 Hello and thanks for joining us today. My name is Silvana Rodriguez and I'm a senior digital fellow at New America, which is a think tank based in Washington DC. Since we are having some issues today this is a pre recorded conversation and we're looking forward to sharing this with you. So yesterday the summit for democracy kicked off in Seoul and a major focus was the role of technology. And one of the biggest takeaways is that we all need to come together to build a tech future that is inclusive, rights respecting and drives progress for everybody. So fittingly today we have a great group of panelists who are coming together to explore how democracies can harness digital tools to nurture resilience and trust in government. Now to set the scene, this landscape is not a simple one. First of all, democracies are under pressure to show that they can deliver for the things that matter most for their people and their livelihoods in the face of rising alternatives. We're also seeing that tech offers some incredible tools to deliver progress, but it also brings some significant harms in certain situations. We also see that developments in the tech space are happening at a pace that governments are really struggling to keep up with. And finally we are living in a very dynamic global context where we have some active conflict zones around the world. And this is also the biggest year for elections in world history with more than half of humanity going to the polls this year in nationwide votes. So this is complicated, but if we're in the interest of shoring up democracy for future generations, we're focused on trying to gather voices around the table that are committed to digital systems that work in the public interest. So our goal today is to spend this hour talking about some of the things we're optimistic about and some of the things that might help us get there. And our four panelists are bringing different perspectives from around the world. We have Laura Bingham, professor of practice and inaugural director of Temple University Institute for Law Innovation and Technology. We have Mike Mora, senior specialist at the Organization of American States in the Department for Effective Public Management. We have Allison Price, who's the senior advisor at New America in the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative, and finally Alec Tarkowski, director of strategy at Open Future. So let's start by digging in with what we're seeing on the ground. So just to set the scene a little bit, these terms resilience and trust can sometimes be a little bit abstract. So help me paint this picture in very practical terms. What does it actually look like when democracies are successfully harnessing digital tools to nurture resilience and to earn the trust of the people they serve? What is the end goal here? And this is for all panelists please. I can jump in, Silvana, if I may, very quick here. On your point, I think it could be abstract, but at the same time, I think it's very practical. Citizens want to be practical as well. So easy transactions, less transactional costs, time and money, right? Openness and participation. I want to feel as a citizen. I want to feel that there is a protocol that applies to all without discretion. Citizens can schedule appointments to issue or renew passwords, for example, in some countries and have to pay a third party to jump the line to get that appointment. That is unacceptable these days. It has to get practical. We have to be able to translate this into easy transaction and less transactional costs for the citizen. I think that is key. And it's practical. It's not abstract. At the end, it's actually our daily life that's impacted by the decisions on how we go about implementing digital government. I like to think that there's a role played by the government, but it's part of sort of a bigger picture and an open future, a bigger picture for us is public sphere in the face of digital sphere. So, because I thinking in these terms shifts a bit the equation from conversations that we've been having, say, for 20, 30 years on digital government, which are still relevant. We still have goals to achieve, but if I think if we add this added perspective that we don't want just as Mike said, the efficient fair government service, but we want them to contribute to a space that also feels like it's a space of truth and not disinformation. A space where basically civil values are respected. And I think that's for me an important context here as well. Yeah, and maybe just piggybacking off of that. I think. Another key component that we really focus on at the Institute that I work with is equity. And sort of recognizing that there is just not going to be one size fits all implementation. You know, and I think that's where the building trust really is absolutely fundamental. Demonstrating through the implementation and use and design of the tools that we're talking about that have so much potential that there's a, there is a, you know, sort of fulsome recognition that actualizing those tools in people's lives is going to take different measures of investment. And starting with the hardest investments where to the with the communities that have the, you know, these advantages simply have not reached and actually more of a firm have will resonate there. That's where the investment needs to go first. But if I can jump in, I always use jargon so forgive me, but the way I like to explain it yes to what everybody just said, but I really wish that we could create a digital ecosystem where customer service and user experience. We're not second thoughts, like so much of these tech solutions that are being used in the public realm it's like, well, how is this helping the government and that is really, really important, but also asking simultaneously, how is this helping communities and people. That boils down to making sure that customer service and user experience aren't second thoughts that they are at the table from the forefront. Okay, so that gives us sort of a picture in our mind of what we're aiming for this end goal we want easy transactions less cost and time, practical equity being important, being contributing to a space of truth and situation or customer service and digital experiences are all priority so now that we have that vision. Let's start with Mike for some insight from Latin America and I'm curious what you think is applicable beyond the region. So, drawing from your experience at the OAS, how can a digital government initiative improve transparency and accountability what's maybe a successful approach or example that you've seen that sort of illustrates that for us. Thank you Silvana. Allow me to begin by stating that in OAS terms, as per the Inter-American Democratic Charter, effective and transparent public management is fundamental component for the exercise of democracy and that's that's key for us. Having said that, a digital government initiative can only be in, can only improve transparency and accountability if it's meant to do that. It has to be intentional. At the department for effective public management, we have working during the last decade in advancing open data greatly along that for transparency and accountability. And we believe government openness participation and use of government data is key, is a key ingredient. Now, that is core of our agenda among other things that we've worked on digital government and open government here at the department. So, but open data is key, data is key and not only for transparency and accountability now, but actually it's key for the use of emerging and new technologies who need quality data to run on. And I think that's going to be then part of the conversation that we're going to have, but in making data core in our work, I want to highlight a few things that I think are very important. In 2018, the presidents of this hemisphere at the summit of the Americas, agreed to launch an inter-American program in open data to prevent and combat corruption. Again, we have to be intentional. And I think that is very important. Big first agreement in open data and is in the region. And specifically, it was to prevent and combat corruption. I think that's telling us something very important here. And I think this is one of the things that can be translated in other regions, you know, as I've been across, right? The regional agreements to use open data or digital government to for more transparency in public administration. So in 2018, presidents came together. We're charged at our department to help member states to improve the implementation of open data to prevent and combat corruption. Now, Colombia is a good example. If you go to the national open data portal, you'll find that PETA is there. I'm going to say PETA because this is the short name for inter-American open data program to prevent and combat corruption. But it's a good example. You go there and you have 30 priority data sets to prevent and combat corruption, including public procurement. So I think all this packaging is very important. It's intentional. You create policies, commitments, and you have to make sure that you can actually impact the fight against corruption with this. I'm traveling tomorrow to the Dominican Republic to initiate implementation of this program there. The countries are doing it. Now, the last summit of the Americas in 2022 now, I talked about 2018 2022 now in Los Angeles also resulted in commitments on digital transformation. And I think that important highlight and I quote from those commitments, I continue to promote the use and leverage of information and communication technologies with digitalization of public service delivery to strengthen transparency, improve efficiency and accountability and so on and so forth. Summit of Americas have actually come out with key commitments and presidents and working on that and then the ministers of foreign affairs are acting on it. But open data doesn't happen spontaneously to take advantage of open data. You need to have data for structure in place in place that positions you to do that. That is a directive, right? A political buying policies, human capital, IT capabilities, and it fits at the national level interoperability as well. So we're here returning the digital transformation and data set the core for interoperability as well. And you need to have a society that uses for that purpose. But also let me point out that the region, and the OIA is working more than, is more like Latin America. We kind of always say Latin America, but it includes all in the same sphere, right? The Americas from Canada, the United States to the very own Haiti right now to all the Caribbean, all the way south to Argentina. And I wanted to highlight this because we are a very diverse region in terms of digital government readiness and that poses challenges as a region. Think about immigration just to correlate, right? People leave their countries for the lack of opportunities. Well, it is not different when it comes to digital government readiness and therefore public administrations are struggling to deliver services efficiently and transparent. And that hurts democracy. So I think I leave it there, Silvana right now with that quick run, but definitely for us at the OIA's data is key. Open data and data, good quality data can be utilized with emerging technologies for the benefit of democracy. Thank you, Mike. And I think that helps us flow into a question that I have for Laura. Specifically, which is that last week, the World Bank launched a major report highlighting two emerging trends that are transforming our digital future. So the first one is digital public infrastructure, which I might refer to as DPI from now on, and artificial intelligence, both are huge topics. So let's start with DPI. Let's see digital public infrastructure being unique from other digital government approaches that we've heard about until now that we've been using until now. Okay. Thanks. So, I, let's see. Well, first of all, a caveat that I think that a lot of what I'm going to describe and DPI in general, you know, when it comes to the definition itself, you're basically, when you're asked this question, you're sure to leave everyone unsatisfied and probably offend a couple of people along the way. So, but I do think honestly, it captures a lot of what Mike was just saying. And some of it there are there are parts of this discussion that just simply won't sound new. So I don't think anyone should should walk away from DPI because it's an acronym and, you know, and it sounds new. But, but basically, I think just unpacking some of the terms infrastructure, right? Digital public infrastructure. So the idea behind that within this discourse is really that there are certain things that are foundational that ought to be operating that are digital and foundational. So there's an analogy that's often invoked to roads or highways or railroads, right? That are physical infrastructures. But in this case, we're still talking about something that's almost not really even experienced in daily life that it's so sort of foundational that it's operating in the background somehow, right? And so that's that's an element of thinking about some of the things that need to get set down in order to allow digital government to operate in some of the ways that Mike was talking about. And those generally have that's generally included three components that are commonly referenced in definitions of digital public infrastructure. That includes digital identity, the ability to prove you are who you say you are in online transactions, a digital payments infrastructure, and data exchange, which I think was one thing that Mike was referencing with interoperability, right? The idea that and the level of openness, I think is something that is still under debate to be honest to go back to some of the principles that we started with, you know, to be frank and honest. That's the way I see it. But I think that one key ambition that's captured in the DPI conversation is that is this society wide scale. And that at the end of the day, what's the vision is that, you know, on top of those layers of digital identity, digital payments, data exchange architectures, that there'll be this innovative ecosystem that includes public sector service delivery on the basis of, you know, open data access to the data exchange in those foundational layers and also private sector innovation and private sector services, and that this would all be done, you know, safely and mitigating for all the harms that anyone can think about in all the things that I just described. And I think, you know, maybe the last piece of the data exchange and sort of in an innovation economy on top of that is where DPI actually this vision that I'm describing really intersects with the second piece that you named with this artificial intelligence. So I think it's, it's a little bit illusory to try to separate these things because the idea of, you know, integrating emerging technologies is fundamental to the vision of digital public infrastructure as a foundation for digital government and digital economies. And, you know, I think maybe the last piece that I'll say here is the questions that emerge about, you know, different models like in Estonia, for instance, the data exchange architecture called X Road is something that has, you know, had a lot of influence outside of the borders of Estonia. And so the idea that any one model of DPI can be kind of exported to other countries or integrated in some way and on a regional level also just going back to Mike's comments. I think it's something that requires more dialogue, you know, to the extent to which that is of value in which components and, you know, sort of how different countries can adapt to different models because the societies are all so different. So that's part of the thesis, but I think it's an area where we still need a lot more unpacking and discussion. To pull a little bit at one of the threads you mentioned, which is really about mitigating some of the harms that could come about even inadvertently when you're using one of these approaches. So how do you think you can mitigate concerns like, you know, inadvertently harming democratic processes or in it or things like societal values when you're using a DPI framework at the outset? Yeah. So I think, I mean, that's when we get to the middle word in the public, right? What does that mean? And I think Alec was also talking, speaking to this in the beginning. She probably has a lot more to say on this, but for me, I think naming what those potential harms are is also unfinished work. I think, and that's where those different components that I set out, especially so most of my work has been on digital identity. And I think, you know, that when you start to talk about risks and mitigations, it's really hard to be up at this level of DPI. I think you really actually have to drill down much deeper into the foundational aspects and other aspects that are implicated. You know, and they're, for instance, so digital identity, 180 countries roughly in the world have centralized national ID systems already. Those are the systems that determine citizenship. Who is it? Who's in and who's out? And, you know, I think that is, we're not starting from scratch. There's a lot of discrimination. The systems are discriminatory by nature because they have to decide who is a citizen and who isn't. But they're also discriminatory in practice in a lot of different things. There are 25 countries that have openly, directly discriminatory laws that don't allow women to pass citizenship to their children. You know, if the digital identity system is simply kind of inaugurating in a digital way, those national identity systems, people are going to get really harmed by it and democrat. And, you know, they won't, whatever the intention might be, they won't be included along this digital highway. And that is a problem for democracy. It's a problem for corruption. It's, you know, it sort of, it impacts the institutions that we're here to talk about. And so, I mean, one of the big things that I always try and bring the discussion to even just on digital identity is fixing the laws that we have that are implicated and sort of, and that that's just one layer, you know, talking about nationality laws, civil registration, that aspect. But I think there's a whole other set of concerns that will probably get into more around privacy and the way that these digital systems can concentrate power within executive agencies. And, you know, whether the administrative laws are really up to snuff to figure out how to use that power and what are some of the sort of checks and balances that can be in place that maybe are in place, but need to be strengthened. So, let me stop there. And that's really helpful. And maybe we can drill down into some of these topics that you've laid out by asking Allison. To talk a little bit about an example of DPI that you looked at recently in Ukraine so we're talking about a crisis context. And I believe you recently wrote a report about Ukraine's e recovery program. So can you tell us a little bit more sort of building off of the vision now that Laura's given us drill down into how Ukraine is approaching some of these issues and and also how this program might be doing sort of the big stuff we're talking about which is really nurturing resilience and nurturing trust in government. I will try DPI which I think Laura just experienced cannot be boiled down to a bumper sticker. I have tried, like in every way possible about how to minimize the descriptions of it just because it, it covers a lot. But did you our team at New America we collaborated with the future of land and housing team to take a closer look at the recovery program in Ukraine which right now is basically using an app Dia to get Ukrainians back into their homes during, you know, wartime. The reason we were interested in studying this is because it's the first, first ever example of a government compensation program for damage or destroyed homes that was rolled out digitally at scale during a crisis and why is this important. Well, not only is it countering Russian aggression, which leads to resilience of communities. It's also a speedier approach to the provision of public services. I typically looked at five innovations. I don't want to go super deep on the tech because I'd rather talk about the implications of the tech. Dia Ukraine it's all still early days they are still at war. There's lots of things that we could critique that is unresolved about public policy legal questions tech and governance questions. And those are important and we should be spending time on them for a healthier reconstruction process when we get to the reconstruction process. But I think right now Dia is a great example of innovations that touch on as Laura said ID verification payments and you know data exchange. So in the case of e recovery claimants so Ukrainians can file from anywhere anytime. They can go and use the recovery portal through the Dia app to to reduce the risk of even, you know, going to government offices or intake centers in the midst of a war zone. It's relying on a digital first process. Emphasis on digital first, not digital only, which we think really allows governments to quickly be responsive to the needs of the people. So if you are a digital first process. You can quickly modify an app in response to concerns, legislative progress reforms, changing realities on the ground. We're interested in Dia, because Dia is a pre existing platform in Ukraine that existed before the war, and then has quickly changed and morphed in responsive to the points and point to that, you know, there's a baked in understanding and recognition that the Americans work from the millions of Ukrainians who are using it. And there's trust in other transactions, it's not like Ukrainians are like okay you recover the only solution that's being used through these Dia rails. The fourth innovation we're really looking at is how and this impacts all countries but if managed effectively we think digital first processes minimize opportunities for corruption. Like was talking about corruption and it's something I think all governments are spending a lot of time trying to figure out where digital fits in their anti corruption measures. And it also increases transparency to how claims are processed. So in real time, the government can sit there and say we have given out this much money we have processed this many claims and what would be ideal in the next iteration of these solutions where that data is also available to the users in real time. And the fifth point on the recovery and why we really are taking a closer look at that is that it during a conflict whether it's man made or whether it is a natural disaster getting people back into the home get their homes. It takes a ton of effort it takes resources there's there's friction. Many times in war zones people take over others houses. It's complicated records are destroyed all these things. But what we see going on in Ukraine right now is that they're proactively and responsively adjudicating claims they're collecting evidence before the risk that you know property is taken over or loss or destroyed to someone else. So we're hopeful that it results in less abandoned homes that are occupied by not the rightful owners and I think these are all interesting lessons that whether it's used for this specific purpose or another other countries could be watching closely at this time. I can talk about DNA recovery forever so I hope that was short enough as to why we're excited about it right. I'm hearing a lot about the infrastructural approach a lot about trust and and you alluded to this a little bit at the end of what you were saying, and you're getting my next question which is, whether these lessons could be applicable beyond a crisis context for example. Yeah, you know, in this question I'm going to throw it to any panelist who'd like to opine but could you see a DPI approach being used beyond a crisis context and being used in large advanced economies, for example like in the United States just to be a little provocative. So this is a question. So a year ago in DC there was this day called Dia Day. The branding is great. And Kara Swisher who's a well known journalist on the tech front, led a conversation about Dia with the Ukrainians and with Samantha power, and she's like well this won't happen in the US, obviously. And, and the obviously part is what I think I really want to dig in on. I mean the United States doesn't have a national privacy bill for like just base layer example of like why some of these solutions are unresolved in a place like the United States but I don't think that that unresolved, you know, tech legal policy issues are unresolved they need to be resolved and then I think we can talk about how you can harness tech for the public good. In the absence of those things existing it gets very difficult very quickly. I think again Dia was built before the war and it's been adapted during the war. And I think a lot of the speed and the resilience of which Ukraine has showed is because it's at wartime, but that doesn't mean that these solutions are for wartime only. I think, you know, what is working is the immediacy of it, and the ready and readiness to innovate and I don't believe Ukraine is the only country in this world that has a readiness to innovate for the public. Do you have any thoughts on that maybe Alex. I have a lot of thoughts, maybe I'll share and we can circle back around but no I mean like the question about the US, you know, I, I completely agree with what Alison said, I think what's being demonstrated is that the US is in ketchup mode. I think actually it's really good to recognize that and I what I don't want to see happen in the US is that there's sort of an exceptionalism, you know, kind of turning inward. Rather than and I think that's an issue for DPI being sort of, you know, the case being made as this is just this package deal and like you take it all in and it's monolithic like I just, I think that there are pieces that the US can share that are important, especially on safeguards and what what we might do more of to shore up safeguards and contribute to that conversation, and looking at, you know, really innovative work on the technical level to translate some of those potential game. You know, so I think there's a lot to do in the US, but we should do it. I think that's the key message. So, I'd like to share an example from Poland where I'm based, which is a neighboring country to Ukraine at the same time we're obviously in a very different reality there's no war happening in Poland but we're at the forefront on the other hand of a massive disinformation campaign we are a society that is required right now to very urgently and quickly militarize, not just with military hardware but you know, ongoing in Poland right now our debates what it means to be a society maybe not on the frontline but very close to it. But they're also interesting stories connected to DSO. I think we're quite by now advanced with DPI is this is my you cannot really see it it's a blank okay a bit. This is my ID right it's in the phone. It still feels a bit weird to show it to the police woman on the street but it can be done. The fact is that actually it also works for Ukrainian so very quickly a bridge was made. And I think that's a bit of a success story indeed Laura you mentioned I think there are huge challenges with digital identity systems for instance in in face of migration the war time migration from Ukraine in in many regards we in Poland think it was a great success of our society, not just the government but the society but this case, the digital technology seem to work really well so if you're a Ukrainian in Poland, first of all, you have a Polish ID number which gives you a lot of benefits for instance health benefits and social security to some extent at least, but you can also basically benefit from the same digital ID system I don't want to say that this is all very simple, but I think these stories show that it can be done and I really like the study on the recovery platform because you show how it's resilient under these very specific conditions of a war time society. In some ways you can see how they build resilience. Also, for instance, in the case of migration there's right now a million Ukrainians that several percent of all Ukraine in Poland, several percent of the whole Ukrainian society and also several percent contribution to the Polish society were both societies of around 40 million that's a very significant group, especially since it's concentrated in major cities. So these tools were very important, but again speaking in this broader context I also want to add that part of it is PDI, DPI is digital public infrastructures built by the government but I like to think they can also be civic so for example had a really big program led by an initiative called Tech to the Rescue, which basically matched civil society organizations with tech companies both Poland like Ukraine we have a very big IT sector a lot of software houses, really with a lot of capacity and they would start building in the end often very basic tools but tools that basically managed to deal with the really complicated logistics of helping people. So I think this is also this bigger context that we need to pay attention to but the last thing I want to say and I think, while the story of tools like our Emma Bavato platform and how it connects with Dia is sort of a history of good continuation, you know we have a new government now but some of these tools continue to be developed across sort of political divide. I think there's also need to build some new frameworks new ways of thinking about things around these tools. And here I come back to this idea of sort of wartime societies. I think it's a big question, not just how our technologies are resilient you know these are the trade traditional cybersecurity issues are, Poland has spent a lot of time discussing our cloud platforms government platform secure, but I would like to it when I think of public space issues like is our information space secure. We can go so far as mentioned Wikipedia which for me is a key civil projects, probably not often considered, but it is a source of truth. How do we make that resilient I would like to, you know, develop further and I think we're starting to do that right now in Poland, these sort of policy framings value framings that can connect cybersecurity with issues like editing Wikipedia in a way that sort of again preserve social resilience. And that's very helpful because I am seeing how you're connecting some of what Poland has experienced massive changes happening right after the last eight years. And how we can, how the rest, you know, other democracies can draw from Poland's experience. And so, you know, we, we've gotten at this in a couple different ways over the last 30 minutes or so but I wanted to see if we could turn to the other big people that's transforming our digital future and that's the emergence of artificial intelligence or AI. So, how should democracies be approaching AI with this trust in this resilience in mind knowing that different countries and different regions are going to handle tech issues quite differently and I think we're seeing this play out, even in the last few days with what's coming out of the European Union and the United States etc so throwing that question out there. And that really allowed me and I let Alec and that we just took the floor to rest a little bit. I want to highlight something and probably a disclaimer because my disclaimer is I'm a multilateral organization right so I see countries across the board that package of 35 independent states here in the Americas. And I pointed out, it's a very diverse region. And I think one of the things that is important to having to consideration is what something we're working on right now is to make sure that there is a dialogue among countries that can benefit the development of protocols, standards, agreements in certainly artificial intelligence as well as other new emerging technology and I think that's very important. Why is it very important? Because countries are struggling to understand how to go about artificial intelligence. They don't have national artificial intelligence strategies for example or policies. And I'm talking about the countries in Latin America, the Caribbean right but there are many around the world that lack also that as well. So definitely finding a way to generate dialogue at policy level that that can come up with solution I think that's going to be very important but here again getting very practical, we cannot talk a lot about artificial intelligence if we don't have data governance so data governance for us is key. Very important. And if countries like data governance for structure or ideas strategies policies and so on. Everything you build on top of that is going to be again, maybe the trend, I put it. I conquer it as a government I have a national AI strategy, but it's meaningless right so I think that's that's important to address here. So at the OAS we're working right now with governments we member states in developing the inter-American framework on data governance and artificial intelligence. So it's 90% of data governance and 10% of artificial intelligence. That's how I describe it pretty much. And the reason why is because I mean we cannot engage so vividly in this discussion about artificial intelligence with the countries when the absence of preparation is just real it's not there. That's very important. At the end of this year we're hoping to have that all drafted with members states in next year's summit of the Americas have governments take a look approval framework first framework and I think just because I'm a multilateral I want to highlight the importance of that countries get together to understand each other that reality and you mentioned in Silvana, Europe, United States, Asia, all the parts of the globe, the geopolitics of AI is vivid countries reaching out for it. And there is a lot of not like understanding how to go about it so I think that's what's important to find a way to create some of the guidelines that can address and be implemented in the countries and in the road so those commitments are going to be very important beyond what technically the countries are capable to do right now. I leave it there. Thank you. For me, the answer and I know we have limited time so instead of going into a long tirade which I think is required on this topic there's also a very simple answer and that's digital public infrastructure. You know, I think there's a Venn diagram where the two topics highlighted by the World Bank very correctly intersect and I think that's going to be a very big discussion because you know the last two years have been a time where among other developments in AI we are understanding the concentrations of power and you know we're facing a situation both in Europe in the US and in other regions I think we by now have charted pretty well challenges around sort of the previous phase of digital development basically around platforms. So actually I am a bit surprised for instance in the European context I thought by now we will see a lot more of this awareness that the challenges are the same if we decide defined systemic risks for the major social networks. It's kind of obvious you could apply this category very prominent in digital services act to AI. This hasn't been done. I'm not saying it's a simple solution but that's where I would look for a space we need first of all public alternatives to these commercial systems but also as always deployment of public solutions creates room to set standards because they are usually more transparent there are requirements to work in the open and things like that. Thank you. That is really helpful. We have about five or six minutes left. So I I know we could talk about AI for another few hours. But I just want to get to another one of the elephants in the room to be able to close with this, which is that all of these topics bring up inevitable questions about how do you mitigate the risk of potential government overreach and this could be anywhere from data privacy risks to surveillance and repression so how should we approach digital government initiatives today that we don't have a crystal to know who might in government tomorrow. I mean, I can kick us off because I know we're short on time and be incomplete here but I mean I just think maybe to go back to one thing I was saying I think that there really does need to be an analysis of power concentration. You know, and to some extent that I think Alec was speaking to this a little bit about the regulatory space in Europe and the efforts that were made around platforms, you know to address some of that. But so the groundwork has been laid. And, you know, we have some tools about gearing private sector innovation towards the public interest or towards contributing to human rights and democracy and rule of law. And I think figuring out, you know, which of the levers are really necessary to strengthen and how. And so, especially in some of the multilateral conversations that Mike is alluding to is just absolutely critical, you know, so I, I think that there's, but it's, but it's that emphasis on where is, where is AI, you know, and the synthetic data that it creates, you know, where, where, where do we really need to to address the predictable concentrations of power in places and for actors that are not already, you know, we don't already have the checks and balances to make sure that they act in the public interest. So I think I do think it comes back to the concept of the public interest and incentivizing that all of the innovation, you know, really spills over into supporting that. And, you know, sort of building these comments that we that we want to create. Yeah, if I can. Go ahead. This is it sort of both interesting and challenging question to answer from for a person who lives in a state that suddenly went basically a shift from a country that I believe was not fully democratic to one that I think is now democratic and very quickly sort of pulling back some of the negative but it just shows some precarity. And I don't think there's a good answer you know there's one minimization answer this is the often the digital rights approaches just in case let's not build these systems. I think I come from a perspective where that's too limiting, but honestly then I think we need to depend on the rule of law for good and bad honestly these infrastructures will be deployed we need to face scenarios like any state infrastructure based on sort of political power. This can change I don't think this is an optimal answer I know that often the alternative answer is also then that's the value of maybe civic projects that they can be a bit more independent but I think these projects are also often very precarious don't scale very well and so on. I think it's a lot about having a balancing act in this regard no really simple answers. Allison you're about to say. Yeah, no I was I, as much as I think the innovation is really important. I think some of the most, you know, some of it is basic tech it doesn't always have to be AI and the flashiest things for people to get better delivery of applications or public services or just experiencing their government whether you know it's we could we could go down all the examples of where government can modernize across the board, but I think there's so much that's happening offline that we also don't like Mike at the very beginning talked about procurement, procurement needs to be reformed across the board so that countries can really experiment and figure out what solutions could work for them before committing millions, billions, whatever it is to specific routes of administering, you know, governments. And I think talking about procurement policy laws, you know, all of those things need to happen hand in hand and I think, at least what we see quite often is that people are like well I don't do tech I don't get it. But I think that's almost like an ostrich approach like if you put your head in the sand and say like well I'm just going to talk about what's happening offline because I don't understand what's happening online. You're missing this opportunity to share all these perspectives and I, and I keep coming back to the fact that procurement reform really does need all of these thinkers with all these different expertise. So yeah, I could keep going but I always leave it to I'm like let's look at like procurement for improving democracy, because that isn't a conversation you hear too much. Are there any more thoughts on that question before we close. So, Lana, I just coming back to the first thing is not abstract. It's very practical, but it requires definitely that first step I think definitely again just to highlight the importance of commitments and agreements that countries and authorities can look after. In the absence of that, it's going to be just a wide open road that nobody can drive on it at the country level and so I think that's what's very important. And I don't want to be to challenge in here but there are convention against corruption around the world right and I think that down the road, I believe we're going to need something similar some similar instruments to follow up on governments and digital agenda. And I think just again because I'm a multilateral organization here thinking about what is that countries can look at and what are the countries can be monitored on at the following that on a fake responsibility when implementing a digital government or a deployment digital transformation and I think that's going to be very important to look at the future. So, those agreements, those commitments actually type the follow the next governments, not the current government in place, but will type to the next governments and I think that's also that's very important in order to follow up with them and have them to come up with a more of a line of work instead of a governmental line of work I think that's going to be very important. Well, I think that's all the time we have for today so I hope that our discussion gave us a bit to think about and hopefully a sense of optimism we heard about a lot of interesting things that are happening in the field. You know, President Biden has said in the past that democracy does not happen by accident so I find it encouraging that there's a lot of thinking and work going on intentionally about what we need to be thinking about today and deciding today for the systems that we're shaping for tomorrow so thank you to all of our panelists for joining us I really appreciate it and I sounds like we all have our work cut out for us but we appreciate your time today.