Digital Cooperation and Diplomacy is a network for action that builds on the UN Digital Cooperation Roadmap launched June 2020. The November 2019 Berlin Internet Governance Forum kicked off the gatherings of key players which is now embarked on the 1.3 Billion Children Project following the call by the UN Secretary General August 4 to “Save our Future”. Participants from the EU, the World Bank and the IFC, IEEE, MasterCard, the ACM, the ITU, UNICEF, UNDP and the Technical and Scientific communities are meeting regularly to cooperate response and remove roadblocks. The IEEE’s Ethically Aligned Designed Engineering P7000 series provides guardrails for evolving inclusive, trustworthy and secure networks.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals during the Covid Crisis are showcased at the UN 75th anniversary marked at the UN General Assembly by the events of ScienceDigital@UN75th. At this critical time, the importance of taking stock of the digital and scientific programs and commitments by professional and academic communities cannot be overstated. We must conserve our resources and prevent the funding of uncoordinated duplicative and wasteful attempts at trial and error. Cooperation and coordination between the Africa Moonshot of the Global Broadband Commission, the UNDP Covid programs including the learning network represented by the SDG Accelerator Labs, the ITU-ILO Digital Skills for Decent Jobs with the UNESCO Education Coalition and UN Technology Innovation Labs operating out of the Office of the UN Secretary General, Singapore Skills Future program and Nordic EdTech Forum, Design for Change and the IEEE Sustainable Development Task Force is of the highest priority. The model of practice-based decision making instrumental in the roll out of the original Internet embodied in the IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force will allow for parallel coordinated efforts while the Standards Development Organizations will harmonize the breakthroughs that work so the breakthroughs can be replicated reliably globally. Applying the lessons of the community networks that spread the Internet to the world, is bringing the most powerful instruments we can bear to this moment of global generational crisis.
The Digital Cooperation and Diplomacy Network was initiated by the technology pioneers who co-founded the People Centered Internet, Vint Cerf – one of the fathers of the Internet and Mei Lin Fung – godmother of CRM – Customer Relationship Management.
