G20 Digital Ministerial Meeting on Digital Economy

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22-Jul-2020: G20 Digital Minister’s Meet

A virtual meeting of G20 Digital Economy Ministers hosted by Saudi Arabia which is holding the presidency of G20, took place today. Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology represented India during this virtual meeting. In the wake of global pandemic like COVDI19, Mr. Prasad strongly emphasized the need for building a resilient global supply chain and shared the vision of Prime Minister of India for making India as attractive destination for investment closely integrated with global supply chains.

Shri Prasad told this global gathering about how India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has managed the COVID19 crisis far better than many other countries. The bold decision of the Prime Minister to go for an early nationwide lockdown helped in the country in curbing the spread of the virus as well as prepare for the upcoming challenges effectively.

The Union Minister shared India’s digital innovations that helped in fight against COVID19. He spoke about initiatives like Aarogya Setu mobile app, geo-fencing system for monitoring quarantined patients and COVID19 Savdhan bulk messaging systems during this meeting. He also spoke about how digital technology helped the government of India in providing relief to the economically weaker sections of society during this crisis. Using digital innovations of India like Direct Benefit Transfers and digital payments even the weakest in the society was provided various financial relief during the lockdown.

Eloquently expressing India’s commitment to leverage emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence for inclusive growth and development specially in healthcare and education, Shri Prasad emphasized the need for building trustworthy Artificial Intelligence systems that can transform the society.

The Minister specially emphasized on the data related issues and sovereign rights of countries to protect data privacy and security of its citizens. He mentioned that India is soon going to put in place a robust personal data protection law which will not only address the data privacy related concerns of citizens but also ensure availability of data for innovation and economic development. In view of these concerns, the digital platforms having presence in many countries must become trustworthy, safe and secure.  He told the digital Ministers of the G20 countries that it is time to acknowledge that digital platforms anywhere in the world have to be responsive and accountable towards the sovereign concerns of countries including defence, privacy and security of citizens.

10-Jun-2019: G20 Ibaraki-Tsukuba Ministerial Meeting on Trade and Digital Economy Held

Amid the advancement of digitalization, trade and the digital economy have become inseparable issues. Against this backdrop, Japan hosted the first G20 meeting bringing together ministers of trade and of digital economy.

At the meeting, all participating G20 members confirmed the need to tackle the issue of trade tensions as, trade tensions rise and the global trade environment becomes increasingly difficult. Moreover, the G20 referred in the Ministerial Statement to specific details of WTO reform issues, including notification systems and regular committees, on which the Trilateral Meetings of the Trade Ministers have been holding discussions. Ministers also agreed, for the first time in G20, on the need to take action regarding the functioning of the WTO dispute settlement system. Furthermore, G20 members mentioned, also for the first time, the need for enhancement of the rules on industrial subsidies, an issue on which the Trilateral Meetings of the Trade Ministers has been holding discussions, and also included in the Ministerial Statement, for the first time, rule-making on electronic commerce, an initiative tackled by WTO like-minded member countries under the leadership of Japan.

Concerning the field of digital economy, G20 members exchanged views on how to achieve an inclusive, sustainable, safe, trustworthy and innovative society through digitalization. There was discussion on the concept of “Data Free Flow with Trust (DFFT)”, governance innovation (agile and flexible policy approaches in the digital economy), human-centric AI, security in the digital economy, and SDGs and inclusion (tackling the digital divide and promoting digitalization).

26-Aug-2018: G20 Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting

At the G20 Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting in Salta, in the north-west of Argentina, G20 ministers and senior officials issued a declaration that reflects the G20’s commitment towards promoting “policies and actions that catalyze digital transformations. The Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting, held on 23-24 August, was attended by 33 heads of delegation- Ministers, senior officials and representatives from invited countries and international organizations, like EU, UNCTAD, ITU etc. India was represented by Union Minister for Electronics and IT & Law and Justice, Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Building on the contributions of the G20 Digital Economy Task Force, delegates deliberated upon efforts to create conditions that help governments, the private sector and civil society maximize the benefits and confront the challenges posed by technological progress. The other focus area of the meeting was digital inclusion, in particular the gender divide. Other related issued such as Digital government, digital infrastructure and measuring the digital economy were also deliberated.

Addressing the Plenary of the G-20 Digital Economy Ministerial meeting, Sh. Prasad said that India’s digital story is a story of hope and growth; of opportunities and profits. But above all it is a story of digital inclusion and empowerment. Digital India is a mass movement today touching the lives of a billion people. Minister Prasad said that he was very assured to note that an important theme of the meeting was bridging the gender divide adding that gender empowerment was an important focus for his government.

Highlighting the enormous scale of India’s digital infrastructure that included 1.21 billion mobile phones, of which 450 million are smartphones, nearly 500 million internet subscriber and an ever increasing broadband availability being supported by optical fibre connectivity in 250,000 village clusters, Minister Prasad said that the success of Digital India programme lay in the conscious efforts to bridge the digital divide and promote digital inclusion, based upon technology which is low cost, affordable, developmental and which fosters empowerment and inclusion.

The Minister, in particular, highlighted the important role played by India’s home grown technologies for promoting digital payment, including importance on interoperable open-source technologies so that these platforms can be used by others to develop more innovative structures as well as leading to new norms of digital identity based authentication which are a generation ahead. All this is in addition to the stellar role played by India’s IT companies, which have left their mark in 200 cities of 80 countries, enabling India to emerge as a profound digital power, with India’s digital economy likely to become 1 trillion $ economy in the next 3-5 years, he added.

Minister Prasad said that India believed in internet access for all, adding that the Internet is one of the finest creations of the human mind, but it cannot be the monopoly of a few. He also stated that while Cyber-space is truly global, it must be linked with local ideas, local culture and local views. He said that the largest and most dynamic markets for digital services are in Asia, Latin America and Africa with India having one of the largest foot-print of several popular social media and other digital platforms. It is only fair and just that the revenue and profit generated from these platforms be equitably reinvested in the largest markets to create more infrastructures and generate more job opportunities for the people there, he added.

Minister Prasad articulated India’s concerns about data protection and individual privacy and informed the meeting that India had already put in place stringent measures backed by laws passed by the parliament. He said that privacy cannot prohibit innovation nor can privacy become the shield for the corrupt or terrorists. We need data to improve business but the data must be anonymous, objective, and taken with consent, he added.

Minister Prasad stressed that India had taken a serious note of reported misuse of social media platform data. Such Platforms will never be allowed to abuse our election process for extraneous means, he added. He said that the purity of the democratic process should never be compromised and that India will take all required steps to deter and punish those who seek to vitiate this process.

India’s views received wide appreciation and support from several delegations including the hosts Argentina, Germany and the EU. Several other countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Indonesia and Japan expressed a keen desire to work with India in a range of IT and cyber related fields. India also presented a non-paper at the meeting listing its experience of using government platforms for inclusion and economic development, which was well received.

The meeting saw great interest in India’s JAM trinity of more than 300 million bank accounts of the poor along with Aadhar and mobiles which is empowering the poor by direct benefit transfer of their welfare entitlement into their bank account.

The G20 member nations agreed to promote policies that will contribute to bridging all forms of digital divide, with special attention to the digital gender divide. The countries agreed to promote digital government and digital infrastructure, strengthen the digital skills of the workforce, deepen the analysis towards digital economy measurement, and to share experiences and lesson learned”.

The G20 Ministerial meeting allowed India to showcase the inclusive use of digital technology by the Government to empower the people. It also allowed India to articulate it's views on global issues relating to cyber security, data protection and innovation for growth.

Pin It
Whatsapp

22-Jul-2020: G20 Digital Minister’s Meet

A virtual meeting of G20 Digital Economy Ministers hosted by Saudi Arabia which is holding the presidency of G20, took place today. Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology represented India during this virtual meeting. In the wake of global pandemic like COVDI19, Mr. Prasad strongly emphasized the need for building a resilient global supply chain and shared the vision of Prime Minister of India for making India as attractive destination for investment closely integrated with global supply chains.

Shri Prasad told this global gathering about how India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has managed the COVID19 crisis far better than many other countries. The bold decision of the Prime Minister to go for an early nationwide lockdown helped in the country in curbing the spread of the virus as well as prepare for the upcoming challenges effectively.

The Union Minister shared India’s digital innovations that helped in fight against COVID19. He spoke about initiatives like Aarogya Setu mobile app, geo-fencing system for monitoring quarantined patients and COVID19 Savdhan bulk messaging systems during this meeting. He also spoke about how digital technology helped the government of India in providing relief to the economically weaker sections of society during this crisis. Using digital innovations of India like Direct Benefit Transfers and digital payments even the weakest in the society was provided various financial relief during the lockdown.

Eloquently expressing India’s commitment to leverage emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence for inclusive growth and development specially in healthcare and education, Shri Prasad emphasized the need for building trustworthy Artificial Intelligence systems that can transform the society.

The Minister specially emphasized on the data related issues and sovereign rights of countries to protect data privacy and security of its citizens. He mentioned that India is soon going to put in place a robust personal data protection law which will not only address the data privacy related concerns of citizens but also ensure availability of data for innovation and economic development. In view of these concerns, the digital platforms having presence in many countries must become trustworthy, safe and secure.  He told the digital Ministers of the G20 countries that it is time to acknowledge that digital platforms anywhere in the world have to be responsive and accountable towards the sovereign concerns of countries including defence, privacy and security of citizens.

10-Jun-2019: G20 Ibaraki-Tsukuba Ministerial Meeting on Trade and Digital Economy Held

Amid the advancement of digitalization, trade and the digital economy have become inseparable issues. Against this backdrop, Japan hosted the first G20 meeting bringing together ministers of trade and of digital economy.

At the meeting, all participating G20 members confirmed the need to tackle the issue of trade tensions as, trade tensions rise and the global trade environment becomes increasingly difficult. Moreover, the G20 referred in the Ministerial Statement to specific details of WTO reform issues, including notification systems and regular committees, on which the Trilateral Meetings of the Trade Ministers have been holding discussions. Ministers also agreed, for the first time in G20, on the need to take action regarding the functioning of the WTO dispute settlement system. Furthermore, G20 members mentioned, also for the first time, the need for enhancement of the rules on industrial subsidies, an issue on which the Trilateral Meetings of the Trade Ministers has been holding discussions, and also included in the Ministerial Statement, for the first time, rule-making on electronic commerce, an initiative tackled by WTO like-minded member countries under the leadership of Japan.

Concerning the field of digital economy, G20 members exchanged views on how to achieve an inclusive, sustainable, safe, trustworthy and innovative society through digitalization. There was discussion on the concept of “Data Free Flow with Trust (DFFT)”, governance innovation (agile and flexible policy approaches in the digital economy), human-centric AI, security in the digital economy, and SDGs and inclusion (tackling the digital divide and promoting digitalization).

26-Aug-2018: G20 Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting

At the G20 Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting in Salta, in the north-west of Argentina, G20 ministers and senior officials issued a declaration that reflects the G20’s commitment towards promoting “policies and actions that catalyze digital transformations. The Digital Economy Ministerial Meeting, held on 23-24 August, was attended by 33 heads of delegation- Ministers, senior officials and representatives from invited countries and international organizations, like EU, UNCTAD, ITU etc. India was represented by Union Minister for Electronics and IT & Law and Justice, Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Building on the contributions of the G20 Digital Economy Task Force, delegates deliberated upon efforts to create conditions that help governments, the private sector and civil society maximize the benefits and confront the challenges posed by technological progress. The other focus area of the meeting was digital inclusion, in particular the gender divide. Other related issued such as Digital government, digital infrastructure and measuring the digital economy were also deliberated.

Addressing the Plenary of the G-20 Digital Economy Ministerial meeting, Sh. Prasad said that India’s digital story is a story of hope and growth; of opportunities and profits. But above all it is a story of digital inclusion and empowerment. Digital India is a mass movement today touching the lives of a billion people. Minister Prasad said that he was very assured to note that an important theme of the meeting was bridging the gender divide adding that gender empowerment was an important focus for his government.

Highlighting the enormous scale of India’s digital infrastructure that included 1.21 billion mobile phones, of which 450 million are smartphones, nearly 500 million internet subscriber and an ever increasing broadband availability being supported by optical fibre connectivity in 250,000 village clusters, Minister Prasad said that the success of Digital India programme lay in the conscious efforts to bridge the digital divide and promote digital inclusion, based upon technology which is low cost, affordable, developmental and which fosters empowerment and inclusion.

The Minister, in particular, highlighted the important role played by India’s home grown technologies for promoting digital payment, including importance on interoperable open-source technologies so that these platforms can be used by others to develop more innovative structures as well as leading to new norms of digital identity based authentication which are a generation ahead. All this is in addition to the stellar role played by India’s IT companies, which have left their mark in 200 cities of 80 countries, enabling India to emerge as a profound digital power, with India’s digital economy likely to become 1 trillion $ economy in the next 3-5 years, he added.

Minister Prasad said that India believed in internet access for all, adding that the Internet is one of the finest creations of the human mind, but it cannot be the monopoly of a few. He also stated that while Cyber-space is truly global, it must be linked with local ideas, local culture and local views. He said that the largest and most dynamic markets for digital services are in Asia, Latin America and Africa with India having one of the largest foot-print of several popular social media and other digital platforms. It is only fair and just that the revenue and profit generated from these platforms be equitably reinvested in the largest markets to create more infrastructures and generate more job opportunities for the people there, he added.

Minister Prasad articulated India’s concerns about data protection and individual privacy and informed the meeting that India had already put in place stringent measures backed by laws passed by the parliament. He said that privacy cannot prohibit innovation nor can privacy become the shield for the corrupt or terrorists. We need data to improve business but the data must be anonymous, objective, and taken with consent, he added.

Minister Prasad stressed that India had taken a serious note of reported misuse of social media platform data. Such Platforms will never be allowed to abuse our election process for extraneous means, he added. He said that the purity of the democratic process should never be compromised and that India will take all required steps to deter and punish those who seek to vitiate this process.

India’s views received wide appreciation and support from several delegations including the hosts Argentina, Germany and the EU. Several other countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Indonesia and Japan expressed a keen desire to work with India in a range of IT and cyber related fields. India also presented a non-paper at the meeting listing its experience of using government platforms for inclusion and economic development, which was well received.

The meeting saw great interest in India’s JAM trinity of more than 300 million bank accounts of the poor along with Aadhar and mobiles which is empowering the poor by direct benefit transfer of their welfare entitlement into their bank account.

The G20 member nations agreed to promote policies that will contribute to bridging all forms of digital divide, with special attention to the digital gender divide. The countries agreed to promote digital government and digital infrastructure, strengthen the digital skills of the workforce, deepen the analysis towards digital economy measurement, and to share experiences and lesson learned”.

The G20 Ministerial meeting allowed India to showcase the inclusive use of digital technology by the Government to empower the people. It also allowed India to articulate it's views on global issues relating to cyber security, data protection and innovation for growth.

2017

11-Apr-2017: G20 Digital Ministerial Meeting on Digital Economy held in Germany.

The G20 Digital Ministerial Meeting was held in Dusseldorf, Germany. G20 cooperation on the Digital Economy has become a special priority, subsequent to the adoption of Digital Economy Development and Cooperation Initiative in the 2016 Hangzhou Summit, under the Chinese Presidency. The German Presidency has carried this forward, and, realizing the potential of digital technologies and its wide impact on the overall economy, has elevated the Digital Economy Task Force to the Ministerial level.

The G20 Ministers expressed their warm appreciation for the accomplishments of the Digital India programme. They noted how Digital India is provisioning a unique digital identity – cheaply, securely, and with privacy – to 1.1 billion citizens via Aadhaar. They appreciated India’s historic digital payment push through innovative and indigenous solutions like UPI, DBT, BHIM and AADHAR enabled payment systems, based on easily accessible mobile platforms. They observed how India has leveraged 250,000 Common Service Centres to drive digital inclusion, entrepreneurship, digital services, and productivity across rural India’s grassroots, empowering India’s less privileged citizens. The G20 Ministers particularly noted how Digital India’s digital literacy mission is transforming digital accessibility for 60 million households.  OECD, as an invitee, made a special mention of how India has emerged as one of the world’s most vibrant e-commerce environments and startup nations.

The Hon’ble Minister, in his interventions, highlighted how India – as the world’s fastest growing major economy – was harnessing digital technology as a major inclusion and growth mechanism. He emphasized how Digital India is bringing a transformative change through various schemes, harnessing the potential of a young Indian demography, and so driving a successful Digital Economy. He explained the Government’s driving motivation in advancing the Digital India programme, “Digital technologies and the internet, which represents some of the finest creations of the human mind are today a ‘global common good’; which we can harness for bridging the digital divide, empowering and improving the quality of life for our citizens.”

The Hon’ble Minister also highlighted Digital India’s unprecedented effort to drive affordability in digital technologies, including creation of low cost digital identity infrastructure called AADHAR, laying down an optical fibre infrastructure to reach all Gram Panchayats under BharatNet, developing Apps and solutions for digital payments, ensuring participative Governance through MyGov and using these digital technologies while ensuring privacy and security through a robust cyber infrastructure. He emphasized how India is advancing in the knowledge economy by catalyzing innovation. He said: “We believe that innovation is key to our success as a digital economy.  India today has one of the most vibrant startup ecosystems with over 4000 startups every year working in emerging technology areas including IoT, data analytics, Block Chains and machine learning. Many of these startups are also in the forefront of developing solutions to many of our grand challenges in areas such as health and education.”

The Hon’ble Minister particularly emphasised that India, as a leading supplier of IT/ITeS services and skilled technology manpower to the world, would be happy to share its experience and knowledge with its partners across the developing world. He noted that the Digital India model – engaging, as it does, issues of digital inclusion and divide that are experienced across the developing world – may offer insight and input to emerging nations’ digital programmes. He called for G20 countries to actively cooperate in combating cybercrimes and cyber terrorism.

India’s interests have been effectively conveyed to the G20 forum, and suitably reflected in the Ministerial Declaration and Roadmap.  This includes unleashing the potential of Digital Economy to drive digital inclusion and reducing digital divide, improved connectivity, digital literacy and skills. India’s essential interests in a strong digital economy, open and secure internet with localized content, free flow of information and mobility of professionals across borders have also been highlighted.