GENEVA
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has said that the world needs a new approach to allow as many people as possible to access digital data across borders. This should help maximise development gains and ensure that they are equitably distributed, said the agency, launching its Digital Economy Report 2021.
A new approach should also enable worldwide data sharing, increase the development of global digital “public goods”, increase trust and reduce uncertainty in the digital economy, UNCTAD added.
The report stressed that the new global system must help avoid further fragmentation of the internet, address policy challenges emerging from the dominant positions of digital platforms, and narrow existing inequalities.
“It is more important than ever to embark on a new path for digital and data governance,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in his preface to the report. “The current fragmented data landscape… may create more space for substantial harms related to privacy breaches, cyberattacks and other risks” he added.??
Digital data play an increasingly important role as an economic and strategic resource, a trend reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic, the report says. For example, sharing health data globally is of “critical importance” as it can help countries fight disease outbreaks, and for research purposes, in the development of effective vaccines: “The issue of digital governance can no longer be postponed,” UNCTAD Secretary General Rebeca Grynspan said.
“The global data economy calls for moving away from the silo approach towards a more holistic, coordinated global approach,” UNCTAD Deputy Secretary General Isabelle Durant added.?
UNCTAD is proposing the formation of a new United Nations coordinating body, focused on assessing and developing global digital and data governance. The body should seek to remedy the underrepresentation of developing countries and provide sufficient policy space to ensure countries with different levels of digital readiness and capacities, can truly benefit.
The report notes that now, there are widely diverging approaches to data governance, with three leading players – the United States, China and the European Union (EU). In essence, the US approach focuses on control of data by the private sector, the Chinese model emphasizes control of data by the government, while the EU favours control of data by individuals, based on fundamental rights and values.
“The absence of a global data governance framework hampers countries’ ability to reap benefits from the digital economy,”?UNCTAD’s director of technology and logistics, Shamika N Sirimanne, said. “It also hinders their ability to protect the privacy of people from both private sector and government use of data and to address concerns related to law enforcement and national security”.
The report warned that a data-related divide is emerging, resulting in many developing countries becoming mere providers of raw data to global digital platforms while having to pay for the digital intelligence generated from their data.
It also noted that the average mobile broadband speed is about three times higher in developed countries than in LDCs. The report warns that it has become increasingly difficult to consider regulations of cross-border data flows without also considering the governance of the digital corporations. These platforms continue to expand their own data ecosystems and increasingly control all stages of the global data value chain.
