The 2016 Global Forum featured many innovative speakers on digitization. It is the 25th Global Forum, befittingly gathered in Eindhoven, the Brainport of the digital eco – system.  The conference featured an inaugural, collaborative event. There is no innovation without startups – so GISCO, the Global Innovation Startup Competition was added to the agenda.

17 companies competed, representing eight nations, covering three continents. The jury consisted of pioneers in the startup industry in the EU and the US (Silicon Valley), including distinguished Global Forum speakers and steering committee members.

The winners are: LocaidMe (Prague/Silicon Valley), a safety app to detect threats in real time in public places in an actionable format.  Second place went to Strategic Security (Virginia, USA), a network vulnerability scanning solution. Third place went to Semiotic Labs, an Amsterdam based equipment failure detection and monitoring solution company that works with private sector and government entities.

Eindhoven’s Evoluon is an out-of-this-world building that serves as a multi-purpose conference and events center. Shaped like a flying saucer, it was commissioned by Dr. Frits Philips — who made the first sketches of it on a napkin — and built by architect Louis Kalff in 1966. An innovative building and a proud icon of science and technology, it has always attracted a large number of visitors thanks to its unique interactive exhibitions. The Evoluon is located in the Eindhoven Brainport region, which is known as a technology and innovation incubator.

Welkom in Eindhoven!

The 2016 Global Forum started Sunday with a reception for VIP and Sponsors. The event was hosted by the City of Eindhoven at The Philips Museum housed in the original factory built in . Philips, an electronics company of which the Dutch are extremely proud, was established by Gerard Philips in Eindhoven in 1891. The company initially grew rich by producing light bulbs but many branches of high technology development were later added to this unique, resoundingly Dutch company. Guests were treated to docent led tour of the museum which shows a comprehensive history of the Philips Company and their development of a vast range of products since their formation. The Vice Mayor welcomed guests to the City of Eindhoven, and remarked about the significance of the innovative forum in the Brainport of the Netherlands. View video an photos

Digitalization: The Global Transformation
MONDAY 19th & TUESDAY 20th September 2016
Evoluon Center, Eindhoven, Netherlands

About The Forum
The Global Forum/Shaping the Future is an internationally recognized think-tank for exchange and networking among governments at national, regional & local levels, private & public organizations, research & development experts and private sector companies

The Global Forum is an independent, high profile, international, non-for-profit event dedicated to business and policy issues affecting the successful evolution of the Digital Society.

Startup Competition
An exciting new element of the Global Forum is our inaugural startup competition. A jury of outstanding Silicon Valley- EU- and US based jurors will evaluate selected startups from a wide range of industries. Top three competitors will be awarded significant assistance to take their fledgling business to the next level.

In light of the recently ratified UN Sustainable Development Goals, the moderator Julia Glidden (Moderator), Managing Director 21c Consultancy, United Kingdom, announced that during this session with such a broad topic in its title, the panellists will be talking about the relationship between the sharing economy, IT and sustainable development, because the notion of sharing that IT facilitates puts a whole new challenge to the consumptive/ capitalist focus on acquisition of goods and constantly buying and selling and replacing things. Ms. Glidden finds the concept of circular economy very inspirational – not constantly buying and throwing away and buying and throwing away again, but borrowing and sharing in a manner that brings people together. The panel will have some very high level discussions as well as very interesting practitioners’ discussions of practical components of IT and the sharing economy, like security, ID cards etc.

Steffen Nerdal, Chief Strategy Office, Ascella AS, Norway, started his presentation by showcasing the company he works for, SmartDok which is the Nordic leader in digitization in the building and construction industry. He addressed the main challenges that the company had to overcome since its founding toward full use of digital systems: working in a conservative industry; reliance on traditional documenting (with pen and paper), and little ICT knowledge in the industry. The solution to the industry’s main barriers of growth was through digitization. The company started developing solutions together with and for their customers (having customer’s needs in mind) and ensuring that the right technology is used and providing knowledge about various markets.

Ascella has made some good impacts on the Norwegian and Swedish market by increasing quality, cost efficiency, developing effective processes for companies and customers, making sure that there are fewer errors and becoming more environmental friendly. Basically, the company is shaping the future by empowering the society and helping the development of smart buildings.

According to Nitya Karmakar, Professor MQC Macquarie University Australia, Australians have been at the forefront of inventing various tools. One of the most famous innovations from Australia include: the electronic pacemaker, Google Maps, polymer bank notes, cochlear implant, electric drill etc. They are not behind in improving of digital life. The innovation through science, technology and knowledge is growing and there are new catalysts for new way of innovations. Innovation and economic development are in place but they are challenges that need to be overcome still. Therefore the following aspects:

Innovation +creativity =commercialization

Innovation + proximity = commercialization

Tim Kelly, Lead ICT Policy Specialist, World Bank Group, started his presentation talking about the upcoming World Development Report which is focusing on the Internet and development, and how digital life impacts the sharing economy. World Bank’s approach is economical, based on transaction costs and how reduced transaction costs in the digital economy help create: processes of inclusion, processes of innovation, and processes of efficiency – the three mechanisms that drive the sharing economy.

The sharing economy/ the digital economy comes in direct conflict with the analogue economy, especially in the areas of regulation, professional services, universities, bricks and mortar stores, building and construction.

Ali Kone, Chief Operating Officer/Co-founder of Coders4Africa Inc, USA: The drivers of sharing economy – connectivity and knowledge are important aspects of digitalization. Being connected means that information will be shared. Sharing information has become so important such that people regardless of their status and regions are now coming into the digital life to share information. There are also more people who would want to share information but they are unable due to the lack of infrastructure in some areas. It is important to change the mind sets through simplicity, transparency and traceability. In regard to digitalization, developing countries are still lagging behind due factors such as: security and the infrastructure are serious issues that are poor and not there in some cases which is affecting the digitalization.

Eikazu Niwano, Producer and director of Produce Group, R & D, talked about the new e-ID cards in Japan that will come into effect in January 2016. Social activities are being expanded into the cyberspace in addition to the real space. Card holder will be able to select the spaces they want to use according to their convenience. The idea or aim is to have social activities be accessed and used digitally.

Therefore, the card number will support both digital signature and personal authentication services and may be used for medical insurance, as a credit card and cable TV. Credit card and paper certificate could be recongized as attributes of the card holder. Cyberspace passport selection of the private services will also be up to the card holder.

Alfredo Ronchi, Secretary General, EC Medici framework Italy, elaborated on important issues such as citizens in the global age and ICT safety and security, safety, health working practices transportation built environment infrastructure free time etc. Security for humans encompasses several areas such as: security, assets, food, drugs, ideas etc. All these important things will need to be protected one way or the other. Therefore, safety and security are an integral part of human rights; we must strive to provide all the efforts in order to guarantee such rights as stated.

Paul Wormeli, Executive director Emeritus, IJIS – Integrated Justice Information systems institute; innovation strategist Wormeli consulting LLP, USA, talked about opportunities and challenges at the intersection of the ICT between sharing information in government and private sector – looking at crimes that are committed in the cyberspace. Information safeguarding in the sharing environment is very vital and important digital life. Information must be safeguarded so it does not end up in the wrong hands or end up being used for unintended purposes.

The following are the fundamental truths about ICT in the sharing economy:

• The sharing economy is dependent on the information technology and including social media
• Information is a valuable assets and requires a lot of safeguarding
• Growth of the sharing economy is depends on establishing trust which requires safeguarding information asses and building a sense security
• Our inability to prevent cyber crime
• Cost on society cybercrime about 1.trillion dollars

There are various trends going on in the cybersecurity and the following trends have been noted,

• technology is getting better defense in depth
• Insider beings are careless or intentional are still largest threat
• Threats are migrating – more organized crime nation state new targets
• Data continues to experiential growth

Comment from the audience: What is the role of the government in all this? The govt seems to be missing especially that our govt are not paying much attention to the digital borders. Physical borders are being protected by different means while digital borders are largely ignored or less attention is shown.

This session was moderated by Jay Gillette, Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communications Technologies, University of Oulu, Finland; Senior Research Fellow and Institute Secretary, Digital Policy Institute, USA, who stated that the importance of the Arctic cannot be underestimated.

This session covered the aspects of ICT, Innovations and Efficient Services related to: rural areas and remote regions in climatic and geographic extremes; sustainable use of Arctic resources and development of arctic infrastructure; advanced arctic weather forecasting and ice management; safe maritime traffic in cold climate conditions; cold climate environmental protection and solutions, in particular oil and chemical spill prevention and combatting

Arctic maritime industry and shipping (vessel design and construction, in particular icebreakers), and the Telecommunications Issue in Arctic Regions (role of satellites…)

Johanna Ikävalko, Ministerial Adviser of Ministry of Transport, Arctic Marine Testing and Training Centre, discussed the maritime issues of the Arctic. In the Arctic people have a concept of combining different spheres of expertise and as a result they can offer the fresh and unique solutions in business and other spheres. Services offered:

• Design construction and operation of ice navigation vessels (testing, training, education),
• Arctic marine rescue operations
• Situation awareness, weather forecasts, ice management
• Vessel and port design, construction and operation for/in cold climate

Kari Laine discussed the megatrends in the North/ in the Arctic:

• Increased urbanization – a global trend
• Demographic challenges (old people stay while the young people leave)
• Continued dependency on transfers and the exploitation of natural resorces will continue to dominate the arctic economies
• Continued pollution and ongoing climate changes will have a significant impact on the nature and environment of the Arctic
• The Arctic needs to generate more Human Capital by investing more in its ppl
• Changes in the nature of interaction between the public and private spheres will impact development
• Renewable energy will contribute to a “greening” of the economy
• Increased accessibility provide opportunities as well as new risks

“Smarctic” – a roadmap to a smart Arctic specialization; a report on combination phenomena of the Arctic and ICT.

Martti Hahl from the Barents Center: Electricity transmission lines are required to fully take the advantage of the natural resources and mineral deposits. Electricity is the key to the functional usage of ICT, which is needed at the Arctic to cope with the unique challenges of this part of the world (climate issues, monitoring of individuals, intelligent clothing, support of mine workers, remote operation of vessels, sub-sea installations, mines and much more).

Stig Nerdal, Transportutvikling, Narvik, Norway, discussed the Barents region (northern parts of Norway, Russia, Sweden and Finland) which despite the challenges mentioned in the previous presentations, has several significant advantages:

• Global suppliers of maritime resources
• Minerals and connected shipping services
• Transit potential for global trade

Cooperation instead of competition is the only way to find the proper and cost-efficient solutions to the existing problems.

According to Henrik Vuorinen, CEO of the Port of Luleå, good infrastructure is a key to sustainable growth. Mining industry and steel industry are the main customers of the Port of Luleå; 90% of the EU’s iron ore production is located in the Arctic region connected to the Port of Luleå. Challenges: increased ore and mineral shipment, land level increase, ships are getting longer and wider and more.

Heikki Autto, Chairman of Rovaniemi City Council: Why does the Arctic matter? The Arctic might be the solution to overpopulation problem: the Arctic has the vast landmass with fairly low density of the population and all the resources needed for life. Is the Arctic interesting? According to Heikki, a lot of cooperation is happening between the Arctic and the other parts of the world.

Esko Aho, Former Prime Minister of Finland & Executive Chairman of the Board, East Office of Finnish Industries, opened the presentation by drawing a parallel between the challenges of going to the moon and the challenges going to the Arctic. Good cooperation and collaboration between business and government is needed based on shared efforts and common goals. Esko mentioned that both the challenges and opportunities were pretty well-covered by other speakers of the session. Digital is smart and smart and Arctic should be integrated.

It’s really important to talk about opportunities and challenges at the right time. Awareness about Arctic and its advantages in the EU is fairly low, and it is something which needs to be corrected. It’s high time to take the opportunities the Arctic has to offer.

Chair – Alexey Ershov, vice president, smarter cities Europe, IBM Spain

Smart cities from disruption to sustainability –disruption will continue because we are just starting. Uber disruptive for the taxi business and now work over 50 billion dollars but promotes sustainability.  Tesla now very sustainable as their cars are electric and making an impact. Citizens expect more from the govts. Leading cities integrate across different functions. An app for almost everything and now they have an App for city mayors in Spain and they are able to look at different things such transport, water management, crime, citizen collaboration and get feedback from the citizens and suggests. This helps to keep the mayor informed about the status of the city and what is going on around the city. Madrid uses analytics to cut costs and support outcome based maintenance and contracts. This in return enhances transparent to citizens

• Incentives to innovation and optimization resources deployment
• In Madrid they are able to report faults in various places such as parks and other public places. Citizens are able to report faults and once the fault has been fixed, the informant is sent a message to let them know the fault they reported has been dealt with.

Moderator – Hugo Kerschot, Managing Director IS-Practice, Belgium

Smart mobility is very important, mobility need to be addressed so that they are more choices in navigation and finding places such as parking places, public transport. There are many applications currently being used for example in navigating through cities, all the apps need to be signed into to use the app, but it will be good to have a single sign in to use all the apps. The systems may also show you where you left your car as cities are growing and it possible to forget the exact location. Bringing together services providers, data providers and developers, this could be achieved. Therefore, having access to open data is an important aspect for driving reaching this goal.

Speakers

(Jukka Järvinen)  Mika Rantakokko, Chairman of the six city strategy steering group Finland

Working together towards open and smart services

Strengthening Finland’s competitiveness by using the six largest cities as innovation development and experimentations environment. These are funded by EU and the six cities (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Turku, Tampere and Oulu). These developments are done through open innovation platforms, open data interfaces and open participation and customer ship. This results in new know how, business and more job creation for the cities. The cities in Finland participate in the development, citizens companies, research and development operators and the authority. In Finland they are now developing new districts that present an experimental innovation platform for co-creating smart urban infrastructure and services.

Eric Legale, Managing Director Issy Media, city of Issy-les Moulineaux, France

More experiments on the consumption of energy involving different stakeholders. How to build smart mobility systems to improve local transport plans. Most people use smart phones to move and navigate around the city and there is need to improve mobility. Open transport is being developed and improved in order for citizens to have good services. Mostly application are being development.  Open data is the fuel of smart cities. It is very difficult to develop smart cities without having access to open data.  Sharing the open gives and produces more opportunities for different cities.

Nezar Maroof, Director of Strategy, Business Process Reengineering & Enterprise Partnership, Bahrain eGovernment Authority, Kingdom of Bahrain.

Challenges to servicing the people before the introduction of eGovernment led to the govt to start working on the eGovernment systems. Now other countries are learning from the kingdom of Bahrain on the successful eGovernment services

eGovernment Success Factors

• Leadership is very important –
• Partnership with stakeholders such as private sectors and nongovernmental organization by making campaigns and awareness to maximize the information about the programme.
• Clear visions and strategy objectives
• Transparent in execution deadline
• Commitment
• Research and development long the fields of study and survey
• Tenuous measurement of customer satisfaction through CSI
• Focus group about the eservice and the eChannels and how to continuously improve

Several teams were created to work at different levels of the project and because of commitment from various parties, the eGovernment project was successful and the continued feedback from the users proved to be a vital aspect. eGovernment portals are able to be accessed through different service almost 320.

Eikazu Niwano, Producer and director of produce group, R & D Planning Department, NTT Corporation, Japan

2020 Olympic Games are a major driving factor n the issue of smart city and sustainability in Japan. The Japanese government have taken a different perspective in the manner they are addressing smart city issues. Increasing safety is also an agenda that helps to have and create smart cities.  Trust and sharing is Resilience. In the govt of the internet of everything we need to assure the people in the social environment. There must be trust among different entities such humans and the objects, services data. Trust is an important

Vaino Olev, IT director, City of Tallin, Estonia

From disruption technologies to sustainable use of smart devices

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Sustaining technologies corresponds to well known technologies that undergo successive improvement. We are using more devices nowadays and in Estonia the nu

The use of mobile internet in Scandinavia and the Baltic states in 2014 has increased considerably as sown. For example the following have been recorded in Finland 5GB /M, Sweden 3GB/M and Estonia 2.7GB/M

Smart city means smart citizens. How do we cut on the fears of people using the information on the devices in a smart city? There is a need to have people using smart devices in a secure way and ensure people are taught to protect themselves. Nowadays there are many invitations with apps asking people to download something and install apps that they d not require. 70% of people in Estonia use their devices in a very secure environment.

Herve Rannou, CEO Items International, CEO CITYZEN DATA, France

Open Data and Big Data in Smart cities

Data needs to be managed and there are more concerns regarding the management of this data. Should cities manage their own data like they manage their water issues? Data is stored differently and we have private sector running internet and mobile providers, how can they local authority accesses this data. There must be some form of infrastructure that allows the sharing of this data especially when it requires to serving the citizens. Private data is very crucial and companies may not be obliged to share data.

Godrief Smit, International Policy Director, ESC-European Shippers Council, Belgium

Trends in urban logistics (tips and trucks)

Transport is an important aspect of our daily life and it affects us, however transport has some challenges such the following;

• Noise pollution and congestion
• Electronic ordering
• Empty running
• High cost
• No coordinated policy

Ecommerce is another mode of conducting business, it seems that ecommerce is a solution but it also used transport for the delivery of goods using transport. We also have the issues of collecting garbage in our cities by trucks that also cause pollution and the noise. These issues are to be dealt with at different levels, EU level and the local level. Emissions are also important issues that must be taken into consideration by making best practices available transparency, follow the prescribed standardization and better coordination. Urban logistics needs coherent approach and need to concentrate on lasting solutions and legal framework should be developed.

The Chair Desiree Miloshevic, opened the session 7: Smarter Regulation in the Internet Age: “A New Policy Toolbox” and gave the turn to the moderator of the session Gerald Pogorel, who wanted first to state that even if we are talking about smarter regulations, the regulations weren’t dumb at all before. By smarter regulations we mean new kinds of regulations and policies that the Internet Age enables and needs in a way. He also noted that now it is time to shift from legacy monopoly to competition. In his opinion, the central issues are how to build a completely new network (interconnected mobile, 5G and 4G) and how to foster innovation and do it in a competitive manner.

Klaus Nieminen, Communications Network Specialist from FICORA, Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority: Regulatory framework was built in a time of telephony networks, there used to be very thick book to tell the operators how to manage networks and to do things, however that is the old way and it is difficult to innovate so it is not right anymore.

Government can do new rights and so on, but we need to have a less, better and more focus regulation for telecommunication. Sector specific regulation for telecommunication is necessary. We need some regulations to make sure end-users have access to the infrastructure that is secured and reliable. It might be better that we do not duplicate the current framework, instead we should make play field equal and probably something may be left out even.

When it comes to digital signal market, what we should probably do including:

• Make sure we have a health commercial media due to the internet and competition
• Issues that prevent free movement within the Europe.

Klaus gave an example of the action preventing free movement within Europe is that he cannot watch the national TV series in foreign countries.

The way of doing regulation is that we should believe in cooperation. Cooperation tightens the connectedness and probably widens the openness at the same time. In addition, he shared his favorite way of doing regulation is to self-regulation. However it is pointed out by others that this might meet difficulties when it comes to EU level.

Margot Dor, from Strategy Development ETSI-European Telecommunication Standards Institute, joined to the discussion and pointed out that the word ‘regulation’ has to be used carefully, because people may understand it differently. For example, policy isn’t the same as regulation. Also, all the regions are doing things differently and they have different regulations. Margot also talked about competitiveness and she wanted to ask an open question directly addressed to the European Commission, but also to for all of us to think about: “What is the vision behind regulations and how do they support the competitiveness of Europe?

Margot addressed the collaboration with other stakeholders: “You are successful if everyone cooperates”. Relating to the subject, she asked us the “16 dollars question”, so to say, referring to the earlier session where one of the panelists said that every dollar invested to the internet, gives us back 15 dollars. To continue the earlier session, Margot asked; Where does the money go, to what social cost and whether the money is equally shared with the market players within the society?

Claudia Selli, EU Affairs Director in AT&T represents AT&T states that the company helps their customers to mobile, go to cloud and go global. In this day and age everything is connected over internet, which requires network has certain capacity and lots of investment. In addition it is necessary to have policy framework which is proper and flexible so that we can better meet customer’s needs and grow healthy. It is also important to foster innovation, increasing participants in market, when the participants amount is increased there will be more chances to innovate and create better environment for the market.

The company serves customers on EU level and there are over twenty different regulations they have to focus. If the regulations and the laws could be smarter and better then it may make start-ups in the market to grow, and same for IT&T to develop better. Besides that, it is also important to scale up the IoT.

Nigel Hickson, VP in ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, discussed about creating equal opportunities for all no matter where people live. Today, for example in Finland, you can sense where the internet is going in the future and how the internet has transformed the society. The Internet is part of everyone’s life here. But in Nairobi for example, many people cannot even access to the internet. So when we are talking about smart telecommunication, at the same time there are places where there is no independent regulator or telecommunication. So we have to remember that regulation depends highly on the market you are looking at.

As Margot did earlier, Nigel also referred to the earlier session where it was said that regulation involves all the players, saying that “of course regulation has to involve all the players!”. Everyone has to come together to ensure that the regulation is taken forward in a sensible way. Interaction with the parties is needed.

Sarah (Xiaohua) Zhao, Partner Perkins Coie LLP, talked about the new development in China regarding telecommunication and what are the challenges for Chinese lawmakers. She pointed out that situation in China regarding regulation is quite different from for example in EU, there are many self-regulations. About 40 regulations and policies are issued for industries like the telecom and internet industries. The most important one is the rule to promote in conversion of telecom broadcasting and internet. The government has tried to promote that but the market nature is, they have their own territory so that the conversion could not take place for a long time. The government has tried to launch the law for telecom over 20 years but it is still not realized and the conversion is a problem.

Not long time ago Chinese government has issued the new policy of telecom which gives specific goals and also defines which agencies should be in charge. The new platform has expanded to transportation ministry and local bodies and licenses will be issued case by case in the future.

She also shared the news that the three sectors of telecom, broadcasting and internet are promoting a conversion. This action would combine the resources make for use of the infrastructures; for competition aspect, it will also bring opportunities for other companies rather than the monopolies in the industry for example the three monopolies of Chinese telecom companies(China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile) now would have to share the play field with broadcasting companies and vice-versa that the telecom companies could also get into the broadcasting industry. For users it is beneficial because it increases the choices available for users and probably since there will be more players in the field, the price would be decreased accordingly which is good for users as well.

With a lunar eclipse at 6 AM over Oulu, and nearly 350 participants from 37 countries gathered in Oulu’s City Theatre we’re off to a great start of the Global Forum 2015, “Shaping the Future”.

After Mr. Sebastian Lévy, the Vice President of the Global Forum, welcomed everyone to Oulu and officially declared the Global Forum 2015 open. Mrs. Sylviane Toporkoff, the Chairman of the Global Forum, warmly welcomed this year’s Global Forum’s participants to Oulu thanking the Prime Minister of Finland, Juha Sipilä,  and the Mayor of Oulu, Matti Pennanen, for the honor of their presence and acknowledging the incredible help from city of Oulu’s professional team, all the Global Forum partners, supporters, moderators and speakers who made the Global Forum 2015 possible.

Focusing on digitalization – an extremely important topic in the modern world – these 2-day long presentations and debates will broaden perspectives and act as the platform for new ideas and new collaborations.

Mr. Markku Markkula, the President of the Committee of the Regions, welcomed everyone at the opening pointing out the Committee of the Regions as an EU institution focuses on not only on what needs to happen at the local and the regional levels, but also on what could happen in the future. The concrete simple measures are not enough anymore; the mindset shift is needed to move “from unemployment to employment and from problems to challenges” and see the opportunities that exist. The mindset shift also means using the latest and coming technology effectively. The key priority of the Committee of the Regions is on sustainable growth and development, which involves:

• Boosting the research and innovation capacity of the regions and bridging the digitalization divide between them;
• Boosting the entrepreneurial spirit;
• Creating the right conditions for digital networks to flourish;
• Removing key differences between the online and offline worlds;
• Stimulating leading in the regional networks.

Innovation and digitalization are the drivers of the modern world, capable of unlocking people’s potentials and making them more connected to each other.  

Mr. Juha Sipilä, Prime Minister Finland, welcomed all the guests to the Global Forum in his hometown OULU, the Capital of Northern Scandinavia. He said ICT was his area of specialization before he went to politics, and mentioned the opportunity and challenges digitisation brings to healthcare and society. After taking office in May this year, Mr. Sipilä leads the government’s strategic effort that highlights the importance of development of digitization, experimentation and regulation. The Internet of Things will not only benefit the public service, but also the private sector. Mr. Juha Sipilä noted Finland’s role of a global leader in the field of ICT and related services, with positions in these areas still remaining strong. However, the world is changing and Finland needs to keep up with change, setting long-term goals of ensure Finland makes the best use of digitization. In doing this, we need to be flexible and think creatively to enable better decision making and better management.

The Prime Minister concluded his presentation with a small tip on how to do fine in Oulu: you have to be able to smalltalk about ice hockey and understand the engineering humour 🙂

Mr. Matti Pennanen, Mayor of City of Oulu, also welcomed Global Forum attendees and presenters from over 30 countries. He gave a brief overview of innovative city of Oulu, which is one of the youngest cities in Europe – average age of 36.5, with nearly 40,000 students out of a total population of 250,000, people and the first city to test the first 5G network. Oulu, Finland has a long tradition of technology and mobile sector, and has know-how and expertise in these sectors. Workers in Oulu are highly educated and highly skilled, with more than one third of the population holding an academic degree. The startup movement in Oulu is as strong as ever – more than 500 startups in ICT and other spheres are working, developing and being funded.  Oulu is well known for its innovation in ICT and digital research and development, which has been made possible by the co-operation between the Universities and companies. Mr. Matti Pennanen emphasized the advantage of Oulu region, for its connection with the Arctic.

Right after the welcome addresses, Mrs. Sylviane Toporkoff, the Chairman of the Global Forum, asked Mr. Juha Sipilä, Prime Minister of Finland, “What does the digitalization mean in practice in government?”. The Prime Minister replied that as an engineer, he always has his toolbox with him, and the digital tools are among the best ones in there.

This session was focused on cyber and security and related new challenges in a global context.

Benedict Suzan, Senior Prospective Analyst, Airbus Group Corporate, France opened the session by stressing the importance of this topic and the different perspectives coming from different industries and multiple countries.

Shakeel Tufail, the CEO of SecureNinja, started his presentation by asking what are we trying to protect and his answer was all-encompassing from  data, time, money, reputation and brand, to legal issues and government. Some of these translate into money and lives. Data is the new currency. Many of the previous forums focused on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device or Disaster), that provided a dialogue to address solutions for the previously listed challenges. Some other cyber security challenges include: increased connectivity to the world, increased complexity of systems, risk of external vendors/third party software, too much reliance on compliance and standards, and lack of experience and knowledge. Privacy can’t be controlled in this day because there are no global standards. To catch a thief you have to think like a thief.

Colin Williams the director of SBL; Honorary Fellow at University of Warwick; visiting p professor at De Montfort University, UK, stated that “the future war is not with blood but with bits and bytes” and this war on cyber security is not fought with blood but rebuilding the democracy with bits and bytes. Citizens and state should not be living fear of each other with open or closed data, when there is nothing to hide there is nothing to fear.

According to Juha Röning Professor Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Oulu, Finland, cybersecurity is about cybertrust, vigilance and reducing vulnerabilities. It’s a serious game of hunting, but we realize that the bucks are hunting us, not us hunting them. US Government (White House) invited University of Oulu to brief on cyber security and trust, and US leadership was impressed by Oulu’s pioneering role in this domain. Research on cyber trust has gained nation-wide prominence and was set as a priority, but government’s plans for budget cuts may affect this effort. New strides are being made to maintain Finland’s status of a trusted digital services provider, and building its brand of integrity.

Mike Ahmadi, Global Director of Business Development, Synopsis, Inc USA, used the term 0-day vulnerability to address the time gap from the moment a vulnerability happened until it detected. Unknown vulnerabilities are bad. Known vulnerabilities are a big problem. Even with known vulnerabilities, we are delayed or negligent in solving these problems.  For example, Java has identified 374 known vulnerabilities in java runtime (of the 374, over 150 vulnerabilities in Java scored critical), but no solutions to prevent this were identified or implemented. It’s very important that you pay attention to the vulnerabilities, especially deal with those known ones before new products and services are launched to the market.

Today we can’t live without software, so we have to put pressure on the software industry, and require organizations to provide us as consumers with secure products and provisions ensuring security, such as the Cybersecurity Bill of Rights.

Lasantha De Alwis is the Director/Head of Operations Department & Corporate Secretary, CTO – Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization which helps developing countries and economies with online trade of goods and service (such as eBay) in a context where cyberspace is viewed by governments as a channel for development. The government’s priority to engage in the main stream cyberspace; and balancing this with people’s concerns about privacy in cyberspace is an illustration of conflicting objectives in the field of cybersecurity. More commonwealth countries are working on cybersecurity than on data protection and privacy. In national cyber-policy making, the engagement of civil society is limited.

Additionally, there are future  cybersecurity challenges and trends that have been predicted, such as:

• Increasing demand for greater degree of privacy and the control of own data
• Continuous friction between security and liberty, which takes precedence will be determined by the scale of economic development
• Practice of democracy will change due to cyberspace, vastly increased civil society engagement in the democratic process
• Global cyber-policy making may not be as broadband as is required, due to resource, knowledge and commitment constraints

According to Philippe Wolf, Cybersecurity Progect Manager, IRT System X – Institut de Recherche Technologique, France, there is nothing private anymore about privacy. As of 2010, public data and information is the new social law, so there is nothing to hide. There has been a clash of managing public information, dignity and liberty. Google is the largest data cruncher, and smart phones are the largest collectors of geolocation services. There are also various efforts in cyber surveillance. Four privacy functions/methods of cyber deception, which include: anonymity, pseudonymity, unlinkability, and unobservability. We are facing a Privacy Paradox, so in conclusion – we have to comeback to human rights.

According to Louis Granboulan, Senior cybersecurity expert, Airbus Group Innovations, a new approach may be needed for ensuring data privacy. a new approach may be needed for ensuring data privacy. The goal is to protect sensitive personal data but this concept is tricky to define and may for example include IP address and voice template. The privacy you want to protect is not your info on your ID card but who you really are. Medical data has been the first concern for personal data protection.

Data analysis is progressing faster than regulation and anonymization techniques. People usually give away some privacy for lower services or better services. Personal data will leak everywhere, e.g. finger print is not a secret because we leave it everywhere. The proposed new approach entails empowering people to enforce the right for anyone to know what can be deduced from using that data.

In conclusion:

• Fighting against the availability of the data will fail
• Fighting against the misuse of the data may succeed: misuse is the risk that people should really be afraid of.

Petri Vilander, Cyber Security Manager, Corporate Customer, Elisa Corporation, Finland, opines that technology is not the solution of cyber, but it is the process which we should look at including cyber risk prevention, preparedness, and threat protection. We should focus more on technology procedures than technology itself to address cyber vs. information security. He also pointed out some new security challenges which include the following:

• Threat diversity will increase: “Due to the variety of objects adversaries can target, many of which are in insecure locations, attackers are able to devise new methods the cybersecurity industry has yet to face and blend sophisticated techniques to accomplish their mission.“
• Remediation will become more urgent and more complex: “When an attack does happen organizations can’t necessarily isolate a system because the cost and implications of shutting it down may be greater than the cost of an infection, presenting serious tradeoffs between protection and continuity of operations.”
• The attack surface will expand: “Case IoT, with billions of new devices connected to the IoT (including smart meters, heating and air conditioning systems, health monitoring devices, remote sensors for gas and oil lines, etc.) and more devices connecting all the time, the ability to gain visibility into these attack vectors, let alone close them to malicious actors, is increasingly ”