“Digital technologies are accelerants, they are cross cutting enablers of sustainable development. It is not just one SDG that they can facilitate or hinder but it is all the SDGs. That is how central the digital system is” @Lourdes Montenegro, Lead Digital Sector Transformation at the WBA.
While the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies it has also widened the gap between the under-connected and the hyper digitalised. There are numerous examples of those that are being left behind. Across the world the lack of access to both remote and online learning is expected to perpetuate intergenerational inequality and poverty. In the UK there are harrowing examples of the people on the margins being further disadvantaged by the lack of access - this includes older people, those on low incomes or without jobs, the homeless…..
In this episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast my guests Heddy Ring, Lourdes Montenegro and I discussed the 2nd iteration of the WBA’s Digital Inclusion Benchmark. The benchmark aims to highlight industries and companies that are currently leading the way in fostering digital inclusion to trigger a race to the top, as well as holding underachieving companies accountable.
We spoke about trends, the COVID bump, impact washing👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾
👉🏾 The surprising reality that progress on digital inclusion is very slow and most companies are lagging behind with very few demonstrating a strong commitment
👉🏾 The marked discrepancy in how companies disclose environmental data vs social and governance data
👉🏾 While Tech companies are gung ho on AI, they are failing to consider the risks. Just 19 of the 150 companies surveyed commit to publicly available principles of ethical AI. Given the human rights implications the numbers are chilling
👉🏾 Techno-solutionism and the fact that most tech for good initiatives are one-off projects
👉🏾 On an average, women make up just 23% if the technical workforce in the 150 digital companies assessed, highlighting the need for more women in tech roles.
👉🏾 And just 15 of the 150 companies disclose that they have the basic processes in place to identity, assess and integrate human rights risks and impacts in their business practices.
I was also surprised to not see any Indian telecom companies amongst the leaders, considering how innovative they have been in making mobile telephony accessible to the poorest and marginalised
If you would like to know more, listen here
Memorable Passages from the episode:
👉🏾Thanks for having us as well Sudha.
👉🏾 Thank you very much. It's a great opportunity to be here and have this conversation with you on this important topic of digital inclusion. Thank you.
👉🏾 That's a great way to start our conversations Sudha. As you know, the WBA is a global initiative that's really devoted towards incentivising and building an accountability mechanism for the corporate sector to really do more on sustainable development goals.
👉🏾 And when we were established, we did a global consultation, thousands of people worldwide, in many different countries; and what came out was that if we are to achieve sustainable development, we really need to approach it from a systemic perspective, you know, think about system change. And what are the systems that we need to change to really achieve sustainable development.
👉🏾And the digital system, was one of those identified in this global consultations, to be really important. Digital technologies are..... maybe we can call them as accelerants, that's how many people consider digital technologies; they are accelerants, they are cross cutting enablers of sustainable development.
👉🏾 So it's not just one SDG that they could facilitate or hinder, but it's the range, all the SDGs. And that's how crucial, that's how central the role of the digital system is. But as we know with the pandemic, it just exploded. And now we see a COVID bump. Did you know there was a COVID bump, in the number of people who are now reported that to be online. So not just a baby bump, but the COVID bump of internet users. But we have to stop and ask ourselves, with the speed of digitalisation, Is it inclusive? Is it trust worthy? So we need to not only accelerate digital transformation, but what kind of digital transformation are we accelerating? Is it one that leaves no one behind, that makes sure that people in all walks of life benefit from technology and also feel safe and secure enough and that the technology itself and the institutions that deploy and profit from technology are trustworthy enough.
👉🏾 So we need digitalisation that is inclusive and trustworthy. So that's why we spend a lot of our time at WBA, actually, we poured a lot of attention into what we call, we label it as digital inclusion, but what it really means is in a broad way, inclusive and trustworthy digitalisation. And the benchmark itself, looks at many different aspects of that from universal access, to digital technologies. So facilitating all levels of digital scales to fostering trustworthy use, but also making sure that companies are conscious enough to, innovate in a way that is ethical, that is inclusive and that is open. And that allows the broadest membership in society to benefit from technological innovation.
👉🏾 So in short, the benchmark is free, it's publicly available, it assesses by 2023, 200 of the world's most influential technology companies. And we've already started that with 100 and 150
👉🏾 I think Lourdes you explained it very, very well. From the company perspective, I think that the digital inclusion benchmark also serves to inspire and to encourage companies to put more efforts into making sure that no one is left behind. And it also enables companies to learn from each other as best practices. So we can improve our own approach and work in this area.
👉🏾 I can start and Lourdes maybe you can elaborate on that. Digitalisation is currently transforming society. So it brings really both new opportunities and new risks and those who are digitally included can make the most out of these new opportunities, while those who are not a risk being left behind; for example, when public services are digitalised, and education, and many social arenas are moving online.
👉🏾 So ensuring that everyone has that access to reliable connectivity and the right digital skills are really a key to make sure that no one is left behind. And when we look at the research, for example, the GSMA's mobile economy 2021 report, it really shows very clearly that connectivity and digitalisation can accelerate progress in relation to all the 17 UN sustainable development goals.
👉🏾 So there is a very clear link between these two topics that we are discussing. And of course what we feel is that the private sector has a very important role in driving the societies towards progress with the SDGs. But Lourdes if you want to add to that?
👉🏾 I think Heddy really encapsulated it very well. And perhaps what I can do is give a few concrete examples so that you know, it concretises in the mind of our listeners. What's the link between digital inclusion and SDGs. If we think of a specific SDG, for example, let's say, No poverty or gender equality, or if we think about health and wellbeing; then we can think of very specific examples where digital technologies actually facilitate that.
👉🏾 So in the COVID pandemic itself, we've been using digital technologies, we've said that during the pandemic, it actually brought to fore and made digital inclusion more personal for us. Because now we're so dependent on connectivity, on digital technologies just the function, in our everyday lives, from our work, what we're doing now, we're talking to each other, children getting educated online, to facilitate, to help prevent the spread of the virus in society, people talking to their doctors via video call and doing all these consultations. So we can really see, concretely that these things can facilitate sustainable development goals. But of course there are risks and harms and that's where we need to also be careful; we need to make sure we protect children online, we need to make sure that we respect data privacy and make sure that data is secure and people feel secure and trust the technology, otherwise they won't be using it at all.
👉🏾 There is definitely a marked difference. So as caveat we've actually tightened and strengthened the requirements in the scoring guidelines from 2020 to 2021, so there's a bit of a challenge in terms of comparability. And the reason we did that is because there's a lot of risks around, you know, impact washing, and we don't want that to happen.
👉🏾 So we want the companies who are at the top to be really at the top, and they're really doing something very substantial. However, we did do a backwards comparison, using the old methodology and what we found is that of the first 100 companies who were assessed in 2020, 43% improved their scores overall.
👉🏾 So using the old methodology, we do see an improvement overall in companies. I think the important trend to note here is that there's a change in the narrative, there's a change in the discourse. So before a lot of the telcos, for example, will be talking about digital inclusion, they consider it, material to their business. But not a lot in the software platforms, e-commerce not a lot in the hardware. But it's spreading now and they're realising that, actually this is important to all of us and that we can frame our corporate responsibility in terms of inclusive and trustworthy digital transformation, because that's closer to your core business. So that's what we noticed, there's really a change in the direction of the narrative.
👉🏾 At the same time, there are some really bright spots I would say. And you will be surprised about the bright spots. So if you think about gender in technology; so we say it's really important that you disclose how many women are in your technical workforce and whether they are involved in your research and development, because you need diverse voices when you're creating technology.
And we're seeing an increase in that disclosure and in that kind of commitment and focus from East Asia.
👉🏾 Yeah, and that's really a bright spot because usually it's the US companies who are leaders in this and that's because they are legally required to do so, they have laws that required this. But East Asians are waking up and companies are waking up. So that's really very exciting.
👉🏾 I can start. There is definitely two reasons. First of all, what I can see from the telecommunications sector perspective; number one, the telco sector has a clear impact on digital inclusion and we know through our recent materiality assessment that we carried out in Telia company, that the sector also has very strong expectations to contribute to digital inclusion from our stakeholders, from investors, from policymakers, from customers, so the expectations are there.
👉🏾 From the other perspective, there is also a very clear link to business; for telcos digital inclusion is about serving our customers in the best possible way, and we know that it supports equal opportunity and human rights of individuals, which is key to making sure that no one is left behind, we also see that digital skills have become, a must have asset.
👉🏾 So by integrating the inclusion perspectives in everything we do, we can actually broaden the customer base, and better meet the customer's needs in this rapidly changing world while at the same time inspiring our stakeholders. and one of the additional perspective from the business angle is that the digital inclusion initiatives also, what we have seen bring the potential of deeper collaboration with the business customers and the municipalities, as well as trust from a broad range of stakeholders.
👉🏾 So I think at least from the telco perspective, what we have experienced and likely also other telcos is that, that we do have these expectations from our stakeholders. And we can really see the benefits for the business in engaging in this. In addition, of course, but this is something that we need to do to really drive the progress towards the SDGs that we have.
👉🏾 I think Heddy touched on the key points, but I just would like to add a bit more and maybe ask if Heddy shares in this suspicions as well or views. You know, so what we're seeing is that the telcos and, even like the hardware companies who have direct customer experience, I think the difference is that they are actually in touch with the customer.
👉🏾 They have a presence, they have facilities, they are in the localities where they are; and they are faced by the needs of their stakeholders, of their communities, of their customers. If you are a platform, a large global platform, you face a disembodied audience and you are further away from the ground, from the realities of the ground.
👉🏾 So there's a lot more challenge for you to understand, what the needs are, but you can, you have the resources to of course overcome those challenges of understanding the needs on the ground. The other we're seeing is a bit of an age factor; so the telcos are definitely some of the more mature companies in the benchmark, they've been around for a while, you know, they understand the world a bit better and the IP and software service companies tend to be really young, and some of them are pre IPO, so they haven't really gotten they're act together yet. But some of them have, that's the good thing they realised, Oh, we're going to IPO this year so we also need to get our act together and how do we frame our corporate responsibility towards the world. So there's also these differences.
👉🏾 Maybe I can start with an overview. So I think what we're seeing is that, there are actually very few companies with a more comprehensive approach towards digital inclusion. I think that's the key, that the comprehensiveness of your understanding and embrace of that responsibility. So those who do have a truly comprehensive approach across all these four areas from access, skills used, to innovation; they tend to do really well and they, what we would call pass. So then we have 27 of those companies globally out of the 150, of course, of which Telia is in the 11th place. So that means that they've gotten very far in terms of comprehensively understanding all these issues and embracing it as a part of their responsibility to society as a whole.
👉🏾 So I think it starts from that, there's a learning curve, the industry is pretty young compared to other industries. So I always say, if you think of the car industry, the technology industry is where it was when we were debating seatbelts or whether people should die in car crashes and whose responsibility it is. So we are in the formation stages of what is good, what the industry should do well. But I think we're getting there and I think that's the key point on where we are, and that's why we see these pretty low numbers, but that is going to improve.
👉🏾 I agree with what Lourdes say. I think this is a relatively new area and clear requirements, expectations and frameworks in the area of digital inclusion are not yet as established as for example, in the area of climate and circularity, when we compare. But I think also that the work that World Benchmarking Alliance is doing, for example, with the Digital Inclusion Benchmark is really one great example of driving their awareness of digital inclusion and the potential for companies to work towards. So this really definitely contributes a lot to the ongoing progress and hopefully within a few years we can see much more progress overall and then companies really stepping up and taking the commitment.
👉🏾 Thank you for that question. Coming back to what I mentioned earlier, the materiality assessment that we carry out on a regular basis, we really found out that this is one of the top material issues for our stakeholders. And in our sustainability agenda, which is also fully integrated into the business strategy, we focus on three prioritised sustainability impact areas. One is climate and circularity, number two is digital inclusion and number three is privacy and security. So this is really kind of decided and overall among one of the top three sustainability priorities. And in addition, we have other sustainability impact areas that we work with in a systematic way, such as children's rights, diversity and inclusion and so on. So focusing on digital inclusion will enable Telia to deliver on our purpose, which is to reinvent better connected living. So it's very clearly linked to our company purpose and we do have a very clear commitment and also tone from the top, to support our digital inclusion agenda, which I think is super important in order to really make the difference and get the progress across the organisation.
👉🏾 I should also mention that there is a geographical difference, because we operate in the Nordics and Baltic's; which are essentially highly digitalised countries with already extensive access to connectivity and technology and intense demands for good network quality. So in our markets, digital inclusion is maybe less about access to essential digital services and devices, and more about the quality of connectivity and securing the proper digital skills for the vulnerable groups in the society that otherwise risk of being left behind.
👉🏾 So in our digital inclusion strategy, we're really focused on providing reliable access to connectivity and building digital skills. And when we talk about access, of course, it is about investing in the 5G and 4G Networks and really making sure that the network experience is very high in between the urban and rural areas, for example, but it's also about accessibility for people with disabilities.
👉🏾 So it's about training the employees in accessibility topics, we have also established an accessibility center of expertise, and one example really is Telias gaming center service that can be provided with customised tools for people with disabilities. So that for example, day centers for youth with disabilities can really get started with access to...
