WEF 2022: Davos discusses digital safety, security, and protection

India's use of drones to provide essential healthcare services to people living in remote and hard-to-reach areas was showcased at World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting at Davos

Digital safety is key to creating a safe environment to protect the world’s 4.8 billion internet users from abuse and harmful content that ranges from life-threatening health misinformation, violent extremist and terrorist content, and online exploitation of children. Issues of digital safety, security and protection are dominating conversations at the first post-pandemic global gathering of leaders at Davos. 

As the reach of digital platforms expands to integrate with almost every aspect of our lives, the world is collaborating to accelerate public-private partnerships to adopt and adapt best practices for online safety regulation to reduce the risk of online harms and enhance digital literacy of users.

 

“As a member of the Global Coalition for Digital Safety, we are trying to create public-private partnerships in this domain – and I think it a very timely thing to do, it is absolutely necessary to look at it in a holistic way and not in silos. We have been doing some work in the three areas of concern; child abuse, terrorist and extreme violent content online, and misinformation and disinformation, which is very topical with the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. There is a lot of fake news and false information available on the internet,” Ms Petra de Sutter, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Administration, Public Enterprise, telecommunications and Post, Belgium said at a session on Digital Safety in Davos. 

The world is struggling to strike a balance between safeguarding rights and privacy and keeping people safe, which is leading to debates on issues such as data retention, where telecom operates can store data for a certain amount of time that can be used afterwards for investigations of serious crime.

“There will be a new European regulation dealing with terrorist content online coming into force in June this year that also tries to find that balance,” said de Sutter. The EU adopted a new strategy for a better internet for kids (BIK+) on May 11, 2022, for the safe participation, empowerment and protection of children.

“Digital safety brings together three distinct discussions or the three Cs—the security of content, the safety of contact, and safety of connection. All these are an equal part of digital safety as a holistic concept… in Finland, we put a lot of emphasis on trust. Trust is a key component on any data economy or any digitalisation and this is something that we need to enhance… It is an invisible added value in any economy, which I would like to call the trust economy trust economy. So that is the component that is bringing the primary data that we can operate with and the trust that it can be reused, utilised and analysed and used in many forms as necessary and I’m really glad the European Union has made regulations to enhance this trust in the Digital Governance Act,” said Mr Timo Harakka, Minister of Transport and Telecommunications, Finland.

Setting up infallible guardrails and empowering digital users with evidence-based information, and not content censoring, is the way ahead. 

 “We have to be very nimble and innovative and not be a traditional regulator to achieve what we wanted to… We take a holistic approach – prevention, protection and proactive change,” said Ms Juilie Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner, Office of eSafety Commissioner, Australia, who holds the first such agency in the world.

India’s success in healthcare delivery using drones showcased at Davos

India’s use of drones to provide essential healthcare services to people living in remote and hard-to-reach areas was showcased at World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos as a model that could be scaled up in other parts of the world.

The results of a 45-day trial of delivery of Covid-19 testing samples, vaccines and medicines to a population of over 300,000 people living in forested Anantagiri hills in the Vikarabad district of Telangana. 

The trial, which documented the first vaccine delivery beyond visual line of sight by 300 long-range drone sorties over 45 days, is the first successful trial of long-range vaccine delivery in Asia. Several other states in India have also piloted the use of drones for vaccines and medicines delivery to overcome challenges of distance.

The is part of global ‘Medicine from the Sky’ report done in partnership between WEF’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution India, Government of Telangana, Apollo Hospital’s Healthnet Global and NITI Aayog. It follows India’s formulation of Drone Rules 2021, which is accelerating drone deployment in key sectors, such as logistics, agriculture, healthcare and emergency response. 
 

“Using drones to successfully enable a case for touching the lives of citizens in remote and inaccessible areas is a highlight that demonstrates how drones can be integrated into the healthcare ecosystem. Post Telangana, several other states have replicated the medical delivery use case,” said Mr KT Rama Rao, Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development, Industries & Commerce, and Information Technology of Telangana.