 Hi everybody, welcome to today's panel, the digital sprint to 2030 today's topic is going to be focused around digital technologies and the positive impact it can have on the sustainable development goals, especially with the backdrop of the pandemic. As we look towards the next 10 years to 2030. The tech sector alone can generate an additional revenue of $2 trillion or more globally and an annual basis so on this panel will outline the UN roadmap for the goals for SDGs. What kind of stakeholder collaboration can happen and what kind of sector group collaboration could lead to unlocking some of this opportunity. So I want to start off by introducing our panelists, Peter Lacey is the senior managing director at Accenture, Rebecca Maisie Zach is the CEO of TechSoup Global. And in a little bit, Mr for greed see a hawkshells the special advisor to the secretary secretary general of the UN will join us for this session. But first I wanted to start off with you Peter. What's going on in the tech sector specifically. We're seeing a lot of collaboration that's happening that we haven't seen before. It's a multi stakeholder collaboration how do you see the industry, continuing this collaboration now and post pandemic as we look towards 2030. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you to what I think and it's a great topic to be having at the heart of the debate on how it is that we accelerate the business contribution to the sustainable development goals. I think my two key messages on this topic are that that on the one hand there is the enormous opportunity that you mentioned. We are seeing an incredible convergence of technologies in combinatorial impacts that are allowing us to think very, very differently about how we can really use digital to enable sustainability. There could be physical technologies linked to digital it could be biological technologies linked to digital but often we see digital as this backbone with big data and analytics and intelligence with advances in technologies like cloud computing. In ways of thinking about how we measure and manage and communicate and add value through intelligence that helps us to be more precise more targeted, more applied in tackling so many different sustainability issues. It can range from how we think about the data and analytics and the intelligence that helps us to think differently about distributed energy systems or rethinking what it takes to run solar parks, wind farms, what it takes to rethink the built environment with connected devices. There is huge potential and that potential is often in combination. That leads me to my second point which is that that requires multi-stakeholder collaboration on a scale that we have rarely seen either on sustainability or on technology. So on technology you'll often see ecosystems of software partners working with integrators working with clients but normally you're talking to a three different players working together sustainability. You may see cross sector collaboration but what we believe is that we need another level of collaboration that allows us to look end to end in supply chains, for example, or end to end rethinking entire energy systems. And that I think is why it's so good to see that as part of the conversation at the United Nations. Today, for example, we launched with SAP and with 3M a new program called the SDG ambition that looks to integrate sustainability into things like enterprise management solutions, helping to produce the softwares that allow us to much more accurately measure performance to be able to communicate that to be able to assess value. So I think those are my two starting messages on this and really around the fact, yes, huge opportunity often in combination, but requires a huge amount of all of us raising our game on collaboration to deliver the value and the real impact on sustainability. In that point, Rebecca I want to bring you in Rebecca you run TechSoup Global, which is a nonprofit that provides technology solutions to other nonprofits. On that topic of multi stakeholder collaboration, what's the best way to foster the public private sector collaboration. Well, thank you the sustainable development goals can really only be achieved with the inclusion and guidance of a strong civil society. And that's the area that we work in so I'm going to emphasize my remarks there. We achieve these goals one person at a time. So they have to be quite inclusive. A little bit about our kind of perspective we we reach 1.3 million nonprofits through TechSoup and this is really one of the biggest civil society networks in the world. Our role is really to build capacity across all the road. More than 60 NGOs who work together with more than 100 technology companies, and we scale these activities through technology. This marketplace that we have just to give you a sense has facilitated more than $14 billion worth of technology resources and funding in 200 countries and last year alone a million and a half a billion and a half rather. And civil society itself is made up of 12 million organizations and lots of groups and others who are activists that contribute about $4 trillion to the global economy so it's very large and very diverse has a workforce of about 250 million. And they bring an understanding of the impact of economic and social injustice and they often act as a bellwether of issues that are really still invisible to the rest of society. Like human rights violations or ocean plastics, with that context in mind I'll comment on two of the recommendations of the UN roadmap for digital cooperation. The first is the concept of digital inclusion. The 2030 goal in sure goal ensuring that every person has you know safe and affordable access to the internet will require the highest levels of global cooperation and civil society must be included in this most important goal which so many other goals rely on. And to this end we were pleased to chair with the World Economic Forum industry group set up the civil society action over the summer to begin to create a roadmap to closing digital divides. We also think about inclusion as a first principle across all stages of technology for social outcomes. It really has the potential to mitigate the injustice and negative consequences of innovations. Civil society has significant experience with inclusive methodologies. We need to build on that and engage those practices in civil society and technology design development and use across all the SDGs. And we see that technology developed with the community involved in all stages really will increase the likelihood of relevant trusted and timely resources to reach constituents better. I can share a few quick examples there. This is some things that grassroots organizations have built for grassroots communities mobile apps. One is Ask Izzy, which is really getting resources to people experiencing homelessness in Australia. Other countries are also exploring the use of it. The Safe Shelter Collaborative, which is supporting organizations in finding shelter for survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence, sexual assault, finding it in minutes instead of days. And Worker Connect, which is giving migrant workers in the Persian Gulf a worker voice tool and soon is going to be used for healthcare workers in Eastern Europe. So these are all grassroots teams who built these products and they did include the community at all stages of development. The other major area of the roadmap that I wanted to comment on is digital public goods. A marketplace for digital public goods is recommended and can certainly allow us to build a network effect on the informal networks of civil society that they already use a lot and to share resources and practices. A community of purpose and practice around the digital public goods and common data sets is required to link to impact community dialogue and innovation. Common data sets enable data driven decisions and the kind of data aggregation that can really support advocacy. They also ensure that the people too often left out are included in the discussions on progress toward or away from the goals. Projects that help provide visibility into things like and washing stations or government resources transportation and previously unmapped areas are all good examples of other potential public digital public goods. These projects demonstrate how shared methodologies tools and data provide key information to both community members and also can improve decision making at the community and national level. And also it's just critical that we have support for these public goods and that the technology is agnostic. That we think about the fit for purpose and making it sustainable and that we have, you know, customer success as part of, like we think about it on the commercial side we need to think about that for these groups as well. In closing, I just want to say there's no one answer because of the diversity of how to best do these collaborations but we have to include commitment to this, you know, access and inclusion but also training and security and other kind of protections around governance and it's really up to us who are privileged to be in these big conversations to find ways to use digital technologies to connect grassroots civil society as contributors and as a sector stakeholder in global cooperation. Thank you. And those are such great examples. I just heard that the Mr. Undersecretaries joined us so I'm hoping that he can actually give us the roadmap for the UN. Mr. Undersecretary, are you there? Yes, yes, I'm here. I'm so sorry. I apologize for coming a bit late but we, it's a platform that one reaches through many roundabout ways but I'm very glad to be here. So yes, the roadmap. Look, the roadmap that digital technology is the fastest spreading technologies ever. In past technologies to simplify what is tremendously complex. You have the business community that boosts development, profit, outreach, and then you have governments that pay attention to the public good, the pay attention to technologies not undermining the broader public good. So in the late 19th century, the meat industry expanded massively in New York. There was very little regulation. Then half the army got poisoned through a major provider in New York. The meat regulation, food regulation began. And that's the way the interplay, as I say, vast simplification tends to work between those who defend the public good and those who advance very legitimate and praiseworthy business interests. Digital is special because it's spread at a speed that has left policymakers and those responsible for the public good way behind. And we've created something that we don't even understand fully the impact. Nobody anticipated in creating technologies that had all the promise to bring us much closer that they would leave us more polarized. Nobody anticipated when we created technologies that allowed many to have a voice that they hadn't had before, that it would undermine our democracy. So there are all sorts of unintended side effects and malicious uses. National countries are trying to catch up. Many regions, especially Europe are trying to catch up. But at global level, and these technologies that do not recognize borders, were still struggling to catch up. But by definition, the global series is absolutely critical. And we're seeing the results of inadequate global spirit, we're seeing tech fragmentation, we're seeing the politicization of the tech world, we're seeing the utilization of tech to lead surrogate wars in ways that is damaging for tech, damaging for the world and certainly undermines the possibilities of achieving universal connectivity without which we won't get the SDGs. And that's the background to the roadmap. That's why we need a roadmap to enhance international digital cooperation. And startups and business have a key role in this. Whether we like it or not, what we had with the nuclear era, what we had with electricity, what we had with railways, what we had with every other major technological advance, but it happened very much under the auspices of government, is not happening with tech. Tech is way ahead of government. And by default, a lot of functions that traditionally were with government are now with tech. Deciding on my privacy rights is much more with tech companies that I use than with any government. So, you know, we won't manage this, we won't manage to steer digital cooperation for good, to steer digital technologies for good, unless there's full buy-in as much from governments as from tech companies. In terms of the big actors, that means they can do more to ensure that the focus switches to affordable connectivity. With the increased digitalization of the world, digital is no longer a luxury. Those who don't have digital are pushed further back, especially with COVID now. The lack of digitalization doesn't mean a loss of action. It means no access to education, it means no access to health, it means no access to work in many cases. So it's a bit like when everybody had horses, if you had a car, it was luxury. But when 60% of the world has cars and you belong to the 40% who have horses, you left much further behind. You're disadvantaged massively. And that's the point where we are today with digital technology. So I think all big companies have to ask themselves, what are we doing to achieve not just our profits gains, but to achieve universal affordable access? Because in the absence of focus on that, they're contributing, even if unwittingly, to the digital divide. And these billion trillion dollar companies can't afford the luxury of naivety that they could afford when they were garage operations. So what economic opportunities are we creating? What are we doing for affordability? Are our efforts to scale? I think those are key questions. And for startups, I think one has to see how we're contributing to the sustainable development goals. Is this yet another app to give me, I live in Williamsburg, New York, yet better access to bubble tea? Or is this really going to help employment? Is this really going to do something for the most disadvantaged? How is it going to help inequality? And we can't, I think, until now, there's been a slight sort of less a fair approach. There's been a sort of almost 19th century idea is you liberate digital technologies and there'll be a trickle down effect and it will just work on its own. I think by now we've learned that's not the case. Unguided, the damage will be at least equal to the benefits. So we need to make a much more conscious effort. Our side is policymakers and the business as well. And just to give you one illustration, the paradox of this, you know, we think 21st century technologies, it's at the forefront of progressiveness. But this can be misleading. I mean, one very simple example I come back to is women in the tech sector. You know, if you look at the overall percentage of CEOs, female CEOs in the in the top fortune 500 companies, it's I think it's around 5%. In the tech sector, it's even less. So here you have a sector that is pushing forward the 21st century, and yet deeply imbibed with 19th century values. There's something wrong there. So let's not imagine that because we're digitally enlightened, we're enlightened in terms of what we're doing for humanity and in terms of the values we represent. And often it's unwitting. I mean, nobody decided to exclude women from the tech sector or exclude minorities from the tech sector, but it happened by default. But this is wrong. Default is not a good function to be in and we need to switch the default function. To start up, I think there's there is some promising signs, but there's still a very long way to go. So my plea is let's be more conscious of what we're doing for society. Let's be more conscious of whether we're increasing polarization or reducing it, increasing inequality or reducing it. And I think if we all work better together, we can make serious progress. And to that point, you've mentioned a lot of polarization and disconnect. Can you give us some tangible examples of some early actions taken by leaders that helping contribute to those SDG goals? Many, many like to quote the examples of both Kenya and Rwanda, Kenya, where there's been huge efforts by government and by the private sector and by aid donors to maximize fintech to bring people who otherwise wouldn't be able to come into the economic life or would have much more difficulties to give them access to credit, to give them access to markets which they wouldn't have. So that, I mean, the Kenya example is often broadly cited. In Rwanda, there's been all sorts of examples of better using digital technologies to help the remotest communities, whether it's using drones for the distribution of medicines that otherwise would be much more costly to get to market. So there are many examples, there are many outstanding examples, but are they to scale and are they happening universally? That's really the challenge of our times. Not just always being able to cite often the same examples, but looking at where things are drifting on the whole and seeing how we can tip things the other way and bring the outstanding examples that do exist to a scale where they have much greater global impact. And I just want to remind the viewers that if you have any questions to put it in Slido, the hashtag is or the code is SDIS. I know that the questions are starting to come in, so we'll get to them towards the end. Peter, I want to go back to you and we've talked a little bit about this throughout some of the great examples, but we touch on some of the civil liberties with Rebecca as well. If you look at the media term on text role with them combating the COVID-19, you've got supercomputers analyzing compounds and drugs, you've got e-commerce companies delivering household goods, medical supplies, video conferencing, allowing us to have this conversation today, enabling education and work from home. You've got companies like Apple and Google and others coming together to help with contact tracing. But that also, how do we hold these tech companies to account so that they're not going against their civil liberties but also providing the good towards those goals? I think that's a great question, so I will come back and answer that directly. If you don't mind, I just want to respond to a couple of brilliant points from the Undersecretary and I will make sure I don't come back to that. So first of all, I think the Secretary General's roadmap for digital cooperation and the fact that it sets out a global, and I think he made this point, a global framework for those of us across sectors, but also in particular big tech and players like us who work with, in our case, the largest consulting and technology player working with all of those tech companies, to tackle many of the critical issues at the heart of the SDGs, digital inclusion, trust, security, AI, in a way that aligns it with the SDGs, but also aligns it with that critical need for transparency, for security, for trust, and it is extremely welcome. And I do believe many of the points that he mentioned are very real risks to undermining the full value that digital transformation and our transitions to digital economies can deliver. And that is not what I think is at the heart of what tech wants or is in its own self-interest. So that's my first point there. I think I will say, I think I agree completely with him about the gender issue in tech. I will say I'm extremely proud to work for Accenture, where we have the most aggressive goals in the industry to have 25% of our leaders by 2025 and 50-50 overall in the company, and Julie Sweet, who became our CEO last year, you know, a female leader. But I do think his point is absolutely right about unconscious bias and also about this sense in which we haven't built this into the way we think strategically across the sectors as an imperative. And so I buy that story as well. I think, for me, the point about holding accountable ourselves and our companies is really, at the one point, it's about values and ethics of leaders and making sure that across your culture, that is not simply a soft-wiring or optional approach within organizations, but is hardwired into stage gates in product development, into remuneration and rewards, into recruitment, retention, et cetera, et cetera. That actually we have those values very clearly built into everything we do and ask for the questions about what impact that's having on a consumer or a citizen. And to the point that was made about privacy or security is not optional. We must make sure that we're secure. Privacy should be done with active consent. You know, this is not something that we should be making decisions on for people. We should be making them with people. I think the problem that we have is that we have a mismatch between the pervasiveness of global technology and markets and connectivity and national regulatory frameworks and the point that in many cases tech firms are way out ahead of regulators and they struggle to keep up. So I think global principles are good, but we also need to make sure that there is real collaboration between those tech companies, between the ecosystems like ourselves having active dialogues with governments as the legitimate representatives of citizens and consumers and having a grown-up debate and trying to keep them up to speed and being prepared to actually have a much more open, transparent dialogue on what's right and what's wrong. We're never going to solve this purely with regulatory effort. It will be partly regulatory, but it will have to be industry-leading self-regulation and voluntary standards. And I think what we need to keep coming back to is the examples that that trust enables us to deliver because it enables the adoption of technologies faster. That's good for business. That's good for consumers. And I'll give you an example. The NHS we recently rolled out during the COVID crisis, 1.2 million examples of Microsoft teams so that people could work more securely or the incredible pace of cloud computing, totally revolutionizing the footprint of the growing technologies that we see in areas like data centers or the way in which we see the retail channel and online consumption, online consumer technology emerging at pace. All of those rely on trust and consent and having that public dialogue openly. So it's in businesses' interest. And as I said, I welcome, I think we welcome having more and more global frameworks and dialogues that can set that tone. No, those are great, incredible points, Peter. I know we only have to get one audience question in. Mr. Undersecretary, I'll throw this one to you. In developing countries, digital literacy and technology capacity of civil society is still low holding back our entire society. How to unleash that potential? You know, in the least developed countries, connectivity is less than 90%. While in the developing countries, for the most part, it's over 18%. So the gap between developed and developing, unless we make extremely determined efforts, is only going to get worse. And the SDGs are going to be more invasive than others. And I think technology has thrown that into stark relief and made the challenge more acute. In terms of the challenge in developing countries, I mean, what's become clear is that it's only partially an infrastructure challenge. You know, connectivity, the potential for connectivity is six times higher than the actual connectivity in terms of network availability. So the problem is affordability, the problems is scale, skills, the problems is public policies and regulation. And we have to attack all those. And in many countries, it's about having local language content available. In many countries about boosting literacy rates. So I think we need much more concerted efforts. We have to, we have to capacity building efforts now a largely supply driven. So companies going with their product and provide capacity building around their product, or countries go within their security approach and capacity building around their approach to digital security. We need needs assessments that look at policies that look at digital skills that look at infrastructure in integrated objective way and come out on a case by case basis of where the needs are. And then we build integrated responses around that. And ITU and UNDP are trying to step up efforts to do that. So the UN is trying to equip itself better to do that. But I think we need to look at the problems from an integrated aspect. And we need massive investment in this. You know, there's huge public investment going on now as part of the build back post COVID. Public investment internally public investment externally and digital building back digitally, including with skills training has to be a large part of that. And the voice of companies, the voice of where it can be very important in that. That's, that's great. I'm going to throw in actually one more audience question and this one's quite relevant to us at NBC and coverage as well. I'll send this one to you. Social media is accelerating both good and bad tech solutions are overwhelmingly with choice. How soon is a digital and real life balance happen for humanity. How soon is a pretty difficult and big question to answer but I will maybe just build on the undersecretaries excellent points to say that some of the training and skills so to speak that we need to arm people with is you know how to understand when information is being misused and also how to protect their security. And so I think they're, you know, we need we need people to have enough information about how this technology does change things. And we do see some excellent examples of people working at the grassroots level to help audiences understand it. I know we did go a little bit over so I'm being told we need to wrap up. Thank you everybody for joining this panel there's a great discussion. Thank you to all the panelists for joining me for everyone else. Please check out top link for any other sessions today there's some great ones scheduled and the hashtag is sdi 20. Thank you everybody. Thank you, thank you.