Thank you, Axel.
So, hi, everyone.
I'm Rene Tanager.
I'm the standards lead at Digital Public Goods Alliance.
And today I'd like to warmly welcome you all to the session on accelerating digital
transformation in Europe and the role of digital public goods and open source collaboration.
And I'm also excited to be here today with my colleague, Jean Pierre, who is representing
us from Primero, which is a digital public good by UNICEF.
And he will be discussing more about the European implementations of Primero.
And how this DPG has also contributed to government collaborations in this process.
So, alright, without further ado, I'll begin.
So, first things first, I'd like to just share with you a little bit about what the digital public
goods alliances, right?
So, essentially, we're a multi-stakeholder organization and we were launched in 2019.
And our mission is to accelerate the attainment of SDGs by facilitating the use
development and investment in digital public goods, right?
And these are essentially all open source solutions.
So, for those of us who might be new to the concept of SDGs, so sustainable development
development goals are basically 17 key goals that are set out by the United Nations
to make the world a better place by 2030 simply put, right?
And these sort of focus in solving big problems of the world, like ending poverty,
like, you know, protecting the planet to improve health care services to make the world
a more equal place.
So, you can call it like, it's somewhat like an ambitious to do list.
But, yeah, the responsibility to make this happen is literally, you know, everybody's.
Now, just to share with you a little bit about, you know, the context of this concept of
digital public goods and what this definition is all about.
So, this definition was created by the Secretary General of the United Nations who
delineates five kinds of open source solutions as digital public goods, right?
So, these are open source software, open data, open AI systems, open standards, and open content.
And, you know, digital public goods are, of course, open source solutions, but they're also
so much more, right?
Because we almost like to think of them as open source plus plus, because when we talk about
a solution, that is a digital public good, we talk about a solution that helps
advance SDGs.
You know, it doesn't just have an open license, but then it also is genuinely created
in a way that allows for reuse to happen, that allows for easier adoption to happen across
the world.
And, it's also a solution that has taken steps in its design and development to mitigate
or avoid any kind of harm, right?
Now, something that really sets this term apart from anything else is these nine set of
indicators that you see here, and which is what we call as the digital public goods standard,
right?
So, the DPG standard creates like a baseline of criteria for, you know, what a solution
has to qualify for to be recognized as a digital public good.
And, these nine indicators are like a baseline requirement for this particular recognition.
And, one of the core functions of the alliance is well, is just to work and maintain
this DPG standard as well as its application, right?
Firstly, because I'm very passionate about this topic, I can go on and on, but since we just
have 10 minutes more, I'll just invite you all to just maybe scan the QR code, and that
will lead you to the entire standard, and you can have a look at it, you know, in detail.
But, I will today be covering some specific indicators of the DPG standard, all right?
So, the first one that I'd like to cover is SDG relevance, right?
So, this is the first indicator, and this is, of course, a very broad topic because
any solution that wants to do some good for this society, it will probably fall under
one SDG or another, right?
What we want from the review team side, from the DPG side, is that there has to be a clear
contribution to one or more SDG, and, you know, that can be, like the list is endless, but
it could be, you know, it was the access to health care or support, you know, supporting
in vaccinations or medication research or something to that effect, right?
And, as an applicant, you have to provide to us a statement of how you think your
solution can really contribute to one specific SDG or more.
All right, the next one that I would like to talk about is platform independence, right?
So, this one is a little tricky because the idea is that we would ideally want for everything
to be open source, right?
But, for example, if, you know, you have a proprietary component as a part of your solution,
but if you provide as an open source, alternative to go along with it, then we could possibly accept
it, and I think you can reach out to biology to ask more about, you know, what this indicator
is all about and how this would work out in real life.
But, you know, the only caveat here is, essentially, that it has to be easy for
implementers to use or to switch to different providers, right?
Because vendor locking should be avoided, and that is one of the main considerations that we have
behind this particular indicator, right?
The next one that I would like to cover is privacy and applicable laws, which is
indicator seven.
So, we recently, you know, made some updates to the DPP standards, specifically for
indicator seven and nine A on privacy best practices, that we now consider as a baseline
criteria that must be met by solutions to qualify as additional public good.
And some of those criteria look like, you know, whether data minimization practices
have been followed, you know, whether there are any consent user mechanisms with respect
to handling PI, data, do you consider privacy by design principles, you know, as a part
of your solution creation.
So, those are the questions that we ask, and you can provide this to us, you know, in the
form of a terms of use or a privacy policy, that actually covers, you know, these
particular topics that I just discussed.
And I would actually like to point out to Thomas as well.
He's one of the experts as a part of the privacy expert group.
So, if you have any questions around this, please feel free to go and
and, you know, any additions that we will be making to this, because we also will
be coming up within an extra in the coming months, and that will be on privacy best
practices that we would highly encourage additional public goods to follow, right?
So, that is going to be a notch above of what we have as the minimum requirements within
the standard.
All right.
Now, lastly, the one that I would like to cover is open standards and best practices, right?
So, simply put what it means is, essentially, you know, any standard or best
practices that applies to the industry in which your solution belongs.
You should be complying with it, right?
So, any web standards by W3C, it could be GTFS for public transport.
It could be the open contracting standard for fiscal transparency.
The list goes on, right?
And a very important thing that I would like to highlight is that the DPD standard is
itself an open standard, right?
So, we are always looking for community input on how to make this better.
And so, we are now going to start work on fine-tuning this particular standard, and so
for those of you who are interested in standard development or, you know, in this part of the open source
ecosystem, we have pamphlets here, just pick them up, scan it and reach out to me, and we will
see how we can get your inputs incorporated into the standard, right?
Now, lastly, I would like to cover, you know, the fact that why our digital public goods
are so important, right?
In short, essentially, these are the three reasons, right?
Because they improve adaptability, they increase transparency, and they encourage interoperability.
And that is by making sure that it aligns to open standards, and ensuring also that, you know,
solutions can work seamlessly across different regions, yeah?
So, because we are short on time, and now hand it over to shop here to share more about
that.
Thank you.
Thank you, I'm right.
So, I'm a Jean-Pierre look child.
I'm actually filling in for Robert McTavis of UNICEF.
I am part of a company that actually implemented Salas 10 years ago, and so I'm going to be
communicating for the UNICEF team, primarily, at this session.
So, the idea behind Primero is that the UN and UNICEF in particular had many projects
where they were duplicating the same functionality over and over by bidding out case management
software over and over.
So, the idea is why don't we try to unify this instead of spending money over and over again
and come up with a single platform, and Robert had a vision that we would make this open source,
available to anybody through the UN, and then through the NGO network as well.
So, Primero is essentially a case management system initially developed for child protection.
I think of any horrible situation in the world, Primero has been there in the last 10 years.
So, a perfect example is what's happening in your Ukraine.
We have a child that would arrive at the border.
The UNICEF folks or NGO folks would get her information, start entering it into Primero,
to try to find their family to do re-enification.
Okay. Sorry. So, we'll need to go through.
I have to wrap it up. I'll do it very, very quickly.
So, Primero is used all over the world.
We've had a 10-year history where now have served over 1.7 million children in child protection
at UNICEF, and that doesn't count all the other usage is.
And one of the main things I wanted to emphasize, it's much more than open source.
You have to have an infrastructure, and that's what DPG encourages open source projects to do.
There's governance that has to be a place.
There are standards that have to be met, and you have to have a good model for long-term sustainability
and primarily around the financials. UNICEF has been incredibly innovative within the UN context
to allow for that. As an example, we have not only do we provide the open source software,
but we also provide hosting capabilities.
And a variety depending on what the country needs.
And then lastly, we're using it in Europe too.
These are three examples. We have many more as well.
And it's expanded beyond just child protection to more social welfare kinds of things.
We're like the poster child for what a digital public could be.
We're really helping children, families, anyone that needs assistance throughout Europe and the world.
Thank you.