Main Topic 2 – Keynotes 

Bridging the Digital Divide: Keynote Speakers Address the Future of Inclusive Digital Public Services

In a session dedicated to “GovTech, putting people first in digitalising public services and the use of data,” keynote speakers Jūratė Šovienė and Bernadette Lewis explored the complexities and prospects of the digital transformation within public services.

Jūratė Šovienė, from Lithuania, shared her experiences with the “No One Is Left Behind” project, which targets the digital divide affecting the elderly population. Identifying herself as a “digital immigrant,” Šovienė spoke about the challenges and opportunities of living in a digital era alongside “digital natives” and “digital refugees.” The project, initiated during Lithuania’s centenary in the ITU, is designed to enhance digital skills among senior citizens, safeguard them from online scams, and introduce them to electronic signatures and digital services. With the support of various organisations and under the patronage of the President of Lithuania, the project has successfully conducted digital workshops for nearly 1,000 elderly individuals.

Šovienė highlighted the generational disparities in digital literacy, noting that only one in four Lithuanians aged 65 to 74 have basic digital skills. She expressed concern over the rising issue of digital addiction among the youth, pointing out that 90% of school-aged children in Lithuania have smartphones and average over six hours of screen time daily. The repercussions of such addiction include a range of issues from sleep deprivation to stress and poor academic outcomes. Šovienė also discussed the “Safer Internet” project, which creatively educates children on online safety, exemplified by a teddy bear sculpture made from phone screen protectors to symbolise the hidden dangers of attractive technologies.

Bernadette Lewis, Secretary General of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization, addressed the necessity of redefining the social contract to centre citizens in government activities. She advocated for a citizen-serving government, led by visionary leaders who genuinely care for their citizens and work towards a digital future. Lewis emphasised the importance of knowing and understanding citizens’ needs through engagement and the use of digital technologies.

Lewis called for a whole-of-government approach to digital transformation, which requires planning, investment in technology, and the development of an infrastructure that allows for seamless and secure government processes. She stressed the need for evidence-based policymaking, informed by the real needs of citizens, and the implementation of policies that are regularly reviewed and adjusted.

Both speakers emphasised the importance of multi-sector collaboration, including public-private partnerships and the engagement of local talent, in driving digital initiatives forward. They highlighted the need for comprehensive approaches that involve continuous citizen engagement, periodic policy review, and the implementation of digital literacy programmes.

The session reinforced the urgent need to bridge the digital divide and enhance digital literacy across all age groups, particularly among the elderly and youth. It reflected a shared vision for a future where digital government initiatives are inclusive, accessible, and tailored to meet the diverse needs of all citizens, ensuring that people are truly at the heart of digital transformation efforts.

Moderator:
So, hello, again. I’m glad to see you. And I hope that people will join us. Let me just start. So, our last big part for today, it’s named GovTech, putting people first in digitalizing public services and the use of data. And we expect to hear an overview of how governments are responding to the pressure to follow the progress in digital and the need to upgrade public services or processes. And here we have two keynote speakers. And please welcome. This is Jūratė Šovienė, Chair of the Council of the Communication Regulatory Authority of Lithuania. Jurajta, please, the floor is yours. Thank you, Rimma.

Juratė Soviene:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Good afternoon, my dear colleagues. I am a digital immigrant. The digital world is not my native world. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I hate it. But I live with digital natives and digital refugees. And I think that I can be a bridge between them. Last year, on the occasion of Lithuania’s centenary in the ITU, we initiated the project No One Is Left Behind. The aim of the project is to reduce the digital divide among our elderly citizens. We left our comfortable office in Vilnius and started traveling around Lithuania. The first participants in our projects were the students of the third age university. With limited resources, we decided to use an already established network covering the whole of Lithuania for elderly people. They are active and they are eager for knowledge. At our workshops, we aim to improve senior citizens’ digital skills, make them aware of scammers, and teach them how to use electronic signatures and digital services. In the first half of the year, we organized digital workshops for nearly 1,000 elderly people. Several dozens of organizations have already joined the project – state agencies, businesses, municipalities. An important partner of this project is regional media. The project is also under the patronage of the President of Lithuania. And what have we learned during this half of the year so far? That such a project challenges us, public authorities and businesses, but they help create sustainable partnerships, build trust in digital services. We learned that, and it was more or less a discovery for us, that the project helps not only our seniors, but teaches us, the government officials, what it means to put people first not in declarations, but in real life. It helps us understand the needs and capabilities of our citizens and what works and what doesn’t in our digital transformation efforts. We came out of our bureaucratic bubble and started to notice that our letters, our way of speaking, our digital services are incomprehensible and inaccessible to many users. Business services and devices are also usually designed for smart, healthy, and young, for people with good hearing and sight, excellent memory, and steady hands. Yesterday, representatives from YouthDIG were complaining that they are not heard, or not always heard, not taken into account their opinion. And yes, that’s partially true. Sometimes that’s true. But at least, being so smart, they can hope that one day they will occupy the positions of deaf, not dead, but deaf, politicians, bureaucrats, and change the world. And sure, they will. One-fifth of Lithuania’s population is 65 years or older, making it one of the fastest aging societies. Similar situation is in the whole EU. And EU data shows that only one in four people aged 65 to 74 have basic digital skills. And digital literacy declines with age. So three out of four are digital refugees. They avoid digital tools, view them unsettling and scary. And in half a year, our team, my colleagues from Communications Regulatory Authority, with the help of our partners, has really done a lot. However, given that number of seniors and the level of digital literacy, it would take us 300 years at this pace. A cynic might argue that, you know, 50 years of doing nothing will sort things out on their own, because after all, the generation of digital natives is growing. And indeed, today, about 90% of school-aged children in Lithuania have a smartphone. On average, their screen time is more than six hours. However, the World Health Organization has recognized digital addiction as a widespread problem. Smartphone abuse is most common among people under the age of 30, with as many as 40% of teenagers self-admitting that they have a smartphone addiction. 53% of Gen Z would rather live without a close friend than their cell phone. Lack of sleep, headaches, less concentration, creativity blocks, anxiety, stress, loneliness, insecurity, broken relationships, poor grades, these are the consequences of screen addiction. Last year, our hotline received 65% more reports of harmful content for minors online than in previous years. A teddy bear on the stage is part of our Safer Internet project. It will hurt your hands if you touch it. Lithuanian artist Jolita Vytautas made it from thousands of phone screen protectors. It carries the message that, at first glance, pleasant and attractive things can hide dangers. Last year, we also started holding classes at our office and outside several times per month. Our experts have become storytellers, sharing stories about online safety with students at all ages. We try to find a common language with them and share our experiences. These lessons are very popular. Schools from various Lithuanian cities invite us to visit and talk to their children. We already count hundreds of school children who participated in these lessons in various Lithuanian cities. Is this enough to say that we are putting people first? I think that, despite our initiative in Lithuania, internet safety is still left in the hands of enthusiastic teachers and non-government organizations. It seems that in other countries, the situation is similar. Yesterday, again, it was mentioned that we Europeans are better at regulation rather than innovation. But you know, it’s better to be good at something, at least. It’s good that, in Europe, we finally have adopted the Digital Services Act, the main objective of which is to create a safer internet environment for digital users and protect their fundamental rights in the digital space. But we need to do much more. We need to do much more to create awareness that digital skills are as essential today as literacy and numeracy. Leaving a child with a digital divide is the same as leaving a child in an unlocked house. So that it doesn’t take 350 years for us to be able to say that we are putting people first. The questions of internet governance, digital literacy, safer internet should be on the policymakers’ agenda, on a minister’s agenda. Such projects, as we have launched, should become the project of every organization, of every business and every family. It must become the project of the entire state. And I believe that we, digital immigrants, know how to lead by example and be a bridge between digital refugees and digital natives. Putting people first in reality, not just in declarations. And reducing not only digital, but also generational gap. Thank you very much.

Moderator:
Thank you, Jūratė. So you heard what it means to put people first. You leave your comfortable office, your comfortable chair. You go and talk not to your computer, but to a very real person where you as well need to find a common language. Because that’s the secret, not a secret, but a surprise as well. Because even when you are talking with a person, you need to find a common language. But now I want to invite and welcome with honor Bernadette Lewis, Secretary General of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization, our second keynote speaker. Bernadette, please, your floor.

Bernadette Lewis:
Good afternoon. First of all, I would like to thank the organizers and the chair of the Council of the Regulatory Authority for inviting me to participate in EuroDIG in this intriguing city of Vilnius. Internet governance is very close to my heart. In my former position as the Secretary General of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, we established the first internet governance forum in the world. That was in 2005. The Caribbean IGF. It was the first regional internet governance forum to develop a policy framework, which is consistently updated and the policies are being implemented regularly. The work of the Caribbean IGF has had a tremendous impact on the Caribbean. And so, I am really, really, I have to be, I have to agree with the words of the chair of the Council that this EuroDIG can have a tremendous impact on this country and Europe as well. So, I think she said EuroDIG can serve as a catalyst for collaboration, creativity, and collective action, and I absolutely endorse that. Now, a little bit of the organization, about the organization I work with at this time. I’m now at the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization. This is the oldest commonwealth intergovernmental institution dedicated to information and communication technologies. And in 2020, the CTO, as we are called, charted a new course to support members in accelerating digital transformation. And the CTO will be focusing on two areas, affordable, meaningful, universal broadband connectivity, and 21st century or digital government. So, I’m very happy to speak on the subject of GovTech, putting people first in the digital in digitalizing public services and the use of data. GovTech, or 21st century government is a term I’ll be using, employs an approach to public sector modernization that uses digital technology. And before I start speaking about GovTech, I want to step back a little and speak about the institution of government and its relationship with its citizens. A national government has a unique relationship with its citizens. It is the only institution with which a citizen must consistently interact and interface with through every phase of life. Every citizen has to be registered at birth. They have to be educated. They have to find employment or start a business. They have to pay taxes, get married, purchase land, receive health benefits, all of these things. Ultimately, at the end of his journey in this life, his departure from this life has to be registered. So, the government, therefore, is uniquely and exclusively positioned to know its citizens and, therefore, has a responsibility to create and maintain systems that efficiently and effectively service their needs and enable them to participate in and contribute to the development of their society. And I want to make three points. They may seem obvious, but they are not trivial and should not be taken for granted. At the first point, and I believe there is a need for a new social contract, one that puts the citizen at the center of the government’s activities, we should be aiming for citizen serving, not self-serving government. Governments must do what is right for all of their citizens without discrimination and not what is politically expedient or personally beneficial. We need visionary, servantly, leadership. We need leaders who genuinely care for their citizens, who inspire them to believe in and work together towards a digital future. And it’s not possible to serve citizens without knowing them, without understanding their needs. It requires recognition of the local circumstances and customization of solutions to solve the problems that they face without harm to the environment, without harm to the culture or the people. A government cannot assume, and our first speaker said that very clearly. You assume that this is needed. You can’t afford to do that if you’re going to serve your citizens. But the government must engage with its citizens to know them, to ensure that the services that they provide is what the citizen needs. We have the technology to enable government to connect with every citizen and their communities and to know them and to understand their needs. So I go back, you know, you cannot assume. The government must be able to understand and properly articulate the challenge. And sometimes articulating the challenge can be problematic because if you don’t articulate the challenge, you’re going to come up with a solution that does not have the impact you would like to see. So we have to really define priorities. The government needs to define the priorities. What are the important things? And the objectives, they have to plan appropriate service programs that would enable the attainment of the goals that they specify. And after you come up with the plans, implementation is mandatory. I have seen wonderful plans, wonderful strategies, but they’ve never been implemented. You have to implement it. That is how you make progress. And of course, you’ll be putting the things in place, your metrics, your systems in place to monitor, to measure the process and the impact. And in order to come up with these plans, these processes will involve consultations with citizens and diverse stakeholders. And they must be supported by a comprehensive, progressive communication strategy that engages your population, the stakeholders, identifies the type and level of engagement that are necessary, the clients and the beneficiaries. You can’t be, as a government, you can’t be doing things in the dark. You have to involve your citizens. And periodic revisiting and appropriate adjustment of those processes will ensure that the government attains their objectives. And you have a number of tools, digital tools. And by making effective use of these technologies, we have artificial intelligence, blockchain, social media. By making use of these tools effectively, the government can know each citizen intimately and create a comprehensive digital information profile about the citizen and their interactions with government. And this profile can be associated with a digital ID that has been assigned from birth to facilitate efficient, seamless, secure citizen interaction with the government and the effective delivery of services, those services that the citizens require. But of course, there’s this word of caution. As the government embraces the digital technologies, new cyber vulnerabilities and also new risks are arising. So they must design and must implement appropriate systems to mitigate the potential negative impacts of a 21st century government and also preserve the rights of the citizens as they embrace, as the governments embrace the technology to serve their citizens better. And governments have a responsibility to safeguard their citizens, enabling them to conduct business securely online. They must ensure that the best practices are in place to protect citizens’ privacy, their well-being, their mental health. These are issues that are coming to the fore. Our last speaker spoke about these things. And also, these systems have to be put in place from the design phase. And it’s not a one and done thing, but you have to have those processes in place that would monitor, discover, and address breaches in those security systems and address them expeditiously. And trust is a necessary aspect of the citizen’s relationship with his government. Citizens must have confidence in their government. And yes, just a couple of days ago, I was reading an article in a magazine under the headline, We Deserve Leaders We Can Trust. And it reported in a poll of their readers that 0.6% of women trusted their political parties. That’s not good. That’s certainly not good. But I think the tools are available for the government to really change that and build confidence of the citizenry in them. Now, the second point I want to make is there’s this need for a whole of government approaches. Historically, the knowledge systems governments employed are rooted in paper-optimized processes that support the operations of independent government ministries and agencies. And in some countries of the world, the law actually prohibits a ministry from sharing information they collect from the citizens with other government ministries so that the citizen is required to provide his information to every ministry or agency with which he interacts over and over and over, notwithstanding the fact that information about the citizen may already exist elsewhere in the government and often in the form of physical documents. And this imposes unnecessary burdens of inefficient, time-consuming, costly processing, duplicated storage, repetitive processes, security risks, and a lack of transparency in the delivery of government services to its citizens. A 21st century government will apply digital technologies to improve the delivery of services to citizens transparently, effectively, and efficiently. And the goal of building this 21st century government which uses digital technology to engage its citizens and serve its citizens is not straightforward. It’s a complex undertaking. It requires investment in the technology and development of an infrastructure to create a seamless government where all of the government processes can be made available securely and seamlessly across all departments of government. And it doesn’t happen by chance. Building this infrastructure doesn’t happen by chance. It doesn’t happen at once. It takes planning and governments must adopt an iterative approach to developing the enterprise architecture for deploying government-wide interoperable frameworks and interconnecting all the platforms that may currently exist in silos. And when the governments are able to effectively begin delivering these services to their citizens, they should ensure that the technologies and systems that they employ have the flexibility to be reinstated rapidly in case of a disaster. And that will enhance the government’s continuity and resilience, particularly, as I said, in the time of natural disasters. And I want to mention it may not be applicable here in Europe, but when you’re talking about technology, you also need to speak of energy in some countries. The whole issue, technology needs the energy. And my training, the workforce is important, upskilling, automating routine business processes and developing the business processes that are needed that requires a skilled workforce. And the last point that I want to make about government, it has to do with policy. And when you are dealing with serving the citizen, the policies must be evidence-based. As I said before, you cannot afford to assume. And if the challenge, as I said, is not properly articulated, the solution will not have the desired impact. And articulating the problem is not trivial. There has to be a deliberate system of evidence-based policies that direct the actions of the government to effectively deliver services to citizens. And those policies must consider such areas as the infrastructure development, affordability and accessibility, upskilling, as I mentioned, the workforce, digital literacy programs, content and local language support, public-private partnerships, and any policy development exercise. It must first start with public awareness and education and must end with the implementation of the policies that you formulate. And there are many trends that are being employed that are transforming the public service. Digital capabilities must be foundational. We see governments are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence in the design and the delivery of the policies and services. AI is routinely being used in recruitment and also facilitating productivity gains. Blockchain is being used widely for tracking the evolution of document creation. The Internet of Things has enabled many governments to measure, to measure, to collect information, to collect evidence that to enable them to do their business. Policies should also, some of the other things, facial recognition, I have experienced this facial recognition in airports. I have to say I’m not, I don’t know, I still have mixed feelings. Yes, the process is much faster, but my question is what are they doing with my information? Where is this going? Who’s collecting it? These are things that concern me. Nobody asked me if I could, if they could use my image to verify my identity. Those are questions that have to be answered. The virtual reality, the metaverse, is being used for supporting training. I know that Interpol uses the metaverse in a lot of their training for their officers. And at the end of the day, the government doesn’t exist in isolation, as I said. They exist to serve their citizens. So, every citizen must be connected to the networks, and they must be able to use the tools, the resources of the technology, and there must be multiple channels so that if one channel doesn’t work for me, be heard about it, I can’t read my phone. Maybe there’s some other channel that would be suitable to me and give me the capacity to engage and have the services that I need. And finally, the last thing I want to talk a little bit about is the use of data and the importance of data. There are organizations and countries collecting information on ordinary people and making merchandise of it. And the information pertaining to citizens, it must be protected, it must be managed, and the integrity assured. And governments have large repositories of information. I encourage governments to open up their data. I think in the European Union, they are instruments, notably the Open Data Directive and the Data Governance Act, as well as national open data policies that integrates open data into the activities of all areas of public administration. And I think this is a very useful trend. I think Europe is doing very well. Other countries may not be doing that well. And finally, I just want to speak about the whole issue of privacy. Those security systems cannot be an afterthought. They have to be from the design stage. And it’s not a permanent fix. It requires constant review, upgrade, and adjustment to ensure that our citizens’ human rights are respected. And in closing, I want to say that the governments cannot do this alone. It’s a collective responsibility. It requires collaboration. It requires cooperation. Partnerships. Yesterday, we heard the Vice Minister speak to with the partnerships with the private sector and the academia, the civil society organizations, the NGOs. They can also play a significant role. And use your local talent. Use your people. They best understand the culture, the challenges that they are experiencing. They’re the ones. You can find the solution for yourselves. Look around and see what’s happening out there. But ultimately, there’s no one who knows the challenges better than someone in your own country. So use local talent. Help to development. Help to the development. Help to develop them. That’s a tongue twister. So with that, those are my remarks. And I thank you for your attention. And it’s really been a privilege to be here. Thank you.