Summary of the 74th session of the Committee on the Digital Economy (CDEP)

June 8, 2017

The CSISAC has participated in the 74th Session of the Digital Economy Policy Committee (CDEP), held in conjunction with the meetings of its Working Parties on Measurement and Analysis (MADE), Communications, Infrastructure and Services (CISP) and Security and Privacy (SPDE). The CSISAC delegation was formed by the Steering Committee members Marc Rotenberg in in the CDEP and SPDE, and Claire Milne attending the SPDE and the MADE. The CSISAC wants to thank all the civil society experts that have taken part in the preparation of the meeting, contributing with analysis and suggestions of the OECD draft papers and discussions.

An important part of the meeting was focused in the update about the Horizontal Project Going Digital, and also in the discussion of the draft chapters of the forthcoming Digital Economy Outlook, where the CSISAC contributed asking for a more consistent coverage of the privacy and security issues, raising the assymetry in the responsabilities derived from data collection, specially with regard to consumers. The need to remark the importance of security and privacy aspects was a common issue in the interventions and proposals of CSISAC, including the reports on data security breaches, national privacy policies, digital security incidents or digital risk management. The CSISAC expressed interest to take part in those projects, and also to engage in the ongoing reviews of the Recommendations on Cryptography, on Critical Information Infrastructures, and on Children Online.

At the CISP and the MADE, the CSISAC contributed with analysis on the differnt reports on telecomunication policy and digital measurements. The case of the refugees was raised by the CSISAC in the context of an analysis about broadband access in rural and remote areas, and the need to take into account also low usage and pre-payment mobile communications in order to ensure the integrity in the compariosn of telecommunication prices, as those could speak about affordability issues; where the need to use the price payed by the user, instead of the potentially different price announced on the provider websites was raised as well. Still in the measurement work, the CSISAC encouraged the OECD to continue performing research on the effects of robotisation in the labour market, as the strong findings could suggest potential displacements of labour to lower skilled positions, that should need to be considered by policy-makers.

The CSISAC will continue fostering this issues as specific policy issues in the context of the Civil Society Goals, engaging in the OECD Horizontal Project on Digitalisation. The involvement of the CSISAC will consist in the participation of the policy making process both at the OECD and at the interaction with other international settings, and the dissemination of the resulting outcomes. The CSISAC calls the Civil Society participants with expertise on digital topics to engage in this process. Learn more about the CSISAC, or directly contact the CSISAC Secretariat <liaison@csisac.org>