Data and Development

ID4Africa’s 10th Annual General Meeting enters a new phase of growth and maturity: A perspective from Civil Society

ID4Africa celebrates its 10th Annual General Meeting this year in Cape Town, South Africa with a program that pushes against multiple boundaries and achieves a new breadth and greater inclusion of diverse stakeholders. ID4Africa’s AGM is easily the most significant identity conference in the world at this point. There are multiple reasons for this; an important one is that the knowledge content at ID4Africa is not replicated anywhere else. In the past, this knowledge base has been focused primarily around government stakeholders. This year, this roster will now carefully expand to civil society organizations that have been deeply involved with African ID systems to gather additional perspectives and foster cooperative dialogue.

WPF to speak before the State House of Mongolia for its National Consultation on e-Health, and before the Human Rights Commission of Mongolia

5 April 2024, Paris, France — World Privacy Forum Executive Director Pam Dixon has been invited to speak at the State House of Mongolia for the Government of Mongolia’s National Consultation on e-Health. She will be speaking twice at this event; first, on the topic of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and second, on Big Data in e-Health.  She will be presenting later in the week on AI governance and Privacy before the Ministry of Digital Development and Communications, and on the topic of AI Governance Tools before the National Human Rights Commission of Mongolia. All speeches will take place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

WPF's contribution to ID4Africa Workshop on Privacy and Data Protection in ID Systems, Nairobi, Kenya 2023

The World Privacy Forum is pleased to provide a summary of Executive Director Pam Dixon's work in Nairobi, Kenya at the ID4Africa AGM. Dixon served as the Senior Special Rapporteur for two workshops at the 2023 ID4Africa Annual General Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya 23-25 May.In June, ID4Africa hosted a live ...

OECD Going Digital Horizontal Project: news and event

WPF’s Executive Director Pam Dixon will be presenting at an upcoming OECD Workshop on the topic of data stewardship, access, sharing, and control in regards to national data strategies. WPF will be speaking as a organizational member of the formal civil society stakeholder group at OECD (CSISAC). https://www.oecd.org/digital/going-digital-project/ ). This ...

WPF mini documentary on challenges in ID systems - in collaboration with ID4Africa

WPF launched a mini-documentary about problems in identity systems on 17 November, 2021 in collaboration with ID4Africa. Digital identity systems are generally accepted as positive tools for social good. Nevertheless, they can pose several dangers and cause significant concerns. This mini-documentary takes viewers on a tour around the world to ...

Roundtable: Are current models of data protection fit for purpose? Understanding the consequences for economic development

WPF’s Executive Director Pam Dixon will be moderating a Center for Global Development roundtable May 20 to discuss data governance models from the perspective of low and middle income countries. This is part of her ongoing work as co-chair of the Governing Data for Development project working group. Michael Pisa, ...

Gender Matters in Identity Systems: How an ID4Africa Livecast Broke Important New Ground in Gender and Privacy 

Recently, ID4Africa held an extremely compelling and meticulously researched livecast on the issue of gender and identity systems, with good discussions that also touched on privacy in this context. The livecast boasted an excellent roster of experts, all of whom are active work in the field. Each presented well-substantiated, groundtruthed research and insight about the myriad ways that how identity systems mediate gender matter a great deal. The cumulative effect was eye-opening. 

Addressing Cross-Border Spillovers in Data Policy: The Need for a Global Approach

Global debates about data governance standards have primarily reflected the priorities and needs of rich countries, with less wealthy countries left in the role of “standards takers.” More needs to be done to ensure that digital governance policies pursued by the world’s largest economies do not create unintended consequences that make it harder for other countries to support a strong domestic digital economy and participate in the global digital economy. This is a joint blog post by Michael Pisa, Center for Global Development, WPF's Pam Dixon, and Benno Ndulu, Oxford Professor.

Comments of World Privacy Forum to EDPB re: data localization and privacy

WPF provided feedback on the European Data Protection Board's Recommendations 01/2020 on measures that supplement transfer tools to ensure compliance with the EU level of protection of personal data. In responding to the Recommendations, we found several areas which, if improved, would enhance the stated goals of the EDPB for ...

Governing Data for Development: Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

The World Privacy Forum is pleased to announce its work on a new project with the Center for Global Development (CGD). This project, Governing Data for Development, is led by CGD, with WPF's Executive Director Pam Dixon as co-chair of the project working group with co-chair and Oxford professor Benno Ndulu, who is also the former Governor of the Central Bank of Tanzania. The project, which has been underway for a year, has produced its first report, which is a scoping report based on interviews with key stakeholders. This blog post, which provides background on the project and links to the first project report, is being jointly posted at WPF and CGD.