ONE UN - Localizing the Global Digital Compact at the City Level (WUF13)

Good morning. Hello, good morning, salam, buenos dias, bonjour, bon dia. It's Friday morning of the World Urban Forum, and the energy is low. But we're going to try to keep this interesting and fast-paced. My name is Isabel De Sola. I'm part of the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies based in Geneva. I'm joined here by another Isabel, Isabel Shirin-Wetzel from UN-Habitat. And we're delighted to invite you to this session about the Global Digital Compact and how it features in cities. This is our agenda. We're going to have some quick opening remarks and then jump right into a panel of people who live in cities, leaders of cities around the world, and their experiences of the agenda called Global Digital Compact, which is a very recent policy agenda of the United Nations that touches upon five distinct objectives. And what we'd like to do, ideally, is hear from those of you in the audience as well, and what your experiences of digital in the city have been like. So as we get started, I just want to take a quick poll about what cities are represented here in the audience. In addition to the speakers, I know we have Mexico. No, Yucatán. Tell us what city you're from.

From Mexico.

From Mexico City, from El Defectuoso, as they say. Anybody else? Gentleman in the back. No city? You live in the countryside.

Yes.

But I see how shy and quiet everybody is. And this session doesn't take any prisoners. So for the young lady sitting in front of me, about to put on her casque. Okay, well, let's see if people warm up as we move along. I'm delighted to introduce two opening speakers. First from UN-Habitat. We're joined by a director. Yes? Okay. And let me hand over to Isabelle to make the welcome from UN-Habitat.

Thank you so much, Isabelle. And as mentioned, we're two Isabelles running the show today, and we're very glad to have you all here on a Friday morning, midday. I would like to, without further ado, just ask my colleague, our Director of this region of UN-Habitat, Mr. Erfan Ali, to give opening remarks, to ground us in this discussion that we're going to have today. So please come up to stage and join us. Thank you.

Thanks to the two Isabels. Good afternoon. Yes, my name is Erfan Ali. And which city I'm from? Okay, I come, I work in Istanbul. one of the greatest cities in the world. And originally, I'm from Damascus, which is the oldest continuously inhabited capital in the world also. 12,000 years, please. Good afternoon. I'm really happy to join you here and to welcome you in the World Urban Forum and in my region, in the Eastern Europe, Central Asian region. And here in Baku city, which is a very vibrant, very active model of sustainable urbanization, this session today brings us to the question that is both practical and deeply strategic. And the question is, how do we make global digital ambitions meaningful in the everyday reality of our cities? The Global Digital Compact gives us an important shared reference point. It sets out a common vision for inclusive, safe, and people-centered digital transformation. But as we all know, its real test It's a real test, or the real test will be in the implementation. We have a lot of commitment, a lot of pledges, but our biggest challenge comes when we need to implement. It will be shaped not in conferences, not in dialogues, not in big events, but in how our cities will begin to provide services, to manage data, to expand access, and respond to the needs of our residents. And here, where UN-Habitat brings a very specific value. We sit at the intersection between global frameworks and local action. Apart from shaping ideas and thought leadership, our role in UN-Habitat is to help cities to translate the ambition into something tangible, into policies, into practices, into systems, into services for people, to help them in their daily lives in our cities. Whether it is in housing, service delivery, or in urban governance, we work with cities to ensure that digital transformation is grounded, inclusive, and responsive to the real needs of our cities and citizens. This is also why our partnership with the UN Office of the Envoy on Technology is very critical. Through the Mayors for Digital Cooperation platform, we are already doing exactly what today's discussion is about. We are working with cities to localize the principles of the Global Digital Compact, ensuring that it remains actionable, easy to translate, and grounded in the realities of people. It's a space where cities learn from one another. share what works, and collectively shape a path forward. The urgency of this work is very clear. Cities are the forefront of digital transformation. An increasing share of urban services, from mobility to housing to public administration, is becoming more and more digital. This creates enormous opportunities, but also raises fundamental questions around inclusion, trust, and governance. How we respond to these questions, how do we fulfill these requirements at the city level, will determine whether digital transformation helps to close the gaps or deepen them further. What we see across our work is that cities are moving, they are innovating, experimenting, and finding solutions, but they cannot and should not do this alone. To all our partners in this room, there are real opportunities to collaborate on this agenda. Platforms such as the Mayor for Digital Cooperation and partnerships more broadly are essential if we want to connect efforts across local, national, and global levels. I am very much looking forward to the discussion today, and we hope that we will bring together perspectives from cities, from national governments, and key partners. Each will offer, or we hope that each will offer a different lens on how the global digital compact can be made practical as possible in guiding digital transformation in cities. Ultimately, this work becomes much easier when cities are not navigating this in isolation, but are guided by a shared direction and vision. When there is a common guiding star, it becomes possible to align efforts, scale solutions, and deliver meaningful impact for people. With this, I would like to thank all my colleagues and our partners. Thank you all for joining us today, and I wish that we have a fruitful, interactive dialogue in this session. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Irfan, for joining us. And it's my pleasure now to ask the mayor of Windhoek, Mr. Zakarias Umoma, to join me here on the podium for some opening remarks from his perspective.

Thank you very much, and good afternoon or morning. Actually, I just want to give a little bit hint of saying that we are actually here to learn from one another. and make sure that we are learning from a digital implementation on how we are going back and make sure that what we have learned today or through the course of the whole week, we can be able to implement the ideas and put in practice toward the cities of our continent or our country at large, so to say. This, what the habitant have done, it's actually a good idea to make sure that cities are brought together, mayors are brought together, the leadership are brought together to make sure that they are learning, sharing ideas on how they are doing within their cities and what ideas we can be able to implement, because at the end of the day, As we are saying, and what our motto is that we have to make sure that we have unity, we have a teamwork, because without teamwork, we can't be able to move anywhere. Cities need teamwork. Cities need habitants that are there, residents that are there. They are our people that we are saving. And in fact, they are actually looking at us, what plan do we have for them? Now, those plans that we have with them, what are we saying? What ideas that they are giving us so that we can be able to implement them? Because remember, when you are a leader or when you are in corporate industries, you need also to get ideas and opinions from your clients, because in corporate, they say one client can be able to destroy a business the moment you mistreat that person. So, to me here is that The message is that we should treat others the way we want to be treated. When we are heading the cities or heading institutions, let's treat other institutions the way we want our institution to be treated. By that way, we can be able to collaborate in harmony and make sure that we create legacy for the futures, because the aim of this event is also that we have to create an, to come up with an initiative of digital system that can be able to be used for the future and the generations to come. And then there afterwards, when we are not here, the legacy remains. and then history will be written for the future of our generations, and to make sure that the whole globe is united and they are moving together in the same spirit, rather than having a squabble amongst ourselves. Why at the end we are just one? There is no way we can separate amongst ourselves of saying this is from a different continent or this is from a different country, but in fact, we need to come together to come on the table, find a solution. I know challenges are there, but challenges can be only overcome once we have a teamwork. Yes, we can have differences here and there, but we can be able to find a solution to solve those differences. There is always a saying that people, when they are sitting or when they are arguing, there is always a disagreement, but a disagreement you can disagree to agree, based on that you have find a solution to make sure that you or us are making sure that the globe is clean, is healthy, is moving forward in terms of networking, and it's also assisting the needy. Remember, there are people that are suffering. We are not here that we are good, but we need to make sure that we comply in terms of humanity. Let's think about those people who are in need. Let's think about how we can be able to help them. Once we get that opportunity to the investors, when they invest, they must not look at the monetary kind of. Let's look at humanity itself, because without those people, then your business can also not grow, your city cannot also grow. The NGO, we are actually glad to have them because Because the NGO, in most cases, they are the ones that are helping more often because they are not looking at profit, but they are looking at the humanitarians to make sure that human beings are treated at the best level. So I think with it, thank you very much.

Thank you, Mayor Unomo, for those remarks about teamwork. And we have a team this morning for the panel who I'd like to invite to come up onto the stage. Ms. Kamelia Kamileva, if all of you could join me on the stage, maybe we'll do introductions from here. And Samuel Seth-Bassa as well. Thank you for coming on stage. I'm going to go back one slide to build off of the mayor's remarks about teamwork. One thing that we spoke about in the Global Digital Compact, if you're familiar with this agenda, is the notion of multi-stakeholderism, which is a fancy word for teamwork. It means that all sectors need to come together, governments, civil society, academia, the private sector, the UN organizations, banks, to deliver on some of these very ambitious global goals. The GDC was negotiated very far away from here in New York in September 2024 by 193 member states. And they had a notion that it would be implemented at the local scale, but from New York, from UN headquarters, of course, it was very hard to imagine what that would be like in practice and to make those lived experiences of digital cooperation much more real and tangible. A year and a half have gone by in GDC implementation, and from our perch at the UN, we're seeing a lot of momentum, a lot of excitement, in particular for the interlocking nature of its five objectives, which you see on the screen. So over 20 years of digital transformation, it's become clear to all of us that each of these individual objectives is related to another one, and it can't quite be achieved unless it's built on and resting on good work that's done in another pillar. So to take an example that we're all very attuned to nowadays is AI governance. We can't have a responsible, human-centric, and transparent AI governance if we don't know where the data comes from, and if the data isn't collected in a way that protects and promotes human rights online. So those are three objectives of the GDC already wrapped into one. So what we'd like to do in this panel is take the local perspective from cities and compare it to the global aspirations that were negotiated in this policy agenda. A year and a half into the experience of the Global Digital Compact, what does it look like at the level of cities? How is it being taken forward? What are some of the challenges? What are some of the lessons learned on the ground? And we have a number of cities represented here, lessons that should be heard in the global capitals and feed into our progress. So I'm joined by these excellent city citizens, Mr. Samuel Seth Passah, Director for Local Governance and Decentralization of the Ministry of Local Government of Ghana, Faisal Al Shimari, Head of ESG and Corporate Strategy at Mashreq Bank in the UAE, Larissa Menescal, who from the ISO-CARP Scientific Committee Chair and Strategic Planning Manager of Fortaleza City Hall, Brazil, and Ms. Annette Lutz, Urban Development Expert of the Competence Center for Democracy, Digital Governance, and Urban Development of GIZ. I wanted to kick us off with Samuel, a view from Ghana, and then turn to Larissa. I just want to alert you. Samuel, so you're now in national government, but you've previously been working at the city level. So you may know a little bit what I'm talking about when I say that member states negotiated something in New York, and maybe they didn't always have an eye on how that would play out, the digital transformation at the city level. So how have you worked from the federal government perspective to make city needs in digital a priority?

Thank you very much. So, once you sign on a compact, then you must reflect it in national policies. And as a country, the digital agenda or the digital divide we crossed for some time ago, and then the issue of making sure that all our public services are delivered through innovative digital means are pursued. So the digitalization agenda had begun. Indeed, as a country, we have a digital center where there's a repository of data in terms of backup and all that established. For us as a country, we have developed a number of digital tools at the national level that serves as payment platforms for citizenry to access public services like passports, payment for taxes at the ports, and all that using AI. Now, moving from the center, I want to establish that as a country having taken cognizance of the digital drive and digital revolution. In 2025, the government of Ghana developed and launched the Ghana National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. Why do you have to launch that? Because you need a fire wall around the AI drive so as to ensure that data protection and human rights are protected, and access to data information is protected. So when that is done, when it comes to local level, there's a policy direction where local authorities are being encouraged or are being instructed to ensure that basic services are delivered, not in person, but delivered through digital means. So as a country, we have 261 local authorities. Let me give an example. We have what you call district development data platform. It's a platform that takes care of all data to the extent that we have what you call project register in that platform. So all issues relating to the local authorities, that platform has the data. They have a domain for climate change, and then climate information, and all that. Then we have what we call LUPMIS, Land Use and Spatial Planning Information System. So the cadastral is also done in a more digital manner. Why do we do that? It's to promote permitting, development permitting, and building permits at the local level. By law, we have the Local Governance Act that makes provision for all these services to be delivered not by human beings, by digital means. And we also have what we call Land Use and Spatial Planning Act. And that act mandates or enjoins all local authorities to have what you call data, public data room. Public data rooms such that if you want to buy a land for investment, you want to get the permits in the local authorities, you walk to that data room. All the data is available. You know where parcels of land are, which are, I mean, the zones, the zones, the schemes, the planning schemes, and everything is available to the public. Why do we do that? Is to avoid the conflicts that are associated with land management and all that. So in a nutshell, I would say that digital transformation or the effort to digitalize our public services is not an event. It is more like a process. The process had begun long time, but it is moving forward, and there is a need to, as it were, build capacity and provide adequate infrastructure, ICT infrastructure, digital infrastructure. and then take cognizance of the vulnerable groups, people with disabilities or people differently able, so that when you are using digital tools or AI tools, they are also not left behind. So I will end by saying that. Thank you. Okay.

Thanks. Thank you, Samuel. And I won't let you go just yet, because you said that essentially you're at the same time getting the infrastructure in place for the digital transformation, managing the data and storing the data, also building an AI policy, and trying to deliver services digitally. So how can you do that all at the same time? What is the priority?

The priority is that we as a country, we are not a federal state, we are a unitary state. So we have to just make sure that our local authorities implement all the policies. So it's easier because we have decentralized our efforts. So our local authorities have the mandate to deliver services. At the national level, we deal with strategy, we deal with envisioning and making sure we have the policy framework. But at the local level, they deal with the citizenry. And the reason why I say it's not an event is that the capacities of all the local authorities are not the same. So I can say categorically when it comes to cities like Accra, Kumasi, Takrady, Tamale, the metropolitan areas, and some municipalities, most of the basic services they are delivering are delivered digitally. But because we have not covered the whole country, that is why I say that we need fibiotic infrastructure. I mean, the ICT infrastructure must be available. Indeed, as a country, we do e-governance, and we are pursuing that agenda so well. But because we are not yet there, I mean, I'm comparing myself to a city like, which city are you from?

San Salvador.

San Salvador, maybe you have infrastructure. We are developing country or more like a middle income country. So the infrastructure in terms of the cable and the lane, it's not existent. It's inadequate, if I should use that word. So we are making effort to ensure, and you know, it's a paradigm shift. It's a shift from the manual to digital. And the mindset of people must also be worked on. Because if you are not careful, people, ah, robot is delivering something. Is it genuine? It's a mindset game. And once you have signed on to the compact, then we have to have clear procedures and strategies to ensure that there's a mindset change and there's ability to do it when the infrastructure exists. If you don't have infrastructure, then we have something we call in economics, efficiency of labor. Congenial environment will let you deliver. If you don't have computers, you don't have that, you don't have internet, you don't have that, how will you deliver? So that's why I'm saying that it's not an event, it's a process. And that process is what we are pursuing. I cannot sit here and say we have concluded it, but by the time the global digital compact timelines are due, as a country, we'll make a lot of progress. And we need to be reporting on that. Thank you.

I can hear it in your voice, Samuel, the progress, the excitement. You're waking us up, actually, today. Let me turn to Larissa Menescal. I think you have some slides, right, from the Strategic Planning Ministry of Fortaleza City. Could you just tell us for those who are not familiar with Brazil? So they say in Portuguese, que Brasil não é para amadores. Brazil is not for starters. Just how big is Fortaleza? What's it like as a city? Maybe there is a slide we can help because I have some questions.

Yeah, I can do it.

Hello, everyone. Good morning. May I have the pointer? Then it's easier for me, please. Okay. Can you just say it? Okay, I prefer it. Thank you very much. So, yes, I am from Fortaleza. And just to contextualize you, as she said, we have so many daily challenges. And when we talk about digital transformation and global deals on that, we have to go there to the floor to feel how to deal with all this data together with our daily challenges, our To be able to talk about our digital transformation and urban transformation, I couldn't start without showing this way that we were occupying our territory. And it shows that it was not that planned, it was not that organized. Actually, if we think that all of that was green before, it's even more concerning everything that we are having to deal on our everyday basis, we are in the northeast of Brazil. I'm not showing this data, but we are a big city and with a lot of inequalities. Inequalities maybe could not be about digital transformation, but in your case, if we talk about any public policy, we have to deal with our inequalities. This first map shows our human development index concentration. So the dark brown maps in the first map shows that those are very high or high human development index. And the light yellow shows the neighborhoods that are low or very low human development index. public policy that you have, we have to deal with that and to ask ourselves, is it really dealing with our effort or compromise to reduce our inequality? So when we talk about digital transformation in our perspective from the Planning Institute, we have to talk about our territorial intelligence, and how do we use it for this transformation? For this systemic overview, talking about planning, participation, and data to be able really to change their quality of life. Then, when you were talking that Brazil is not for amadores, actually, I'm not sure how to say amadores in English.

It's amateurs.

Amateurs, almost the same. We have sometimes to build new ways to plan and to use the digital tools in our reality because of creativity. And we have to have a lot of innovation. And we have such scarce resources that we need To be innovative, to optimize our resources, and to be able to bring urban transformation. I'm talking about urban and digital because although we are talking about the digital issue, but we are in this perspective here in the World Urban Forum. And then I would like to share a couple of tools that we are using to put this digital transformation into practice there. And we are organizing and offering to the society. several territorial information on laws, infrastructure, social data that are very helpful for the public government, but also they can be helpful for the scientists to create new researches and also to the society to be sure that we have open data for them to be able to deal with forest city. As we have that, we had that kind of occupation that I was showing to you before, very fast with and that produced so many inequalities. Now we have to, we are consolidating that way, but we have to believe that we can change that situation. And for that, we go further deep, actually, in the, in all the territorial information that we have to be able to bring innovative ideas. And as we are talking about Brazil, everything that we do cannot be related only to the technology and only to the technical approaches, because the level of participatory process is huge. And now we can use the technology as a partner for this participatory budget, participatory processes. And also for the climate actions, because we are putting together data on extreme events and also the social economic data to be able to prioritize actions to deal with the climate issues, to adapt and to deal better with the situation. Because, as I mentioned before, the resources are strict, and we have to choose who what answer first, and if we can answer areas where we have more people with more vulnerable situation, we can work better. And I would have more around three slides, but I could stop here just to keep the the information, the time for discussion, but only this one that we are working in network with national and international platforms that make possible that all the data that we are using there allow us to have some interoperability with other data that we are connecting in other parts of the world. Thank you.

Thanks, Larissa, for this snapshot from Fortaleza. Just before you go, could you tell us, and citizens, they appreciate being able to access this data. Do you find that the level of engagement of the citizens with these platforms encourages to go deeper and farther? Or do you find that there's maybe a gap on capacity and understanding of citizens still? So my question is really asking This is an amazing tool, and are citizens taking advantage of it?

Wonderful question, because then I can show the next slide. So this is some issue. Obviously, it's not that accessible with such a huge inequality that I was showing to you. So sometimes we translate those digital information to more analogic accessibility. One example is this Fortaleza in 121 neighborhoods, that is the number that we have. And we made it like a box with 121 pocket maps. with all the data for each neighborhood of the city, then the people can get closer to the data, although they not always are able to go further in our applications, for instance. But and about this knowledge issue, I'm not talking only the population. challenges, but also in the municipality challenges. We didn't have data before, and I was sharing these days with a couple of colleagues that we have that kind of public servant unicorn, who is a great economist, but was studying a lot QGIS. And he needed data to be able to organize the public taxes, but he couldn't talk with the colleagues at the municipality because no one was working with data territorialized. So he decided to train us. I was his student three times. And he was training the public servants from the health department, from the security, from the education. And nowadays, all the departments are working with data, territorialize it, and building a stronger basis for everyone.

Thanks, Larissa. And yes, we're all here to learn, as the mayor, Mayor Unoma said. We're all students of digital. I'd like to turn to Faisal Al Shimari from Mashreq Bank next for a view from the UAE. And you're an interesting panelist because you have both government experience, so at the federal level, at the city level, but now you're in a financial institution. So you've been both on the planning and infrastructure side, and now you're on the, I guess, delivery side of financial digital services to citizens. So My question to you is about, well, we can talk about many things, but I had a question about vulnerability. So the UAE is a highly connected society. It's also a highly capable digital society, which has advantages and disadvantages. So I wanted to hear from all of your perspectives and also how you find that the financial sector is playing a role in making digital cities safe.

The dependencies on technology is a blessing and sometimes it's a curse. In the recent exceptional circumstances where US, Israel, and Iran were fighting, we were disappointed to see that our neighbor was attacking us with more missiles and drones than Israel. The number of missiles and the drones hitting UAE or targeting UAE was more than 3000 plus, while Israel was 2000 plus. Nevertheless, as always, the government was ready. Our air defense system accuracy was 97%. So out of the 3000 plus drones and missiles, only 30 missiles and drones debris managed to reach our soil. A couple of them targeted a data center, which reflect the jealousy and the envious and targeting civilian assets. trying to disrupt the digital economy and the digital ecosystem of the country and the cities. Amazon AWS data center was disrupted for a couple of weeks. Of course, some people tried to spread rumors at that point, saying that the UAE, because of the war, will start blocking financial transaction, not allowing people to take their money out. Well, it was not real. The only reason was there was a disruption of service, and the servers were not working. Nevertheless, moving forward, this provided an insight on digital resilience. The government, positioned by the central bank and other regulators, highlighted and emphasized operational resilience, asking and challenging during those exceptional times How to address this and take it above and beyond? Talking about on-prem and the cloud, hybrid integrated kind of infrastructure integration. Of course, the cost here will go above and beyond into an exponential increase. Nevertheless, disruption of the service and the reputation damage is priceless. So the government and the private sector are working hand in hand to address this. Moving forward, if we look historically, UAE was positioned the sixth globally on digital transformation and smart services. In fact, in a congressional hearing in the US, the CEO of Microsoft was using an example of how long it takes to renew a car registration in the UAE, comparing it to America. 30 years ago, when I was a traffic police officer, Without knowing someone, it will take you three days to get your car registration done. Today, not bragging, reality, 10 seconds. It became part of a robot process automation. If you don't have black points, you paid your insurance, you did the car inspection, literally, it's 10 seconds. And this is a model that we are considering as a private sector to monetize. and to franchise overseas. In fact, there are some countries in Africa and Asia who are interested in copying this model. Looking at the integrated smart cities in general, UAE came up with a recognition. There are too many standards, too many frameworks, and too many documentations that you need to deal with whenever you are addressing an infrastructure project. and it makes your life a misery because you want to start where the others ended. You don't want to start from the zero, exploring what are the standards available and what are the recommendations there. So the municipality of Abu Dhabi came up with something they called Zayed Standard for Smart Cities. It kind of ticked the boxes on multiple KPIs and multiple standards available globally. In addition, We collaborated with the British Standard Institute, myself here representing the UAE, to develop something that was called PAS 2009:2024, which is an international government guideline on digital maturity. The aim of this digital maturity is to enable smart cities and the ecosystem of digital economy and the digital services and the transformation of the government to evolve to the next government generation, which is a wiser government depending on accurate data on an instant, with seamless experiences in the pipeline. Today, the government excellence model in the UAE is considered the fifth generation, while in Europe it's the fourth. There is seven awards on AI. seamless experiences, integrated seamless experiences, where at least four government and semi-government entities are integrated to deliver a seamless experience. In addition, we are talking about future readiness KPIs. If you see the experience in COVID-19 or during the exceptional circumstances of the war between the neighboring country and America, We had mobile apps up and running, ready, identifying those who got COVID or are in a geo-fence location where there is a risk of a debris or a missile or a drone. Informed on the same second. There is no other country in the region or globally who provides such transparent alerts to the citizen, including the expats. Furthermore, I'm proud to be from a country where we are highly into tolerance and Proud to be an international country or city. We have 225 nationalities living in UAE, 225. I believe in the Interpol there is 190. So we are more than the Interpol by 35 nationalities. Back in the days in 2016, we launched a mobile app with 16 languages, not six, 16. Why? We needed to encourage the penetration of the smart services. And I cannot go to, let's say, a normal labor, a blue collar, and ask him to learn English or Arabic to access my services. I cannot. So what did we do? We analyzed the statistics around the nationalities and their preferred language. And there is a minimum degree of primary school where they can read and write, basic readings. When we provided them with those, the selection criteria was not because I love English or I speak English, then English will be the language. No, it was the statistics and the numbers of the citizens or expat who use those languages. So Portuguese was one of the preferences. And then we had Spanish, and we had Korean, and we had Japanese, we had Vietnamese, and we had other national languages like Urdu, et cetera, et cetera. We identified a spike in the penetration of our digital services that we needed to upgrade our network bandwidth and computes in an exponential vector. Why? The number of users from, let's say, 50 to 500 users a second increased to multiple thousands in a week. Accessibility is a challenge. When we talk about cities of the future, we need to talk about also The international city component, what are the nationalities that we have? What are the languages they use? And we need to enable them. In addition, we need to look at AI because junk in, junk out. If we will put stupid data in, then we will have a stupid outcome. It's not the AI who's stupid, it's the data that we give them. And in reality, it's us who decided to use such data. So we need to cleanse the data. We need to develop data controls to prevent discrepancies proactively, and then we need to decide whether one algorithm is enough, or if we want to prevent biases and false positives, we need to have multiple algorithms to cross-reference the outcome.

Yeah, thank you so much for reminding us about that. So you've told us about what it looks like to deliver services to a highly international, very connected city with multiple languages and geography as destiny with key security concerns because of the neighborhood, which is really interesting coming after we've heard from Ghana and Fortaleza. So digital proving to be a tool in all of these different contexts. I wanted then to turn to Annette Lutz from the GIZ, which is shorthand for Germany's Development Cooperation branch. And for the audience who might not be familiar with the work of GIZ, why is there an urban development center inside the agency? Why has digital become so fundamental to the work of international cooperation from Germany?

Okay, hello. So at GIZ, yeah, it's true, we have a proper urban development competence center that also deals with digital governance on a global level. We, yeah, we at the moment, we implement about 119, 200 projects that deal with urban development in 58 countries worldwide. And we see a really a very much rising demand for capacity development and support with digital solutions. In every project, I said it's nearly 200 urban development related projects, we typically work with between two and ten cities, so it's quite a number of cities altogether. We always work, even in the urban development related projects, with the national level, so we work on a multi-level approach. And we see how much demand there is from urban administration, urban governance, for more digital literacy, for the use of digital tools. We have seen with the example for the laser and from Ghana, I think, what digital tools can do for urban development and how they can accelerate urban transformation, but there is still quite a lot to do. And we think there are Maybe three key challenges that I would like to mention when it comes to digital transformation in the sense of the Global Digital Compact. First, of course, Faisal mentioned that it's essential to protect digital infrastructure from external threats, for example, cyber attacks, but also very real drone attacks, as well as from internal risks like lack of maintenance. And that's something that we are sort of, yeah. helping the urban administrations to do. Another key challenge is to ensure that digital transformation does not further exclude marginalized, vulnerable groups. So you all know the leave no one behind principles. That's also part of the Agenda 2030, which is very important also to the Global Digital Compact, which we very much subscribe to. So, of course, in every city there are people with limited digital skills, a lack of education, maybe illiteracy, or no access to IT infrastructure at all. And we must make sure that digital transformation does not leave these population groups behind. So we want to make sure that they are included in decision-making processes that regard them. and that they have access to municipal services, even if those municipal services become more and more digitalized. So that's an important point. And of course, at the same time, as we all know, smart cities always bring about the risk that digital technology may be misused to surveillance of citizens for repression or for discrimination. And that's, of course, something that we don't want to be part of. We have the do no harm approach. And all the development measures that we carry out must address these risks. We have for every project that we carry out, we have information security standards that we observe. So the German Development Cooperation as such supports a human-centered approach. to the development and use of digital technologies. And that is very much something that we have to push forward and that we support at the city level as well. So maybe three important aspects related to your questions. So we need a set of rules also in cities. that make innovation possible, digital innovation, while also protecting people and the planet at the same time. So, yeah, we need to make sure that data are protected, that we have equal access to data and clear responsibilities also within the urban administrations. And so we work towards just digital governance systems and regulatory frameworks for the use of artificial intelligence and other digital technologies, for example, in countries such as Kenya or Senegal. Then secondly, accessibility of data. Since 2019, Germany has been strongly putting forward its responsibility for advancing fair, inclusive, and responsible use of digital technology. We have co-launched the FAIR Forward initiatives where datasets are made available and considered as global digital public goods, and help innovators to build local artificial intelligence solutions. that help, for example, to access government services in local languages. That's something that also Faizal was referring to. And then thirdly, I think that absolutely it's crucial that digital transformation goes hand in hand with local ownership and institutional capacity, which is something that we very much pay attention to in the urban development project and GIZ as well, for example. by increasing access to open source data sets and AI tools, by supporting local innovation systems, for example, we work with local startups. I've mentioned the very important aspects of capacity building for local policy makers, also for national policy makers, by the way, developers, civil society, and always promoting inclusive participation of women and marginalized groups. in the use and development of digital technologies. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Annette. We're going to open up the floor to the audience in a moment. I'd just like to ask one question to the panel so that the audience can get ready to take the floor if they'd like to. We went through many, many topics. I think we heard on the one hand from each of you about the great potential that we already know of digital to drive outcomes and deliver services to citizens in your different geographies. So the digital for development agenda, we know it since a couple of decades now. And each of you touched very briefly as well on some of the risks. So Annette, you mentioned now the risk of exclusion. and marginalized groups. Faisal, you spoke about a double-edged sword. So on the one hand, a data center that powers the digital economy, but if it ever goes offline for any reason, there is disruption. And Larissa talked about some people that prefer analog measures. That's me, actually. The GDC frames the risks and asks us to transform our notion of digital for development and say, yes, let's do digital for development, but there are some priority risks, junk in, junk out, for example, in AI. So before we turn over to the audience, I wanted to hear, going down the row, what are some of those priority downsides? of digital in the city that you're looking at or seeing over the horizon that you'd like to share for us today.

Thank you very much. I think you've said it all, the issue of excluding some cohorts of the population when you are using AI, especially people with disabilities, and even the aged in terms of accessing public services using digital tools. So when you look at countries where you have the vulnerable groups and people who are not having exposure to digital tools, I mean, when you take a smartphone for an aged person in a city, He may not be able to use it. He has to depend on the child or the younger person to say, what can I do? So there's a cohort of the aged, and there's a cohort of people living with disabilities. That can be an exclusion. And then we need to make effort to bring them all in, to make it more inclusive for everybody to access. The other bit is, as you said, Garbage in, garbage out. So what data? Who's producing the data? What data are you using? Which institution? In Ghana, we have Ghana Statistical Service. I mean, it's a regulatory body in terms of data. It's not every data that is data. It must be authentic, reliable, timely data. And as a country, we have actually moved to use secondary data. secondary data, which has been quality assured. Then when AI picks that, then you know that you are getting the right information, you're getting the right services. And then there's a firewall we need to build. If you don't build a firewall, then everybody is going to be vulnerable when you are going to use digital tools. The last bit I want to say is that I have said it, and I'm going to reiterate that, it's a mindset. It's a mindset. And Einstein made a statement that you cannot continue doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That is insanity. So globally, people are used to analog. People are used to doing things in a certain manner. And with the digital revolution and the The fact that we want to let people access services at the comfort of their home, then there should be a certain information, education, and communication activities. We need to sensitize people. People must become very much aware of how we are moving. Indeed, as a government of Ghana, the government of Ghana has even rolled out a program, more than 1 million youth, we call it coding program. More than 1 million youth are being trained to be conversant with ICT, and the government just assumed duty last year, and a number of youth are rolled onto the program. So ICT and digital means it should not be a monster, it should not be scary, it should be very easy to use applications. So that is another bit of it. Once you are delivering services that are so complex for people, then they will stick to the old and say, I'm being frustrated because the infrastructure is not there. The way to do it is to simplify, and then I will not use the tool. So these are the fears that we need to be dealing with as we move forward towards this agenda of using AI for service. The last bit is unemployment. The fear of people laid out, the conversation going on, a lot of companies are laying out people, but the carrying capacity of the mind is more than the AI. The mind is powerful, but AI, the mind manipulates the AI. So if the mind is not also abreast or upskill to be able to work within this ICT system or digital tools, then you are going to lose human beings as again AI. That can create a lot of confusion in our cities.

Thanks, Samuel. Let me hear quickly from Larissa, Faisal, and Annette, and we'll turn to the audience and also come to Camelia. Camelia is going to bring us back to the global view. But top risks, what's top of mind in Fortaleza?

Well, we have so many data. I think that the municipality is the the one that has the biggest amount of data about the city and the citizens. And we need to save lives and to improve the quality of life, to promote more fair way of life for everyone, and to change the structural poverty that we have there. And we have to be able to use all this amount of data that we have to make it more suitable to a way of life from 2026. Maybe we should customize better the public services, the public policies. Using this data as a reference, as we know so much about everyone, we can make their quality of life better and optimize our resources on their services.

I would flag two main challenges. Energy, everyone knows the prices of oil went to the roof because of the current political tension in the region and the Gulf. Energy transition requires funding. Money is there, but to mobilize this money is a challenge. In UAE alone, we need 640 billion investment to finalize and finish our energy transition plans without counting the AI factor. People will say, what's the AI factor? We are participating and investing in Stargate project in America, 1.4 trillion dollar. A similar investment is happening in Abu Dhabi, Stargate Abu Dhabi. We are planning to become one of the big capitals of AI globally, computes. People will say, why energy is so important to AI? Well, just an example, SpaceX, is getting $15 billion in computes as income from cloud and other AI operatives. So energy and compute is the challenge in the future. This is one of the things. To mobilize the money and the cash, we need to have an ESG taxonomy. Government today come to the private sector and tell them, invest more. Okay, we will put the money on the table, but we need to sit in one round table. and we need to raise the risk, you cannot come and tell me, why don't you finance affordable housing while at the same time the central banks in certain countries are telling me, underprivileged family or poor people, let's call it transparently, shouldn't take loans. Okay, how to balance the challenge? If you don't de-risk this, if you don't change the regulation, if you don't develop an ESG taxonomy with human centricity addressing this, including housing, affordable housing, I cannot give the money. In addition, you need to pragmatically come up with a blended finance module. Endowment could be a method, social impact bond, similar to what Bank of England and the Ministry of Justice create to microfinance drug abusers who have been going through rehabilitation using lottery money, but that's a different story, to finance or to de-risk. Last but not least, If we want to look at the future, we need to look at the AI risks associated to job loss. Standard Chartered is planning to terminate 15% of their staff. And according to the CEO, he said, "We are, he said, "It's not cost cutting. It's replacing, in some cases, lower value human capital. Lower value human capital. Well, today you are terminating a clerk or you are terminating an accountant. In 10 years, it will be you. It will be the CFO, not you. I mean him, the CEO himself or the CFO, which is a risk. What will happen when we reach the next wave of automation? Are we looking at a global Income as an alternative, or an AI tax?

So going down the row, Samuel also mentioned unemployment, lack of capacity, the immense amount of data, maybe a need for data science to be able to adequately harness that. Now, financing, again, unemployment. Annette, I was Interested to hear you not talk about maybe shrinking budgets for international cooperation. Okay.

I'm not going to talk about that. I'm coming back to the human-centered approach because I think it's both vice and a virtue, you know, the complexity of digital technologies. All of us are using smartphones. Some of you are using them right now at the moment. Who of you would say that you really understand the way your smartphone works? I don't understand my iPhone. I don't understand it. I'm quite a proficient user, but I don't know what's behind it. My 80-year-old father, he's already struggling with online banking. So I think that really the necessity or the desire to not leave anyone behind in this development, it's quite something that we really, really need to make sure that we manage to do that, on the one hand. On the other hand, we are all becoming more and more dependent on technologies that we don't really understand, that makes life so much more comfortable. I mean, the use of artificial intelligence or ChatGPT in my kids' homeworks, I don't really want to think that further, but it's really, really important to handle that responsibly, including everything that has to do with data protection and the huge power it gives us, digitalization.

And you see a role for cities in that. Thank you. Let's see if there are any questions or comments in the audience. If you could raise your hand, there's some floating mics and you can speak in one of the five or six languages, actually, of the translation. Please tell us what city you're from.

Thank you. I'm Musa Zondo, the Chief Strategy Officer from the City of Durban in South Africa. And I think the points made by all panelists are important. And I think they resonate well. The part that I just want to emphasize is that the working between unitary states and equally federal states, and I'm glad my fellow Pan-African says in Ghana, for example, they are unitary, we are equally unitary. But the challenge that we find in cities is that the cities seem to move faster than national government in policy making. And in some occasion, the policies that come about are a bit behind, in one occasion, maybe restrictive as well. And I think we need to remedy that by active involving city officials or local government officials in drafting and equally consider their use cases when we develop these policies. Of course, we are well guided, I mean, not well guided, but guided to some degree, maybe I should say like that. In our case, in the African context, the AU approved the convention on cyber security and protection of personal information in 2014, and subsequent to that, they then approved the AI guidelines and protocols. And if you look at those protocols, they talk, they are emphasizing the right-based approach, lawfulness, proportionality on what you collect. In fact, from collection to handling to sharing. Then if you look at the EU approach, I mean the protocols, look at the risk-based approach that every AI and cityverse or civicverse initiative must then be registered and then be vetted by that, and if they are risk identified, then the person, the city that is leading that must then deal with that. And then if you look at the Singapore approach, which seems to say, I mean, we'll use, our policy will be informed by the use cases. I think we do need then to oscillate between these practices in a way that ensure lawfulness in what we do as cities. Certainly, we don't want to monitor people, but we want to ease the time and allow people to have more time in their hands so that they can then do more in their lives. Stop the queuing for simple things. Thank you.

I just wanted to ask the tech team in the back if they can help us move forward. Are there any other comments from the audience? One more.

Hello. Is it working? Is it working? OK. So here I'm Mohona Haque from Bangladesh. The discussion was really fruitful and really amazing. And what I want to say is countries like Bangladesh, like third world countries where we're from, the problem is when you talk about the city and development and et cetera, et cetera, whatever it is, mostly it is focused on the capital city. most of the cases, the other cities like Ratchakun and other cities, they are not getting that kind of attention. We do not have those kind of opportunity, roles, and the city planning and everything. We do not have this. Even if we're talking about the AI, it's like so far away from... because we don't have the basic in the other cities. So I don't know how to solve this. I don't know why and where to solve this and who should talk about it. Maybe we're the I want to know that if there is this kind of walk discussion, I would like to request in future that when you talk about cities, please mention all the other cities and the rural areas, even the urban areas, that is not the capital. And that will be helpful for our countries and our people. Thank you so much, all of you.

May I?

We don't have the solution. And we have time for more comments. I'd just like to flag what's on the screen, because it speaks to your comment and also our colleague from South Africa. This is an online portal that was created to bridge that local-global gap in the framework of the Global Digital Agenda. So this is a database of initiatives that are happening for the digital transformation. And I searched it this morning. It was recently created. It has about 3,000 data points. I searched the word city, and there were only 67 initiatives that have come into the portal there. It's one way to make visible what's happening in cities of all sizes and to raise up to the negotiators in New York what are some of the realities from all of the places where you live and reside. So one of the reasons that we came to the World Urban Forum was to meet you and to encourage this connecting between lived realities in an urban area and the global perspective. And if we don't have any more comments from the floor, which I think we don't, I want to turn to our last speaker, who is here exactly for that reason, Kamelia Kamileva from the Global Cities Hub. I take it that you hear on a daily basis from your post in Geneva, that global policy agendas need to understand better lived realities in cities. Can you tell us about what are some of your priorities for Global Digital Compact implementation?

Thank you very much. With pleasure, Isabelle and all the colleagues from UNITAC, ODETH, UN Habitat, and also in ITU in Geneva. I have to say, you're doing a fantastic work, and I'm not saying this because I'm invited to this podium. I'm invited to many podiums. It's really from the heart. one point, speaking points for today, then I had another one, and then I adapted it in order to be as interactive and as useful for everyone in the room and online to all the questions that came up. I will not be long, but I will really try to be as punchy as possible for this. So, yes, to pick up exactly your last comment, Isabelle, we are subject, all of us, but especially city and regional leaders, they are subject of what their central government negotiate. And I will come back to the division of cities, you know, capital and secondary cities, as we call it. secondary, not because they are not important, but because they are not capitals. So the negotiators in New York, these are diplomats, human beings for the moment, not yet machines. And as human beings, we have and I'm a career diplomat from more than 20 years, we have the same brain like everyone else. So, the more the information is divided in this amazing database, in these publications and reports, the less you look at it, you don't have time. What you need is really, and I'm a little bit provocative, obviously, you look the information, you look the database, but at the end, you need to synthesize. So what we are doing at the Global Cityscope, which is Geneva-based organization, but working globally, is to try to work with city leaders to what we call negotiable language, the language, really exactly in the same word that you hear it, that can be adopted by negotiators. This is exactly what we do. This is the core of our mandate. So to give you one example, if you want to have more attention on the cities that are not capital, sometimes this pertain to two words. Sometimes this would pertain to the next negotiation around the digital compact, which says pay attention at local and regional governments, including secondary cities. And if you manage, and this sometimes is very difficult actually, just to words, if you manage to include this as an example, that means that all the secretariat behind all the people from the UN agencies I've mentioned, they will be obliged to look into this, to report back to member states, and you have the whole machines which comes up. So my first really out, you know, big remark, bringing everyone to what we call multilateral negotiation, which is this big green room you have seen on the TV called the United Nations General Assembly and many other rooms where, you know, member states, diplomats sit behind the nameplate of their countries, is really to trickle it down to what you want to see or what you think you shall lobby to see in the final. no tax. Now, coming back a little bit to the city leaders, I wanted to actually make three points, not to repeat other speakers. Why we shall include and consult city and region leaders in the negotiations? Because innovation is happening in cities. Sometimes my fellow panelists said faster than on a national government. And my friend from South Africa, who was sitting with me in Geneva two weeks ago, I wanted to speak about you. They are advising Pretoria, they're advising the central, from the municipality he comes, they're advising the central government of South Africa on digital and on EA. So city leaders, because innovation happens there, because sometimes they are more advanced, they exchange with other cities, but they also can be useful and exchange with central government. This is also important because the city leaders, and as I say, city leaders/administration, obviously, they are also responsible for this famous, as we are discussing today, people-centered approach or human-centered approach. Western countries say human-centered approach, others say people-centered approach. There is no difference. Just a joke. Then, to me, the people-centered approach started. So initially, traditionally, this is when you have the technology which takes care of what people want, as you said, using it and come from the home, everything to what you said, I subscribe. My second new reading of the people-centered approach is this. very, very clear notion that there will be hundreds of thousands of jobs which will be lost with AI. I mean, at one point of time, we have to say openly, we cannot just say, yes, but this will also create other things. No, there will be like massive loss of jobs. This loss of jobs can be, of course, pre-planned can be, of course, handled, can be, of course, reorganized, reoriented to something else. The mayor of Geneva said in a forum in Geneva, maybe we shall replace on the table something close to what we call universal revenue for everyone. Maybe there are also other strategies like longer unemployment revenues for those who lose their jobs. My point today is to say that this actually comes exactly at hands of the city leaders. If there is something which gets to this, I don't want to call it only job lose because it's too gloomy, but let's say profound job transformation of our world, this will be to be handled by city leaders. So to me, this is the second part of the people-centered approach. in all this discussion. Now, to get back to the data for a moment, I wanted to mention the very valuable initiative of the Global Urban Data Coalition. I can only agree with the junk in, junk out, as you said, but more importantly, we need the disaggregated urban data to be handled at the United Nations level as you do in UN-Habitat, and this is an amazing initiative, the Global Water Mandate Coalition. I hope that you can say a word on this, Aline, later. And finally, to come back to the last point, I know that I have to finish, the last point is that Again, bringing the city voices at the international level with the negotiators, speaking about capital cities, secondary cities, etc., involving them in this policy discussion. I can only congratulate you for this Mayor for Digital Cooperation initiatives that you are launching. You can include these people from this cooperation, these mayors, you can include Global Cities Hub, we are always happy to help. to have an added value to all these meetings, international meeting which are going around, the 31st Virtual World's Day, the second Cityverse, And also the first global dialogue on AI governance, which will be held in Geneva back-to-back to AI for Good Summit and WISY Smart City. All these complicated words, sorry for them. You can just simply go on our website, www.globalcitieshub. Sorry, it's not an advertisement. But all these complicated words and meetings and dates you can find there. Again, Global Cities Hub, thank you for your attention.

Thank you, Camelia. And with that, could we please give a round of applause to these amazing panelists who've been here with us? I'd like to hand the floor to Aline Machado from UN-Habitat for our closing remarks. Thank you.

Good afternoon, colleagues. Good afternoon, Your Worship. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, colleagues. This is the last day of the WOF. I really hope all of you make the most of it, that you learned a lot, but you also had the experience to share and to make connections and to collaborate with the stakeholders that we have here today. What stands out immediately, not only from the discussion that you had here today, but from what we have been hearing in the other sessions at the WUOF this week, is that the richness and diversity of experiences have been contributing for us to be able to advance. We have heard from cities grappling with inequality, from governance building national digital systems, from partners focused on standards and resilience, and from organizations working to ensure inclusion remains at the center during this session today. We have heard from a financial institution about the risk in urban initiatives. Across all these perspectives, there is one clear message. The global digital compact is shaped and realized in cities, in communities, in the day-to-day interactions between people and their local governments. What we are seeing is a transformation in how cities operate. Cities are moving toward more connected systems where data can support planning, service delivery, and accountability in a more coherent way. Public services are increasingly expected to be accessible digitally in ways that are simple, reliable, and responsive. At the same time, there is a growing recognition that access cannot be assumed. Many residents still rely on low-tech or offline solutions, and these realities need to be taken into account and also remain part of how cities design and advance their systems. Inclusion runs through everything we have discussed. Cities like Fortaleza, that we had here today, reminds us that inequality shapes how people experience digital services. Others highlighted the importance of building skills, strengthening awareness, and supporting a broader shift in mindset so that people can actually benefit from the tools being introduced. We also heard strong messages on trust and governance. Data protection and responsible use of AI, and the reliability of systems are all essential for building confidence among residents. Without that confidence, that trust, even the most advanced systems will struggle to deliver their full value. Let me remind you, the challenge is very real. Many local governments are working with uneven levels of infrastructure and capacity. In some places, the fundamentals, connectivity, data systems, basic equipment, are still being put in place. Delivering on the ambitions of the Global Digital Compact needs sustained investment, clear priorities, and coordination across different levels of governments. This is where collaboration is really critical. From your habitat perspectives and as a co-host of the newly launched Mayors for Digital Cooperation Initiative, and I would like to appreciate you all for joining us yesterday. We had a very good moment also with our partner ODETH. And here I want to specifically thank Isabelle for all the support and collaboration so far. Our role is really to support this transition in a practical and grounded way. As part of these efforts to advance the Global Digital Compact and also the data production and the advancement of SDG 11, we have created, as Camelia mentioned, the Global Urban Data Coalition. The idea is that this coalition can also help to advance the Global Digital Compact. We work with cities to strengthen capacities, to develop integrated urban systems, and to support governance approaches that are aligned with human rights and local priorities. We also create space for exchange where cities can learn from one another, build partnerships, and scale solutions that have already been tested. We see a strong need to maintain a balance between innovation and responsibility. As cities adopt new technologies, careful attention must be paid to inclusion, to access, and to the risks that come with digital systems if they are not well governed, and that our systems remain people-centered or human-centered at all times. The Global Digital Compact offers an important shared direction for all of us. The work ahead lies in grounding that vision at the local level in ways that reflect the realities, the capacities, the difference, the diversity, and aspirations of cities around the world. That's a collective effort and one that brings all of us together. Thank you very much. With that, colleagues, we close this Valuable session. Thank you so much, Isabel. Thank you again for your great moderation. I hope to see you in the, we still have the ceremony. Let's join us there. But I also hope to see you all in the next WUF in Mexico. Thank you so much.