DTI to Europe - reporting back from events
Over the past two weeks, DTI has been quite active in Europe. This isn’t exactly new territory for us; I first spoke at a European Commission workshop on portability in May 2023, and DTI’s Director of Policy and Partnerships Delara Derakhshani and I have been to London and Brussels on several occasions since. We scaled up our policy work in Europe earlier this year when Tom Fish joined DTI. And with this month’s travels, we are investing more of our time and energy in the region, because data transfer work, on both technology and policy, continues to be even more critical and more impactful in both the European Union and the United Kingdom.
First, I traveled to London to participate in the Chatham House London Conference, a gathering of foreign policy luminaries looking at the global landscape. Here, as with seemingly everywhere else, the impact of artificial intelligence is inescapable – in addition to its relevance for U.S. and China relations and other topics, AI featured in a breakout session in the afternoon. While it is helpful to understand the geopolitical landscape for its impact on data matters, my principal goal in participating was to pitch data transfers and data empowerment to new, broader audiences and learn from the experience. Generally speaking, the importance of empowering people with respect to their data was well-received; and I found that connecting it to AI, as we have been doing at DTI, helped convey further urgency and significance.
Sadly, timing and logistical issues kept me from coming earlier to join the Smart Data Forum on June 13 in London. I greatly enjoyed last September’s iteration, and am glad Ctrl-Shift is continuing their important work to convene the key leaders whose work could well shape the future of the digital sector in the UK, if not the world. DTI was proud to continue to provide support for the event, and we are fortunate that Tom was able to join and speak.
Next, Delara spoke at this year’s Internet Governance Forum in Oslo, Norway on a panel on “Privacy Preserving Interoperability and the Fediverse.” IGF events bring a rich mix of global stakeholders on a broad range of internet governance topics. Joined by industry and civil society stakeholders, Delara focused on the practical work DTI is doing to promote privacy and data transfers together, including our work on trust and DTI Chief Technology Officer Lisa Dusseault’s proposal for improved ActivityPub account portability.
And last week, together with our partners at Forward Global, we hosted a half-day workshop in Brussels, “Portability for the People.” I was joined in opening remarks by Zach Meyers of CERRE, followed by two strong panels of government, industry, and civil society leaders working on data portability – including representatives from DTI founding members Apple and Meta and our partner ErnieApp. One topic that received a significant amount of discussion was incentives to participate in portability infrastructure such as DTI’s tools, in particular for small and medium, non-designated gatekeeper businesses. The assembled stakeholders all felt such engagement would be highly beneficial, while recognizing that more collective work was needed to encourage participation.
One topic that did not take up much attention in the discussion was trust. Trust is an area of significant investment for us, and often features in our public presentations. As I noted in my closing remarks, the lack of emphasis on trust in this recent Brussels event does not to me indicate our efforts are misplaced in any way, but rather that there is collective confidence in them to make positive progress. The journey ahead for trust may be long, but we are confident that we are going in the right direction.
No trip is complete without side meetings, of course. While the post-COVID era has normalized video conferencing and remote collaboration in many ways – for which I am deeply thankful, as a U.S. West Coast resident who works frequently with people in Washington D.C. as well as Europe – there is still something uniquely valuable about sitting down in person. And with the European Commission in the midst of ongoing DMA implementation review and the United Kingdom having recently finalized its Data (Use and Access) Act, this trip was particularly timely.
Overall, our events and meetings in Europe reinforced that stakeholder support for DTI and our work continues, and moreover, continues to grow.