The Digital Transformation:Trends and Challenges for

Governance of Human Societies

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/collectiveawareness

Fabrizio Sestini

DG CONNECT E3 - Next-Generation Internet

My background

• Internet Science• A multidisciplinary approach to better understand

the complex interrelations between technological, social and economic trends in Internet developments

• CAPS – Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation• Pioneering new social innovation models exploiting

network effects and collective intelligence• Distributed Architectures for Decentralised Data

Governance• A Next-Generation Internet research area

• Blockchains for Social Good• A policy area and an EIC Horizon Prize on the

development of decentralised social innovations based on blockchains

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sdistributed, grassroots

centrally controlled

Trends in digital transformationOxford Internet Institute Study on Technological, Social and Economic aspects of FIhttp://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/fire/docs/tafi-final-report_en.pdf - 2010

Big Brother(s):commercial services/ political interestsEntertainmentDRM-heavy

Power to the People:(user-gen. knowledge)P2P, wiki(-leaks), social nets, blogse-democracy

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decentralised

centrally controlled

…and today?

rcing

GoogleAmazon

FaceBook

Uber, Airbnb

CrowdfundingSocial entrepreneurs

Collaborative Economy

Web entrepreneurs,

start-ups

Power to the People

Why decentralisation?

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Centralised Decentralised

One choice Multiple choicesMonopoly Competition, NNProprietary solutions Open standards, open sourceClouds Community networksMonitoring PrivacyArtificial Intelligence Collective IntelligenceAsymmetric data flows Decentralised data governance

the goal: creating a decentralised innovation ecosystem

• Open to new entrants and open innovation:Low entry barrier to access big dataprivacy-by-design business models

• Open to new services: allowing more SMEs and social enterprises to implement social innovation

for collaborative public servicescollaborative economycollaborative makingparticipatory consumptionenvironmental actioncitizen scienceopen policy making and open democracy

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CAPS projects

GrassrootsWavelengths

Made4YouFamilies_Share

Share4Rare

PTwist

Childrescue

DSIScale

example: D-Cent 1st CAPS call

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• Tools for democratic participation and citizen empowerment (incl. DECIDIM)

• (1st call of CAPS, Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation)

• Be informed and notified on issues that matter to youCitizen notifications for town hall decisions

• Propose and draft solutions and policy collaborativelyCollaborative policy making

• Decide and vote on solutions collectivelyElectronic voting

• Implement and reward people while tracking progressBlockchain reward scheme (freecoin)

• Large-scale democracy pilotsBarcelonaReykjavikHelsinkiMadrid

http://dcentproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/D-CENT_PUBLISHABLE-SUMMARY-05-2016_A5_final_web.pdf

example: DECODE start 1/1/2017

Ø Demonstrating a distributed open hardware and software platform supporting • decentralised data and identity management • bottom-up participatory innovation

Ø using decentralised algorithms based on blockchains Ø Involving

• technological actors (P2P, blockchains and open source developers, open hardware manufacturers, experts in security, encryption)

• civil society organisations (local communities, digital rights advocacies, artists, social scientists)

• developers of the overlying social applications and systems (creative industries, SMEs, social entrepreneurs, software developers)

Ø Creating robust open standards9

http://decodeproject.eu/

EIC Prize on "Blockchains for Social Good"

• To develop scalable, efficient and high-impact decentralized solutions to social innovation challenges leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology (DLTs), such as the one used in blockchains

• Targeting social innovations in which decentralized solutions based on DLTs have shown clear benefits over conventional centralised platform solutions

• 5 awards of €1 million each, corresponding to different social application areas

• Deadline to submit applications: June 201910

Digital Social Innovation

• For society• delivering new public services for and by the citizens

(but not replacing them, or publicly funded)• For the environment

• collaborative solutions to reduce pollution, crowdmap issues (traffic, etc.)

• For the economy• enabling new economic models (sharing or collective

economy)• For the Internet itself

• driving different technological priorities for its decentralised development

decentralisationchanging the rules of the

game

digital transformation: trends and challenges

Inequalities

Concentration of data and

power

TrendsChallengesVisions?

more digital = more inequality?

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Decentralised Innovation Ecosystems

New Economic modelsbeyond GDP

IncentivesSocial entrepreneurship

MultidisciplinarityEngaging citizensNew ethical priorities for ICT R&I

digital transformation: trends and challenges

Circular (Social) Economy

Ethics

Level playing field

network neutrality

Democratic ParticipatoryTransparent

TransparencyEthics

decentralisationchanging the rules of the

game

OpennessOpen DataFair usage

InclusionEthics

Inequalities

Digital divide

Lack of Privacy

MonitoringProfiling

Concentration of data and

power

(need for)Sustainability

Artificial Intelligence

IoT

Innovation(social vs.

technological)

TrendsChallengesVisions?

Advice…?

• Engage real communities of citizens• In research activities, as drivers

• Be multidisciplinary• Involve different departments/institutions

• Let society shape the digital society• rather than just "adoption and adaption" of digital

technologies• Develop skills to design the digital society

• Not just to live in it• Leveraging on grassroots actors

• Embed sustainability and ethical concerns• In every aspect of research

• 1. Openness and Transparency• Mandate Open-Source and Open Hardware,

Promote Open Data, Sustain Open Knowledge • 2. Democracy and decentralization

• Accelerate democracy projects, Showcase open democracy, Promote awareness of democracy opportunities

• 3. Experiment and adopt• Bring together, Set technological priorities,

Increase public adoption• 4. Digital skills and multi-disciplinarity

• Promote digital skills, Define broader ICT curricula, Create Incentives for multi-disciplinarity

• 5. Sustainability• Shift funding governance (give voice to bottom-up needs),

Update methodology and tools, find additional sources 16

Manifesto for Digital Social Innovationhttps://www.dsimanifesto.eu/manifesto/

"I’m still an optimist, but an optimist standing at the top of the hill with a nasty storm blowing in my face, hanging on to a

fence.We have to grit our teeth and hang on to the fence and not take it for granted that the web will lead us to wonderful things.”

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Nov. 2017

fabrizio.sestini@ec.europa.euDigital Social Innovation (DSI), CAPS:https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/collective-awareness

Thank You