Journal of Science Policy & Governance | Volume 16, Issue 02 | May 27, 2020
|
Policy Memo: New Analysis Tools and Leadership Model for A Modern UN
To: The United Nations Secretary-General
Tobias Bienz (1), Spyros Schismenos (2,3), Garry Stevens (2), Nichole Georgeou (2)
|
Keywords: digital; analysis tools; development; frontier technologies
Executive Summary: Digitalization has disrupted the way products are distributed. With this came an influx of products that depend on network effects and thrive in a winner-takes-all market environment (Schilling 2002). A similar trend is being observed in many frontier technologies, including applications in the so-called ‘gig economy’, which will create winners and losers. Simultaneously, governments are experiencing an erosion of their tax base (Peng 2016). These resources are desperately needed to tackle the widening digital divide, combatting the lack of electricity, and providing internet access to the poorest (International Energy Agency 2017). The current strategy of the United Nations (UN) shows promise. However, the way the UN currently operates has not been adapted to meet the challenges of a digital economy. This is often observed in global-to-local applications, especially when generalized frameworks fail to adapt to communities with different characteristics and needs. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a guiding light to rally stakeholders around specific key issues and opens the field for collaboration. The UN is in a unique position to convince all participants to engage in negotiations, to mobilize substantial resources, and has the best chance to get concessions on restrictive systems such as the intellectual property arrangements (Haugen 2010). Systems need to be in place to facilitate technology transfers and capacities need to be built up to give the least developed countries (LDCs) a chance of catching up. The UN needs to bring international institutions, governments, civil society, academia, and the private sector to the table to enable LDCs to determine their own future (Moyo 2010). The UN should introduce more heuristic analysis tools to bring more diverse partners into workable collaborations to address these challenges. A new leadership system should also be introduced to provide clearer direction and autonomy to their contributors.
I. The age of hyper-scalable technologies and the digital divide
Digitalization disrupted the way products are being distributed. With this came an influx of products that depend on network effects and thrive in a winner-takes-all market environment (Schilling 2002). Network effects, more specifically positive network externalities, are defined as goods where “the value a user derives from a good increases with the number of other users of the same or similar good” (Schilling 2002, 387). A winner-takes-all market environment is characterized by a technology that displays an increasing return to adoption (Arthur 1989) resulting in a disproportionate amount of value captured by a limited number of entities. Many frontier technologies rely on a feedback cycle based on products that gather large amounts of data (the Internet of Things is often the poster child for this trend), machine learning to recognize patterns, and big data to improve performance (Kurbalija 2016).
We have seen a widening chasm in the West where many new technologies enable companies (e.g. Airbnb, Google, Facebook) to create a winner-takes-all scenario as network effects are one of the most crucial parts in creating the most benefit (Schilling 2002). A significant portion of the benefits is ultimately captured by very few entities, most often the company behind the innovative product; new technologies such as AI and big data have the same characteristics (Deloitte 2018). As a result, the entity with the largest data set to train the program becomes the best at what it does and therefore becomes the best product, which creates a reinforcing cycle.
Due to improvements in computation technology and better infrastructure, many of these products are delivered through the internet or are cloud-based and depend on a service business model, which implies that “the supplier commits to improving customers' value in use” (Kowalkowski et al. 2017, 7). This enables hyper-scalability where access to a product can be granted to thousands of users, simply by buying additional capacity from an existing data centre (Lehrig et al. 2018). The efficiency gains in these environments are immense and frontier technologies carry the promise of making whole industries significantly more efficient while simultaneously creating more value. In this winner-takes-all environment, it becomes increasingly difficult for least developed countries (LDCs) and their communities, which are lagging technologically, to follow the progress in digitalization of more modernized countries, leading to a digital divide that is increasingly difficult to overcome (van Deursen and van Dijk 2019). The digital divide in this context is understood as “the gap between people who have or do not have access to information and communication technologies” (van Dijk and Hacker 2003, 62).
In order to enable all countries to reach a more balanced position between efficiency gains and losing out in the marketplace of frontier technologies, key resources (e.g. know-how, access to patented technologies, education, increased government capacity) need to be made available. Currently, tax avoidance is common in most big technology companies, leading to fewer resources for states (Tehrani 2014). These resources are desperately needed to tackle the widening technology gap, combatting the lack of electricity and providing internet access to the poorest (International Energy Agency 2017).
As elaborated above, frontier technologies can bring immense gains to an economy. They can, however, also bring with them detrimental effects such as an increasing digital divide. While LDCs should benefit from the efficiency gains and the additional value created, it should also be ensured that the profits and locally developed intellectual property are not simply extracted by foreign companies (Ampah and Kiss 2019). The UN plays a critical role in solving this ethical dilemma. The opportunities and dangers of frontier technologies are both significant. Enabling negotiating parties to strike an agreement, which is beneficial to all participants may be a difficult task, but also one in which the UN can play a critical and strategic role.
We have seen a widening chasm in the West where many new technologies enable companies (e.g. Airbnb, Google, Facebook) to create a winner-takes-all scenario as network effects are one of the most crucial parts in creating the most benefit (Schilling 2002). A significant portion of the benefits is ultimately captured by very few entities, most often the company behind the innovative product; new technologies such as AI and big data have the same characteristics (Deloitte 2018). As a result, the entity with the largest data set to train the program becomes the best at what it does and therefore becomes the best product, which creates a reinforcing cycle.
Due to improvements in computation technology and better infrastructure, many of these products are delivered through the internet or are cloud-based and depend on a service business model, which implies that “the supplier commits to improving customers' value in use” (Kowalkowski et al. 2017, 7). This enables hyper-scalability where access to a product can be granted to thousands of users, simply by buying additional capacity from an existing data centre (Lehrig et al. 2018). The efficiency gains in these environments are immense and frontier technologies carry the promise of making whole industries significantly more efficient while simultaneously creating more value. In this winner-takes-all environment, it becomes increasingly difficult for least developed countries (LDCs) and their communities, which are lagging technologically, to follow the progress in digitalization of more modernized countries, leading to a digital divide that is increasingly difficult to overcome (van Deursen and van Dijk 2019). The digital divide in this context is understood as “the gap between people who have or do not have access to information and communication technologies” (van Dijk and Hacker 2003, 62).
In order to enable all countries to reach a more balanced position between efficiency gains and losing out in the marketplace of frontier technologies, key resources (e.g. know-how, access to patented technologies, education, increased government capacity) need to be made available. Currently, tax avoidance is common in most big technology companies, leading to fewer resources for states (Tehrani 2014). These resources are desperately needed to tackle the widening technology gap, combatting the lack of electricity and providing internet access to the poorest (International Energy Agency 2017).
As elaborated above, frontier technologies can bring immense gains to an economy. They can, however, also bring with them detrimental effects such as an increasing digital divide. While LDCs should benefit from the efficiency gains and the additional value created, it should also be ensured that the profits and locally developed intellectual property are not simply extracted by foreign companies (Ampah and Kiss 2019). The UN plays a critical role in solving this ethical dilemma. The opportunities and dangers of frontier technologies are both significant. Enabling negotiating parties to strike an agreement, which is beneficial to all participants may be a difficult task, but also one in which the UN can play a critical and strategic role.
-Read the full article through download.- |
References
- Ampah, Isaac Kwesi and Gabor David Kiss. 2019. “Economic Policy Implications of External Debt and Capital Flight in Sub-Saharan Africa’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries.” Society and Economy 41(4): 523–42. https://doi.org/10.1556/204.2019.41.4.8
- Anthes, Carolin. 2019. Institutional Roadblocks to Human Rights Mainstreaming in the FAO: A Tale of Silo... Culture in the United Nations System. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27759-8
- Arthur, W. Brian. 1989. “Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-In by Historical Events.” The Economic Journal 99(394): 116. https://doi.org/10.2307/2234208
- Brown, Tim and Barry Katz. 2009. Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organisations and Inspires Innovation. New York: Harper Business.
- Deloitte. 2018. “Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2019.” Deloitte.com.
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/pe/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/ Artificial%20intelligence.pdf - Deursen, Alexander JAM van and Jan AGM van Dijk. 2019. “The First-Level Digital Divide Shifts from Inequalities in Physical Access to Inequalities in Material Access.” New Media & Society 21(2): 354–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818797082
- Dijk, Jan van and Kenneth Hacker. 2003. “The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon.” Information Society 19(4): 315. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972240309487
- Elqadri, Zaenal Mustafa, Dewi Tri Wijayati Wardoyo, and Priyono. 2015. “The Influence of Motivation and Discipline Work against Employee Work Productivity Tona’an Markets.” Review of European Studies, 12: 59. https://doi.org/10.5539/res.v7n12p59
- Farivar, Cyrus. 2011. The Internet of Elsewhere. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
- Gregory Eady, Jonathan Nagler, Andy Guess, Jan Zilinsky, and Joshua A. Tucker. 2019. “How Many People Live in Political Bubbles on Social Media? Evidence From Linked Survey and Twitter Data.” SAGE Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019832705
- Haugen, Hans Morten. 2010. “Access Versus Incentives: Analysing Intellectual Property Policies in Four UN Specialized Agencies by Emphasizing the Role of the World Intellectual Property Organisation and Human Rights: Access Versus Incentives.” The Journal of World Intellectual Property 13(6): 697–728. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1796.2010.00401.x
- International Energy Agency. 2017. Energy Access Outlook 2017: From Poverty to Prosperity. OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264285569-en
- Klimek, Katarzyna. 2019. “The Implementation of ‘The St. Gallen Model for Destination Management (SGDM)’ in the Polish Carpathians: A Case Study of Six Bieszczady Communes.” Turyzm/Tourism 29(2): 55–67. https://doi.org/10.18778/0867-5856.29.2.06.
- Kowalkowski, Christian, Heiko Gebauer, Bart Kamp, and Glenn Parry. 2017. “Servitization and Deservitization: Overview, Concepts, and Definitions.” Industrial Marketing Management 60 (January): 4–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2016.12.007.
- Kurbalija, Jovan. 2016. An Introduction to Internet Governance. Msida, Geneva, and Belgrade: DiploFoundation.
- Lehrig, Sebastian, Richard Sanders, Gunnar Brataas, Mariano Cecowski, Simon Ivanšek, and Jure Polutnik. 2018. “CloudStore—towards Scalability, Elasticity, and Efficiency Benchmarking and Analysis in Cloud Computing.” Future Generation Computer Systems 78 (January): 115–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2017.04.018
- Ludji, Irene. 2018. “The Ethics of Solidarity and Human Rights: Insights from the World Council of Churches on United Nations Reform.” The Ecumenical Review 70(3): 430–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/erev.12373.
- Moyo, Dambisa. 2010. Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Peng, Wei. 2016. “Multinational Tax Base Erosion Problem of the Digital Economy.” Modern Economy 7(3): 345–52. https://doi.org/10.4236/me.2016.73038
- Rouvinen, Petri and Rikard Stankiewicz. 2009. “Are Intellectual Property Rights Hindering Technological Advance? The Need for Technological Commons.” Review of Policy Research 26 (1–2): 195–217. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-1338.2008.00375.x
- Rüegg-Stürm, Johannes, Simon Grand, and Uni-Taschenbücher GmbH. 2019. Managing in a Complex World: The St. Gallen Management-Model. Stuggart: utb GmbH. https://www.utb-studi-e-book.de/9783838552996
- Sachs, Jeffrey D. 2012. “From Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals.” The Lancet 379 (9832): 2206–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60685-0
- Schilling, Melissa A. 2002. “Technology Success and Failure in Winner-Take-All Markets: The Impact of Learning Orientation, Timing, and Network Externalities.” Academy of Management Journal 45(2): 387–98. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069353
- Sutherland, Jeffrey Victor. 2014. Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. New York: Crown Business.
- Tehrani, Sherry. 2014. “Welcome to the Amazon: Leading Online Retail from Local Tax Avoidance into Your Backyard.” The Tax Lawyer 67, no. 7: 875-908.
- United Nations. 2016. “The United Nations Leadership Model.”
https://undg.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/ 10/UN-Leadership-Model-Rev-Jun-2017.pdf - United Nations. 2018. UN Secretary-General’s Strategy on New Technologies. https://www.un.org/en/newtechnologies/images/pdf/SGs-Strategy-on-New-Technologies.pdf
- United Nations. 2019. “Management and Accountability Framework of the Un Development and Resident Coordinator System.”
https://undg.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/UNDS-MAF-2019-country-level-component-FINAL-editorial-rev-26APR.pdf - Vereinte Nationen, ed. 2018. Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development. World Economic and Social Survey 2018. New York: United Nations.
- Zollinger, Zach S. 2018. “Old Rules, New Issues: The Discovery of Social Media Information.” Computer & Internet Lawyer 35(6): 11–15.
Tobias Bienz holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. During the process of completing his degree, he consulted for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation on the ‘Impact Potential of Incubators for Employment and Income Creation’. He also taught a class on ‘Innovative Projects for a Sustainable Future’. His thesis focused on an analysis of the off-grid solar energy market in Ethiopia in collaboration with Nobel Prize nominee Gigawatt Global. Furthermore, he was selected as a Leader of Tomorrow at the 2018 St. Gallen Symposium, having successfully submitted an essay on the future of work. This essay was later developed into an exploration of ‘Humanitarian Entrepreneurship and Employee Shares’ presented at the Asia Pacific Humanitarian Leadership Conference in Melbourne last year.
During his bachelor studies, Tobias cofounded a social impact start-up in the Swiss mobility sector. His other engagements included a longstanding participation in the social entrepreneurship branch of oikos, volunteer experience in rural Thailand and support of the Lee Kuan Yew Responders group in Singapore during his semester abroad.
Spyros Schismenos is currently a PhD Fellow and Member of Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI) at School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University, Australia. Since 2016, he has been working closely with the UNESCO Chair on Conservation and Ecotourism of Riparian and Deltaic Ecosystems as the Focal Point for the Wider Region of Asia-Pacific. He is a Member of the United Nations Association of Australia (UNAA) Academic Network. His research disciplines focus on Humanitarian Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Disaster Management and Renewable Energy.
Garry Stevens is a Senior Lecturer in the Humanitarian and Development Studies (HADS) Program at Western Sydney University. As part of the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI), he is involved in projects examining population preparedness for disasters and critical incidents, including occupational risk and resilience factors among emergency service workers, Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (AUSMAT) and humanitarian aid workers and trainees. His recent work with Aid practitioners focuses on worker self-care and help-seeking attitudes in the context of work-related stress. He is also involved in population mental health and epidemiology, including technology assisted mental health care in hospital and community settings.
Nichole Georgeou is Associate Professor in Humanitarian and Development Studies, and Director of the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI) at Western Sydney University. She holds a PhD in Development Sociology, a Master of Social Change and Development (Research), and a Bachelor of Creative Arts from University of Wollongong, as well as a Diploma of Education from University of Newcastle.
Nichole is the author of the 2012 study ‘Neoliberalism, Development and Aid Volunteering’ (Routledge). Her research publications on volunteering, aid, development and food security have appeared in, among others, Journal of Sociology, Australian Journal of History and Politics, Australian Journal of Political Science, Third Sector Review, PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, PLOS One, Pacific Dynamics, and Voluntas.
Nichole is a Board Member of the Development Studies Association of Australia and is on the editorial board of International Gramsci Journal (http://ro.uow.edu.au/gramsci/). She is a regular article and book reviewer for journals in the disciplines of sociology, politics and in development studies. Before academia, Nichole worked as an aid volunteer and aid organizer/manager in Japan and in Vietnam, working with UNICEF and various civil society organisations.
During his bachelor studies, Tobias cofounded a social impact start-up in the Swiss mobility sector. His other engagements included a longstanding participation in the social entrepreneurship branch of oikos, volunteer experience in rural Thailand and support of the Lee Kuan Yew Responders group in Singapore during his semester abroad.
Spyros Schismenos is currently a PhD Fellow and Member of Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI) at School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University, Australia. Since 2016, he has been working closely with the UNESCO Chair on Conservation and Ecotourism of Riparian and Deltaic Ecosystems as the Focal Point for the Wider Region of Asia-Pacific. He is a Member of the United Nations Association of Australia (UNAA) Academic Network. His research disciplines focus on Humanitarian Engineering, Emerging Technologies, Disaster Management and Renewable Energy.
Garry Stevens is a Senior Lecturer in the Humanitarian and Development Studies (HADS) Program at Western Sydney University. As part of the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI), he is involved in projects examining population preparedness for disasters and critical incidents, including occupational risk and resilience factors among emergency service workers, Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (AUSMAT) and humanitarian aid workers and trainees. His recent work with Aid practitioners focuses on worker self-care and help-seeking attitudes in the context of work-related stress. He is also involved in population mental health and epidemiology, including technology assisted mental health care in hospital and community settings.
Nichole Georgeou is Associate Professor in Humanitarian and Development Studies, and Director of the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI) at Western Sydney University. She holds a PhD in Development Sociology, a Master of Social Change and Development (Research), and a Bachelor of Creative Arts from University of Wollongong, as well as a Diploma of Education from University of Newcastle.
Nichole is the author of the 2012 study ‘Neoliberalism, Development and Aid Volunteering’ (Routledge). Her research publications on volunteering, aid, development and food security have appeared in, among others, Journal of Sociology, Australian Journal of History and Politics, Australian Journal of Political Science, Third Sector Review, PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, PLOS One, Pacific Dynamics, and Voluntas.
Nichole is a Board Member of the Development Studies Association of Australia and is on the editorial board of International Gramsci Journal (http://ro.uow.edu.au/gramsci/). She is a regular article and book reviewer for journals in the disciplines of sociology, politics and in development studies. Before academia, Nichole worked as an aid volunteer and aid organizer/manager in Japan and in Vietnam, working with UNICEF and various civil society organisations.
DISCLAIMER: The findings and conclusions published herein are solely attributed to the author and not necessarily endorsed or adopted by the Journal of Science Policy and Governance. Articles are distributed in compliance with copyright and trademark agreements.
ISSN 2372-2193
ISSN 2372-2193