 Hello, everybody. My name is Amar Asher. I am the assistant director of research at the Brooklyn client Center for Internet and Society and also part of the secretariat for the global network of Internet and Society Centers and today's conversation. I'm really excited to talk with one of the centers who's been very active in the global network of Internet Society group for the past couple of years and I'd like to introduce you to Professor Susan Aronson, who is a professor at the George Washington University and also the director of the digital trade and data governance hub, as well as her colleague, Thomas Stewart, who is the director of research at the digital trade and data governance hub. I'm really excited to talk to you both because I've followed the work of the hub since it was initiated last year, or a year or two ago and also through Susan's work over the past couple of years so welcome to both of you. My first question for you is just to tell us a little bit more about, about the hub and the work that you're doing. Thomas and I worked together when he was. Balgi. Istanbul Bilgi University. Istanbul Bilgi University. Another network of center. Right, we had received a grant from Eli sugar minute you let to look at whether or not they were shared definitions norms and strategies as to what are the barriers to cross border data flows. We did a survey and we entered we did. Six case studies, and we found what we thought we were going to find which was very disturbing which was all these nations were alleging that other nations had adopted all these barriers to cross border data flows. But there was no shared definition as to what a barrier was. For examples net neutrality rules and incentive or a barrier. There were no shared strategies like what do you do how do you respond. You put in place tariffs that doesn't seem like a good idea. And as a result of that as part of, so we did these interviews. Around the world our case studies were Brazil, US Canada. The EU, Russia. I'm missing country and I'm missing. I guess there was no Asian country. In any case. And what was pretty shocking is almost everywhere we went. The policy makers that we talked with had like, some of them were very sophisticated. Some of them are making legislation or regulations and they seem to have very little understanding of what they were working on, and that frightened me. And so we put in proposals to as many foundations as we could to try to get support to educate policymakers. And what the hub does is, until March, we went to people on the hill and we went to people in the executive branch and said what would you like to learn more about. And then we give them either free training or free event or luncheon. So we've done everything from digital trade to should there be standards for AI. To why in the world does Denmark have a tech ambassador and, you know, to Silicon Valley and to, you know, Chinese tech companies. And, you know, I, I think they're really interesting things, but we, we aren't reaching the public as much as I would like and I, I'm not sure how to do that. I thought the best way would be to partner with as many groups as possible. But I think in these times it's also kind of hard to get people to pay attention they say they care about things. They have other priorities which I think are more urgent like getting a job or feeding your family in times of COVID-19 or avoiding COVID-19. So, so we did move to these webinars online. We still do training for policymakers. But we're trying to rethink the strategy in that sometimes people, we know that a lot of times people want to learn the news of the day so you know like everybody's concerned about tick tock. But maybe, you know, a better way, you know, should we find ways to suggest what they should learn while being tackle about it. And then how to get them to spend 45 minutes, you know, learning those stuff. Another thing is, I would like to set up study groups for various issues and I haven't yet figured that out but that's something. And then I'm going to let Thomas talk to you now about our major project which Thomas is directing. Excellent. And thank you for that really helpful overview, Susan. I know that so many of these issues are really core to actually what so many other network of centers members are working on. And this question in particular I would love to continue the conversation on how we think about informing and educating policymakers as an audience versus the public, maybe not versus but how to think of those two things together and also as individual communities as we think about how we produce our research products and who we intend, who we intend them for. I kind of think about that every day because I just as an aside, I worked on trade policy before my dissertation. And my dissertation was how do policymakers talk about trade more to the public here. And it really didn't change for from the 30s to. It didn't change for a while. And now it's, you know, under Trump it's become this crazy thing I won't go into that much detail but we do need to think differently about how we get the public to care about that because you do see this very strange dichotomy and public opinion they say they care about protecting their personal data and that's not how they act. But Thomas will talk about the study. Yes, please. Yeah, so the digital trade, the data governance and digital trade hub beyond just trying to educate policymakers in the public we've branched off to also doing research at the hub. And the current research project that we're starting that's going to last for the next year is basically trying to map out data governance across the world. So we have a selection of 40 countries from around the world that we're going to be looking at, and we're going to look at where kind of how data governance is happening in these 40 countries from their international agreements to domestic laws and regulations. And we're going to be looking at data governance from the standpoint of personal data protection to looking at how trade secrets can be used by, you know, companies to control and hold on to data to also how governments open data policies to share data and we kind of want to take as full of view as we can of how data governance is happening while also a very narrow scope of, you know, only, only policies that are directly governing or explicitly governing data. You know, just have this mapping. And beyond that we'll be looking at some case studies within it to just basically try and understand what the current state of data governance around the world looks like. Excellent. There will be follow on to that the grant is on not only what does it look like comparing it across countries but also what is comprehensive data governance at this moment in time and then our nations using data governance to achieve comparative advantage and data economies of scale and scope, better quality data mixing of public and proprietary data, etc. And so I think that you maybe just answer the question I was both going to ask you which is what you're most excited about it sounds like this is a really ambitious and globally oriented project around data governance so I'll ask a spin on that, which is more. So what might you be because you are doing this mapping of data governance around the world. What. How are you kind of working with others in the space who are also thinking about data governance and studying data governance, and it doesn't have to necessarily be members within the network of internet and society centers but I know a few groups like Zilla and others are thinking about how to better understand the ecosystem of data governance so what are ways that you you work with or partner with or study or learn from others within the space. Yeah, so right now we're just kicking this project off, you know, just starting the last week or two. So we have been, you know, just within our kind of community our network reaching out to people and, you know, getting feedback discussing like our own, you know, how we're we plan on going about this project but I know we also have some some longer term goals of hopefully, hopefully, incorporating the two sides of the hub the trainings and the webinar side from the actual research side and hopefully bringing in some other some other experts into the hub and, and providing some webinars on what data governance is and just trying to get as many viewpoints as possible to you know share with both the public and policymakers. Yeah, we don't know the folks at Mozilla, although I do remember Mark Sussman and a while back we did try to get some money from Alan Davidson I think he's not the lobbyist for Mozilla in DC, but in terms of other knock, I mean, we probably should put out a call to ask them to comment on our work, especially for the 40 countries, but I haven't seen others doing that and so that, you know, I think that would be really helpful to us. But basically the way we've done it is called that chits from friends to like review our work, however, we are also we've been working pretty closely with the World Bank. People on this because as part of the world development report, as you probably know, they have sent out a survey to 90 governments on their data governance. And we looked at it as more like is there a law and well, and then they're interested in enforcement and what where we're different from them is we're looking at different types of data. We're looking at the mixing of data. We're looking also at various stages the when of data governance when is data regulated so is it regulated a collection. You know those kind of questions are kind of taunting us and haunting us. And I hope that that will lead to a better understanding but if if you know of other groups doing that we've also had a lot of conversations with folks at who, as you probably know, you know, say this is what good data governance looks like it's, it's laws on spam and digital signatures and, you know, some sort of personal data protection law but beyond that they don't really tell governments what good data governance looks like and I know that's not a static concept. Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I think that's, that's right and hopefully this, the beginning of this process and this video and working with the network and centers I think absolutely asking folks for comments there are definitely others I can think of colleagues in Brazil who are working on issues of data governance in addition to many other countries that I think would be very willing to offer comments and help help review so we should think about how how to best position you to in order to do that. I love that because our feedback we get like we're, we just sent out the questionnaire to a bunch of people but part of the problem is the questionnaire is kind of freaky in that it's, it posits a vision of data governance. It also has, we're trying to look at, because we're trying to look at how governments might be moving in this direction. So, we do have like a question that looks to collective data rights, which I don't think any government has done anything on yet. Another area we look to is the mixing of data and whether or not there might at some point be rules governing it many people think not because they think it's, you know, personal non personal and that's all we need to care about. Or, you know, there's some sort of proprietary data rules that allow the firm to control that well. People may not like that at a certain point especially related to what is public data regarding smart cities as example or I don't know I don't have a good example beyond that but the more feedback we can get honestly will do a better job. So my final question for you is, what are opportunities for collaboration and I've heard a couple on this call so far so you have a wonderful Webinar series that you run. You have a mapping that you're engaged in and you're looking for different partners, you have a couple of other modalities in which you've talked about collaboration, both with the Global Network of Internet and Internet and Society Centers but also generally like if you have PhD positions and others. So we'd love to just hear what are opportunities for collaboration with with the hub. Well one thing that we've only done for digital trade but we plan to do for data governance is we, we have a listing of scholars, and we list their expertise, so that people can quickly find a expert in an area so for digital trade I think we have 25 people on our website with their emails and stuff like that and an overview of what they do research on. And I really like to do that for data governance. And we're also here's your personal, you know here's Cameron Kerry an expert on, you know, personal data, and here's Urs Gasser, you know an expert on interoperability, you know, and your colleague who does AI principles whose name I forgot but you know so that kind of thing we really need to do. We have a couple of colleagues who do AI principles. At the OECD. We had him as a speaker. Oh, I know Lorraine Piquilla at OECD but I'm not. Oh, yeah, she's OECD. Yes, but your colleague at Berkman Klein. Oh, Ryan, Ryan Beutich. Yeah, probably. Yeah, and then there's Jess Fields who's at the clinic there's like a bunch of people doing AI principles. Yeah. Wonderful. Any Thomas anything you'd like to add to either opportunities for collaboration or just anything else. Yeah, I would definitely say as as a hub, we're always looking to basically connect experts to people who who want to learn both policymakers in the public so I think bringing in experts to you know beyond webinars would be would be great. We're always looking for new topics to to cover in webinars so you know, if collaborating in that way would be really great.