NGI Panel: Communities, Digital Rights and the future of the Internet

Given the rapid spread of technological innovations, preserving human rights in the digital world is a more and more pressing issue for technologists, policy makers and society. Several communities and initiatives are playing a pivotal role in addressing these challenges. This NGI panel brings together thought agents from this ecosystem to discuss paths towards an inclusive, more equitable, and human-centric digital future for all.

On January 25th, the NGI outreach office organizes an insightful 60-minute online panel discussion on the vital, yet not visible enough, role of the digital rights grassroots communities in shaping the future of the internet. The panel brings together community leaders from renowned organizations like Access Now, Missions Publiques, Algorights, and Wikimedia Foundation. These experts will share their visions and discuss the pressing issues surrounding the creation of a safer and more inclusive, human-centric internet.

The Next Generation Internet (NGI) is a European Commission (EC) initiative that aims to shape the development and evolution of the Internet into an Internet of Trust, responding to people’s fundamental needs including trust, security, and inclusion, while reflecting the values and the norms all citizens enjoy in Europe. The project merges financing (more than €250m have supported 1,000(+) Internet researchers and innovators involved in hundreds of projects up to date) with mentoring and support in the innovators’ journey, from the initial idea to the development and testing of new open source solutions.

Access Now is a grassroots-to-global international organization that focuses its work on preserving human rights in a context of rapid introduction of new technologies and tools into our daily lives. Wikimedia is a non-profit Foundation whose labor is centered in providing the essential infrastructure for free knowledge, ensuring humans remain central along all the knowledge compilation process. Algorights is a collaborative network that promotes the participation of civil society in the field of AI technologies, with a focus on Human Rights. And Missions Publiques is an agency specialized in citizen participation focused in initiating and organizing international and crossover citizen dialogues. So far, they have created more than 1800 dialogues across 125 countries.

The panel is an opportunity to debate about the often aligned visions of these digital rights communities and the NGI principles towards a more human-centric digital environment, with open source and digital common at its core. This panel will also offer a chance to understand what  learnings and lines of action coming from these communities are not yet evident at the policy level, and how these can provide valuable insights into shaping the future NGI agenda by following an inclusive, grounded, bottom-up approach. The session will therefore embed a societal and community perspective within the NGI, thus extending its scope while exploring synergies and potentially collaborating in future initiatives. It will pave the way for co-envisioning and co-designing scenarios of desirable futures enabled by the internet.  

Panel experts:

• Manavpreet Kaur, Governance Committee Support Associate at Wikimedia Foundation.
• Antoine Vergne, Co-Director of Missions Publiques.
• Lucía Errandonea, Team Algorights and Govtech Project Manager at GOBE.
• Caterina Rodelli Eu Policy Analyst at Access Now

Speakers:

• Gemma Carolillo, Deputy Head of Next Generation Internet Unit of the EU Commission.
• Monique Calisti, CEO of Martel Innovate

Moderators:

• Anna Higueras, Projects Manager at Ideas for Change.
• Giovanni Maccani, Research Director at Ideas for Change.

Agenda:

• 11:00 – 11:10: Welcome and Introduction by A. Higueras (Ideas for Change) and M. Calisti (Martel Innovate).
• 11:10 – 11:20: Overview of The NGI Initiative by G. Carolillo, Deputy Head of Next Generation Unit, European Commission.
• 11:20 – 11:35: Presentations by Representatives of Access Now, Algorights, We, The Internet, and Wikimedia.
• 11:35 – 11:55: Debate and Audience Interaction.
• 11:55 – 12:00: Conclusion by G. Maccani, Ideas for Change.

Registration Details:

The panel discussion will be conducted online (11am to 12pm CEST). Interested audiences must register to attend. For registration and more information, please visit:  https://ti.to/ngi/ngi-panel-communities-digital-rights-and-the-future-of-the-internet.

The NOO (NGI Outreach Office):

The NOO is the communication agency at the service of the whole NGI initiative, interacting with several stakeholders within the Next Generation Internet ecosystem and beyond its borders. The core foundation of its approach to NGI promotion is to be an active communication hub for both the NGI insiders and outsiders, facilitating encounters and promoting know-how and technology transfer across several channels.