The UN High-level Panel Report on Digital Cooperation represents a welcome effort to improve the network of organisations and entities that contribute to Internet governance. It is well timed, as it comes as the world recognises that the digital transformation is fundamentally shaping every sector of the economy and many dimensions of society. Improving our understanding of this transformation has been the focus of OECD’s “Going Digital” project since 2017^[1].

In this sense, the OECD welcomes being a partner in this effort and being recognised as an organisation that can advance the measurement agenda and fill in some of the identified gaps where we need a sound evidence base. Experience shows that policies are more effective when developed based on facts and not anecdotes, the passion of the moment or competition between countries. The OECD takes prides in improving and using statistics and our most recent milestone, “Measuring the Digital Transformation”^[2] is the latest step in this policy space. It sets out a forward road map of work that needs to be pursued to develop better measures of connectivity, human capacity, autonomous intelligent systems and trust – topics identified as priority actions in the UN Panel report.

However, the OECD is more than just a number crunching organisation. We can also contribute to advancing the policy agenda in a variety of areas. In fact, some of our experiences may provide a useful guide to the future of Internet governance and how to move from political aspirations to outcomes that are more concrete. The OECD engages with a variable geometry of countries, ranging from our committee meetings where about about a quarter of the delegates are not formal members to our Global Forums that now cover the world: the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes has 157 members participating. In addition, our active involvement with the G20 on digital policy issues since the 2016 Chinese Presidency broadens the number of countries we support in this space. A recent example of this, is the 2019 G20 Summit under the Japanese Presidency that agreed to support a set of G20 AI principles^[3] that were drawn from the OECD AI Principles^[4] that our Council adopted a month earlier.

Embracing Multistakeholderism at a Multilateral Organisation

Our smaller set of countries, many of whom have been pioneers in digital policymaking, may represent a configuration that is able to forge a consensus and has the flexibility to adapt to new working methods. One example of this is our early embrace of the multistakeholder approach to policy making that was formally enshrined in 2008 at the Seoul Ministerial Meeting after which the stakeholders at the Committee on Digital Economy Policy expanded from business and labour to include the technical community and civil society. These stakeholders are not window-dressing: they sit at the table next to government officials, they have access to the substantive documents in advance of the meeting, and they are encouraged to provide comments on the documents. The importance of a multi-stakeholder approach was further advanced when the OECD adopted in 2011 the OECD Internet Policy-making Principles^[5] as a Council Recommendation of “soft law” which specifically recommend that countries include stakeholders in their policymaking.

This multi-stakeholder approach was used to constitute the Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AIGO^[6]) in 2018-19 to explore the development of AI principles to “further the development of and trust in AI.” Consisting of more than 50 experts including from each of the stakeholder groups, AIGO produced a draft proposal that was instrumental in the development of the OECD’s AI Principles from which the G20 AI Principles are drawn. These principles embrace many of the aspirations of the UN HL Panel report such as human-centered values, transparency, robustness and accountability. These AI principles represent a prototype of how multilateralism and multistakeholderism can work to produce outcomes that advance digital governance.

In parallel, work is underway at the OECD that seeks to update our methods of taxation for the digital era. It also embraces a similar multi-stakeholder approach but one that includes a large set of countries. Its work will go beyond “soft law” and rather establish the basis for new tax regulations. This work has been underway for several years and is expected to reach fruition next year for the G20 under the Saudi Arabian Presidency.

A future architecture for Internet Governance

The UN Panel report is refreshing in its recognition that there is no single approach to digital cooperation. Chapter 4’s list of five challenges and gaps provides a succinct list of the problems that need to be addressed by any new approach. The first two – the low political status of digital policy issues and making technical bodies more inclusive – will be relatively easy to fix. The remaining three – the considerable overlap among mechanisms covering digital policy, the fact that digital issues now permeate a wide range of siloed-policy area (e.g. health, trade) and the lack of reliable data – are more intractable. Respectively, the overlap reflects to some degree the natural tendency of countries to seek coalitions with like-minded partners with similar economic and social contexts, and it will be hard to stop especially in the current environment; the awakening of various bodies to the digital transformation is to be welcomed, but they need to join the party, not operate in isolation; and as for data, one critical action is to put our money where our mouth is and fund our statistical agencies which includes paying higher salaries for public sector data scientists.

From where I sit, option 3, a “Digital Commons Architecture” is the most practical and pragmatic option and best respects the organic nature of the Internet. Clearly, it will not be easy to herd all the actors into various work streams, but the ethos of this community has always been shaped by a shared vision of a global commons.

^[1] See https://www.oecd.org/going-digital/

^[2] See https://www.oecd.org/going-digital/measurement-roadmap.pdf#targetText=Measuring%20the%20Digital%20Transformation%3A%20A,%3A%20Shaping%20Policies%2C%20Improving%20Lives.

^[3] See https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/000486596.pdf#targetText=a)%20AI%20actors%20should%20respect,and%20internationally%20recognized%20labor%20rights.

^[4] See https://www.oecd.org/going-digital/ai/principles/

^[5] See https://www.oecd.org/internet/ieconomy/oecd-principles-for-internet-policy-making.pdf

^[6] See http://www.oecd.org/innovation/oecd-creates-expert-group-to-foster-trust-in-artificial-intelligence.htm