It’s been a while since my last blog Inside the Digital Society for APC. I’m glad to return and will be writing each month on an important issue for those concerned about the impact that digitalisation’s having, could have and, importantly, should have on our societies. Starting this week with some reflections, almost one year later, on the outcome of last year’s UN review of the World Summit on the Information Society and whether that’s still relevant.
The World Summit on the Information Society
It’s been a year since the UN General Assembly agreed on a resolution on the 20th anniversary of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
I was involved in the work that led up to that resolution, first as lead author for the review report published by the UN’s Commission on Science and Technology for Development, then as advisor to the consultation process and development of the resolution by the Assembly. And I’ve been involved, one way or another, with WSIS almost since it was first considered nearly 30 years ago.
I thought I’d start this blog again with reflections on the summit, its recent renewal, and where it sits within the much more complex world of international decision-making on digital policies around us. Something that I’ve been thinking over and recently addressed for AfriSIG (the African School on Internet Governance).
What WSIS was
How well is WSIS known today? Some digital insiders see it as a crucial moment in digital policy, akin to the Earth Summit that launched sustainable development in 1992. But for many concerned with digital technology, or students in communications theory and practice, it’s history, something they may have heard of but know little about.
There’ll be readers of this blog who know it well, and those who don’t, so first I’ll summarise.
It was a United Nations summit, held in 2003 and 2005, which agreed on a vision about what the Information Society should look like; a framework through which international agencies, national governments and other stakeholders might look at it; and a new way in which all those involved might work together. The key documents? The Geneva Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action from 2003, and the Tunis Agenda from 2005.
The vision was for “a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society,” consistent with human rights and sustainable development.
The framework was a set of “action lines” – in practice, 18 areas for policy discussion and development rather than new institutional arrangements.
The working method was a commitment to multistakeholder participation, involving not just governments and multilateral actors but also business, civil society and the technical community behind (especially) the internet.
WSIS also agreed to set up the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), and a WSIS Forum concerned with the summit’s more developmental outcomes has also become a regular annual event.
Was it important?
I’d argue yes; it was a turning point in international thinking about what was then called the Information Society, more commonly today the digital society.
Its outcomes weren’t all that harmonious. There were intense arguments in both phases, especially about internet governance and financial mechanisms for infrastructure and for ICT4D (the use of ICTs in development). But, as is often the case with multilateral agreements, the final compromise was hailed for establishing principles for how things should go forward.
The framework has been useful. Many governments, in the Global South especially, say that they’ve found it valuable in structuring their policy responses to digitalisation. There are gaps, though, in that framework, reflecting the time it was adopted and the scale of what has happened since.
The working method’s also been resilient. Most international fora concerned with digital policy now commit themselves to multistakeholder engagement, though what that means can be unclear and the power imbalances between stakeholders have changed as big data corporations have come to dominate not just the digital but the wider world economy.
Its core agreements have become foundation texts. Which is why governments and other stakeholders were keen to play a part in the negotiations last year and, largely, to maintain its status quo.
What’s happened since?
But 20 years is a long time in digital development. The WSIS outcomes were agreed when the Information/digital society was an aspiration rather than the reality it has become today.
When only 15% of people made use of the internet rather than today’s majority. When the capabilities of digital technologies were a small fraction of what they are today. Before many of the features that are central to today’s digital society were significant or even present: social media and platform businesses, the Internet of Things and cloud computing, big data and algorithmic decision-making. Before we became transfixed by the potential impact of AI.
And WSIS gave us highly optimistic texts. Enthusiasts imagined that it would transform longstanding problems in development, generating economic growth, empowering individuals, enabling equality and democratising power. Little attention was paid at WSIS to potential risks.
The digital society today is very different from that imagined then. There have indeed been major developments arising from digital technologies, many of them for the good. Digital public services and e-commerce have been transformative in many aspects of societies, though to varying degrees, and online engagement’s become a mainstay of many people’s lives. There have been powerful changes in the way those lives are lived – in employment, education and relationships: think, for instance, of growth of the gig economy and online dating.
What we have learnt?
But we have also learnt a good deal that has been less comfortable. There have been risks and downsides as well as positive achievements.
We’ve learnt that outcomes aren’t predictable. Few anticipated the growth of social media, for example, or the way that it’s changed news consumption.
Inequalities in access to digital services are now understood to have exacerbated inequalities in social and economic welfare within our societies. Those with money and other resources have been better placed to take advantage than those living on the margins.
Criminals have proved adept at exploiting digital technologies, exposing the vulnerabilities of both individuals and national infrastructures.
We’ve experienced waves of disinformation and abuse that have distorted political debate and personal lives.
We’ve learnt of costs to the environment and seen the growing concentration of power over digital resources in the hands of fewer businesses..
We’ve come, in short, to recognise that digital technologies contribute to problems as well as to solutions, and concerns about this have intensified as we have seen the rapid evolution of AI. Some have begun to question whether what we have today’s a "people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society" of the kind envisaged at WSIS or one that’s technology-centred, unequal and profit-oriented. And to wonder how, in the coming AI age, we can avoid ceding human agency to tech.
To summarise then: much of what has happened has been positive, but far from all. The question that we face, in words I’ve often used, concerns how to preserve what we value and prevent what we fear while also promoting and achieving the value that digital technologies enable. And doing so for all, not just for those who can afford it.
The context for a 20-year review
Technology and services are not the only things that have changed during the 20 years since WSIS. The international climate’s different too.
ICTs weren’t emphasised in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, but they’ve become a lot more central to plans for development since then, especially since the COVID pandemic set the Goals off-track.
And WSIS is no longer the only UN frame of reference for digital development. The Global Digital Compact (GDC), agreed in 2024, dealt with some issues that weren’t fully discussed in WSIS, especially AI and data management. Other multilateral negotiations have addressed specific dimensions of the digital society, such as cybercrime, while digitalisation’s growing centrality in every area of public policy has made it central to discussions and agreements in other sectors too, from defence and trade to health and education, human rights and the environment.
WSIS is no longer, as it felt two decades back, a single reference point, and these other negotiations and agreements aren't a holistic global framework along the lines that WSIS sought to establish 20 years ago.
The world today is also deeply fractured. The UN’s influence has declined. The international rules-based order that’s prevailed for decades is in crisis. It is more difficult to achieve international consensus in almost every field than it has been for at least a generation.
WSIS+20
The WSIS+20 resolution reiterates the WSIS vision and commitment to multistakeholder engagement, and largely retains its institutional framework – but today’s digital society is unrecognisable from that when WSIS was agreed, and the number and range of public policy issues affected by digitalisation has grown enormously. Retaining the status quo from twenty years ago has obvious limitations when the Information Society has changed so much.
The resolution’s largely rhetorical and aspirational. This is not a criticism. It’s what was feasible.
As is often the case in international negotiations, much of the debate (or argument) was about finding language that would enable compromise rather than supporting new ideas. While there is new text in some areas, including the environment, and strengthened text in others, such as gender rights, proposals for new institutional arrangements made by the G77 group that negotiates on behalf of the Global South were not agreed.
I think it was a real achievement to secure a resolution that held the line on existing international agreements, but the tensions underlying the negotiations were profound, and statements in the final session at the General Assembly showed dissatisfaction on the part of many governments. And it will be harder to translate the resolution into practice at a time of geopolitical dysfunction, with shifting power asymmetries between governments, regions and businesses, when there is great and growing uncertainty about the likely impact of the latest new technologies.
What next?
WSIS’ resonance has increasingly resided in its core value statement – that commitment to “a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society” consistent with human rights agreements. But core value statements need to be translated into real life contexts, to be assessed not by whether they’re agreed but by whether they inform the policies and practices of governments, businesses and other stakeholders, whether and where they make a difference.
And we’re now at an inflection point in digital development, as AI supplants the internet as the critical technology requiring multilateral consensus.
There was much talk in last year’s negotiations about the need to maintain alignment between WSIS and the GDC, which is the main reason why there’s very little language about data governance or AI in the WSIS+20 resolution. But what alignment means in practice is complicated. ‘Implementation maps’ have been developed within the UN system, but there are many different actors involved.
The issues and challenges posed by AI differ significantly from those around the internet, especially where regulation and the public interest are concerned, and they’ve already moved on markedly from those that were important when the GDC was negotiated (among others by the previous US administration).
So while there’s, rightly, satisfaction at the agreement that was reached in the 20-year review, there were many issues that were not discussed, or not resolved, there, and these won’t go away. They’ll recur and they’ll become more challenging.
- The relationship between WSIS and the GDC will return in the first review of the GDC next year. Rapid technological change will require continuous rethinking about AI governance.
- The relationship between digital and sustainable development will be a major issue when the UN comes to review the SDGs in 2030. It will require much more serious thinking about financing mechanisms for development than took place last year, when these were deferred to an internal UN task force.
- The belief among G77 governments that they’re under-represented in digital policy development – and that their populations' priorities are poorly served by it – will continue to be pressing.
- There are crucial interfaces between digital development and other fields of public policy that weren’t addressed enough in WSIS+20, like environmental impact, or were not touched at all, like the militarisation of technology.
- And the international rules-based order, in which WSIS and the IGF are embedded, is under greater pressure than it has been in our lifetimes.
Challenging times ahead, in other words. And a clear message that, while the continuation of the WSIS framework was a good thing, it’s unlikely to prove sufficient for the future.
David Souter is a longstanding associate of APC who has worked for more than 30 years on the relationship between ICTs and public policy, particularly development, environment, governance (including internet governance) and rights. He writes a column for APC, looking at different aspects of the information society, development and rights. David’s pieces take a fresh look at many of the issues that concern APC and its members, with the aim of provoking discussion and debate.
Further reading: David Souter’s presentation on this topic at this year’s African School on Internet Governance (AfriSIG)