This truly interactive and engaging opening session brought together:

• Anna Gomez, Partner and Attorney at Law, Wiley Rein LLP, USA – the moderator of the session;
• Mikko Kosonen, President, SITRA-Finnish Innovation Fund, Finland;
  • Yoshio Tanaka, Professor, Tokyo University of Science (TUS), Graduate School of Innovation Studies,Japan;
  • Jørgen Abild Andersen, Director General Telecom (RTD), Chairman of OECD’s Committee on Digital    Economy Policy (CDEP);
  • Adriane LaPointe, Senior Policy Advisor in the State Department Office of Communication and information Policy, US Department of State, USA;
  • Luis Jorge Romero, Director General ETSI-European /telecommunications Standards Institute;
  • Anja Wyden Guelpa, State Chancellor, State of Geneva, Switzerland.

Ms. Gomez opened the session by bringing to everyone’s attention that 57% population does not have access to internet. On the other hand, this year’s Global Forum is taking place in the city with the first testing lab for 5G which is estimated to bring about 65 billion dollar revenue by year 2025. With such a development, infrastructure, security and privacy become the main focus points for the future.

Mr. Andersen started his talk with the viewpoint that focusing only on full mobile broadband coverage is a narrow approach towards the forthcoming boom of high-speed Internet connectivity, and that our approach should address three major challenges faced today: poor innovation, low growth and unemployment. He stressed that the problem towards this boom should be dealt with by reliance on the following four pillars:

• E-infrastructure: Full broadband coverage and open internet to everyone.
• E-Applications: Provide services to fill the high speed internet pipes.
• E-Security: Ensuring privacy and trust that are vital for the system to be successful.
• E-Skills and e-literacy: People should be made digitally skilled and literate to fill the gap for the digitally industry.

According to Mr. Andersen digital economy is the solution to future economy and employment.

Mikko Kosonen is the president of the Finnish Innovation Fund (SITRA) since 2008. He discussed the importance of increasing the wellbeing while disconnecting the economic growth from the consumption of natural resources, and transitioning from top-down massive production of goods to bottom-up production of services.

He further discussed healthcare and ICT, and Finland’s potential to build a leading market for ICT-enabled preventive healthcare. The new framework of the preventive healthcare system will be enabled by the following conditions:

• Transparent steering
• Single channel funding
• Separating service ownership from service production

Mr. Kosonen also talked about the new economic paradigm –the circular economy – characterized by:

• A new business model which generates no waste or loss, and reduces the dependency of virgin natural resources;
• Products, materials and their value which remain in circulation instead of linear usage;
• Added value for products generated through digitization and services
• Consumer-based models creating added value for consumers instead of ownership

Realizing these opportunities requires:

• A new type of collaboration acknowledging that global competition increasingly takes place on ecosystem, not on individual company level.
• A new business ecosystem developed based on setting national priorities for new growth areas; multi-disciplinary research combined with active participation, and intensive public-private-people partnership
• New incentives (taxation, regulation etc.) and innovation-driven public procurement to make this happen.

Mr. Kosonen stressed the need for more innovation from the private sector in conjunction with the government, as well as the need for the public and private sector taking up a leading role in implementing more effective digitalization strategies in various industries to enable higher added value in production and service offering.

Anja Wyden Guelpa was the first woman to be elected the chancellor of state in Geneva 2009 and re-elected in 2013 for the second term and currently presides over the College des Secretaire Generaux of the seven states departments of Geneva and is board member of Swiss Tourism and of the RTSR regional council.

Ms. Guelpa focused on the importance of open data and open source – the new imperatives to be considered and implemented in the new digital economy as they enable greater transparency and accountability in the public sector, increased government legitimacy and co-creation of public goods. She illustrated these core building blocks using the example of Switzerland’s electronic voting system – CHVote in which the e-voting ballot was made transparent just like the traditional voting ballot boxes by making the source code publically available for future improvements. Few aspects of CHVote are worth being noted: internally developed system; public ownership of the e-voting system and public access to the code to test it and improve it. Yet, as Ms. Guelpa stressed, not everything is open and transparent. Some “good secrets” remain safe in the Switzerland’s e-voting system and that is the secrecy of each individual’s vote which should never be in jeopardy.

Jorgen Abild Anderson, Chairman Committee on Digital Economy Policy, OECD, discussed the main elements of today’s digital strategy and the main challenges we are still facing (poor innovation low growth and high unemployment). Mr. Anderson stressed the four pillars of the digital economy:

• E-infrastructure
• Openness of data
• E-security and e-privacy
• E-skills and e-literacy

Challenges that need to be overcome to achieve a flourishing digital economy:

• Building a full comprehensive system that encompasses the four pillars
• Re-establishing trust
• Filling in the gap in skills and qualifications
• Government’s unawareness of what needs to be done within its departments and across its department to establish a fully-functioning digital economy
• Strong coordination across different sectors

Adriane LaPointe, the Senior Policy Advisor in the State Department Office of Communications and Information Policy, US Department of State, talked about extending the benefits from the Internet and digitization to those who still don’t have access to Internet. The Internet can be a driver of a growth if it is available, accessible and affordable, and no country should be left out of the Internet Age. The real challenge nowadays is how to develop a coherent, holistic government approach about the Internet of Things.