 Good afternoon everyone. My name is William Nixon from the University of Glasgow and I'm a member of the RLUK's digital shift working group. I'm delighted to be chairing today's session on data and information for sustainable living and future from Govinda Choudhury for who's a professor of information science at the University of Strathclyde, also here in Glasgow. I think today's talk is very timely, and I think as we all live through the pandemic and the experiences of COVID-19, this has really underscored the challenge of digital inequity and digital poverty, which is experienced not only by ourselves in our libraries in the academic sector, but also kind of more broadly and widely in society. Govinda is a professor of information science at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Strathclyde, and he's been involved in teaching and research in information science for over 25 years. And he's taken on senior management positions at universities in the UK and Australia. Currently Govinda is the chair of the Global iSchools organization and his research focuses on digital libraries and information services, trying to understand how people access and use information and data in different contexts. So Govinda's recent research also includes information systems and services for addressing global challenges and sustainable development. And it's really kind of this that he is going to bring to the party today and explore with us. So I hand over to Govinda, and thank you so much for your time this afternoon in presenting for us. Hello, everyone. Thank you. Thank you for attending. And first of all, thank you to Matt and William and RLU in general for giving me this opportunity to share some of my research ideas and such experience with you all. And as you will note that, you know, I have more questions than answers, but let's share this these questions and let's see whether together in the near future we can find some answers. So as you can see, the title of my talk is data and information for sustainable living and sustainable future. So that's kind of you know my current area of interest, but again, you know for sustainable living sustainable future data and information is the foundation so obviously I'm coming from that perspective data and information. So there are three key bullet points here that kind of set the foundation for this presentation. Two of them are statements that you all know. And sort of this community, for example, is already a converted community. So, you know, you all know that data and information is the fuel for today's information and knowledge society and knowledge economy. And of course, you know, there is a huge digital shift that is, you know, taking place around us in every aspect everything that we do everything that we kind of, you know, we leave for and everything that we do for living. Now the third bullet point is slightly provocative. And this is increasingly I am beginning to realize and feel that we are living in an increasingly technology rich but but information poor world. And this information poverty is the key theme of my talk today. And broadly speaking information poverty is defined as kind of lack of access to information and data, and people are considered information poor and I would like to sort of use data and information both in that context. They are considered as data and information poor, if they cannot have access to information if they do not know how to access and use information in in everyday living life and also for whatever they do. Now information poverty and the poverty as a word there is a significant difference. And the first difference that we should know that often people do not know that they are data or information poor. Now, in terms of poverty, which is, you know, again, even sustainable development goal and then that is, excuse me defined by some measures, for example, information poverty is sorry poverty is measured by the United Nations, as the I think the recent document says that it's measured by, you know, if family, sorry, $1.90 per person per day, if that is, you know, any family lives below that income level that $1.90 per day, then they are considered as severely information, severely poor. However, with regard to information poverty, we really do not have any yardstick to measure, we do not really have an accepted kind of standard global standard as to what we mean by information poor. How do we measure that, you know, people at different levels of information poverty and so on and so forth. So that will form part of my discussion today. We will see that information poverty and its eradication requires work at multiple fronts and multiple levels. And we will see that often measuring the impact and benefits of information poverty is difficult, and often it is sort of linked to various other things. Because, you know, as we all know the information need is not a primary need, it is a secondary need. So therefore it is the secondary thing that we are going to do and the for which we need the information and we want to use the information. When that is fulfilled and what result it produces, what impact it has, what outcome it has, that may be attributed to the availability of information or in other way that is improving or reduction in information poverty. So information poverty can be caused by we all know lack of relevant data and information, that's the first thing. And we will see that, you know, particularly with regard to sustainable development, you know, we will see with some data that, you know, data and information is not easily available, even at the government level or even at kind of, you know, national and international level. Of course lack of access and that is where the digital divide comes in. Again, we'll look at some data, digital skills. Now, information skills and digital skills will, you know, spend a little bit of time on that and see how one complements another. Increasingly sort of, you know, misinformation, disinformation and infodemic, this is becoming a challenge. And again, you know, information poverty can be, you know, caused by misinformation and disinformation that people may be kind of, you know, put into a disadvantageous position. And particularly with the pandemic, we have seen that how this can create a huge impact on people's life and living and society as a whole. Then of course, you know, there's a lack of adequate governance and policies that may be also another cause of information poverty. I will explain very briefly with some of my experience working with some African countries over the past two, three years with some GCRA projects, how governance policies and how adequate sort of, you know, understanding of people and awareness that make people more information poor. Now, there are, you know, various factors also secondary factors that cause information poverty, which could be kind of based, you know, created and caused by general lack of education and literacy, socio economic condition agenda. Again, we will look at some of this in the context of the UK data that we have. Of course, there are, you know, physical disabilities that are also the different constraints around that and how that affects information poverty. Again, we'll take a look at some data. Lack of understanding of data number and statistics. I think that's again a key challenge with regard to data and information. And, and often sort of, you know, a lot of assumptions going there. For example, we all have seen that, you know, a lot of data is thrown at us with regard to the recent pandemic and, you know, say for example, if we say that, okay, today's death from COVID-19 has been let's say 600. What does that mean? How do you contextualize it? Is it sort of good thing, bad thing? Is there a cause for concern? How does it compare with previous data? How does it compare with other countries? So a lot of context is needed to make sense of data to understand data. And that is where a combination of technical skills, digital skills rather, and, you know, some higher order skills are needed. We'll take a quick look at that as well. And of course, there are also some cultural and behavioral practices that may cause, you know, influence significantly and maybe a big causal factor for information poverty. Again, we have seen some examples. For example, with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic, you know, there are some cultural kind of, you know, correlations with cultural practices associated with refusing to take COVID-19 vaccine, for example. And there have been some efforts made by, you know, various cultural communities to try and persuade people into alleviate that fear and so on. So again, you know, there could be a number of secondary factors that might cause information poverty. So what we'll do is we'll take a look at some of the data in the context of all of these things that we have discussed as information poverty. In the context of, you know, some of these things like we will take a look at the internet access and digital divide in the UK. What I would like to, at the end of this discussion, I'd like to sort of, you know, put forward to you that what my belief is and what my thought around information poverty is. One level is, of course, in today's digital world and especially as we started with this basic premise that there is a digital shift around us. Having access to internet or, you know, reducing the digital divide is one of the key requirements that people should have access to internet. And again, you know, recently we have seen all of this all over the media that, you know, this homeschooling caused by the pandemic and the closed down measures, lockdown measures. We have seen that, you know, how people struggle, you know, children are struggling to get access to their digital education because of lack of internet because of lack of, you know, appropriate devices and so on. And ultimately there have been some measures, you know, a lot of donations and a lot of, you know, laptops and devices are being made available to children. And then there is a comment push as well, and also from civil society push as well to persuade these internet service providers to reduce the tariff because and mobile phone providers to reduce the tariff because there have been some estimations that, you know, using homeschooling that digital education with through the mobile devices could cost hundreds of pounds to families, which could be really, really devastating for many families under this situation. So internet and digital divide digital internet access digital divide is one of the things, but then that is only one condition. Then having access to internet does not necessarily guarantee that everyone will be able to access information, do whatever is expected or required. I have got some research in that area I'll try to draw some kind of references to that. Then the second point, sorry, the other point that is important with regard to digital skills is again digital skills is not, it is a necessary requirement but not the sufficient requirement. So having access to internet and the devices is important, the necessary condition, then, you know, having digital skills is the second necessary condition, but then information skills also equally important. And I will show information skills and data skills increasingly that is becoming also a kind of an expectation and the requirement. And then we will also take a look at this at general population level in the context of sustainable development and where we stand, both in UK and internationally. So this is kind of the context within which we will have our conversation today. This is the data from, you know, when a statistics which shows kind of the internet access and use. Now, this is kind of this digital divide is measured by how people access and use internet and this is the definition that is used internationally and that is also used in the UK is that people using people never using internet or people not using the internet within within the past three months. So as you can see, you know, the line at the bottom here that shows that the 2018 figure so this is the latest data available from the report that came out last year. And there is still kind of you can see that there is about, except for London and Southeast and East over 10% that people actually do not have internet access. Okay, so they there is a digital divide in, you know, we can say that at this, and then Northern Ireland is is much higher it's close to 15%. As we can see that, you know, if you take, take a kind of a baseline of 10%, a significant proportion of the population still do not have the internet access. This is the latest data. There's also a huge gender difference here. Now, although over the years, this one shows the line on top shows women and at the bottom is men. You can see that, you know, this has dropped. However, the gap still remains and the gap from 2016 to 2018 almost like over a million population still remain so the first slide shows that there is more than 10% population still sort of, you know, do not have internet access. And this slide shows that there is a huge and there is a significant gender difference and that is not bridging. So this is the data that shows that there is age is a major factor, 28% of those aged over 60 are offline. And, you know, 29% was in 2017. Now, 2018, this is 28%. So it's still a significant it's not dropping significantly. And again, 25% of those people who are registered, these are registered disabled people, they do not have access to the internet, and they are four times more likely to not to be online. So this is, this is quite significant because if we want to bring the entire population into the digital world, then these are the people who are most vulnerable. The next slide shows, these are the age groups, you know, 65 to 74 and over 75. This, this number this this group of people still is quite significant in terms of not having access to the internet. And as we have seen in the previous slide and this slide, and more details are available in this when this report and you can find the reference at the in my last slide. It clearly shows that you know people who are more vulnerable elderly people, or people with you know some physical disabilities, etc. They need more, they need to have access to the internet service, the digital services more, and yet they are excluded digitally excluded. Now, so digital exclusion in the context of you know having access to internet is one measure, as we have seen. I said before that you know, this is the first condition that people should have access to the internet to get, you know, to be able to use the digital information systems and services. But then there are these are the five basic digital skills that have been identified, and there is a national report that I will see soon see that these are the five digital skills that are considered to be essential to be able for people to be able to use digital information systems and services. What we see from a recent data. The percent of the population have zero basic skills. So even if they have internet access, they do not have the skills to use the digital systems and services. 21% of our population do not have all five skills that means they have some skills, and they do not but they do not have all. The percent of the people population do not know how to sort of, you know, create, you know, new products from images, music, video, etc, which is often a requirement in some cases and I did some research last year before last and part of last year with the Newcastle City Council trying to understand how people access and use some of the council services. And we found that, you know, some of the requirements for the council services, for example, if you are applying for a, you know, disability badge for your car. Or if you are asking for, you know, some kind of council rebate for your, you know, some of your services and so on or council tax and so on. There are expectations that, you know, people should be able to, you know, scan their different documents and then, you know, select the right kind of file format upload them properly and so on. And this creates a lot of stress and anxiety amongst people, particularly those who need them most. And our study was actually focusing on what is the kind of impact of that digital divide and how people are kind of being affected. We have a paper coming up, you know, in a journal and we hope to expand that study to understand that how the current provision of digital services by government and council actually are used by people who are most sort of needed and most vulnerable people and what are the hidden costs of those. Again, you know, this is something I kind of, you know, marked it read because this is something alarming, nearly a quarter of our population do not know how to verify the sources of information that they use. So no wonder that there is so much of misinformation, disinformation and infodemic. And this is something extremely important that if we really want to take our society to the digital world. This would really understand and know, you know, how to judge the authenticity of the trustworthiness of the information and so on. And of course, you know, the last point shows that there is kind of a financial or economic relationship between the digital skills. So people, families who have more than 40,000 pounds per year income, they are nearly 50% more likely to have the basic digital skills. So there is again, we can see that there is not only a gender difference or sorry age difference and disability. Also, there is some kind of household income that plays a role. This is the regional difference again sort of, you know, in terms of the five digital skills. So this is the line that shows almost sort of, you know, 20%, 18% actually. Overall, who are kind of, you know, who do not have the basic digital skills. So therefore that proportion or that cross section of our population, they really sort of fall out of this digital world. Now, this this slide I purposely wanted to sort of show side by side again sort of, you know, I'm talking to a community of people who are experts in this and they clearly understand this but I just wanted to, you know, point this out that first we discussed the, you know, digital divide in terms of having access to internet, then we discussed the digital skills, but having digital skills are again necessary, but not sufficient condition for people to be able to make, you know, use of information because accessing interpreting and analyzing information needs, you know, somewhat higher level of cognitive skills because this is this is not only sort of, you know, a simple training cannot let or cannot, you know, help people do that. This needs a lot more analytical skills, a lot more cognitive skills and understanding to understand interpret and analyze information and also to share information. And this is again, we have seen in the context of pandemic that a lot of information has been shared to create, you know, and spread rumor because people do not understand. You know, there is a, and this is something I blame people I would blame also in a way the world has quickly moved over the past 20 or so years. If you talk to, you know, people often think that oh, this is what I found through Google search and therefore the underlying assumption is that that information must be correct because it is available, you know, in the digital form in digital form and can be searched through Google. And as a corollary if something cannot be found by a Google search, and I'm using Google as a search engine not my name, any search engine if we cannot find that that does not exist. Now, you know, I sometimes smile, we all know, especially if we work, you know, in the organization where you work and I face that I know that I have seen this document in my university somewhere. I cannot find it. Where is it. So if I cannot find it by a simple search, I should not necessarily assume that it does not exist. You know, other hand, if I do a search and if I see that the first few results, I should not really assume that they are the best possible results. So this difference that how the search engines operate, why why the results some results come on top and how they are ranked. And people should know about it and people should try and make use various other kind of, you know, types of knowledge and skills to ascertain the value of the information and therefore they should analyze and interpret accordingly, as well as they should share the information. So the hidden costs of information. Again, we know there are direct and indirect costs that are direct cost is simple that if people, you know, fall out of the service cannot make use of that service then obviously, you know, they lose out. We found for example that in Newcastle City Council they have created a lot of, you know, service facilities which is like call center facilities or even, you know, drop in sessions within the various libraries where, you know, people can book an appointment they can come with their problem then the person sits with them and takes them step by step. And often, you know, people have to make more than one trip. They have to accomplish a particular task because in the first instance they may not know what kind of document they have to bring in. They bring in the document, the second time, for example, and then they have to be scanned and they have to be kind of uploaded and so on and so forth. So there is a direct cost for the, for the users for the, you know, population that people who want to use that there is an indirect cost also to provide support for this. So often, you know, the digital only or digital by choice service is do not necessarily reduce the cost, you know, on every front. There is a huge, you know, psychological as well as physical cost, you know, harms, etc. through misinformation, fake news, infodemic and so on. You all have seen, you know, examples of that and how there is a huge kind of, you know, pressure now on the social media companies, for example, to ensure that they have, they put in place some measures to restrict misinformation, fake news and particularly with regard to pandemic, infodemic and so on. At workplace again, there is a huge impact and this is, these are all based on, on, on this way of statistics that currently 10% of the workforce do not have the basic digital skills and people who are unless they are likely to have less digital skills. So there is again, you know, something that is a national overall national loss or loss for a particular business. You know, so far we have talked about, you know, overall, in general, the impact of information poverty and then what are the different factors that cause. Let's take a quick look at the sustainable development goals and some of the reports from there. Now, we all know that sustainable development goals were kind of, you know, 17 sustainable development goals were introduced in 2015 by the United Nations and all countries, almost all countries in the world signed up to that and there is one kind of in 2030 is, is the deadline by which there are certain targets and those targets have to be achieved. Now we are now in the five years of this 15 year period so we had almost one third of our way through. Let's take a look at where we are with regard to the availability of data and information related to sustainable development. Because I took a few lines from some of the reports, especially the report from the ONS, you know, government UK government report on sustainable development that came out last year late last year, and also, you know, the event global report on sustainable development. The data ONS says that no country in the world collects data on all the targets and indicators. So we really do not have the mechanism to collect data related to sustainable development and related to sort of, you know, various things that we measure like how we are performing in certain areas of sustainable development goals. On the one so far we what we have seen is the the causes of information poverty in really, you know, in the context of digital divide in the context of digital skills in the context of information skills, etc. And those are, you know, some of the challenges associated with the technology and associated with people and their skills and capabilities and so on. But information poverty can also be caused by the lack of standards lack of metadata lack of a framework, because what it says is that some SDG indicator gaps remain challenging because the indicator gaps are difficult to measure. Like, for example, if you look at the ONS statistics, you will find that, and we'll soon see we'll find that there are certain obvious gaps in relation to some of the indicators. So the data is very old even report says that, for example, the poverty related indicators as well as the indicators on gender inequality and sustainable cities goal 11, etc. These are the latest data is 2016 so it's good for five years data gap there. And even also recognizes that we need some measures to protect people from this data so that the data should not be misused or abused. So with regard to data creation, there are challenges associated with standards and how we collect data how we make that data available, and how quickly we can, you know, collect and update that data, and also how we protect people and how we protect sort of you know, how we take measures and governance and policies so that data cannot or should not be misused. There is one example here like gold 16 for example which which says that everybody should have access to information. Again, how it is protected the measure even measure is that the how many countries do have these acts. Now this is in the UK we have this act so how many countries have freedom of information act how many countries have you know data protection act. Last year around this time, actually end of January 1st of February as part of my project I was running a workshop in Kenya. And that was with the information commissioners office and also a number of senior officials from from the Kenyan government offices and also a number of academics. Even if they have this act nobody has a clue as to how to collect that data and what is the governance mechanism how we handle that, you know, and how we respond to one of the freedom of information act requests and so on. So, there are different levels of, you know, facilities and infrastructure and understanding even training and skills for people who should manage this information, and then and only then this will work. And then only then you know, you can generate data as to how many if I request you got and then how many of them were addressed and so on. And this is this is again sort of you know the data availability this is the way in a statistics as to, you know, it says that 81% of the data is available, however, however there is there is a problem there. The problem being that, you know, data desegregation is important because data is does not make any sense if you really cannot understand that data and cannot really bring it down to some meaningful conclusion and meaningful analysis and so on. So, these are some of the, you know, this, this color codes shows partially desegregated so if you see a number of good health and well being reduced inequalities and and say responsible consumption consumption etc. They are partially desegregated, and a lot of them are not aggregated at all. So not desegregated sorry not desegregated at all life and land, for example, not desegregated at all. So what does it mean, it means that this data is available, but in a very crude form, and therefore you cannot really make any sense of it. Here is a slide very quickly sort of you know so that you can see why data desegregation is important and this is again taken from one of the sustainable development reports. It gives us some figure that 6.3% of women experienced partner abuse. And apparently it shows okay that it really does not differ that much. But if you desegregate that data, then you can find, you know, different factors that are causing this and that is where data and information is important that is where you know people can make decisions people can take you know appropriate measures and so on. But you know a lot of data is still not desegregated and not available at that level. So we got to awareness within the business again this was a study commissioned by the government conducted by Deloitte recently, and then they have four categories champions are, as we know all fellow travelers are sort of beginning to sort of take part and measures in sustainable development explorers are sort of not they are yet not engaged are totally sort of do not know. Amongst all those sort of participants who responded in that survey. As you can see that there are you know private businesses and investors, they are still sort of less than 25% private businesses are very small champion and then some are just moving so. In general, what we can see is that there is a lack of awareness from various stakeholders businesses as well. And as well as investors in with regard to sustainable development. So quick, sort of, you know, to wrap up. What do you think we should do. Now, here are some of my thoughts, certainly sort of you know there may be kind of you know more discussions needed open access and resource sharing that is important. And there have been with regard to sustainable development there have been some initiatives, but with regard to other sort of you know we all know for example the within the library world. It needed, you know, several years to move into this open access and then open access repositories and so on. And yet, I know that is again one of my areas of research. We have, we are far from kind of, you know, open access repositories and user centered services for research data, for example. And with research data again that's a completely sort of different area of research and I can give another kind of you know one hour lecture easily on on research data management and what are the key challenges. But you know this is some area open access and resource sharing is an area where more research is needed. And context specific design of information systems that is important because often there is a lot of assumption that goes in in designing information systems and services. And there is, you know, sometimes people are expected to learn people are expected to know a lot of things. Now, one of the problems with the technology world that it changes over very quickly. We all know as a professional that, you know, when we get a new version of a software we get a new tool, we still need to spend a bit of time to familiarize ourselves ourselves and then also we know that you know when we use the service, you know, after three months or six months when you go back, they may have changed the look and feel of the site may have changed or that someone or some of the design may have changed. So, again, this has to be sort of, you know, constantly sort of people centered design should be the focus. Data standards is an important and then with regard to have been studying very closely all the metadata standards and so on for sustainable development. There is still sort of, you know, in a number of areas, developing metadata standard is sort of, you know, at a very early stage, we in the information world know more about metadata standard more about user and context specific design and so on. This is something where you can definitely contribute advocacy and awareness this is something we should really, we can contribute information programs in my view as being an educator, you know, we should try and sort of, you know, revisit this and I have got my own thoughts on that and digital information skills for everyday life and living this has to be constantly updated and then we can contribute. I'll finish with this UNDP data ecosystems, you know, this is again a group of organizations experts from around the world came together to create data ecosystems, and within this ecosystem, they have come up with various research ideas, and this I just came sort of, you know, I found accidentally. And you can see, you know, some of these areas are highlighted. Some of these areas are similar to what I sort of pointed out. I think I should take, I should stop here. And I've spoken for quite some time, and probably this is the time when I should take some questions. I've got a list of sites and a couple of my papers. So if, you know, if you want to know more about it, by all means, you know, you can, you can email me, but if you have any questions and I'll try and answer them now. Thank you. We've had a number of questions come in as well. So I would, but first of all, I think we have of the digital shift forum and my colleagues attending. First of all, thank you very, very much for your provocations and, you know, opportunities to kind of think about, think about that. I'm going to share some some questions from colleagues. Clearly you know your audience. But one of the a couple of the questions kind of tie into kind of public libraries and kind of asking about kind of some of your research about the potential role or the current role for local public libraries in terms of that digital literacy, digital skills and media and kind of, and then by extension of public libraries, kind of a heritage sector. Yeah, certainly. Let me try and answer them, you know, in two parts. Public libraries have had a huge significant role in sort of, you know, not only improving the kind of reading and literacy of community but also in the digital world to enable to use the digital information safely, easily, but more importantly, as we can see, increasingly responsibly, because that is where the key challenge comes. Now, one of the problem, well, there are a lot of benefits of social media, a lot of benefits of the internet and so on. One of the things, one of the advice of that and that is major, is that it is very difficult to judge, it is very difficult and that that is in some, you know, some sense in the printed world, we all knew that there has been some kind of peer review process has gone through it and there has been some kind of control mechanism. Whereas in today's digital world, one of the key problems is that there is no direct control and it is very difficult to know where the information is coming from and also whether the information is trustworthy. And that's the key challenge and, you know, public libraries, there have been some efforts to create awareness amongst young people, for example, at school level and so on. But I think public libraries have a key role to play. Now, again, public libraries have their constraints and the constraints being sort of, you know, we all know that the, you know, they have been severely affected by a budget cut and so on. But my personal belief is that both in terms of, you know, creating digital citizens of tomorrow's world and creating people, you know, who are responsible for creating a sustainable world, public libraries can play a key role. And there is definitely more engagement and more kind of, you know, context specific research is needed. With regard to cultural heritage information, again, that's, you know, another of my area of research. Now, we often, you know, this is where we, in a way, kind of, I would say, I wouldn't call it failed but we have not appropriately focused. Now, if you ask anyone on the street that why do you want to go to a library, then they might say that yes I want to go to a library to read a book or to access internet and so on. They might say that when did you last visit a museum or last visit? They say, oh, last time, you know, last summer already I had some time I took my children or 15 years ago. Because people often do not see that the cultural heritage information has something to offer. And we have failed that cultural heritage information has everything to offer right from our past to the future right from sustainable development to our community heritage to our asset. Now, and there is a huge value to it, direct and indirect. Now, we have not really focused on that. Actually, I'm now doing a project with, with NGS and NMS to see what people did during the lockdown period about their sort of, you know, digital access and so on, whether there is something that we can see that something is emerging there and there is a clear interest. So, again, public libraries, libraries and cultural institutions, they have a massive role to play in creating like as education institutions have a massive role to and socially recognized role to play to create future citizen. So, libraries and cultural institutions also have an equal role to play to create future city responsible citizens who can handle information and know how to access us to create and share information responsibly. Great. Thank you very much. So there's a follow up sort of sting question from around that which is, are you aware of any research that looks at a correlation between the decline of public library funding, kind of infrastructure and professionalism and kind of correlation with information poverty. So, as you were saying there I guess one of the challenges is that investment in this sort of the infrastructure. If is the flip side of that, you know, is the research which shows, well basically if you if you're not investing in that space. There have been there have been some study in the UK done by Rita Marcella and her group at Robert Gordon University as to how public library funding has created more information poverty. She has done some work and then in particularly information poverty in the context of in the, you know, citizenship and then political views and so on. And people in, in, if there have been some studies, you know, I cannot say often but I know there have been some studies by the ifla group, you know, and some came in ifla journals as to how public libraries can play a major role. Really, and this I'm saying, Donna Shrider, who was the former president of ifla was in one of my projects in Africa. And she used to always everywhere she went and she used to always say that public libraries can really play a major role but I'm really very sad to see that public libraries are almost sort of you know cast up so much, and they are reduced There is a, there's a bit of work by Betty Castle done as well in Newcastle, who is who has demonstrated that how in the absence of funding and funding support how volunteers can create, you know, some kind of a bridge the gap, but I don't think that's the right solution. Okay, thank you so much. We've got so we're trying to get to all of the, all the questions but we've got little more questions coming in here. The, so one sort of kind of metrics question. Interesting presentation. Thank you very much. When will the last kind of so you showed some on s stats. So, what's the lead time on that for sort of the 2019 2020 data to be made available. The, the, when a stats usually come around. May, June around that time so the data that I have shown is the data that came out last year that's the latest data available. So with the sustainable development data that came out in December 2020. Sorry, December. Yeah December 2020 so it's only six weeks old. So I tried to look at the latest data but there is always as you can see when the report that came out in 2020 that covers data up to 2018. So there is always kind of 12 to 18 months gap between sort of you know publication of and the date last time the data that they had. With regard to the UN statistics that is slightly longer delay because they have to collect data from all the countries around the world so there is I think the delay is a year more. Um, good. So there's been some interesting questions as well about kind of trusts and relationship with the, with the public. But one of the, one of the attendees has an interesting question around, if you had a magic wand, what literacy skill would you give every person and given the gender gap, would there be something you would give to sort of males versus females. Okay, I think, first of all, you know, I wish I had a magic wand and could answer the question. The best way I can but what I what I think is that here is a difference between and this is something we often kind of forget. So, information literacy and literacy there is a significant difference literacy is that you can give the same kind of skills for reading to people in a class or in a group. And once they learn they will never they will not forget so you know 10 years down the line they use this or 100 years down the line they can read use the same skills to read and understand. Okay, they may need, you know, more subject knowledge. That's a different thing but the basic skills that is required. Information skills as we discussed there are four levels of skills that is required to access and use information the digital, the internet access. And therefore, every time you change your mobile phone every time you change your computer every time you have your new internet service provider etc there is some sort of skills required. So the basic five digital skills again those are five basic digital skills but we all know that the new formats always come up so we do not know impact format or or JPEG format and what is the difference, you know what is the latest standard of that format and so on. So the digital skills, then we need the information skills, the information skills are again more, as I said cognitive skills more sort of advanced level of skills that is needed. And that is where the context comes in and that is where your question is very important, is that how do we offer in, you know, information skills, which is appropriate, and therefore information skills should be contextualized within the context of a person. Within the context of the domain and within the context of the environment like someone for example, coming from a foreign country to Britain may need a different level of information skills. Someone in a particular context of health may need a different set of information skills compared to in another discipline in another domain. Similarly, for example, you know information skills have to be contextualized with regard to people's kind of lifestyle people's age and so on. It is not, it is not one size fits all and that is where the problem is we try to fit in a one size fits all approach and that's where it fails. Okay, thank you very much. I'm going to try and get a couple of other questions in as well. Can you provide, so we talked about publishing data. I wonder if you could say something about is it useful for publishing? Is there a best way to publish data in a way that's understandable by the public? And does the library, can the library help support that? Certainly, yes. You see, okay, now we all the library and information people remember when we publish data. And this is a difference between, you know, publishing data and publishing an article or publishing a book. Now, that we need to understand first. When we publish a book, anyone with the reading skill can take that out and read and sort of, you know, they need some disciplinary knowledge and so on. Whereas, even if you have the disciplinary knowledge, even you have the skills, it is very difficult to understand the data set unless the context is provided. That is where metadata comes. So one of the major problems with publishing data is that we do not really have except for certain fields which have been historically kind of, you know, very widely shared amongst people like astronomical data, for example, where machine, you know, data is generated by machines. In many cases, data is, and that's, you know, it is very obvious that, you know, two years ago, I was invited to give a kind of, you know, data and information access panel by the International Atomic Energy Agency. And I was sharing the panel with the head of the statistics office in the United Nations. What he said was very important. He said that, look, we came up with this sustainable development goals and with all the kind of, you know, targets and so on. But we do not know how to measure data. How do we know that this person or this data is needed to measure gender gap, or this data is needed to measure people's information capabilities or information access and use. He said there are certain data which is collected by machine and then can be used because there's a scientific fields like climate logical data, for example. But impact of climate logical data on specific areas we really do not have kind of agreed standards and measures. And that is what the key problem with publishing data, publishing data comes with a lot of added requirements so that people can make sense of that. Okay, I'm going to have one last provocative question for you, Covinda. As well as official public bodies were beginning to see platforms like Twitter take a stance against misinformation. Should they and others be required to take such an active and positive role. So think about referring to open data sources or is there too much risk in going down this road. So this will be your last question. Okay, thank you. I'll try to be quick. I am not an expert in kind of, you know, data governance and data policies and so on. But what I can tell you is based on my experience. Now, if you are a publisher, for example, and you are likely to publish something, and then you have created a website, for example, and then where people can go and publish, would you feel responsible that people publish all kinds of wrong information, hatred, all kinds of, you know, misinformation and so on. Probably not because, you know, being providing a service, providing a platform, publishing something comes with certain responsibilities. So if you make some platform available, where people can come and people can share and that's, that's wonderful, but that comes with, you know, certain responsibilities as well. And therefore, I know it is difficult technologically, but that does not take away the responsibility. So if you are the newspaper editor, anything goes on to the newspaper, you could be held responsible for that. Why, why can't you extend that to a digital platform? I imagine that, you know, it's kind of, you know, the responsibility still lies whether you bring out something in print form or digital form.