Digital Public Infrastructure Day - UN Open Source Week 2026 (Part 3)

Once again, good morning. We'll do it again one more time for those who were not in the room. We're going to do a synchronous clap, and it's just a one clap, and we'll do it until we get it right. So, per my instruction, we're going to do this. Clap once if you can hear me. Perfect. Wonderful. Thank you for joining us this morning. I see that folks are still streaming in. I again encourage folks to also fill out the front. We don't bite over here. And thank you for being here on time as well. I know that there are many things going on. You could be anywhere else in New York, but you chose to be here with us on DPI Day. So welcome to DPI Day, the second, I understand, DPI Day at the UN Open Source Week. Open Source Week is co-hosted by the UN Office of Digital and Emerging Technologies as well as the Office of ICT. We also have member state hosts who are Tanzania, Lesotho, Morocco, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Estonia, and Luxembourg. I also want to acknowledge in advance the ministerial participation we'll have this morning, which is exciting about a topic like this one. And I myself, I'm your host for today. I can be your rabble-rouser, I can be the one who ushers you into places, but I'm hoping that we'll have a good time. My name is Nanjira Sambuli. I am a Senior Advocacy Officer on digital public infrastructure and inclusive financial systems at the Gates Foundation. So, some things about this day. This is day 3 of a long week, but it's exciting once again to see the room has filled out, considering yesterday, I hear, was a very full— filled-out house. Day 1 on Monday, there was a hackathon, and then yesterday was the exciting open source and AI session. And today is DPI Day, which is aiming to bring together the open source and DPI communities together and to help advance through that the Global Digital Compact commitments. As for our agenda today, we're going to start with an opening fireside chat, followed by a ministerial panel, but then we're going to move around into some breakout sessions before lunch, have enough time for lunch where you could also get to know each other better. And then we'll have another breakout session after lunch, then come back into this room for a closing panel and a closing ceremony. Not to worry, we'll keep emphasizing these as we go along throughout the day. And the most important part, there will be a reception for those who have the ticket for that. Now, um, the next thing I want to point out is a UN Digital Cooperation portal that has been put together by ODETTE. For those— I want to actually find out if folks can— let's do some live participation here by scanning that QR code and getting some thumbs up that, you know, folks have reached the portal. Somebody took a picture and I don't know that that's what they were meant to do. Right. So you can— what this portal is about is that you can register the initiatives you have in your respective areas of work. And link them to the Global Digital Compact for visibility when the compact is being reviewed. And it's also a chance to showcase your work on a global platform and portal. Just checking, we good? Thumbs up, little thumbs up that we have the link. Perfect, thank you, sir. Active participation welcomed. So just some housekeeping rules before we get into the day. No food and drink are allowed, but your water bottles are safe. I had to confirm that one. Um, people, you pay for your own meals in the cafeteria areas on the third floor where we have lunch or coffee and all the— fourth floor, sorry. Um, and so to move around, as I mentioned, to the breakout sessions and otherwise, there will be volunteers outside in yellow t-shirts who can help you move from room to room depending on the sessions that you want to get to. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I'm hoping that we'll have a great day together. I am just looking around the room to make sure that I can hand over to the next session. Oh, and our moderator is arriving in grand fashion. We welcome her as she arrives. I will now hand over to Ms. Yolanda Martinez, who will be joining us shortly here for the opening fireside session. Yolanda, welcome very much.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, and good morning everyone. It's an honor to be here. I truly respect this setting, especially for devoting one entire week to open source topic, and within that week, an entire day of discussions for DPI. So welcome to this initial session.

And to get started, I would like to bring two amazing leaders to join me for this conversation.

Number one, I'm sorry because literally I was running to get started on time, Miss Lisa Lee Kosta. Did I pronounce your last name correctly? Welcome, Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs of Estonia. Thank you so much. And I would also like to give the floor— I don't see here— Minister Sigmund Freil from Dominican Republic. Maybe he's running like I was, literally.

No?

Let's give a couple of minutes. And to get everyone inspired and into the conversation, let me share a little bit of thoughts on why talking about open source and DPI under the framework of the Global Digital Compact is so important. Number 1, the Compact reminds all of us that digital transformation must be inclusive, must be trusted, and must be country-led. At the World Bank, we have learned that the most successful digital journeys are not just built by countries working alone, but by countries learning from one another, and supported by strong partnerships. And I would like to give you some examples of very concrete results coming from working in partnerships across Latin America and the Caribbean through IDLAC Consortium, which is a joint effort funded by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and co-develop under the technical working groups of the Latin American Network for the Development of E-Government, Redial. Countries are advancing cross-border digital identity interoperability. And I feel so proud to share today that 83 million Brazilians can access more than 300 public services on Uruguay's government portal using their Gold BR digital ID. More than 12 countries are participating in this effort, including Dominican Republic, which is the chair of Red Health this year and will host the regional ministerial meeting later this year as well. Another example of partnerships is Vincula LAC, and for this one, We partner in the World Bank with Coursera to give more than 5,000 scholarships that have been provided across the region based on country context and needs. And I'm very happy to share that more than 20,000 courses are being taken by— that reflect more than 70,000 hours of learning in areas such as relevant of AI, cybersecurity, and digital transformation. Another example of the power partnership is the LAC AI Accelerator, and I know Estonia will share a lot more on this through our conversation, which is a partnership between the Tony Blair Institute, AT&T Data, and Carnegie Mellon University, where we are working with 18 use cases coming from an open call where we got 59 proposals to put an idea on how to use AI to make government services better into action in just 6 And last but not least, the Women in GovTech Challenge. I feel very proud because this is a partnership between GIZ, the Government of Estonia, colleagues of ITU, the World Bank, and the DPI Say What initiative with UNODET that are investing in the next generation of women leaders in this space. This year, the initiative graduated its third cohort, bringing the total number of women supported through mentoring, training, and networking opportunities to more than 680 participants across the three editions. Today, the Challenge team will be hosting a workshop at 3 PM, and I encourage everyone interested in scaling women's leadership— and I think we have a great example here, Minister— to join and learn more about this initiative. So these are examples of regional engagements and global engagement, but we're going to have the opportunity through this conversation to learn about specific examples. So we're going to be discussing around 3 main areas: what worked, what is underway now, and how international cooperation matters. So to kick off the floor and looking back at the country's DPI journey, and I'm super fan of Estonia because when I was the CIO of Mexico, it was one of the first countries I went to visit to learn and to gather inspiration for the digital strategy that we put in place after what we saw. What is the one program or reform at your desk at this very moment, and that is moving everything around DPI. How does— what does the next chapter look like when Estonia has been working with Nextro for more than two decades now? What is the priority? What are you working on?

Thank you. Thank you for this wonderful introduction, and it's really a great honor to be here to discuss on this very timely and important topic because we are very much talking about open source AI, but you need some kind of infrastructure around that as well. So that is, that is absolutely clear. Estonia, yes, is a country with 100% of public services digital. Everything is connected via a very important infrastructure point, the personal or company code, but also the interoperability between more than 3,000 different databases. So one of our political decisions has been that we never build a super database because everything should be built on trust, and super database is not a good answer if you are looking for a trust. So you asked what is the one most important thing at my table right now, and this is still the inclusion. So when Estonia as a country has achieved already 100% digital governments, then now going to the next era, that is the AI governance, that is fundamentally different. So basically, we are at the same place where all the countries are. Um, despite our previous digital journey, we are richer with our experiences, but we are building new things with AI. And that means now again that nobody should be left behind. So we have this principle at the United Nations, but we have this principle also in our country. And that means that with a—

hello.

Yeah. So having the AI for everybody, nobody left behind, it means that we have to make new political decisions. Let me give some examples, and these are not technological ones, these are political ones. First, we have a prime minister-led initiative, Estonia.ai. Actually, you'll find it ast.ai at our own language, and that is— has every week sessions for absolutely every sector in the society, describing and helping how you could use AI. Also, we have a program together with our public libraries. Every village has a public library, and we do not train librarians. Already from 1990s, we have information specialists because you don't need Even a single gadget in Estonia to be member of digital society because you can get all the digital services from banking to the state services from the public libraries. Now we proceed the librarians helping the village people without any gadgets to understand what AI is, how it can change your life. Maybe you could be part of that, maybe you choose otherwise. So literally, no one is left behind. So I consider personally this— because I'm very keen on equality issues— I personally consider this as most important technological solution, which is absolutely not technological, that really no one is left behind. And we also include children. So many countries in the world are discussing banning social media for kids. Estonia has made the choice otherwise because we have very high results at our PISA tests. We are doing very well in education, and this is because we have included digital learning already from the very first grades, but also some knowledge already from the kindergarten with the state curriculum to everybody. So no child is left behind. We have AI Leap at schools. That means that already all teachers have got access to AI together with the researchers, but also, uh, the kids get gradually full access to AI, not to be only the best users but to be the best creators of AI, to be the best critical thinkers on the era of AI. So these are just just some of the examples. I would love to share also the technological things, but for me, as you ask, what is most important, one thing for me, and that is inclusion and that nobody is left behind.

Thank you, thank you so much. I feel very inspired, and maybe you can elaborate a little bit more, especially because education is a very challenging sector. In most of our countries, I can speak from Latin America, from Mexico that has 129 million people, 25 million children, how you engage with unions and teachers to incorporate AI in a way that is an incentive and a way to scale the capabilities in working with the kids. Can you elaborate a little bit more about that negotiation that usually comes at the political level?

Actually, the situation in Estonia is vice versa. So first, our principal for digital services and AI is that not that government controls people, but people control government with a data tracker and all the other tools available. And that's the same with the schools and teachers. So the initiative actually did not come politically. It came from the teachers from the schools. So we have a very independent teacher system in Estonia, which actually elaborates a lot of different initiatives, and it is the teachers who actually lead the program together with the academia and universities. So teachers have free hands to— the government only gives access. We only pay for the access, but all the rest is done by the teachers together with academia, and we very much support the different initiatives This is actually the ambience we have here at this week, that when different people come together, we get better solutions. And that is the same with the teachers in Estonia. When different teachers in different schools, in remote schools, city schools, different languages, put their ideas on the table, experiment, and we have also very supportive university side, research side for that, also the brain research, development research. So together, the academia and the teachers are developing, co-creating the new ways of learning, and politicians do not intervene. So that is what I truly believe in, that the initiative from different people is the breaking point for new innovations. The only thing that the government does and has done throughout the years is that Estonian government is basically a risk-taking government, research-based, on research-based, on very, uh, since very severe risk assessment. But we are open to co-creation and research-based innovation.

Thank you. I found extremely Interesting, this approach of governance, really working with the teachers and giving them the space to define the how.

The teachers are working with the government, I would put it that way.

Perfect. Thank you for sharing that experience, and I'm sure many authorities here, but also representatives from different sectors, feel inspired and ready to test these ideas.

Thank you for sharing that.

Welcome, Minister. Thank you for joining us. Another country that is a champion in Latin America and the Caribbean. I was sharing with the audience at the beginning the example of IDLAC and the amazing work that the consortium is doing, allowing country teams to define the priorities on how to integrate into the regional ID broker and the important role of Dominican Republic chairing Red Hat this year and hosting the ministerial meeting. So I would like to give you the floor to also share with audience what is the top priority, the top policy that is right now at your desk, and how AI is moving everything and how Dominican Republic is embracing this AI approach. We learn from Estonia, no, a very interesting way to allow co-creation by providing the right elements of risk, teachers and government working together. What is the journey in Dominican Republic?

Well, good morning first. Thank you, Yolanda, and my greetings to Minister Acosta and to all the delegates that are here today in this Open Source Week. As you mentioned, Dominican Republic right now is in a very, let's say, sensible At the moment, we are, as a government, since 2020, when President Abinader took office, he made a decision and took the path that we have to transform the whole DR government, including the digitalization and digital transformation as a transversal, let's say, step and mandatory. We have been working a lot, not only digitizing the whole government, not only creating interoperability, but also how to adapt into a world in which every day AI is more active, it's more present, and it's more mandatory to be involved in all public service that we offer as a country. As you mentioned, Yolanda, we have been working in trying to integrate in this ecosystem, in in the whole Latin America region and Caribbean and trying to be one of the leaders in that area. We have first, we have to, the first 2 years, government tried to create the, let's say, the governance in the whole country regarding how we have to adapt and how we will produce this ecosystem. Because when we arrived in government in 2020, we didn't have any, like, a clear path or a clear state how the governance of digital transformation should be in the public sector. And we, President Abinader, has made various executive decisions. He has, in which he had established clearly, which is the governance representing the government itself, with our Minister of Public Administration, who has the leadership in this case in all these actions. And then after that, we have been working with several multilateral organizations in, let's say, in three ways. First, interoperability. That's very important for us. We have been dealing a lot with the how the institutions were structured separately, and they were working each one with their own data and their own system. And our goal was at that point, and it was not an easy way to start it, that how we have to interpret and create this one ecosystem in the whole public service and to make them understand that the information is not owned by them, but is owned by the people and is owned by the government itself, the whole— as a whole. So that was a process in which we have to change the cultural vision and belief of the incumbents and all the public officers in the Dominican Republic to compromise in that vision. Signed like one year ago a very important pact with what we call the Junta Central Electoral. That's the national identity office of Dominican Republic, who in order that all the public government offices in Dominican Republic can be interoperability with— had the probability with the junta and has all the information about Dominican citizens. We didn't even have that as a governor. We didn't have like a central information and how to get any data regarding any Dominican citizen in Dominican Republic. So that's one of the first step that we made and we have advanced a lot in the last 12 months in that part. Second, last week we signed or we start The innovation center with a partnership with NVIDIA is this the first innovation center in the whole Caribbean, and I think also Latin America, in which we are creating the ecosystem with the government, with the private sector, and also with the academia, with academia, in which to start building this, well, capabilities from students, from teachers with the certifications on NVIDIA, and we Also, private companies that will be partners with the government in the innovation center, trying to create this ecosystem in which we can develop AI not only for the public sector, but also how to impact in the private sector. Also, we have worked a lot in what we call the— well, the DPIs, public infrastructure. The President Abinader just is— I think next week he will publish a new executive order in which structuring all the DPI public infrastructure that we don't have, we still don't have it in Dominican Republic, in order not only to create the governance, but also how we will handle and manage all this infrastructure in Dominican, in the country. That is very important to keep going and and advance. So I think we have many— still we have many things to still working ahead, but right now we think that we are in a great moment in which first we have transformed the whole cultural vision of the public service, of how we must intervene with these platforms, with this DPI infrastructure, with AI, all those things. And second, also, we have also make as a debate in the whole country that the public service is going to be better if we adapt and we create and we incorporate AI to the actual, to the mandatory, to the most common service that we offer in Dominican Republic as health, education, other things. We are working in what we call the proactive service. We will launch it in November this year or October this year, in which we will create, as Estonia already has it and other countries in the world, how we anticipate to the needs of the citizens, how we, by the by cell phones, by any other technological device, we can notify Dominicans, citizens, that you have to go to the hospital, which hospital you have to go, you have to— which is the school that you will be placing your children, how to renew your licenses, things like that. We are going to launch it in November. We call it the proactive service. Also, we have received a lot of collaboration from Estonia, and we thank you for that. I think we are in a good place right now. Dominican Republic is not only— we have the goal to transform Dominican Republic not only as a tourism place that everyone sees us, but also a technological country.

That's very inspiring, and congratulations, because you have a lot on the table. Running a same mindset within the cabinet and put it interoperability at the service of the citizens, putting the right executive order in place to frame it from a legal certainty point of view, but also creating an AI ecosystem that allowed co-creation, as Estonia was also sharing on their case in the sector of education. And positioning such a beautiful country as a digital hub, as an innovation hub for the region. I think that sets a very good intro for the second round in this conversation, which is around international cooperation and why spaces like this matter so much. Maybe now we're going to start that way around. If you can elaborate a little bit more, you mentioned and you thanked Estonia. I also express my gratitude for all the learnings I got when I was leading Mexico national digital strategy. But if you could both elaborate on how international cooperation had shaped the digital journey that each of your countries are currently taking. If you can share, since this is DPI Day and we run over the principles of modularity, reusability, and a standard base, what solution idea, you have take from another countries, how regional engagements and regional and global initiatives have played a role in how you are shaping and implementing and scaling your digital transformation journeys?

Well, for the Dominican Republic, it has been very important the collaboration of not only countries like Estonia, but also in the multilateral sector. First, I want to repeat again that we thank Estonia because they are helping us with the X-Road platform and then also in areas like cybersecurity that are very important for us that we are trying to improve, and Estonia are collaborating with us in the last few months with that. Also, we have a very good relationship with the Emirates that are helping us also in digitalizing and transformation in some services in Dominican Republic, like immigrations and education teams. Also, we have, as you know, Yolanda, the World Bank and the IBD has been very active in the Dominican Republic in the last 2 or 3 years with our ministers. In working with, first, the IBD, trying to create this whole ecosystem and clear governance path in Dominican Republic in the digital prospect. We have a program for almost $30 million with the IBD. We are right now working first in creating in this minister himself as a leader, this culture about how the digital transformation should be taken, how we can also reflect it on our brothers and all our colleagues and all our partners in the public sector. Also, we are creating, the first time in the Dominican Republic, with the support of the IBT, We didn't have a central platform that, let's say, centralized all the human resource and all the public service in Dominican Republic of functionaries and how we provide the services. We are right now very advanced in that process, and we should have it finalized by the end of the year, trying to incorporate all the entities in Dominican Republic to operate through this platform. With the World Bank, we are in the process of modernization, as we call it. It's a very important program that we have over there, which includes, as I mentioned before, right now what we call the proactive service and other initiatives that we are working with the World Bank, including capabilities. It's very, very important interoperability. Also, the matter of AI. We just launched 2 weeks ago, the first program in AI for public servants, 2,000 scholarships for 2,000. It was amazing. The whole public service wanted to participate in that program. That reflects the interest that the public servants has in this matter. For us, without the cooperation of countries like Estonia, like the Emirates, without the cooperation of the multilateral organization like World Bank, IBD, and also in these spaces, it was very difficult to get what we— to achieve what we have achieved up to this point. We support, that's why we have been coming here every time that you invite us, because it's very important. To receive also experience from countries that already have done this path, that years ago have done this, what we are doing in Dominican Republic. It's a good space to not only to receive the good experience, but also the mistakes that you have made, so we can solve it and not do it also as a country.

Thank you. Very inspiring. Now, from Estonia, but a quick recap on what you kindly shared, concrete example, X-Road. So for anyone in the room that would like to follow up on that experience, the minister is here with his team, but also the role of multilateral development banks. And we're doing also a lot of work. There is a session this afternoon on DPI financing. We're working a lot on creating knowledge products, best practices on how to procure. So reach out into the different events today.

And Estonia.

Why digital cooperation matters so much.

Yeah, thank you, and thank you for the very good words. Thank you so much, and we are really hoping for a continuous, very good cooperation. So yeah, starting from X-Road, so this is basically an architecture for interoperability that is both extremely cyber secure but at the same time very well suitable for for the AI era as well, because it has basically the computing capacities in between. And it is an open source. So if anybody wants to use it, there are already many countries, but also many organizations who use it. So be— and because it's an open source, it is a very good opportunity to at least think about it. Estonia, with this X-Road experience, has showed that when one government has a good experience with an open source solution, it is a trustable way for other governments also to proceed, and that saves a lot of money, that saves a lot of time, but also it saves Saves the mistakes. I was very fond that you mentioned it because I think one of the strengths of Estonia is that we are open with our mistakes and it is maybe good to work with us because we really tell honestly what didn't work out for us and what did. And because of this open source matter so much. We get also good information back from other countries. Every country invents something new on that, and that helps us also to build new details on the existing. We have— we are one of the grounders of GovStack. GovStack is basically a shared architecture possibility between governments, and that is again very important not only for the cybersecurity, not only for the trustable solutions, but it is very important also to save the money of the taxpayers for much more fun things like education, healthcare, and so on. So we have a shared architecture portal within Estonia, but we also share internationally. And we really see that for a small country like Estonia is, it is very important that we co-create, that we learn from each other, and that really enables us to offer the most important thing, the trustable, secure, best-ever services for our citizens at the lowest cost possible. So the international cooperation, the international sharing, even if it's just the technical sharing of architecture, it is extremely effective for all, all these goals to be fulfilled. And the third thing I would like to mention is the trust within the cybersecurity issues that you also mentioned. We are living in the world where cybersecurity is every minute more important than it was the last minute. We see that the good countries are using the wonderful possibilities we are talking here all about, but we also see that there are bad guys out there, and we see the huge —growing amount of cyberattacks led by AI, but not only. So this is an area where the international cooperation is extremely valuable, because we are looking back to historical evidence that we have had. We have got agreements against pirates, we have got agreements against international crime. So, this is— the cybersecurity area is the area where United Nations has given good examples, good concrete documents, and this work should go on because this is something— every cyberattack usually has an overspill, and this is something that no country can stand against alone. So, for Estonia, as a small democratic country, international cooperation, multilateralism, law and order internationally is extremely important to save the lives of our people, to save the democracy, to keep the liberties, to keep the human rights we are used to.

Thank you, very inspiring. And I think we are fully aligned that digital transformation should be an enabler of human rights and to guarantee a safe space for everyone. And to close and to summarize, we are in the Open Source Week. So what is the expectation of you as Minister of this week? And what will be the recommendation for the community on what output are we expecting to deliver to the Global Digital Compact review. So we want to start here.

Estonia has open source by default, so this is our political decision, has been a political decision for a long time, because we rarely see the absolutely good sides of that. Maybe just again underlining the efficiency, the cybersecurity, but also the possibility to learn from each other and to offer better services to our citizens. One thing that we are looking for very much is that we get— we are moving towards international agreements on that to the international level of interoperability because the world we are looking for is that more and more of our countries, for example, if we are talking open source and DPI together, are using digital documents. We are used to travel from one country to another with our paper documents. We need international agreements to travel with digital documents. This is just one example why we can't go on alone, why we need international cooperation on all that. And it's not only documents. We are building already cross-border services with many countries so that the one and same service is available from the governments in several countries. And this is extremely good for the citizens because then you can enjoy really the best sides of every country. It can save your health. It is good for education.— some examples. And this is— let us imagine how beautiful our world would be if we have really functioning cross-border services, the best from each country, cross-border functioning. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, actually, I want, First, that at the end of this week, these two days, to get a stronger sense that DPI and open source community are more eager to go from ideas to implementation. That's very important for us. For the Dominican Republic, open source is not only a matter of cost, it's also a matter of sovereignty, so a matter of transparency. Of efficiency, so we need that to be implemented in every way. And we need tools to govern, we need tools to secure data, so for us it's very important that the open source get more stronger and receive more cooperation in that sense. And I want to— I brought 3 ideas. Last night, and I want to read it. And what, for us, is very important. First, production-ready digital public goods and reference architectures that countries can trust and adapt. Second, practical safeguards that can be embedded into real implementation, not only discussed as principles. It's very important for us. And third, better cooperation between governments, as we have it, development partners, as we have a few also, funders, and operational communities so countries like Dominican Republic can scale safely and sustainably. So for us, it's important. And finally, I will add one more point, financing. We need digital investment models that reward reuse, that interoperability and national capability. A portal may solve one problem,, but a shared digital rate can solve many. On our side, Dominican Republic wants to stay true to the commitments of the Global Digital Compact and the path of the future through implementations. Our hopes is that by the end of the week, the GDC review, we can say that the GDC helped countries to move from digital ambition to digital capability, from pilots to from infrastructure and from fragmented project to trusted digital public service that improves people's lives. I think that this kind of discussion is very important for countries as Dominican Republic, that they are in the path to establish DPIs and establish open source, but we need more help. We need collaboration from countries that already have done and have a more advanced ecosystem in the digital transformation. I think that we are in a good path. I think we have great collaborators, but we need to be more into the, let's say, to materialize things. Discussions are good, but we have to receive implementation. We have to receive collaborations, how to implement things.

Thank you both. A very inspiring conversation, I think, ready to kick off the day. And if I have to summarize all these exchanges, this community, as international community of DPI, are committed to co-create, to provide the right principles but also the right approaches to go from pilots to scaling and to make sure that no one is left behind. Thank you so much, and I would like to give the floor to Nanjira. Thank you.

Thank you once again to Yolanda and the ministers for such an inspiring session. As they're taking their picture, we're going to have a short intermission that allows you to actually talk to the person next to you. But at the same time, I want to introduce a second QR code to you. Across the desks, for those who are seated around desks, there is a QR code to share your feedback for every session. That is very much appreciated by the organizers of this DPI Day. So as you chat with your neighbor, we'll continue in just 5 minutes. Do take advantage of also taking a snapshot of that QR code. Thank you, and we'll continue in 5 minutes. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I didn't sign for this.

Oh, where's it?

Sebastian, get your ass in here, lo!

¡Oh, nice!

Hi! How are you all set? Energy from the background.

I didn't bother you yesterday with questions so today my question to you: Did Isma—

who?

The lady there she's the other guest of our friend! Ah this is a hotel for guests only okay...

Yes, it's all in your hands, really.

I mean, we are just happy that you will not be—

Yes, you.

—to a real tough place to go to. Absolutely.

We had to make a decision how close to the beach do we want it to be.

Important decision. Yes, yes, yes.

All is well.

Thank you again, and it's good for me to know you Hello, hello, DPI Day peeps!

Calling the room to order. I hope the 5 minutes for interaction have brought back some energy in the room. Good. Kindly take your seats. We'll be— we'll We'll be continuing with the next session shortly.

Lovely.

All right. In the spirit of the day, we'll do my little favorite thing. I will— just to make sure we are now back in the room, we'll do it one more time. Clap once if you can hear me. Wonderful. Well, that fireside chat did bring up something towards the end around how are we going to do all this and how are we going to do it all together. Together. This panel is going to talk to us about turning global commitments into action, and our moderator for this lovely session will be the wonderful Under-Secretary-General, Mr. Amandeep Gill. I hand over to you to take over from here.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Nanjira, and good morning, everyone. There is a backstory to Nanjira. I don't know if she's already mentioned it. She was a member of the Secretary-General's High-level panel on digital cooperation. So when DPGs, DPIs were not buzzwords like they are today, so she helped us put together the right framework for thinking about these issues, not only the exciting opportunities but also the safeguards and the community engagement. So, Nanjira, so wonderful to have you with us. And ladies and gentlemen, we have a most exciting and distinguished panel this morning, so I will be very brief. In the Global Digital Compact, member states made real commitments on digital public infrastructure to invest in them. I think that's very, very important— find the financing, mobilizing the financing that makes as possible at the level of countries, to build systems that are safe, inclusive, interoperable, and rights-respecting, and to treat digital public goods as digital commons so that they are not only serving the countries and the communities inside of borders, but they're also contributing to the global public good. So those were very, very powerful commitments., and we've been working hard, all of you been working hard to translate them into concrete actions. So soon, very soon, these commitments will be reviewed as part of the overall review of the Global Digital Compact starting in late 2027 and going into 2028. So the review will be as consequential as the actions that preceded, and What is discussed then will depend on what governments, UN entities— and I'm so delighted to be joined by Ahuna today— and the wider ecosystem actually do in the 18 months between now and then. I'd ask everyone in the room to think of this not as a panel, but as a kind of working session that plans ahead strategically with that review. In mind. So we have governments on this panel, we have international organizations, governments who made commitments, now putting them into practice, and on the other hand, the institutions with the capacity to support them. So I'm going to pose a question, a broad question at the start, to each one of the speakers in turn, and that question is: Where does your country stand in implementing the GDC commitments on digital public infrastructure? What areas of progress would you highlight? What are the priorities for the coming 18 months? I want to start with you, Your Excellency Salimah Manorma Bah, the Minister of Communications, Technology and Innovation of the Republic of Sierra Leone.

Thank you so much. For that, I would really like to start by thanking yourself for really organizing this week. It's been a great session of really enlightening conversations and look forward to more of them and also congratulate you of being able to put together fantastic panels of all female representation. There's no risk of a mano here, so absolutely thank you for that. And also, also for the opportunity to Sierra Leone to participate and share our experiences. I think more specifically, I like what you said about let it be a start of a conversation around this couple of years of implementing the GDC and to see what's worked well, what hasn't, and how we can all plan together for that next phase of development. With Sierra Leone specifically, we were really excited by the adoption of the GDC, because we saw it as one of those first steps in bringing together critical stakeholders to agree on the phase of development and moving beyond just the wordings of commitments, but really narrowing down to see what do we need to do, so governments, development partners, private sector, and all of these elements are critical for the digital advancement as we see it. That's why we're really supportive of the GDC and been keen to see how it progresses and contributes to that development. For Sierra Leone, a lot of focus for us has gone into looking at the foundation or the foundation layer, so to speak, with regards to connectivity, because you can't talk about payments, instant payments, you can't talk about an ID system, and you can't talk about interoperability without connectivity being there. So for us, that's been a huge area of focus over these last couple of years. We've been focusing on advancing connectivity coverage to now, we believe we're out around 90% coverage of population of 4G coverage within a significant tremendous progress in just a short couple of years in ensuring that citizens, regardless of where they sit, have access to connectivity. We've expanded our fiber backbone layer. We've improved on our redundancy. We've also interconnected with our neighboring countries, our neighboring countries, because we also saw that as a way to reduce dependency within the country of making sure that We're connected through the backbone to our neighboring country, Republic of Guinea. We're also making progress to connect with Liberia, and we see all of these as critical. Also, progress for us has been made around digital ID system with the National Civil Registration Authority making significant progress on around, I think around 80% of ID, and that I think that's been also significant. We're also moving now, working with other partners to look at digital identity program of itself and how we ensure that it really becomes a single point of truth and integrating with other government systems as we roll out. And really, maybe in the spirit of this being really a conversation, I think what I would— from these conversations, I really think one of the benefits for us would be able to learn from others, specifically around once we have the registration ID information, how do we really ensure that all other new government systems roll out? This really becomes a single point of truth, because I think we're still at a risk of duplicate ID programs being rolled out across. So that's for us an area that we're looking to tackle. And improve upon. Progress has been made around payment systems with our mobile money, the improvements of our mobile money ecosystem, improvements around digital payments also happening with also the rollout of the payment switch in Sierra Leone as well that will support interoperability. Then maybe I'll end by— on exchange as well. Again, progress has been made. The Ministry of Finance right now is rolling out interoperability exchange layer for the financial sector, which we're hoping to then scale. Of course, we decided to go with a model of choosing one sector to deal with before we scaled up, and the finance sector being one of the most advanced when it comes to digital transformation, we thought it was a good place to tackle that there. And install all of this and put all of these in place, which will then allow us to scale that across other sectors and as we go along. And maybe one of the areas which we're also still working on within that is around data governance standardizations. When we think about it and how do we do that for the whole of government, we've been able to think through the ministry or the financial sector, but when we think of the whole of government and how do we put those standards in place, so once We have the infrastructure that those would be embedded. Those are areas that we're working on and the areas of our next phase of development. When it comes to the DPI and the foundational elements, I believe a lot of progress has been made. We're working with our regional partners on cross-border digital trade to make sure that as we're developing these foundation, we're doing it in a way that would ensure that It would enable cross-border digital trade because for us, that's a key area of priority. If we look at the ECOWAS region, with His Excellency the President, Dr. Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, currently serving as the chair of ECOWAS, one of his priority areas has been for ECOWAS to go back to its original mandate, which was the economic integration as a critical pillar for peace and security across the region. For Sierra Leone, lots of focus has been going to how do we really ensure we're setting up the standards for cross-border digital trade, because we believe that that is what we need to do to look at the next phase of development within the region. Just a few experiences of what's been happening in Sierra Leone. We look forward to further engagements and collaboration.

Thank you. Amazing. Thank you, Minister. Love the way you've stacked it up all the way to regional cooperation dimension. Let me now turn to Professor Ammar. Morocco's experience is one of the 5 largest data markets in Africa, within your own region, from your national perspective, also your own expertise in this area. We welcome your thoughts.

Thank you very much for the introduction. Amandeep. Morocco is fully aligned with the GDC endorsed by member states as part of the Pact for the Future adopted by consensus at the UN General Assembly in September 2024. If I want to provide all the development in Morocco, it will be very, very huge, so I would prefer to give you some very important initiatives, maybe to summarize. Morocco has launched the Morocco Digital 2030 strategy. This national strategy is based on two complementary axes. The first one is the digitalization of public services, and the second one is the development of the digital economy. So it is driven by 4 cross-cutting levers: digital talents. We do a lot of work towards digital talents, including young people from 4 to 18, also at universities, also some categories, specific categories like women, etc. The second cross-cutting lever is artificial intelligence, which which has been pushed forward, and artificial intelligence in Morocco has its own roadmap. Outsourcing, we do a lot of things in outsourcing and offshoring. To give you just an example, in Morocco, we open to big companies, and now we can count 1,200 companies, foreign companies in Morocco doing offshoring, digital export, and employing 143,000 young people and engineers in Morocco. As you know, Moroccan engineers are very well targeted in the digital market and something, which we are very proud of. Maybe the last thing is connectivity and data infrastructure. This is the last pillar of this strategy. For example, we launched the 5G connection or network last November, and we covered already 50 cities in Morocco. We have also covered more than 1,400 regions by 4G during the first phase of the deployment of this program of connectivity. And we also invest a lot in infrastructure from data center and compute point of view, and we can say that in Morocco, If we take the data center capability globally, we have projects that more than 1 gigawatt, and the most important data center is under study in the south in Dakhla region with 500 megawatts. Megawatts, yes. This data center is intended to provide capacity storage but also compute for like 20% for Moroccan country, but the 80% will be dedicated to the neighboring of Morocco in the west, west of Africa. So many things about connectivity, data centers, compute, but maybe which is very important also to mention is our three structural initiatives underway. The first one is Idaraty x.o. Idaraty in Arabic means my administration, and this is a platform or architecture of interoperability connecting multiple public administrations around sovereign digital identity, anchored to the national electronic identity card issued by the General Direction of National Security. This means that we build interoperability between administrations all the ministers, for example, or public administration using identity card which is issued by this sovereign national entity. This is very important for us because this allows two things. This allow in our approach, we We pay huge attention to two things in all what we do in digital affairs. The first one is privacy by design, how to give the protection to citizens in this huge data era. And the second one is security by design, because you know all the digital Infrastructures are matter of cyberattacks today over the world, and we play a very huge attention to preserve this security and privacy by design in all, even in our law. I mean, in the architecture itself of our identity, we take into account these two aspects because from one hand we protect the country, and from the other, we protect also citizens in this era of digital. So e-Darity x.o— x for exponential, because you know all these technologies are exponential— is an interoperability architecture connecting, as I said, multiple public administrations. And for now, 8 institutions institutional agreement has been signed, and we work very closely with— I will not give the name because it doesn't mean that much for you, but the spirit is that we have to work with cybersecurity office, public office, our regulator for data protection, etc. So we are not doing this as ministry alone, but we work with 4 other institutions that count when it comes to privacy and security by design. The second framework I would like to highlight here is the legal framework. And, you know, we do something very original, I think, and very disruptive. We have a lot of aspects of simplification of procedures. So you know in many countries that we started pushing on the table procedures to have access to administration and over the years these procedures become more and more complicated, sophisticated, and there is no design from the beginning for these different levels of expansion, for example. So what we do is we use AI, artificial intelligence, to simplify these procedures, and we can give you more details if interested, because it's very important to clean the scene, to have new procedures while keeping the function of the old procedures, but to do it in a very clean way and while introducing AI and new techniques to do it. So this legal framework is something very important that supports also my administration, X.O. And we propose a law called Digital X.O. Because it supports IDARET 2.0 to provide all the mechanisms for simplification but also for the protection of the country and also the citizens. Maybe one more initiative is the network of Jazari Institutes, and this is a very important— for us at least— very important initiative Because Jazari, as you know, is a researcher that lives in 12th century. It's somebody who created the first automata in the world. It is considered as the first robotician in the world. But beside the name, Jazari Institute is a physical space where we put researchers, start-uppers, stakeholders, administrations, and schools to create the huge ecosystem to develop AI solutions and to solve a real-world— I mean, the problems or the issues that we face in our daily life. So we have Morocco, 12 regions, and we have one Institute of Excellence per region. And in this, in each center or Institute of Excellence, we have this whole ecosystem that work closely to solve, to provide solutions and to solve problems. And as ministry, we fund this institutes. For example, we have schools like UCODE, for those who know, 42 school in, in Europe, L'École 42, and this kind of things. But we have also schools dedicated to civilian servants, to doctors, to physicians, etc. Because today, if we want that AI go ahead, we need of course infrastructure, we need talents, but we need talents across the whole disciplines, not only talents at the university, because when they want to work on AI, they need to understand the problems of the physicians, of the engineers, etc. So in our idea, it is very important to bring these courses also to everybody depending on the expertise. And for example, civilian servants will not use AI to digitalize the administration if they are not comfortable with that. So that is the idea, and it started— of course, we also push for the development of these solutions, and we provide the whole necessary infrastructure like data centers, like clusters, like GPU, etc., etc. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Yes. So really appreciate, Minister, the reference to the compute and data center infrastructure. All of Africa, just 1% of the global data center capacity and This new project would add significantly to that capacity and also the references that you made to security and the development of cross-domain talent so necessary for the AI turn. Thank you so much. Now we'll go to another very important and exciting region, and that's the Caribbean. Minister Audrey Marks, your reflections, please.

Thank you, Undersecretary and moderator, Secretary Gill. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Jamaica has moved beyond mere commitment and is now firmly in the implementation phase of our digital public infrastructure journey. We are actively converging our foundational building blocks including the National Identification Card, the Jamaica Data Exchange Platform, and our National Identification and Registration Center with 24 access for citizens. We have really put a focus on the Data Exchange Platform to ensure data sharing, and the most exciting part of what we are doing now is also building out our national broadband network. It is currently designed to represent a transformative national investment that is expected to connect up to 2,768 government locations, including schools, while extending our high-speed broadband access to approximately 490,000 homes across Jamaica. Including 140,000 households in underserved communities. This initiative will significantly strengthen digital inclusion, expand access to opportunity, and help bridge Jamaica's connectivity divide. The government has also just recently, in April, signed with the Transamerica Fiber System for a new subsea cable into Jamaica. This will dramatically increase Jamaica's internet speed up to 20 terabits. So we are focusing on connectivity with the new subsea cable to expand the broadband, improve redundancy, and lower costs into a cohesive national digital stack. We are further building a digital document wallet for electronically stored verifiable credentials, reducing the need to rely on paper-based records. This transformation is designed to deliver tangible citizen value, reducing bureaucracy through once-only service delivery, and ensuring that digital transformation translates into a seamless, trusted experience for all Jamaicans. So we have now For this year, financial year, we're spending over $100 million to build out these systems. And looking ahead, our priorities are to integrate the stack into a singular national framework, expand our online service catalog, and build the public sector capacity necessary to transform these systems from individual projects into a seamless citizen experience. Thank you, Mr. Moderator.

Thank you very much, Minister, for that valuable perspective from your region. So we've heard from ECOWAS, the Maghreb region, the Caribbean, and now we'll go to Central Asia. Minister, you have the floor.

Thank you so much. Mr. Gill, Your Excellency, dear guests. I represent Kazakhstan. It's a country in Central Asia. We also have some achievements in the e-government platform. For example, our rating in UNDP and UN Development Index is today 24, and our e-government platform, it's included top 9 platform in the world. But it's one question we I really understand, and today I try to share our vision, and I think we would make and work together. We try to— our cooperation. And many countries have already made significant progress in building digital service platforms and digital public infrastructure. The more important question is what comes next. We increasingly see digital public infrastructure as a foundation. The real purpose of the digital transformation is not simply to digitalize government, it's to change the relationship between the citizens and the state. For decades, governments have been organized around institutions, administrative boundaries, but the people do not live their lives through institutions. They experience life through the events, the needs, and moments. The true opportunity of technology is to make governments adapt to people's lives rather than requiring people to adapt to government processes. That is why we believe that the next stage of the EA-native government, it's when not government that simply automate existing processes processes, but governments that become more responsive, more proactive, and more human-centered. For the last two decades, we have been building digital states. Perhaps the next decade should be about connecting them. Today, data, documents, and digital services often stop at the national borders, even though people, businesses, trade, and ideas do not. If we can build trusted digital bridges between countries, we can reduce frictions, accelerate economic cooperation, facilitate mobility, and make public services more accessible across borders. In this sense, the future of the digital transformation, it's not only about connecting people to the digital world. It's maybe— it's also be about connecting digital states to one another. For us, there is two key message. First is digital public infrastructure should evolve into a native government. It's truly centered around the people. And the second, the next of international cooperation may be building trusted digital between our countries. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much, Minister Bakhtiar. The example you brought in of connecting digital states, like, that's a very powerful one. This is a similar digital bridge between Estonia and Finland when it comes to digital health. So this is really— and Minister, you refer to it in the context of the digital trade where the African continent is trying to build a common shared digital economy that gives scale to entrepreneurs and also facilitates the life of individuals in our increasingly globalized world. I'm going to now turn to my dear colleague, Ahuna, Assistant Secretary-General from UNDP and newly appointed Under-Secretary-General for the Office of African Affairs. Ahuna, you've heard from the ministers and Often countries turn to UNDP, so UNDP is the partner that supports member states in turning these commitments, the GDC goals, into local delivery. So how do you react to what you've heard from the ministers and how does UNDP respond to what governments are asking for?

Thank you so much, Amandeep. It's a pleasure really to be here and, you know, just listening to the conversation, I— for those of us who have worked in the development world for so long and have imagined a future, a world, have dreamed of this world where everyone has enough, where needs are met, And listening today, I thought, actually, that world we just previously imagined and dreamed of, that future is possible. And it's not only possible as a distant wish that will happen someday, it is happening now. This, you know, hope today is a very rare commodity, but in this room, We are embracing, witnessing hope unfold before us in a world that is not given to that. And I am so thrilled to hear what I've heard from the ministers here today. I want to add 3 more countries to this list. In Tanzania, we have now the national instant payment switch called TIPS, which processes over 450 million transactions worth over $12 billion in just a single year. It was just a fraction before this time. And we look at Rwanda, which has launched the Irembo platform, and that has brought over 100 public services— just think about that for a second— online, and this is fundamentally transforming how rural people interact with their state. And then you look at Nigeria, the most populous country on the African continent, which has scaled its national identity register to over 100 million people. I think these are really powerful signals of what is possible, yet we know that this picture is uneven across the African continent, for instance, and there is so much more that needs to be done. I guess that's why we're having the conversation. The reality is that African countries, for instance, continue to struggle with a set of common, yet often invisible challenges. The challenges of trust, for instance, which is really key in everything we're talking about, but also coordination and knowledge. And these frictions turn into invisible costs that are borne by everyday citizens. Imagine that we have over 500 million— if we have over 500 million people who lack a verifiable identity, It means every basic transaction will stall. It means that they cannot access credit. They cannot save. They cannot access insurance or the services that they are owed. So that is, for us, a development silencer. When public service delivery operates in paper-based, donor-funded silos, coordination becomes painful. Painfully slow and quite leaky, wasting the very resources that we need at a moment when development financing is also declining and every dollar must count. And when we are navigating public services requiring dealing with fragmented data or expensive intermediaries, knowledge stops being an equalizer. It becomes a structural barrier that's keeping ordinary entrepreneurs and small businesses locked out of their own digital economy. So digital ID, interoperable data, and AI built on safe and inclusive DPI foundations, as we've been hearing, hold the key to removing some of these barriers. And I think UNDP is really committed, I mean, the for on this, working with African countries and other countries and the entire DPI ecosystem to build safe, inclusive, and deeply trusted DPI embedded with robust data privacy safeguards. And we think this has to be done from design, from the design stage through to the national development collaboration. It shouldn't be an afterthought. Our analysis shows that the single biggest blocker to achieving this vision, actually achieving it at scale, is not the lack of political will, as we've heard every government that's spoken. The will is there. It's the lack of structural financing and innovative financing, but also investment-ready national projects, and that's where we come in. This week, we're excited to be launching a new initiative which is our Africa Accelerator for DPI, and the idea here is really to work with countries over the next 18 months in an intensive partnership that's timed to the global review and in creating a platform, and the platform will provide a structured pathway for digital readiness diagnostics, It will mobilize specialized technical expertise and actively build the pipelines of investment-ready projects that are required to unlock available sovereign and concessional finance. Everyone says capital is not the issue, it's not the problem, it exists, but how do we unlock it for initiatives like this? And that's what the question that we'll be answering through this platform, and this is designed explicitly as a structured platform for all ecosystem players to engage with us so that we can actually work collectively within countries and finally stop driving these critical foundations as uncoordinated, fragmented pilots. These are not pilots anymore. The infrastructure of the future is being built right now, and I think We have to make sure it is built right, but also we have to make sure that it's built for everyone. That's where UNDP's heart is right now.

Thank you. Thank you, Ahuna, and you put your finger on these critical blockers: financing, technical capacity, institutional readiness, and really value our partnership. With UNDP on the DPI safeguards framework and these initiatives aimed at unlocking innovative financing. So you've heard the panel. We're going to skip the next round and go straight to Q&A because this is a conversation and we want to hear from you. So perhaps two questions from the the audience, and then we come back for a final reflection. And please keep these questions brief, so no speeches. Keep them very specific and, you know, address the issues that our panelists have raised. The floor is open. I see one hand there at the back. Uzman, if you can help. Yes, you got your mic switched on. Madam, you have the floor.

Hi, can you hear me? Great. Thank you so much for this, for all the information you've shared. It's really inspiring to see countries that sometimes you consider small but have achieved so much. So my question is around governance. I was really looking forward to hearing some more, in addition to what you already shared, is what were your challenges when implementing governance using open source and how did you work around it?

Because I'm sure this is a topic on many people's mind.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that. You've set the standard for a brief, pointed question. Next one over there, Aneer, please call for the mic. Thank you very much.

Very inspiring set of discussions. I was particularly inspired by hearing about institutional issues and also what I would call incentive type of issues, so why would I do this for specific public servants, politicians, and also private sector.

So institution and incentives. I was also very taken by the honorable minister from Morocco talking about how AI is being used for process simplification.

Would like to hear about how you are addressing the institutional legacy barriers using AI and incentive issues using AI, because I think it's the way of the future using AI for design of institutions, institutions and design of digital transformation, but wanted to know a bit more. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Those two issues, governance and then institutional design incentives around that, and the question was asked by someone who knows how that worked in Bangladesh. Minister, your reflection about how different ministries needed to kind of come together and start appreciating the need to move away from siloed investments in vendor-driven, vendor-specific technologies? Maybe we can start with you.

Thank you very much, and definitely thank you for that question, because— and definitely appreciate the question, because in Sierra Leone, this is something we've tackled with as well and had to really think through, specifically for a country who's a founding member of the DPGA, who has long committed to the opportunities and the potential of open source to accelerate our digital transformation agenda. It's something at the ministry I've been grappling with, how do we also ensure that across government this is reflected, this position is reflected? What we ended up doing was to actually have and develop an open source resource-first policy, supported by our partners at UNICEF, have been really critical for us, because even though this has been a government on coded policy position, but I think really detailing it down to a policy document that's adopted by cabinet has been critical, because I think what we also try to engage with other government institutions is Open source first doesn't mean open source must. What we're communicating is to say where there's an open source alternative, we're ensuring that government considers that and explores that option instead of going immediately to the proprietary-based solution. We've been able to get this adopted with our Ministry of Finance, with our public procurement agency, as well as our audit agency, because we see it as a way— once this has been embedded within their process as well, they also help us to enforce it. Because one of the things we know with some of these policies, sometimes if you don't have an enforcement mechanism, sometimes it could get ignored. So we've been able to do that, and we're working towards that. But I think it also leads towards the question you were asking around institutions and how do we, you know, ensure that— how we, you know, we work through institutions and adoption of this. So the experience within this has been really critical in understanding how do we work across other government agencies to get buy-in for that. One of the things that we'll be able to do around this, we have a digital government legislative legislation. Again, within that, we're establishing a digital development agency because one of the things we've recognized when it comes to the procurement of digital services, sometimes every institution kind of wants to run and do their own thing. So we're just ensuring that we have regulations around how we manage and procure these digital services and making sure that We're really looking out for some of the critical elements that the ministry considers that we must, you know, abide. Governance, the governance aspects of technology has been critical, I think rightly so. Technology always moves faster than the law does. I think that's just how it happens in every society. We usually are catching up with the governance and regulations, always coming behind, which is not a bad It's good to see how sometimes it plays out instead of— and not to let regulation stifle progress, but they are also critical. We're working towards to make sure that our regulation catches up with the digital advancement that's happening.

Thank you. Thank you, Minister. Maybe I can come to you, Professor Amar.

Okay, thank you. I think when it comes to institutions, which is very important, is to conduct the change, to say, okay, you have procedures, these procedures have been built over the years, and now we— like in software, for example, you can add codes, so codes and codes, and at a given moment you have to clean the whole thing. And in our procedures, there are two things: this accumulation of various layers over the years, but also some simplification, legal simplifications, relaxation of some constraint. For example, in Morocco, for many decades, you had to provide a document that has been certified. We call it legal— legalization, certified by another entity. This kind of legalization disappear with digital, because if the document is issued by the administration, so this is— that's the proof that the document is original. No need to go to another, a third institution to get it Ligal Azai. So this is, for example, just an example of how we can relax some constraint in these procedures. In many procedures, we move from 6 days, if you want to do it as usual, to 20 minutes without moving to any administration, only digitally, by digital procedures. Something very important is we work on is we explain— everybody knows that there is a resilience index, and this resilience index is also applied to the administration. So if you want that, the, for example, to get the service in a very short time, you have to adopt some technologies, you have to adopt You have to have storage, you have to have compute, etc. What we do is we explain to administration that the resilience is also a matter of using new technologies and using and having the necessary infrastructure. It works more or less. In some countries, they just cut the finance of the administration. It's not yet the case in Morocco, and I think we will not be able to cut money, but it's a way to enforce laws. But we are not taking this direction. We try to— we create some network of— at the level, we take responsibles of all administrations. We have meetings. We conduct this change by explaining things. For example, we have some lectures, some masterclass for how to move to cloud, how to digitalize. Sometimes we provide also tools to process documents. In Morocco, we have Bulletin Officiel, the official document for all the laws et cetera, which is right now in big book everywhere in the administration. Now it is digitalized. How many, Skierish, I think until 12 years digitalization of this document. So when people see that they gain time, they gain effort, they improve the service, they are not against the change.. But we have to show exactly where they have— they take benefit. And of course, administration is always very heavy. They want to provide service as secure as possible, et cetera. So we have to— this is why in my first intervention I said security and privacy by design are very important, in particular in administration. I think— Thank you.

Thank you very much. The incentives go down to the level of citizens as well. Thank you for those valuable perspectives.

Maybe just one thing. Yes, please. If I can. There are two things we take care of, is dignity of citizens and illiteracy. You know, we talk about technology, emerging technology, like we have— everybody is able to use technology, everybody is able to interact with technology. So in our administration, we develop chatbots, for example, for illiterate women or men, and we take care of this dignity because if we don't have— we have to think of this digital divide, which is more or less present depending on the countries, In Morocco, we still have 30% in the countryside that cannot read or write, so we have to take this. If we want to implement all these ideas, we have to, of course, to form talents, but also to— in some situation, you have to provide tools. You cannot send them to school again, some part of the population. So this is something Dignity is the motto in our approach.

Inclusion by design. Thank you, Minister. Minister Marks, your final reflections, please. Yes.

I wanted to share, Mr. Moderator, that in Jamaica, the approach was to literally transform government from the very top. So the new ministry that I lead of efficiency, innovation, and digital transformation, by policy the Prime Minister has put this ministry to cut across all government agencies, ministries, and departments. So I think that policy imperative is important in giving the authority to to have real digital transformation in countries. The second thing that we have done, well, since we are in office now, is that we have implemented the Jamaica Data Exchange Platform. And as I mentioned earlier, this data exchange platform is really our major foundation initiative because it allows authorized government systems to exchange information electronically in a controlled and standardized way. It allows institutions to securely verify information directly at source instead of requiring citizens to carry documents everywhere. We think of it as a trusted digital bridge connecting government agencies and businesses. Which means, for example, if someone wants to open a bank account, their identity can be verified in real time using their national ID card. No more, you know, various forms, no more going to various places. So we see this as a way to have a major shift from turf government to joined-up government, from data silos to data sharing, from fragmented systems to integrated, interoperable government, from slow manual processes to real-time seamless services. So I think I will just mention that one as our main initiative to answer the question of moving from silos.

Thank you. Great, love that. Thank you. We're trying to do the same at the UN. We're trying to do the same at the UN, moving from turf to jointedness and silos to interoperable one UN responses. Minister Bakhtiar, please, your final reflections, looking at the clock.

Yes, our country, I think, faces some different challenges, but In our view, the most significant limitation today is not just financing or maybe accessible to technology— access to technology, because computing power is becoming more available. Its knowledge spreads faster than even before. That matters even more is the willingness of the governments and institutions to embrace and implement changes. In our countries. Digital transformation, I think, is not only technological process. It's about the all— it's a process for the change, and the speed of the change is shaped by the quality of our institutions, the effectiveness of governments, and the ability systems to adapt to new realities. The second important factor is the cultural context. Context. Every country has their own history, traditions, levels of trust. As a result, the same technology can be adapted very differently across the countries. In many ways, this is similar to, like, the DNA of the society. Something shaped it over decades, sometimes centuries. That is why where there is no universal model for the digital transformation. History teaches us one important lesson: the most sustainable progress has always happened where the countries remained open to cooperation, to exchange of knowledge, to trade, technology, and new ideas. Innovation seldom emerges in isolation. It emerges in the intersection of the knowledge, cultures, and experience. It's about creating platforms for collaboration, sharing the best practices, learning from one another, and building trust between our countries. Ultimately, the success of digital transformation is shaped by not only the technology available to the country. It's shaped by how the ready societies and institutions institutions evolve alongside them. I think it also— it's one of the most important things before we met with some different countries and discussed how we try to implement technology, but technology, it's like the tools. First of all, it's important that your political structure, your vision to developing your country, your society, and the second, how you adopt to the different challenges. Because today, yeah, maybe artificial intelligence is so important question, but after 5 years, we maybe gathering together and discuss about the quantum technology. Yeah, and this is the tools and this is challenges we, I think we will have in the future a lot of more than before. But how our institutions and how our government to make this technology into implement to our society, I think this is more important question. I think this. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Remaining open and flexible as the technology frontier is moving fast. So thank you for those insights. For the final word, I call on my sister Ahuna. You've heard the ministers again, and you ended your previous intervention with this powerful note: Capital is there, we have to unlock it. How do we work to bring that innovative financing to bear on this very important area of digital transformation?

Thank you. I think one way is to look at it in a different context. So we're not building bridges and roads here. It's not the same structure in terms of investing in infrastructure overall. This is really a different ballgame. You need to reimagine allocation of resources, not in this sort of big portfolio things of infrastructure. And I think it needs some engineering to understand what it's calling for, an investment in DPI. I think it's also important to have— the question on governance is really an important one, you know, having that commitment that's anchored at the highest political level, but at the same time has the whole of government, whole of society character. We need to make sure that at the table our CSOs, our young people, women, you know, the people who really need to shape it, not just be beneficiaries of it. So that's part of the governance for me, is governance architecture is making sure it's very inclusive. I agree with Minister Amal that we need to see or at least make an effort for everyone to see the benefit for them otherwise, because you're asking for change. Change, colossal change, and some of the people who have to work towards that change will be affected one way or the other, but the question is how are they viewing how they will be affected, and there's a lot of work to be done on trust, transparency, and transitions, having that space for transitions. Then I think capital has to be fit for purpose, like I was saying, and then communities have to shape it and collaboration has to be genuine and have that component of being a strategic autonomy. I think it's really important here that countries' autonomy is respected, the sovereignty is respected, even as we expand the partnerships across borders.

Thank you. Please join me in thanking our incredible panel. Thank you so much.

Thank you, USG. And before our honorable ministers depart, I think an official photograph will be taken before you take your leave. Thank you once again for such an insightful panel. I think please do come to the front here as I also explain how we are proceeding next. So we're going into the fun part of the day, which is a breakout. We're going to have one session between now and lunch and then another after lunch. So as I wait for the sessions to be projected, I would encourage that you get your cameras and take a picture of what I'm about to explain. I know once lunch hits the system, we might forget how the second sessions go. So I'm just waiting on this. Breakout slides present projection.

Fun.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Oh, you're good. I know, between people and lunch. I know I'm the one before the session between us and lunch. So once again, we're going into breakout sessions, and they're going to be 4 of those available between now and lunch. The first session that will be in this chamber, ECOSOC chamber, is a, a DPI approach to next generation trade and transport. The second one that will be in Conference Room A is on advancing population scale innovation with safe and inclusive DPI. The third session in Conference Room 11 will be DPI sustainability for health, Learning and Science. And last but not least, in Conference Room 9 will be Building Inclusion: Identity, Payments, and the Real Cost of DPI. I really do encourage you to take a picture of this as you're walking out to figure out which one you want to go to. And I'd like to mention that after lunch— All right, before we continue, let's do my favorite activity one more time. Clap once if you can hear me. Thank you. Please give me 1 minute of your attention so I can explain how we're proceeding and you can take off. Thank you very much. So as I mentioned, these are the breakout sessions that are about to take place. Please take note of this because after lunch we have another set of breakout sessions that will start at 3 PM. We're going to have in Conference Room 9 the Public Code Observatory, on mapping public sector contributions to open source worldwide. Conference Room 11 will have Women Building Digital, the GovTech Women in GovTech Challenge. Conference Room A will have DPI That Delivers: From Failure Points to Multi-Stakeholder Actions. And then the ECOSOC Chamber will have Making DPI Work for Children: From Country Experience to Implemented Tactics. For lunch, that will be on the 4th floor. However, that is at your own cost. And we will gather again here at 4 PM. Thank you for your attention. Enjoy the breakout sessions and see you at 4 PM.