Pulse on the Principles

The Principles for Digital Development were created over a decade ago as international development and humanitarian practitioners began integrating accessible digital technology in programming. And while the Digital Principles didn’t quite revolutionize the field, their establishment created a common language and vision around how to institutionalize lessons learned. That was in 2016. Fast forward and a lot has changed: digital technology is accessible, commonly adopted into programming, and we are witnessing new kinds of technology emerging that have incredible potential to both help and harm economies, societies, and the way we work and live. In this mini-season, we will look ahead to explore the new challenges that come with new technology and see how global actors and the Digital Principles themselves can evolve to ensure that technology benefits all.

Widespread adoption of digital technology has improved the way we access information, services, and economic opportunities, but at what cost to the environment? Claudine Lim hosts Carlosfelipe Pardo and Angelina Fisher to weigh the tradeoffs on how technology both exacerbates and mitigates the impacts of climate change and the natural environment.

Emerging technologies are introducing a new digital era, driving innovative business and service models. This comes with new pressures for regulators and global actors to balance public interests and fair markets, all while allowing innovative businesses to thrive. Miriam Stankovic (Senior Digital Policy Specialist, DAI) sits with host, Claudine Lim, to explore critical questions and approaches to ensuring equitable and sustainable governance frameworks, protocols, and policy systems.

The Digital Principle “Reuse and Improve” is often applied to data: by leveraging existing information, we can drastically reduce operating costs and quickly improve services and systems. On a national level, opening data flows can impact economies by increasing trade volume and productivity while reducing prices for industries that increasingly rely on data. Thus, for any nation participating in the global economy, effective and clear policy on cross-border data flows is necessary. But as we know, there are legitimate concerns around risks to human rights and citizen safety. In this episode, Angelina Fisher (NYU School of Law), Tom Orrell (DataReady), and Chris Calabrese (Microsoft) compare their industry’s innovative approaches to governing the surge in data and designing robust policies that retain a fine balance between the benefits and risks of data flows and governance.

The use of digital technologies in international development and humanitarian programs to deliver information, services, and assistance has become commonplace, but cybersecurity in these areas have been largely untapped. Without it, ICT becomes a potential new point of failure that could threaten to undo development progress. In this episode, Claudine Lim sits with Melissa Hathaway and Francesca Spidalieri to discuss key takeaways for development and humanitarian practitioners to consider from their recent report "Integrating Cyber Capacity into the Digital Development Agenda." Mark Manantan (Resident Vasey Fellow, Pacific Forum) joins the conversation to share cyber strategies, challenges, and breakthroughs in the Indo-Pacific.

The Digital Principle, "Address Privacy and Security", is framed around the idea of data and how it’s collected, used, stored, and shared. Recent community discussions have been increasingly focused on how ICT practitioners can better preempt digital harm issues other than data protection. Claudine Lim sits with John Zoltner of Save the Children US, and development consultant researcher, Priscilla Wahome Majani, to explore how digital development stakeholders are collaborating to advance child protection in the digital space.

When it comes to “openness” in digital development, one of the most important things to remember, and one of the easiest to forget, is why we’re doing this work in the first place. Connecting the strategy of openness to social impact outcomes, we sit with Dr. Ronda Zelezny-Green (Program Director, Capacity Accelerator Network at DataDotOrg and Digital Principles Advisory Council Member) to discuss the values and challenges of open educational resources. Amandine Le Pape (Co-Founder, Matrix.org) shares examples of how open technology platforms can speed national digital transformation and Samson Goddy (Co-Founder, Open Source Community Africa) gives us a glimpse of the potentials of an open future.

In the last episode, we discussed ways open source licenses for software can unlock digital cooperation. In this episode, Sarah and Heath explore how that might be able to happen. Lucy Harris (Digital Public Goods Alliance), Bernhard Kowatsch (World Food Program Innovation Accelerator), and Max Mehl (Free Software Foundation Europe’s Public Code program) weigh in on how this concept helps and challenges innovation startups, share how one can apply the “open principle” to their ideas, and set clear definitions and checklists for how to better achieve the Sustainable Development Goals through public goods and open source.

“Use Open Standards, Open Data, Open Source, and Open Innovation” – what does that mean for your organization? Sarah Farooqi and Heath Arensen of the Digital Impact Alliance’s Open Source Center, introduce the principle of openness this mini-season, as it relates to digital development, how it impacts ways of working, and what it means for shared global goals. They chat with Angela Odour-Lungati (Ushahidi) and Hong-Phuc Dang (Open Source Initiative) to explore what “being open” might mean for each type of organization or project, its impact in other fields, and look at a use case in Kenya.

Episode 3 kicks off with a bit of background from Ian Gray on the third hurdle in creating a sustainable business model for digital solutions in the humanitarian and development sectors: the viability risk problem. Essentially, can you procure sustainable funding? This is perhaps the most visceral challenge for businesses in the space, given the way that procurement works, the risk-averse nature of many organizations, and the failure to invest in digital solutions and knowledge across the sector.

In Episode 2, Ian Gray provides some background on one of the biggest challenges in creating a sustainable business model for digital projects, businesses, and solutions in the humanitarian and development sectors: the feasibility risk problem. We’ll hear from Vanessa Goas, Chief Operating Officer at Development Gateway, and Tyler Radford, Executive Director at Humanitarian Open Street Map.

Episode 1 kicks off the mini-season and delves into the sustainability challenge for the digital humanitarian and aid sectors. It will also provide a bit of background on our Fondation Botnar-funded project to build a toolkit to help entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. We’ll hear from Aarathi Krishnan, Strategic Foresight Advisor at UNDP, and Lars Peter Nissen, Director at ACAPs and the H2H Network about the challenges of constructing value propositions that hang together in real life - and what that means for the ethics of our innovation ecosystem.

We’re in the final episode for Pulse on the Principles: Series 1! Tune in with Claudine Lim as she chats with Maurice Sayinzoga, DIAL’s Senior Manager of Policy and Research, and Grace Nyakanini of the Smart Africa Alliance to break down components of digital transformation and how development actors are using digital tools to change the way traditional services and systems work.

The world’s population has more than doubled in the past 50 years, but food systems have not kept up. The problem is not the amount of food produced, but food systems and distribution; malnutrition and undernourishment in all their forms continue to be a growing challenge. Claudine Lim sits with Qingfeng Zhang (Asia Development Bank) and Sibi Lawson-Marriott (World Food Programme) to explore how technology is unlocking new ways to improve supply chains and food security, but also how policy and markets must rise up to help meet the potential

We’re wrapping up the first series of Pulse on the Principles’ with a mini-season on governance! Government investment strategy is a crucial pillar to delivering on national digital transformation, but challenges like corruption, failure to protect human rights or build for sustainability lead to suboptimal investments and loss of public trust: what strategies and technology are in place to help governments operate openly and responsibly? Host Claudine Lim sits with Angela Kastner, DIAL’s Procurement Strategy Director, and Warren Smith, Deputy Director of the UK’s Government Digital Service, to explore best practices in public procurement that drive digital transformation.

In our last episode, Laura and guests discussed challenges and solutions to address the digital gender divide: however, approaching this work through a gender binary lens is insufficient at best, and dangerous, at worst. For the final episode in our “Leave No One Behind” mini-season, we’re joined by Mala Kumar and Dr. Carlos Acosta to break down unique privacy, security, and data ownership concerns and protocols for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Digital technologies have become a common reality, changing the way we use information, making inclusion more important than ever. Yet, women still fall behind in participating in the digital revolution and remain largely invisible in international development datasets. Host Laura Walker McDonald examines causes and consequences of the digital gender divide and gender data gaps with guests Dr. Revi Sterling (USAID), Naomi Naik (GirlUp), and Professor Mmaki Jantjies (University of the Western Cape) and solutions to tackling gender inequalities.

Laura Walker McDonald hosts the third mini-season on ‘Leave No One Behind.’ She sits with Joelle Hangi, co-founder of Refugee Artist and Authors, and Olivier Nkunzurwanda, founder of Refugee Innovation Center, where they share their experiences as refugees as well as the work they are doing to improve refugee financial and digital literacy, the results of policies applied to refugees, and development of projects that aim at improving the their self-reliance and rights.

Delivering quality education to remote and isolated communities is a challenge for international development programs, and has only become more pronounced in the COVID-19 reality. For the final episode in the Education mini-season, host Allana Nelson chats with Amplio’s Toffic Dapilaah and InformEd International’s Lisa Zook about tools and initiatives that provide educational information to rural communities - and how they’re doing it in safe, socially distanced ways.

While online health platforms and digital tools offer young people new ways to safely access information about their physical wellness and sexual health, its quantity is limited and its quality is often poorly regulated. Sahil Tandon, public health and human rights advocate, and Pavita Singh, Acting Executive Director of Girls Health Ed, sit with host Allana Nelson to discuss the importance of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) and considerations in the digital health ecosystem.