivating. So just to introduce maybe why I'm here, we started a project on assessing the internet development in five South Pacific countries last year. It's a process which was led by the national teams, by national researchers, and by by teams of multi stakeholder teams in each country, and we have, they have produced this, and I see many of you here, and I'm truly grateful for your motivation, your excitement, which was really contagious for me, and very exciting. So thanks to your efforts, we have the national reports assessing the development of the Internet in these countries, which was made possible through a joint un SDG fund project on economic diversification in South Pacific, and you yourselves have great recommendations to further improve the State of the internet at the national level. And based on these findings, we have also crafted the regional assessment for the South Pacific with reflections also on Pacific overall. And based on this, we will have this discussion tomorrow with all of you. It will be led by all of you and so and I got to know very exciting and bright people from the Pacific. And I thank you for the warmest welcome I received each time I visited your countries. So thank you so much for that, and thank you so much for your commitment. And I should also thank extend special thanks to Andrew and Sarai for the excellent cooperation, also to to have this space and be part of the Pacific IGF Forum. Thank you for that, and I look forward your cooperation in the future and continued joint work. So our speech will be delivered by the UNESCO representative to the Pacific states, who is also the director of the office, who unfortunately couldn't be here with us today, but she has sent her warmest greetings and regards and her video message, which I would like to request to play. So the video message of Miss shamila Bedwell during my
expert, Honorable Ministers, Your Excellences, honorable guests,
participants, I'll give you more greetings from United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you today for having engagements, preventive, conjoining your presence. Engagements, preventing from joining new person at the spare importance. Let me start by expressing my appreciation. Let go to support this forum, recognizing the crucial role in changing the future of hidden future of political governance. Also extend my sincere gratitude to the community for your uneven support of a disability initiative across the Pacific Island. Your collaboration is the backbone of our focus this year's theme digital government and resilience. Is more relevant than ever. It highlights the central role of digital policies, governance and mutual cooperation in providing sustainable development and enhancing community resilience our interconnected world.
These elements are not just beneficial, the
internet's Global Impact is unreal, but significant in the Pacific is uniquely performed in one of the most isolated regions of work. The Pacific has faced the challenges that the internet has helped overcome in transformative ways in the next empowerment exercise
in three key areas. First,
it serves as a lifeline for a more tangible community, inconsistency and possibly wrongful connections. It strengthens our by supporting disaster preparedness and sustainable development. Thirdly, the internet preserves and promotes our cultural identity, allowing us to share specific stories, traditional and knowledge across the world. UNESCO supporting these transformative impacts, especially with small and developing states, not just for priority, it is our mission. The challenge of digital governance highlighted by this forum are central to many of our initiatives. One such initiative is implementation of the internet universality indicators, so many islands and biological many of the material have helped shape these assessments. And thank you again this work part of the joint Sustainable Development Goals. Unfortunately, to UNESCO living and good that upholds human rights is open and accessible to all and govern a multi stakeholder approach emphasizing gender equality and environmental sustainability. One with these efforts, UNESCO has prepared the first meeting, R, O, A, M, X, role X assessment would you be launched tomorrow, during the session, you will be hosting. I will encourage you to accept my colleagues will share with you in this particular event, especially what will serve community support will serve as a strategic roadmap, by the comprehensive analysis of intimate ecosystem across the Pacific and highlighting the need to scale solutions that address the specific needs of service in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, this much commitment to the first big step goes beyond assessments, we intend to find
our efforts to support digital transformation. This
includes working with stakeholders to enhance media and information, develop digital skills and help government challenges while seizing opportunities presented by artificial intelligence. Our work must not stop there. The district must continue to lead in global discussion on digital government as we approach critical events like the summit of the future and between of the World Summit on information society, known as WSIS and UN General Assembly next year, we have an opportunity to shape the future of digital governance of the Pacific by Pacific voices bringing local and regional perspective and will now be clear on the global stage. In this collaboration, I invite you to join us at UNESCO networks on the 12th for our global forum on artificial intelligence and digital transformation with the public sector. This forum will address the link to Guru public sector capacity to effectively leverage AI indigenous technology. Join for the outlooks of the summit of the future this specific idea, let's harness
the power of the
Internet to to create more inclusive, more resilient and climate region. I thank you since you and thank you for all the support you provide. UNESCO. I wish you all. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Just to say one thing that her speech was recorded
and the protocol was observed based on the old agenda, which was changed so just tonight, you know that's how the process. Thank you so
much. You so much for that correction. Thank you, UNESCO, for that also
inspiring message. We have come now to the end of the session one. But one more item before you escape, we're going to have a group photo appear with the speakers.
Sorry, was pointing. Is pointing outside
Okay,
sounds good, okay, but we have we, I think we have 30 minutes before the
end of our session, so please make use of that time to you know, meet the other and then we'll join the break here. Please give our speakers and our sponsors
round of applause. Thank
you. Let's head over there at the back. He's going to lead
us to where we're going to take the picture. Thank you,
Savannah. Recording
stopped.
To enter at the.
Okay, welcome back.
We will start session two. Just before I let them speak.
I just wanted to give you a bit of introduction
to this team.
I would say these are the pioneers of Pacific IGF. So please give them
a big round of applause as we welcome them. You
I will
introduce themselves and
say a few words about themselves, but on my right here, furthest down, is Keith Davidson, who is
he's a friend, and also he's been supportive of Pacific ATM ever since. And he used to be
with internet and said at the time, and I believe he'll tell you more about his engagement, but he's,
he's been, he's been very focal, very been very
focused on supporting the Pacific in terms of internet governance and ICT. We do have record Doctor Rego, who is here as well. She, she has been with us all those years, USP and prisal and all those so Jules tell tell us more about that. And also next is yen Thompson, who's been, also been in the Pacific, and has been doing a lot of projects. He's been with USP, she'll tell you more about that. And last, I mean, the far right is a special friend, Don Hollander,
same he has a lot of history, a
lot of engagement in the past week, he spent some time in Samoa. He'll tell you, I think he speaks the dialect, so he'll tell you more about that. And online, we have Ellen Strickland, who has recently been left internet N set, but she has been with this group for quite some time, and I think a few of us here might know this group, if you don't know them, but some, some might, some like Anjo and Noya, I believe they, they know these people and sakayo Somewhere there, yeah, but I'll let them introduce themselves, and then they'll still continue With the discussions themselves. Thank you. Thank you, Keith. Thank you Andrew and Sarai and the sponsors of this, joining this panel of well,
largely graveyarded,
aging, Grumpy Old Men, Kia ora tatou and I use that as an informal Maori greeting, because I think we're now entering into a more informal session. My job in this panel is to be provocative. Andrew has asked us to recount some of internet governance history in the Pacific, so we're going to go through that, but I will be the last speaker in terms of that coverage. But before we formally begin, I want to pay some tribute to our internet governance pioneers in the Pacific. These were people, I think, who were all personally present in EMEA in 2011 where we had about 100 people along for a an internet Pacific Internet governance event, and these four people have subsequently passed away, sadly, as for the Pacific, firstly, this lakateva, tanavusa, Savia, who we all knew As tevi, she passed away in Samoa in december 2018, we fondly remember her the general manager of Computer Services Limited to and she was the ccTLD manager for.ws she was very outspoken, a powerful voice for the Pacific and for civil rights on The Internet. The salmon Samoan government has just recently opened tevi's Learning Center at the Samoa Primary School. And this is a specific tribute to tevi, and it's really interesting noting their opening speech about her, her dedication for this Learning Center, saying she was a powerful voice when she was at school, you couldn't argue with her. So a fine tribute to tevi, who never took a step backwards. Secondly, dephratus, he passed away in Samoa on the 29th of May 2020, aged 63 he was from St Vincent and the Grenadines. He was the first of the government regulators appointed in the Pacific, and worked tirelessly in Samoa to deregulate the telecommunications space and saw through a number of regulatory reforms leading to very competitive telecommunications and internet. Subsequently, thirdly, Frank Louis, who was a companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, who passed away in Nuu on the ninth of july 2021 he was a former prime minister or premier of Nue in the 1990s and in later years, he was a leader in the Internet user Society of Nue and the.in new operation. But we have a legacy from us through some Amani Louis, who is now an MP in Nue, a fine internet technologist. I don't know if you're here. Amani, sadly, no, but he has built networks in Auckland and in Nue and as a big promoter of the multi stakeholder model. And finally, I'll try to get my tongue around this salamita Taman nakawa, Maro from Fiji. She passed away in 2023 in her early 40s. She her first experience of internet governance was in numer in 2011 and she she was a barrister and solicitor in Fiji and a civil rights activist, but she stepped immediately forward to the microphone and in numeria and asserted various aspects of internet governance and multi stakeholderism, and got very in the Internet Society and an Internet governance generally, and served on the mag for a number of years. So these four people have done a great deal to establish the Pacific voice and the Internet governance, and I hope, are examples for all you young people in the room to aspire to to be future leaders and to be outspoken and have your say and be involved and be engaged and argue and debate, because that's what multi stakeholder is all about. So I give a tribute to those four, and may you walk in their footsteps. Thank you.
Now our first speaker, we were we, I've decided that we're
going to do ladies first in the misogynistic style of old. Our
first speaker for this panel is Riku Hayakawa, who's been involved in Internet governance internationally and with a view for 2530 years, 40 years before Internet governance was a word even welcome
record
10 eight Miki, Nga atua, Nga muta,
menga, mana, Venu, ane,
Kate Vaka, ihiya Tenney, no UNGA,
Mano,
tau ki Nua terei, ki, mua terei, Ira tena ko tu katua, I hope it doesn't make sense. Thank you. I feel and come back to the old friends house today. And pisok, board member and conference organizer and sponsors giving me chance to talk today, my journey of ICT and Pacific Island start began in 1991 990
at the beginning of a journey. I was responsible of USB net and PSAT, and in 1997 I was able to make USB net as Japan and New Zealand assisted project. I will do not talk about USB net and PSAT today, but we just published a paper last year. So if you are interested in please contact me break time or anytime. I will be here today and tomorrow. Today, I'd like to talk about how Pacific Island, the global Internet governance at the 2003 which is WSIS Tokyo conference, I invited delegation from PIF Pacific Island forum and Pina Pacific Island News association to the Tokyo and organized side event at the United United Nations University. This is series of the conference organized by ITU and UN Secretary out, is it right? Because at the ITU is oldest international organization in the world, and the is a group of the world telephone company. At that time, they were hostile to the internet, screaming that VOIP and internet taking over. And the UN was also alarming by the US monopoly and internet governance. The racist World Summit on the Information Society was one of the major starting point for the debate of internet governance at that time, Secretary General of itu was Japanese bureaucrat named Yoshio utmi. When I read his papers documents, he does not hide his concern for the United States government. Utzmi criticized that fact that the US government looks into the privacy of the all the world political leaders. We Pina and PIF, who participated, WA, with this confidence, organized side event in Tokyo, Asia. Pacific always overlooked Pacific Island countries, so we did not know that Internet governance was a key theme of wishes. However, Mr. Utsumi immediately understood and was very pleased with the political significance of the political participation of the Pacific Island countries, group of small countries, but with large number of voting rights in the international arena, and for perhaps the first time in the history of itu, they started address the digital divide in the island states in the concrete and proactive manner. I think this was good thing for Pacific Island countries to uh, the end of us, monopoly, internet governance regime Today,
however,
I'd like talk emphasize that the impact
of Pacific Island countries on recess ie picks continue advocacy of the digital divide as a regional collective power had a significant impact on the ICT and internet governance. The threat of nuclear war was the background of birth of internet and the threat of North Korean missile connecting Marshall Island, FSM and Guam via undersea cable, the threat of China is now major motivator for undersea cable all over The Pacific islands, when looking at the development ICT incentive to be inevitable. However, on the other hand, it is able. It is also true that
Alexander Bell
his motivation for inventing the telephone, telephone was for his beloved wife, who had an audio empowerment. So let's tell our government, your government, that ICT is important and necessary for Pacific islands, community, education, health and future and appeal to the international arena that it is the as the collective voice will over the Pacific Island countries. Thank you.
And I think it would be fair to ask for any questions
as each speaker speaks so any questions for Reiko
get one chance, right? Thank you very much now. Ian
Thompson, oh, sorry, Ellen,
she's online. And
Dr Strickland, well, hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Can hear you? Well, please introduce yourself and let us know what you're thinking about Pacific Internet governance. Thank you. Keith Kia ora koutou, Hello everyone, and thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today remotely. Apologies I can't be them person.
So many people that I've known for so long that I would love to be catching up with. But it's great to have a chance to reflect a little bit about the theme of strengthening digital governance and resilience for the Pacific Islands, and this idea of Pacific pioneers. And, you know, I had to think about it, and I'm really interested in kind of the role that civil society and community voices can play. It's something I'm strong advocate for in my time, I'm currently at BrainBox Institute, which is a New Zealand based think tank. I've been at Zed previously, as well as on the Picasso board and at the University of Queensland, was involved in some research. And goes back to I worked for the National Commission for UNESCO, actually. And so I was going to share a bit of about the Pacific pioneers that I met along the way, and some of the things that I kind of learned I was really I always keep in mind the idea of the Pacific scholar Pele hoaf, about the future being behind us, and that we walk backwards into it with the past in front of us, because the past is what we can see, and that the future we can't see, we can just look at
that we had the past to look at and learn from as we walk backwards into
that unknown future. And so reflecting about the pioneers I met along the way. Now, I was first involved in the Pacific, in that role
with the National Commission for UNESCO. I joined in the middle of the whistles process, which, thank you, Reika, talking a bit about, and was involved in some of the community consultations in the Pacific. And I really took from that, you know, those initial discussions about the information society being inclusive, and thinking about the internet, but in terms of what it means to people, as well as at technical layers. And so that really formed, for me, this idea of talking to civil society organizations, about education, about health, about what does it mean to have information, what is the role the internet can play? And as we know now, that was this process, you know, was the beginning of, well, a key milestone in Internet governance, establishing the IGF and and the Pacific, amazing things from those consultations. And also saw the Pacific acting in amazing ways on that world stage. I remember that there was a delegation from Samoa, I believe, who went to the whist and, you know, brought dancing and Pacific culture and just made an amazing impact that, you know, the internet is personal, and it's about culture as well as the technical layers. I also had the opportunity to do some research I was doing my master's at the time and work with and learn from Telecentre operators. This is, you know, 20 years ago, and talk to them. My research was about the problems of running internet or telecenters and internet in the community, but what I learned was the risks, the concerns they had, but also the amazing benefits that they were seeing in their communities around education and health and and the way that those pioneers bringing internet to communities through schools and women's centers were understanding the technology, you know, their communities needs, their culture, with this, this new technology, the internet and and finding concerns, but finding opportunities. And to me, I really saw, you know, that being so important to the future of the internet, you know, for for the Pacific. Later on, I was involved in the digital strategy process, one of them, one of the third and this was when
I was teaching at the University of
Queensland and doing my PhD. And again, you know, I saw policy makers, inter International, regional governments, national governments, working on this digital strategy. And, you know, I think for many people who've been involved in this in a long time, there were a number of them, you know, what, what their impact was and how they happened, is something that I think frustrated some people at the time, and for reasons that you know, I think are valid, but I also saw it community voices and civil society, and that Those policymakers at their best were navigating the hard task of understanding community needs of specific communities and culture, and how you have a strategy that helps support, you know, making the best of the internet, of digital governance, and that you know that governance isn't Just documents, that it's about doing the work of understanding and helping develop the Internet to benefit communities and people. And so for me, that was really an important thing. And through that, I would remember I was lucky enough to be a part of the pick I saw board. And thank you to the organizers of this event today. You know, I had the honor to work with just such a great we use that word multi stakeholder. But you know, a multi stakeholder group of Pacific pioneers within pick ISOC, to work with Anju, who, I
think is there, who
governmental orgs, Yosi, who's now the honorable Prime Minister of Tonga, Imani, you know, who we've mentioned, Louis, who was at the time climbing trees, putting up networks, you know, and to really see how an organization of volunteers from around the region, you know, could bring together before the Pacific IGF pack I net, which I had the honor and hard work, the fact that people are pulling together, these in person, fantastic meetings that were really about bringing together everybody you know, and all the voices that we had wonderful engagement from When I say civil society organizations, you know, not just tech ones, disability organizations, you know, a range of community organizations who had really helpful voices in shaping the internet for the Pacific. And so I guess that's, you know, as I walk towards the Pacific, I think about, you know, all those pioneers and the work they've done, and how I know a lot of the people in the room today are policy makers, you know, but and that, you know, what can we do? And so I guess for me, I think are things we do to build access and engagement from directly from communities and civil society organizations. And I applaud those hugely fellowships, you know, supporting capacity building to enable them to engage in digital governance. Also, you know, that's not always going to be possible. And so the people from technical organizations doing the work to understand, I think, is really important, you know, I would say, Listen, you know, and reflect and listen again. Because in the end, for me, you know, digital governance, resilience is a messy process that is, you know, the future is unknown, but it does need everyone and and we just have to keep doing the doing. Those are kind of the reflections that I have from it, and I'm really glad to be able to share and to be here. Thanks. Thank you. Are there any questions for Ellen? We've got here
again, only one chance.
So Ellen is Don Hollander here. I used to have a bookshop
when you talked about getting people physically
together for the pack high nets, which were originally geekfests. I think, do you think there's an opportunity for those sorts of things to occur again in the Pacific? I think it's up to the people in this room. I hope so. I think that, you know,
you are all together today, and I wish I was there too. And I think,
yeah, I think the answer is, you know, I hope so, and I think that it's something we should all strive for, and the Pacific IGF is a part of that, and there's lots of capacity building initiatives and things that bring people together. And I do think that matters. Yeah, okay, any further questions? Right? Thank you very much. Ellen,
welcome to the stage. Ian,
Thanks Kate, and
thanks Andrew as well for those kind words.
For those of you who don't know me and I really a lot of good friends here,
thank you. Good to catch up again, but I was the first regional ICT coordinator for the Pacific Islands. And listening to Reiko saying she started back
in 1990 I think, I think she really deserves the honor. It's not me, but
I was appointed as the ICT regional coordinator and SPC in 2008 so my perspective is going to be a little bit more what's happened in the regional area, not development in countries, but about the region and what, what, in particular, what we've learned from that. So I was going to talk a little bit about the first regional digital plan, and then I might talk a bit about some of the projects that I managed in that role, and a quick summary of some of the key regional initiatives that I was involved with in some way or other. And I've been told by Andrew that I must ask a lot of questions. So if you don't ask the questions, I'll ask the questions. So the first item I wanted to talk digital strategy. And before I get too far into that, I want to acknowledge
Dr Jimmy Rogers, who was the head of SPC at the time, and Sam Tao, who was working as the ICT manager at that time.
They played a huge role in forming that digital strategy and formulating a couple of key projects that would form the basis of that. And I know that Dr Oz is still active in the region, in the Solomon Islands, and I think Sam is there with him as well. So I just want to acknowledge the their contribution. Kicking that first football is very important, because you can't play the game unless you've kicked the first football. So the when the digital strategy was developed, obviously there was some money needed to get it going, and Dr Rogers and Sam and I tell you, this is an anecdotal story, so please don't quote me, but it's what I understand. Had went down to Canberra and said, we have this digital strategy now we want some money. And I said, Well, that's interesting. Yeah.
So how much money you want? He said, a million dollars.
They laughed at him, and I must remind you that at that time, most aid agencies couldn't even spell ICT. So the interesting thing was that Sam and and Dr Rogers sat in that room and said, We're not leaving here until we get that million dollars. And somehow or other Australian aid came up with the money. And because of that, the project was kicked off, and I was hired as the regional coordinators to try and make that happen. So an interesting little anecdote. The two main projects that I was working on and that came out of the digital strategy, was the rural internet connectivity system. So I'd say that was probably the first digital divide in in the region. And then there was also the spin project, which was the plan to connect every island to submarine cables. And that was quite, quite an ambitious goal at that time. I think Fiji had just become connected, or not long, connected to to the internet. And thinking about connecting, connecting other islands was a good, a good initiative, but hard work. And the third project that I was working on was with the project called the One Laptop per Child project. For those of you who don't remember that, this is an Yeah, it was a while ago. This was initiative by MIT, where they decided to develop a laptop that would cost $100 and they would make that available to every child in developing countries. Very ambitious project, so I'll cover a little bit of that those so the rural internet connectivity system, we had a partnership between SPC and Pacific
satellite services, and they donated 16 pilot sites
so that they donated the the dish and the surrounding infrastructure, and we used some of the million dollars to pay for the first year of internet connectivity. So we deployed these projects in, I can't remember exactly, maybe, six or 10 countries, there's an interesting problem developed, because in the rural areas, of course, there's no electricity, and we needed that, and the project really didn't cover that. So we had to become a little bit innovative and inventive to get power to these sites as well, and that's one of the things, I think that was the biggest stumbling block we seem to be able to do the ICT side of things, but the electricity side to sustain that. So one example that I might give is that is that we had a strong focus on
Ministries of Health, and we were looking at the rural health stations
that were scattered throughout the islands. And we worked with the government's Ministry of Health Health to install a satellite service at each of these Ministry of Health regional centers. And we then suggested some ideas about how they might be able to use it. So trying to suggest someone that could provide health services, like, for example, better management of drugs, also some tele consultation type of services. When I was talking to one country, the I was asking them, how do they communicate with these regional health centers, and they said, Oh, we have to get on a boat, and it takes two days to get there, and then we spend a week there, and then we come back again, or they get on a boat and come to see us. I said, Well, wouldn't it listen? Wouldn't that be helpful? I said, Yes, that'd be very good. So I said, Well, how about we take some of your transport budget and put it onto the ICT budget.
We said, ICT budget. What's that?
We don't have an ICT budget. So in this particular instance, we installed the satellite solution. We managed to get some power to those satellite solutions, and we paid for the connectivity for the first 12 months on the understanding that the government would pick up that payment afterwards. And of course, at the end of 12 months, I went round and spoke to them and said, well, where's the money? Oh, we forgot to do that. Sorry. So unfortunately, the service had to be disconnected because we didn't pay for the connectivity. The other project that I wanted to talk about was the spin project. At those days, it
was pretty innovative to think that we would ever
connect all of the islands but parts the western part of the islands and the eastern part of the islands. We had a lot of strong support to make that
happen. The leader very, very strong in support of
that. And Dr Jimmy Rogers was there as well, and ADB and the World Bank, and at later times, Australian aid and New Zealand aid, or those organizations stepped up. I wanted to recount a funny story. When we were working out this project was all about, I was talking to the World Bank expert who had some experience in doing submarine cables. And she said, Well, Ian, we might be able to connect Tonga, or perhaps some more, I don't know, maybe New Caledonia and PNG, but look, Kiribati, never, never, ever, ever would we do Kiribati and Tuvalu and Nauru and nuway as well. We could just never justify that. And I'm just really glad to say now that every one of those islands is going to be able I think that's an awesome achievement.
So I wish I could be as
glad about the OLPC project as I was
about the spin project. For those that didn't know,
the MIT had a funder that allowed them to fund these, these laptops into schools. So we were donated 5000 laptops for the region, and we worked with each ministry of education, I think, in 10 or 12 countries, and that involved spending some time with them, talking about, how would you use this? How does it help you in teaching and learning, developing a plan of making that work. So we found that some schools and teachers and some ministries really struggled with the concept of children owning a laptop. It wasn't cotton. That was something that we didn't consider. So the whole name one laptop per child was really quite counter cultural, and in the end, we had some really good users of them. So in some countries, the Ministry of Education established a computer lab in the school, and then the children came in and learnt and things like that. They taught them how to use the computer. In other countries, particularly in countries where they had younger teachers that had been to USP and had had some experience with ICT, they did some really innovative things. So in one country, I remember particularly, the the exams were coming up, so the teachers gave the laptops to the children and said, Do your own revision with the laptop. And of course, embedded in the laptop was a lot of content about about curriculums and all of the items and everything. So those kids gladly took the computers and worked away and did very well in the exams. So some of the other comments that I wanted to make. In one country, we spent two weeks training
all the teachers how to use the laptops.
And at the end, we were doing just having a chat about that, and I was talking to one particular teacher who was, let's say, a senior teacher, and I was saying, What do you think about this? And she said, we shouldn't do this. Oh, why not? Well, because the children are going to learn more than us. And I was going to say to her, surely, that's what education is all about. But I held my tongue and I didn't say that, but it was just an interesting story to say we did, obviously didn't meet that that teacher's needs, so we failed in that regard. Yeah, let me see. The other other problem, of course, I won't dwell on it, is power to the schools, because in a lot of those places, there was no power. I was no power we had. In one country, they nominated a particular school on the outskirts of town.
So we went there to talk about them, and we're talking about and they were quite excited about it. And
we said, well, we hear that you've got power here. What is it? And I said, Oh, solar power. Oh, okay, that's good. Can we go and have a look at it? So we went out and this little shed in the outside there was had the solar panels there, looking really good. So we went inside the shed where the battery should be, and there were no batteries. So what happened to the batteries? Oh, well, the last principal was transferred to another school, and he said those batteries belong to him, so he took them with him, rather an unexpected problem to deal with. So maybe I'll just touch on a couple
of other regional initiatives
just as to be complete here, sometime after a couple three years, I think after working with SBC, general responsibility was chance to transfer to USP, and they set up the ICT working groups who to do to drive
ICT development.
So in the ICT working group. There were, let me see, there was quite a lot of people, about 16, all told, groups and things. So I've got, let's down here. There were six different crop agencies involved. There were four UN agencies. There were eight main donors, and there were five NGOs. So there's quite a lot of people that were being active in that area. And when I was doing my research for this talk, I found an article that was saying between 2007 and 2019 they had found 228 ICT projects with a grand total of $630 million so are you confused about who does what I was, and I still am, so
to try and coordinate all those
people and that that's what I guess. I guess
it's what the ICT working group was trying to do,
is to coordinate all these activities to to assist each other, to learn from each other, and move on. So from from a regional point of view, we've now had three ICT strategies. So the first one went from 2006 to 2010 the second one from 2010 to 2016, and the third, one to 2020, just of an interest. Note that the ICT Strategy 2016 to 2020, had 18 high priority projects. 18 high priority projects. Then there was triple that number of medium priority and then there was even, even more. I didn't bother to count them as too many. So interesting comment I made is that the this strategy, but they had no resources to implement it.
The the strategy was out there. I'm not even sure if anyone read it, but it
but it was put out there, but there was, there was nothing they could do to implement any of those things. So in the end, the value of having the ICT strategy wasn't fully realized. And while I was doing this research for this paper, I was looking around for evaluations of these strategies. Did we actually evaluate them? It's interesting. We did one of them, the very first one that finished in 2010 an independent research company research that and made a report about how successful the strategy was, and made a number of recommendations, which I'm not sure really made their way into the second version of the strategy, and certainly not in the third version. So, and I just wanted to note a more recent development, if you're not aware, that the ICT so the IT managers
of the region are getting together now under the flagship
of digital dialog and action plan, ICT dialog and action plan. So they're starting again to have another go at developing a strategy and an action plan. I'll make a comment about what I think about that in a minute. The other projects that I think are worthy of note during that period were housed at USP. So
the first one was a regional
Pacific Island adrenal Regulatory Council community, I can't remember. It was about providing advice to Pacific islands to develop policies about regulations. So that was established for two or three years. I think there was another project that was the Pacific cert, a Computer Emergency Response Team in USP, and again, after about three years, that seemed to lose
funding or initiative, and I don't think it's there anymore. And they also funded
a group, which I was in charge of, was the teachers learning and educate E Learning and Education Center. And again, that's not there. So I'll wrap up with a few comments and thoughts for me, it was really interesting to go back and look at these projects from an end, from a distance, if you like, rather than being directly involved. But what I really I found it very hard to find information about these projects. And if you remember the the 23 agencies that play with ICT in the region. You can imagine why it is hard, because a number of them have them in in their own databases, often firewalled. Even the ICT working group was firewalled. So all told, I think we've done a fairly poor job of reviewing the projects that we have had and
learning the lessons that we should be learning. And I would challenge the
ice team ministers now in their new initiative to say, please go back and look at the other strategies and see what's happened there and learn from that. So my comment was to say, what does this mean to IGF, and for me, the stuff that we've done in the past is not open and transparent. It is difficult to find often, the projects have not been evaluated. We haven't learned the lessons. It's too hard to find the lessons if they do exist. So I wondered what we could do about that, and I noted that it may be interesting to talk about a need for an ICT development portal where we could have all of this information evaluated. It would be really interesting to do an evaluation of them to learn from that. So my question was,
where are the lessons learned,
and how do we share them? I'll put that to a challenge to you on this floor as part of IGF, it's something to
consider in the way forward. I
think a couple of other people have talked about, you don't know where you're going, if you have can't see where you've been.
Yeah, I had another question, and I'm not sure whether it's relevant
or not, but I just wanted to throw this out there. In
all of the work that I've done, there's always
been this word called transformation in there, digital transformation. And I've never really heard what that means to the Pacific Islanders. I fear that it's a western idea, and impose that on the islands. And I just think the most telling
thing about all of the projects that I've been involved in is so far,
is that we didn't get the transformation part of it right. We did the technology fairly well, but we didn't get the transformation right. And I just mentioned that as a challenge to you here, if you're ever involved in doing any of these projects, that the transformation comes first, and from that we apply the technology to it. With that, I'd like to say thank you very much for your attention. I hope it's been helpful.
Thank you, Ian.
Any questions for Ian?
Thank you for that talk, Ian. I think it's interesting to reflect on projects
that at the time seemed really good, but then when you look at it now, I'm
curious. There's probably two elements to that. One is, sounded like quite a lot were dependent on some sort of government funding, and then at some point
that government funding was removed. Was the issue that
they weren't able to demonstrate their benefit, and that's why they didn't get continued funding, or was the issue that they should have actually started to think about building a bit more of a some sort of sustainable business model around the initiative. They're very good questions, and I'm not sure that I can answer all of them, but some of those projects are what I call proof of proof of concept, and
of course, they have a limited life, but the issue I have there is that we didn't learn from that. So the VSAT project, for example, I know we've done a lot more work with VSAT, but was there some lessons to learn there? And the issue is, I think, that the donors, by and large, under under resourced projects, elements in there. They have lots of money for the technology and city building too. That's another thing that they do, or developing policies and things. But there's nothing about the softer side of things, of how do we make sure that the benefits of this comes out in the community, and, yeah, maybe that's enough to say there. I think it's a complex issue, but worth give a lot more investigation.
Thanks, Bruce,
any further questions over here? And then Kia, ora, you've got lots of questions today, if there was a database
of ICT projects in the Pacific, who'd be the logical organization to fund that on an ongoing basis?
Well, there's an interesting question there about regionally, who has responsibility for ICT regional projects? These are not in country projects, but they're regional projects.
That's something I think USP was the nominated crop agency to coordinate all of that, but
I don't believe they're doing very much about that now. And they had set up an ICT
Working Group, which had about 17 different members that is non functional, as I understand it at the moment. And I think the most recent initiative by the it ministers to talk about this ICT dialog and strategy and action plan that may be may bring this out as an issue. But so far, mostly I've seen talking about resources, and I sure that they've really learned the lessons that we have learned from past initiatives like that. So the answer is, it's not clear. Kia ora Ian, just want to speak in order. Sorry, my apologies. And can I ask each speaker to introduce
Tonkin from outer with the first question, and Jonathan Brewer with the second question, just
for the record, and over here was our next speaker, and I'll come to you next. Sorry.
Yeah. Good morning. It's Tino Vitale from Tokelau. So few heads,
I think, to answer the question, I think we were not well prepared. I think the capability, the capacity within our communities given tokala was very small. There were a lot of things going on at that time. The entrepreneur were coming in with, you know, good deals that we kind of went with it. But I think the transfer of knowledge was not quite well done. And I think the coordination point was not well coordinated as well through the many I was around in 1997 and then I left in Tonga, and they've got the Pacific, you know, Blue Blue Ocean
Strategy, which also has an ICT component in
it. So it's interesting that I didn't hear it come but I think that's another project that I think the Pacific needs to actually get together and coordinate. And I'll be really interested. This is my first acting in this kind of environment. Be really interesting to see how this group can actually work through some of the things that you actually were speaking about. So thank you for enlightening us for that, and I'm really encouraged to have a Talanoa with the rest of the community to see how well we can actually move forward. Hi, Keith.
Sorry if I could. I used to own and operate an ISP
back in the 1990s and early 2000s and I was the ISP for the total hours to New Zealand and Tino would ring sometimes and say, can You look at my mailbox
and just delete any spam, because
I've only got an hour of internet time to use. So they were good old days. It's a good point, Keith, and it just reminds us, in the 30 years that we've been doing this work since 1994 A lot has happened. And I don't want
to play that down in any way at all. We've done some amazing things. My My concern is, have we really learnt the lessons? Any further questions over here? Kia ora, tatou, wetu, fala, I'm on the Council of internet New Zealand.
Thank you so much for
all of your contributions in the past, of which
I was aware of, but it's good to hear it straight from your mouth. So I'm really taken in with your observations on the strategic governance. I'm not technologically minded any of that type
of thing. So here in Aotearoa,
our academics Professor Graeme Smith of shout out. He is my relation. He developed academically kaupapa Maori framework, which has now been applied to all sectors of our work in your work through the Pacific, and there'll be many academic Pacific strategic thinkers here today is, are you encountering more of what we would call a tuk Lal approach to ICT, a Samoan approach to ITC? Is there a plug in in the Pacific of Pacific, thought that we can use for this transformation of our communities. Another very good question. I don't really feel Professor any comment preface, any
comments to say that I've been retired for the last five
years, so
I'm not up to date.
One, one negative aspect to that is who has the money speaks the loudest. And I would, I'm not saying that in a critical way to the donors that are in the room, but very largely, that agenda is set up when, when the money is being allocated, and the KPI is introduced. And I've never seen a KPI yet that talked about culture, adaptation, transformation or anything. It's always been about the technology. So I put a challenge to the to the donors, to say, maybe you should be more open and and considering those elements as part of the project and resourcing the project to deal with those things. Noya from Tuvalu Telecom, thank you again for for
reminiscing the old days. My question is basically around,
what would you say now, with all the experience that you've got,
formulating or developing the ICT strategy back then, then the lagatoi agreement that the leaders just endorsed late last year, what would be your comment? Are we learning the lessons, or are we repeating the same thing? First of all, I'd like to say the most successful project that we've ever done in the region has been the submarine cable project. That's been awesome to do that. You know?
What we achieved there was really fantastic. And I think we all need to pat ourselves on the back about that, because that was a phenomenal feat to do in terms of other lessons that we've learned. Yeah, I think it boils down to at
building this community,
participation and involvement and contribution.
All too often, when the donor agencies put the
dollars there, they have technical KPIs at the end of them to justify spending the money. And that's the biggest weakness of all of the projects that I've seen is that the benefits are not coming through as quickly as we wanted them to as we thought they would, and that's because we didn't really identify them. We didn't really put resources for them. We didn't put KPIs measurements and the values in there for for them. But I would get back to saying one of the things that we haven't done well is what I mentioned before about evaluation of these projects. And even if the project is evaluated for the donor, that information is not freely available to us in the Pacific. And I think that concept of information is there free and open access for anybody to investigate and look at and learn from would be
one of the key initiatives I think, that we should be taking.
We'll make this from last questionnaire from sambo.
My question is around the context of
access, given the Pacific is quite remote, the
cost that we pay for internet is is because of the logistic problems. Currently, we are facing economic issues as well. So many of the Pacific people prioritize life and survival. How do we address the logistic problem in terms of reducing internet costs? Because building a like a tower, you need to build the roads. The roads need to have engineers that know how to navigate the soil. And also we need to figure out, how does this type and that's only one time, but if there is a cyclone, how do we sustain the long term transition of products
to recover those towers? So for the Pacific, the
internet is basically the cost of logistics that people take. How do we address that? I am tempted to say it all comes down to money, but I saw a figure the other day that said, since ICT ever existed in the region,
there's been $900 million spent on ICT projects in the region, which leads me to say that's a lot of money. Maybe that's not the issue. Maybe the issue is being better prepared to do these things the way that you want them to be done. Rather than taking a hand out, you should be giving giving the donor a hand up, if you like. I think that would be a good step in the right direction. And again, I put it out to the IGF here to say, Thanks, Ian. We've got one question here, then over there, and that'll be the final question, because we've got more speakers to come.
Thank you. Lebouf Alon from the tiny
islands of Yap in Micronesia. I just wanted to add to
actually kind of like what you just commented on. There are two points that you made, you know, the funding and resources, and then also the definition of digitization can be very different for two different worlds. So the funding side, I just wanted to make a comment that I think you hit it on the point that there's a lot of money. And in my experience, I think the challenge was, there was, there was a lot of funds that was given to our nation. Nothing is hidden. Hit the ground. We took we had to take our own actions for
our own communication. We started on the at the community level. And
maybe this is part of that portal solution or talk that the community level has to be incorporated as a voice. I think that has been echoed all over because sometimes, not just about the funds are there, but sometimes, when it comes from the it can get easily stuck on the top, where it's just over bloated with regular regulatory overblow there and very little action on the ground. So just wanted to comment to that and comment about the definition of digitization.
I'm coming from a place that we're still we're we still have rich men digitization, and I just happen to be lucky to be a been abroad in the tech industry, I've
done digitization for modern companies, and going back home,
I know what that means. It can literally be it can literally wipe out what's beautiful out there, our culture and everything. Because digitization is probably harder than actually forming a new nation, because it's you gotta in that process. So who, who should be leading that, you know, I mean, and so forth. So I just wanted to commend you for for adding for for bringing that up. That's a very good point. Thanks. Thanks for your comments. I, when I was writing my notes, I had put something in there about E government, because that seems to be a bit of a catch phrase at the moment, and it's,
it's transformation of government through through digitization. And I just think, I can't help but think we've got that wrong, because the E comes first. It's really not that. It's about better government through the use of technology, and I think if we
start off in the right step, in the right direction,
we've got a much better chance of getting involved in that and understanding the issues, and therefore getting a much better result out of it, out of what we do. So just just question a few things along those lines, about are we thinking about this the right way. Thank you. Have a final question over here. Good morning. My name is Kyle, and I work at the foreign fisheries
agency based in honyada islands.
I'm just want to respond to the questions that Yen has put the floor. I've worked with yen at USB for a number of years, and I've been in the region in terms of the IT space for some time, and I know exactly the what we've learned. We've learned a lot of lessons, and that's why we are seeing now a lot
of countries is moving into the submarine
paper. Why? Because they they've actually learned what has happened before in terms of the failure, in terms of the project that he raised, it's our failure. It's the failure is at the national level, because we are trying to adopt the regional initiatives to be our National Institute. No, it doesn't work that way. It we work in some of the initiatives, but not all. Take, for instance, the Pacific cert at the USB, it didn't work in that context of regional lens. Look at the tongue, assert, look at the time the Samuel assert, they're working. Why? Because it's been developed from a national lens, not from a living factor to that failure, because the members didn't actually pay contribution to the Pacific cert.
Why? Because they have their own national interest. So
look, taking these two examples here, the Tonga cert and the Samoa said, and I know some of the countries will come on board to have their own cert, they they actually contribute to the national interest in terms of looking after their their IT space. So in that context, the real context, in terms of the third didn't work. So to answer your question, yes, we've learned a lot of lessons, and that's why we see a lot of changes in the region. You know, they coming towards. We used to say, oh, we need to build infrastructure. Now they actually slowly moving to the cyber security space, which is something that we in the past doesn't exist in the Pacific. Now we're slowly think that was more of an observation than a question. Thank you for that.
I think just to sum it up, just one observation from
me, Ian, the $100 one laptop per child. I wonder if they ever come up on eBay, and whether their value is now considerably more than $100 because they would be a collector. Yeah, it's interesting, because they never made it. Made them for $100 anyway, it was about 300 or $400 but yes, there were quite
a few of those laptops left in the region store away somewhere, and I've really forgotten where they are, so perhaps you could resurrect them and sell them on eBay. Indeed. Anyway, thank you. Ian nowlist, Don, Hollander Don, and I go
back to 1980s when we were young children playing together. And welcome Don,
thank you. My name is Oh, look at that. My name is Don Hollander,
and I've been working in it from
for a long time, ninth, just around the turn of the century, I went to Samoa as the Pulai of CSL, So Talofa lava, those from Samoa and CSL at the time, possibly still, but I've lost track. Was the largest ICT operator in Samoa. We had 34 competitors from my memory, and this little talk that I gave in 2006 2000 2007 2011
the business in Samoa and a lot of other Pacific countries.
So what I did is I created this
imagination of what an ICT enabled village in the Pacific would constitute. Now I'm told I've got just 90 seconds for this presentation, so I'm not going to give the whole one, but, oh, this is not the one that I wanted. Maybe I will get the whole one. So we said, what? How is ICT going to make a difference? And I'm hoping Andrew will
share this
in the in the mailing list, we were looking at communications, disaster recovery, weightless exports. We thought that that could
be a make a big difference. I don't think it did.
We thought the creative skills and talents, at least in some more for software development, would be well developed. And I don't think they, they are, particularly in in the Pacific. So I'll go through this relatively quickly. So we talked about having community radio, email, business, stock management. Anybody here still use email? Not too many, everybody, but we thought this would make a big difference for people doing export, imports. We're focused mostly on exports. Web browsers. Was a long time ago. Everything's, I think, just app based and electronic banking that I think has
been successful almost everywhere, including places
where not traditional banking accessed through a front end, but actual banking within the phone and within the phone network. We thought this newfangled thing called FPOs would be possible. Anybody still use an F pass card in New Zealand anyway? Anybody still they just take, we just take our watches and and somehow they let us take, walk away with goods. Telephone, I think telephones are still a thing.
Health we thought was a big was going to be a big deal. I can't tell Ian said he tried to leverage the health capability, and as long as somebody else was
paying for it, people were willing to take his his opportunity when this funding
ran out, which was pilot and seating funding. And so then things disappeared in in Tokelau, I remember very much when we were there. And Dr Adams was, was a Wellington Doctor Who up from time to time. Great place for drugs. He was very supportive and and he, he introduced this whole idea that you're out in the middle of nowhere, there might be a nurse. What do you do? Somebody comes in. So the story that I tell is somebody came, went in to the nurse that a problem in their eye. The nurse couldn't figure it out. In fact, Dr Adams was there. He couldn't figure it out, but he was able to take a picture, and within 10 minutes, he had a diagnosis and and how to fix it. So I still think this
is, this is wonderful,
farming information, don't know
should be
education. These are very old. This is the state of the art of PowerPoint in 2006
and two way radios. Google Maps that
is available most places. I don't know about Tocqueville. You got Google Maps there.
So lots of stuff, the things as I as I looked over the past couple of days, what was, what was successful, and what wasn't email and and family communications that was successful. Transaction. Things that I don't think was particularly successful, as I said, was the weightless
exports. And I didn't think, I didn't get
a sense that religious studies and sharing services was particularly popular. So when I look, went to look for churches in Samoa that were broadcasting their their services, to to the to the world, that didn't seem to be happening, and I thought it would be. And my last story, 2006 just before YouTube. So we, we did a project with televi Samoa. We tried to do it with televised new a they didn't, that didn't work, but Tel Aviv Samoa as part of my role. And I know one of the tasks that I had as the Boulet of CSL was we were sponsors the Miss Samoa
pageant, and one of my obligations was to meet each of the
candidates for Miss Samoa and and the one that I liked, they were all very nice,
but the one that that I was more inclined to vote for, though I didn't get a vote, was
Miss Samoa, USA.
She did not win. So I asked people, why didn't she win? And they said her Samoan was not good enough. She was fluent in Samoa, but she didn't have contemporary dialect. So I said, Fine, we'll help that going forward. So let's take televisamo, and at the end of each just it, put it at that point still a satellite,
I think, or just shifting to and then it was available.
We would host it, and then it was available for anybody outside of Samoa to seek, to a, be aware of the dialect, and B, to hear what was what was happening at home. So some things worked. The weightless exports, I don't think work, and I don't the the religious stuff didn't work as much as I thought, but YouTube came along and replicated our project, and so that's what I that's what we did in in the early 2000s and some sense as To whether it's achieved or not. Thank you very much. Thank you Don just don we're running
a bit short of time.
I thought there'd be loads you can, you can you
can so it's my turn. Now.
My name is Keith Davidson. I'm for my sins.
I'm a former newspaper printer and publisher, former ISP owner,
former chairman of the board and CEO of internet NZ, former chairman of Asia Pacific top level domain Association, APTLD, former ISOC director, former convener of the Nu IGF in 2011 Currently, I am the vice chair of PIR the operators of.org We're a US based corporate. We turn over about 100 million US dollars a year. We make 65 million to the Internet Society to enable them to do their work. And the Internet Society
funds operations like the Internet Engineering Task Force
and a lot of outreach on the internet and as has a vested interest in the Internet governance model. So I think I know a little, a little about the space. What I'm going to do today is give you a discussion about the good, the bad and the ugly. And sadly, you don't have Clint Eastwood. You have me to present this, but I'm going to pick the pieces out of the various discussions we've had up here today and try and analyze what I think was good, what was bad and what was ugly, and then try and project an image for the future, for for you. So I think the good definitely, the telecommunications deregulation in the Pacific was a major countries who still don't have a competitive environment, environment for telecommunications.
But it is happening, and it's continues to
happen, and the power of that deregulation has led to massive reductions in prices for phone and internet, albeit acknowledging your question earlier, to still too expensive in many instances, but the competitive market for phone and internet has been a major go forward process. Fiber To The island has been fabulous, too. As Ian was saying, the most of the main islands have fiber, but it's still, there's work to do there, but it's a great thing to have that, because it allows those islands To compete with the rest.
So on. I'm really
fascinated that I work in Vanuatu, and have done
for several years. They have a little island to the very north
of Vanuatu that doesn't have internet, doesn't have telephone, but virtually every resident has a smartphone, and they communicate via Bluetooth, and they find their own ways, and they're upskilling themselves through using the smartphone. So I think for the Pacific, the smartphone has been one of the key instruments and good for the delivery of the internet, the cheapness of power for recharging your cell phone. And the sheer price of a cell phone device is, you know, you you virtually have your $100 device. And I think things have moved really well. The Mobile Money App that now is available in the Pacific is the bank fees, their international payments and so on. So these are things that are really good, really positive, and moving
moving nicely forward, and so they should continue.
But let's go to the bad I think we we saw from the late 1990s with groups like the Pacific Island chapter of ISOC, this growing interest in Internet governance and where it might be useful as a discussion forum for how to improve internet and ICT in the Pacific, I think we got to 2011 and Nemea, where SPC convened for us, that's the Secretariat of the Pacific Islands and or Pacific community. And we had about 100 people at that event. So somewhat similar to today, We fundraised by tapping various organizations on the shoulder to get real
money together. So I think we had 10 organizations, internet
NZ, our aus registry, that's putting in $10,000 US, dollars each, to make a pool of $100,000 that we spent on getting around 70 people fellowshipped to that event. So that, to me, was the sort of the peak of interest in Internet governance, and we've seen it tailing off a little bit since. You know, the Pacific Island forum seems less interested. They used to convene a ministers of ICT meeting annually up until about that point, and then didn't anymore. They they went to prime ministerial meetings and internet and iG was lucky to make it on the agenda, I think AP regional, and largely concentrates on Asia and well developed economies, and
hasn't had very much interest in The Pacific,
although, to their credit, they did convene the Asia Pacific Regional IGF in Vanuatu in 2018 and that might have been a bit of an eye opener to them, but I don't think they followed through. I think APTLD, you used to be pretty keen on Pacific engagement with the ccTLD operators in the Pacific, but I think that has gone away in recent years, and they've concentrated more on other parts of Asia that were formally difficult to reach. Internet NZ had a wonderful little program that we called PIP, the Pacific internet partnership that was funded EP and that allowed again, travel fellowships to get Pacific Islanders to meetings and get
speakers along to the Pacific. But that largely
dried up and doesn't appear to exist anymore. So funding is always an issue. We talked about money being the key. I think maybe that things like covid have stood in the way of further developments. Disappointingly, Australia was running its own Australian IGF, and New Zealand was running its net Hui. I think covid and other things and other politics have stood in the way of those things. But again, New Zealand and Australia should be taking the lead, and it does appear that they may be now taking the lead for doing more in that regard, as an exemplar,
I think generally, the idea of E health and
E education have been failures in the Pacific. I mean, these
programs do exist, but lightweight, and I know, and from my experiences in Vanuatu, if people have medical problems, are flown into port Vila and treated and flown home, and so often those people didn't need to fly at all. So the funding that was used, that is being used to fly them instead used for E health, just by diagnosis, via internet and so on. So, you know, I think that's pretty awful. I think the wissus coming up. Rico talked about the early wissus, the World Summit on the Information Society. The that was that ended, which painted a map for Internet governance, which led to the global Internet Governance Forum, which I think
started off quite successfully, but seems to be fizzling
out as a useful forum for multi stakeholder dialog. And I'll come to the reasons why shortly. The WISC process itself is a multilateral discussion. It's government to government in all of the preparatory meetings. It ends up with governments speaking all day, and then business and civil society given five minutes each at the end of the day to have their input. And so it's not a useful process when governments can be confused about what actually is happening in their country relating to the Internet and Internet governance, and so that going projecting forward, UN bodies tend to like this multilateral model and don't
want to necessarily follow the multi stakeholder model.
So I think that's quite ugly as well. I think without multi stakeholderism, the future of the Internet becomes quite fractious. So looking forward to the future, big, big congratulations to Auda and to APNIC and to for their reinvigorating this event here and our and to the Pacific Island chapter of ISOC. You know, congratulations to you for ensuring there is a new IGF, and also to Vanuatu itself, which has its own annual in country IGF, and it gathers a lot of people, useful people together for dialog. I think your government benefits roughly. To what people have to say. I think future
fiber to the smallest populated eye is still the
essential pipe dream. Without it, you don't have real connectivity, perhaps Starlink and satellite going forwards might provide more more expedient way of connecting, but it needs until everybody's connected, you can't say that you have a society that is based on equity and fairness and reasonableness. I think education for the future is a massive issue. You see better connectivity, the scamming, the spamming, the cybercrime, the lack of cybersecurity is a really massive to protect ourselves from. We need lots of young and
I see this room's full of young, young, enthusiastic people to step forward.
Don and Ian and I are far too old to worry about this for the future. So we're utterly reliant on everybody in the room to step up and work towards the viability of the multi model, whether that be an ICANN or at ISOC, or in your local in country, IGF, or in the Pacific, IGF, your voice is needed. And let me just reiterate what multi stakeholderism is. It is bottom up. It comes from the people, not It's not top down. It's bottom up. It is open and transparent. Consensus based decision making. Consensus doesn't mean unanimous, but by far the majority of the room agrees. The country agrees. The region agrees that that the room for civil society, for academia, for the technical community, for governments,
to come together and have that dialog, and that
it is an equal platform, that governments are not given preferential treatment in any way. Governments, of course, have right and the obligation to make law, and they always will. But what multi stakeholderism can do is inform the government how to make better law, how to make robust, useful law, and so that dialog is vitally important, and it can't exist in a vacuum. It can't exist with just the technical community or just academic or just government. It must be something where everybody can hear, listen, observe and develop consensus. So I'll give you that as my challenge to you for the future, and I'd like to say
questions i
No, excellent. Oh, Andrew. All right, you're gonna
you've got a question, and you just right. All right, I'd just like to thank my panelists
online, Reiko, Ian and Don and can
you put your hands together to thank them?
Thank you so much, Keith. We are almost on time, but a
few minutes, but that's okay. I'd like Ian just come up.
As I said earlier, these are pioneers of internet governance in the region. Now you sorry. You will notice that they are all while we are here in New Zealand, we're going to acknowledge them.
So I'll ask Sarai
to a small token of appreciation. Is not only for the for for the years, it's just a small token of appreciation, just to on behalf of everybody from tcvik that have been impacted because of your work in the Pacific. So I'll ask Sarai to to give you,
I don't know. I
really we can give you one Helen, but I'll bring it to Auckland when I'm there. Thank you. Okay,
so thank you so much. I think that's
our the end of our session, but if you want to take pictures with them, please feel free. Yeah, yeah, you, you might not see this group again in Dexter in Pacific, Asia. So have this opportunity to to acknowledge them, and you know, take the picture. Andrew, okay, thank you so much. Our next session will start at two, which is digital transformation trends, another interesting session, so please come back after lunch is outside. Please help yourself. It's I think it started. So find something to eat. Continue to mingle and enjoy your lunch. Applause,
