At MozFest, the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, UN Habitat, and BetaNYC would like to start a Digital Rights Helpdesk connecting officials and workers in city governments with expert advisors on ethical AI and digital rights. The helpdesk will support city governments in navigating the ethics and digital rights considerations of local digital strategies, policies and projects. Civil servants, city leaders, and service providers can share questions with advisors (including researchers, experts, creatives, makers) who can offer thought-provoking questions, project examples, policies, and prompts for cities. This session will introduce and catalyze the helpdesk project so it continues after MozFest and Open Data Week.
This session is open to all, but especially geared toward city stakeholders implementing digital projects/policies who could benefit from such a resource, as well as people who would want to take part in responding to their questions or advising them in meeting their needs.
if we have 3 participants, we will keep the discussions plenary. if we have 30 participants, we will create break-outs, to ensure fruitful and engaging discussions.
What is the goal and/or outcome of your session?:I. Go beyond the echo-chamber of digital policymakers and create a network of creative and out-of-the box advisors for municipalities with concrete questions, projects, policy-concepts or challenges.
II. Feedback on what the public perceives as trustworthy tech.
III. Include fields that go beyond more digital rights topics, but really focus on applied digital rights.
The Mozfest CC4DR Session should be a kick-start of something I would call a Digital Rights in/for Cities Hotline. City Administrations within our network experience the CC4DR as a safe-place to explore the greenfield of digital policymaking together. At the same time, this community of digital rights conscious civil servants risks becoming an echo-chamber. Increasingly, we see cities sharing their ‘concept-policies’ within our coalition for feedback from colleagues, or locally, for public consultation in their cities. Though, they tend to share at a point where it already feels safe to do so, not in the earliest stages of the process. Also, skills/knowledge might sometimes be lacking.
Milou Jansen - City of Amsterdam: Advisor Digital Ethics & Coordinator Cities Coalition for Digital Rights.
- Impact of data-driven technologies on society, in the context of smart - & wise - cities.
Intern
Executive Director of BetaNYC & government technology activist
Associate Programme Management Officer in Innovation