The second PublicSpaces conference will happen in just a few hours, on 17-18 May, in Amsterdam, and it is set to provide a great forum to work on digital ecosystems based on public values. The program of the conference features a number of sessions with European experts, activists, policymakers and politicians to work on a digital ecosystem based on public values.

SDEPS members will also contribute to the programme in Amsterdam: on 17 May at 13:00 CET, Sophie Bloemen (Commons Network) will host the session “Public-civic collaboration for public interest-based digital spaces”, exploring the opportunities of collaboration across public and civic initiatives, which will be joined by Michael Zita, Deborah Grayson, Boris van Hoytema, Sarah de Heusch. On the same day, and starting at 17:00, Paul Keller (Open Future) will host the panel “The state of play of European legislation” to have a look at the progress of the European legislative files included in the EU Digital Strategy which play a key role for Digital public spaces with Kim van Sparrentak, Lotje Beek, Claudine Vliegen and Tamar Sharon. The PublicSpaces Conference #2 is going to be held in a hybrid format, and you can register here for free.

Building a European Cultural Backbone

The Cultural Broadcasting Archive (CBA) is organizing a series of events running on 23-28 May in Linz, Austria, to explore and expand technology for community-based exchange and publication.

With collaborative hacking projects, CBA wants to push forward a common base for a European Cultural Backbone for community media and their surrounding media spheres. The unconference-style event will feature sessions, workshops and co-creation labs.

Would you sell your personal data for a cup of coffee?

An edition of the Ethical Dilemma Cafè took place in Manchester on 26 and 27 April. Ran by BBC and Mozilla, the Cafè gave its participants the opportunity to reflect on the value of their personal data, and better understand the power of their data and algorithms - and how those shape our world today.

A number of activities took place throughout the 2-day Cafè, including workshops, talks and exhibitions. Ian Forrester (BBC) wrote a wrap-up of the Cafè in his cubicgarden blog, while the team of  Digital Skills Education made a video out of the experience.

Welcome to the second issue of our Newsletter, where we update you on what the SDEPS coalition has been up to in the past month - and what’s next. We will be attending different events in the upcoming weeks, and we hope to meet you there!

Updates

Towards Public Digital Infrastructure: A proposed governance model

On today’s internet, power is concentrated in the hands of a handful of actors who increasingly control what we read and what we see. The tendency tends to be towards ever more concentration, both within and across layers of the technology stack.

In her latest report Towards Public Digital Infrastructure: A proposed governance model, Katja Bego, principal investigator at NGI Forward, outlines how Europe should provide an alternative vision to these top-down approaches and support Public Digital Infrastructure by:

1. Create an ecosystem of alternatives through collaborative interoperability and open protocols.
2. Launch a Public Tech Fund.
3. Support data commons and identity.

A conversation about generative interoperability

On 22 March, Sophie Bloemen (Commons Network) and Alek Tarkowski (Open Future) launched the co-authored report Generative Interoperability. Building online public and civic spaces in an online conversation with Amandine Le Pape (COO and co-founder of Element, co-founder and Guardian of the Matrix Foundation) and Ian Brown (visiting CyberBRICS Professor at FGV Law School). A key finding of the conversation was that interoperability should be a core principle for Europe’s Digital Decade. Not just as a market-fixing tool, but also as a principle that supports societal objectives. You can watch the recording of the conversation here.

Building Digital Spaces in the public interest at Mozfest

On 11 March, Leonieke Verhoog (PublicSpaces), Sander van der Waal (Waag), among others, held the session Building digital spaces in the public interest - Where we are and how to move forward at MozFest 2022. The session served to showcase some projects that work on (pieces of) digital public spaces and provided opportunities to build new connections in a way to make it possible to move forward more coherently and powerfully towards building digital spaces in the public interest.

Still at Mozfest 2022, Ian Forrester (aka Cubicgarden) hosted an open discussion about the public values of new technologies like the potential of a Metaverse, investigating whether they serve a greater purpose or only benefit the privileged few.

Upcoming

Ethical Dilemma Cafè

BBC R&D and Mozilla Foundation will be exploring data ethical dilemmas at a 2-day Cafe in Manchester on 26-27 April 2022.

During the 2 days, the fully working cafe will contain workshops, talks and many interventions. All designed to help the public think about what they do every day online. Before entering the café, visitors will be confronted with a EULA warning them that their personal data to the 'café' will be swapped for free tea, coffee and more.

The Ethical Dilemma Cafe concept is coming to other cities and countries in the world in the future!

PublicSpaces Conference

The second PublicSpaces Conference will take place on 17-18 May in Amsterdam! Many professionals, experts, politicians and policymakers from all over Europe will join forces to work on a digital ecosystem based on public values. The full program will be available soon, and you can register here.

CBA Labs & Conference

The Cultural Broadcasting Archive (CBA) is organizing a series of events running on 23-28 May in Linz, Austria, to explore and expand technology for community-based exchange and publication.

With collaborative hacking projects, CBA wants to push forward a common base for a European Cultural Backbone for community media and their surrounding media spheres.

The unconference-style event will feature sessions, workshops and co-creation labs.

On today’s internet, power is concentrated in the hands of a handful of actors who increasingly control what we read and what we see. The tendency tends to be towards ever more concentration, both within and across layers of the technology stack. Attempts by both governments and large technology companies to take back control are an important source of internet fragmentation – recent events have us teetering closer to the splinternet than ever before – and leave citizens with little agency and choice.

In her latest report Towards Public Digital Infrastructure: A proposed governance model, Katja Bego, principal investigator at NGI Forward, outlines how Europe should provide an alternative vision to these top-down approaches and  support Public Digital Infrastructure by:

1. Create an ecosystem of alternatives through collaborative interoperability and open protocols.
2. Launch a Public Tech Fund.
3. Support data commons and identity.

The Cultural Broadcasting Archive is inviting to participate in a series of events running on 23-26 May in Linz, Austria to explore and expand technology for community-based exchange and publication.
With collaborative hacking projects, CBA wants to push forward a common base for a European Cultural Backbone for community media and their surrounding media spheres.
The unconference-style event will feature sessions, workshops and co-creation labs.

Topics of discussion will include:

• Metadata modeling for community media exchange
• Using wiki data as a rich source for metadata terms
• Federated and decentralized recommender systems: Technologies, privacy implications
• Search & personalization: What could search algorithms oriented towards the common good look like? Which approaches to follow and technologies to use?
• European Public: What are international communication needs and in which ways could a European public be reached? How to deal with multilingualism and what are the perspectives for automatic translations?
• Decentralized authorization and authentication: Alternatives to data tracking, federation or crypto keys, …

The intention is also to open a collective brainstorming area to develop new ideas on what a public sphere for community media can look like in practice.

The event is targeted towards developers, designers, activists and media makers.

The hackathon will be preceded by a few days of more focused discussion on how to advance Open Audio Search into a federated system.

A project by cba, Radio FRO & arso.
Kindly supported by European Cultural Foundation, Kulturamt, Open Commons und Volkshochschule / Stadt Linz, Servus.at, Shared Digital European Public Spaces (SDEPS) and Verband Freier Rundfunk Österreich.

Generative Interoperability: Building Public and Civic Spaces Online is a collaborative effort between Commons Network and Open Future, developed with the support of Nesta and the Next Generation Internet programme.

Building on their earlier work on a ‘Shared Digital Europe’, Open Future and Commons Network propose a new frame for digital policymaking in the EU, one that treats interoperability not just as a competition measure, but also as a policy principle that supports the creation of new ecosystems, with a stronger role of public and civic actors.

Interoperability is one of the original design principles underpinning the internet, allowing the internet to grow to its current size. But what kind of interoperability would serve as a solution to the problems of today’s internet? Discussions around interoperability often focus on what we call ‘competitive interoperability’. It’s necessary that we shift our perspective, from a single platform to an ecosystem view. Public policies should actively co-create other ecosystems and the new economy.

On 22 March at 15:00 CET, Sophie Bloemen (Commons Network) and Alek Tarkowski (Open Future) discussed this in a conversation with Amandine Le Pape (COO and co-founder of Element, co-founder and guardian of the Matrix Foundation) and Ian Brown (visiting CyberBRICS Professor at FGV Law School) while presenting the findings of the report Generative Interoperability: Building Public and Civic Spaces Online.

Welcome to the first issue of the SDEPS monthly newsletter - thanks for signing up!
We are a European coalition of organizations and initiatives united in the desire to build a Shared Digital European Public Sphere – SDEPS. We share the belief that there is a need for public digital infrastructures based on democratic values providing alternatives to the existing commercially-driven Internet. We are committed to creating digital public spaces aligned with our shared values as Europeans by putting the Shared Digital European Public Sphere high on the EU policy agenda.

Through this monthly bulletin, we will share insights, update you on our activities and share our comments on policy developments. We look forward to also receiving your thoughts and feedback.

The time for Europe to invest in digital public infrastructure is now: the networks are in place, the prototypes are there, the ambition is clear. What we need now is the political will to create digital public spaces that offer a credible vision beyond narrow commercial interests.

Updates

We have a new website!

We have revamped the SDEPS website to better communicate our initiatives and actions to create digital public spaces. Built on Ghost, the website allows us to commit even more to a decentralized information ecosystem and to retain control on the content we publish - without relying on platform feeds and streams. It reports on SDEPS’ outputs, gives an overview of the coalition members, explains the reasons why we decided to build this coalition, and includes a library of some foundational documents.
We invite you to explore this new website and subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and we are also keen to hear your feedback - please get in touch!

Blog Series: Towards Online Public Spaces

The blog series on the role of Interoperability for Digital Public Space, co-produced by Commons Network and Open Future, just came to an end. The series investigated ways to create public-civic spaces online and transform the Internet into something less exploitative - and more social and generative. The blog was conceived as a series of dialogues with experts and activists: Nathan Schneider, Geert-Jan Bogaerts, Mai Sutton, natacha roussel, Jaromil, Aik van Eemeren and Jan-Hendrik Passoth.

EU’s steps towards Digital Public Spaces

Open Future has been tracking the policy developments around the possible creation of EU Digital Public Spaces. On one hand, Alek Tarkowski notes how the Declaration of Digital Principles, despite introducing the concept of “participation in the digital public space’, lacks bold societal objectives to build a Digital Public Space; on another hand, Paul Keller is very fond of France’s intention of use its presidency to propose a European Initiative for the Digital Commons to strengthen EU’s digital sovereignty.

EU Policy Forum: Initiative for EU Public Spaces

Back in November 2021, together with the European Cultural Foundation and NESTA, SDEPS co-hosted the EU Policy Forum: Initiative for EU Public Spaces in Brussels. The Forum put a spotlight on the digital public space gap in Europe and it served as a catalyst for discussing how to imagine and build a digital public space with EU policy makers, media and CSOs representatives while setting  the ground for SDEPS developments. Kristina Petrasova (Beeld en Geluid) reports on the event here.

Upcoming

Ethical Dilemma Cafe

BBC R&D and Mozilla Foundation will be exploring data ethical dilemmas at a 2-day Cafe in Manchester on 26-27 April 2022.

During the 2 days, the fully working cafe will contain workshops, talks and many interventions. All designed to help the public think about what they do every day online. Before entering the café, visitors will be confronted with a EULA warning them that their personal data to the 'café' will be swapped for free tea, coffee and more.

MozFest, the online festival organised by the Mozilla foundation takes place from 7-11 March 2022. It is a festival to connect with others around the world who have a single mission: a better, healthier internet.

During this festival SDEPS partners Waag & PublicSpaces will organise a session together with the City of Amsterdam on Building digital spaces in the public interest.

That the big social media and communication platforms cause big societal problems is nothing new. One major underlying issue is that all big social media platforms are operated by commercial companies. There are currently no alternative platforms that operate at scale AND put the public interest truly at their core. However, there are many initiatives that operate on a smaller scale that do provide an alternative platform or a piece of the solution for preserving people’s rights online. One such example could be to provide a privacy-preserving way of logging in or adopting an established open standard such as ActivityPub to allow people to control their own data.

This session serves to showcase some projects that work on (pieces of) such digital public spaces. It will also provide ample opportunity to hear from you what other projects are valuable in this regard and aims to build new connections so we can move forward more coherently and more powerfully towards building these spaces in the public interest.

The session will be held online at Friday 11th of March 4 - 5.30 pm CET and get your (free) tickets here.

The Ethical Dilemma Cafe is a relaxing space to grab a free coffee and meet fellow participants.

This year, BBC R&D & the Mozilla Foundation will be exploring the data ethical dilemmas we all face online but in a Manchester physical space.
During the 2 days, the fully working cafe will contain workshops, talks and many interventions. All designed to help the public think about what they do every day online.
Before entering the café, visitors will be confronted with a EULA warning them that their personal data to the 'café' will be swapped for free tea, coffee and more.

Earlier in February , France — in the context of its presidency of the Council of the European Union — organized a conference on “Building Europe’s Digital Sovereignty”. And while the concept of digital sovereignty is very much en vogue these days, France is promoting a very specific approach by stressing the importance of the digital commons as one of its building blocks.

In a statement issued this week by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the State secretariat for the digital transition and electronic communications, France declared the intention to use its presidency to propose a European Initiative for the Digital Commons, that could be launched during the next Digital Assembly on June 21 and 22 in Toulouse. It is welcome to see the French government throw some of its weight behind the digital commons and to recognize the importance that digital commons initiatives play in supporting the open internet. According to the declaration by the Presidency of the Council of the European Union calling for a European Initiative for Digital Commons published on Monday,

Digital commons are non-rivalrous and non-exclusive digital resources defined by shared production, maintenance and governance. Wikipedia, Linux, OpenStreetMap, and Open Food Facts, of which three are European, are some of the most visible examples. Under the right conditions, digital commons contribute to the preservation of the collective control and valuation of data, and consequently to improve the security of digital tools and innovations.

In addition, digital commons challenge the enclosure strategies pursued by some governments and major digital service providers. Additionally, they provide affordable and ethically governed digital systems to associations and democratic initiatives. Digital commons constitute a significant lever for setting up multilateral governance - in the sense of mutual and mutually accepted constraint - of our data and the tools that use it, and for recovering a share of digital strategic autonomy. In the context of an increasingly digitalized world, commons can become a pillar of Europe’s digital sovereignty.

We could not agree more with this analysis. As we have argued in our 2019 Vision for a Shared Digital European, cultivating the commons should be one of the key principles for creating a more equitable and democratic digital environment. The French presidency declaration calls for exactly such an approach by building on existing European efforts which support common resources in the technology space:

The initiative would build on existing programs and initiatives that have proved efficient like the Next Generation Internet to fund commons and open-source technological components on strategic segments, both at the European and at the national level. By facilitating a change of scale in the use of open-source solutions and digital commons in public tenders, the European initiative for digital commons will complement ongoing national programs and will build on existing European structures and projects to provide recurrent aid. [...] This initiative should (i) steer efforts towards the identification and the Europeanization of existing national digital commons and open-source software, (ii) promote the use of digital commons within European institutions and Member States’ public services, and (iii) set up a framework for contributing to strategic commons by allocating human resources or financial support, or by participating, formally or informally, in their governance.

With its clear focus on commons projects that provide digital infrastructures, the French proposal is aiming at a space that has recently received a lot of attention. In late 2021, Open Knowledge Foundation Germany presented a feasibility study for a Sovereign Tech Fund that has since been embraced by the new German government which has committed to financing this fund with €10 million on an annual basis. In light of the French declaration, it seems logical to scale this approach to the European level.

But if the EU is serious about investing in common projects to strengthen its digital sovereignty to become less dependent on foreign digital infrastructure powers, the amount of money invested must be significantly increased.

One way to substantially scale up the impact of initiatives like the German open technology fund would be to implement digital commons initiatives in the form of multi-country projects under the digital transformation heading of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Here, the French ambition to structurally support digital commons projects seems like a natural fit for the European Union's strategic ambition to create digital services that are based on European values and contribute to digital sovereignty. And given that 16 EU member states (Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Spain, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Sweden) have announced their intention to contribute to further develop the French initiative, there should be plenty of opportunities for multi-country projects. It will be interesting to see how this initiative evolves over the next few months leading up to the Digital Assembly in June.  Meanwhile, the French presidency should find ways to reach out to commons projects and civil society organizations that have long been advocating for more investment in commons-based digital infrastructures. The time for Europe to invest in the digital commons is now. - Vive les biens communs numériques!

The Internet is busted. Huge corporations are calling the shots, extractive business models prevail. And safe and privacy-friendly online spaces have become scarce. How do we move from extractive practices to regenerative ones? How do we retain public control and move to a people-centered internet?

In our research on a Shared Digital Europe and public-civic spaces, we argue that public and civic actors need to build these alternative spaces. And that interoperability is an essential principle, through which they can together form a bigger ecosystem.

Over the course of summer, we consulted friends and experts on the question: how do we get to public-civic spaces, what role does interoperability play? And what is holding governments and civil society back to make the shift? In this series we share the insights of these conversations one at a time.

Previously in this series were conversations with Nathan Schneider, Mai Ishika Sutton, Jaromil, Geert-Jan Bogaerts and natacha roussel.

This time we chat with Jan-Hendrik Passoth, who is Professor of Sociology of Technology and head of the Science & Technology Studies Group at the European New School of Digital Studies at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). His research group explores how to build digital infrastructures based on public value, organize software engineering as a responsible social practice, as well as how to integrate arts and critical design in order to change the way digital technologies are developed and understood. Passoth has worked for a long time on the politics of infrastructure and is the co-editor of a book called Agency without Actors: New Models for Collective Action. One central concept in that book is the Latourian concept of non-human agency which is to say that ‘agency’, the capacity to determine things, outcomes, the environment, is not exclusively human, but resides in technologies, protocols, materials, and so on.

Passoth has been working on interoperability on different levels. One is his contribution to an interdisciplinary project group at Acatech, the German National Academy of Science and Engineering, which put out a paper in 2020 called European Public Sphere. Towards Digital Sovereignty for Europe that talks about the urgent need for a ‘European Public Sphere’ online, what that could look like and how it might be established. In September 2021, it was taken up by the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT) of the European Commission when Passoth was invited to a public hearing.

A seat at the table

Acatech is an influential group in the German tech-policy landscape but, according to Passoth, it is often also very research and industry-driven. When he thinks back to the writing process, he characterizes a part of his role to act as a mediator to bring NGO's and civil society organizations on board, ‘because they make the important points but are often not well-represented in the tech-policy discussions’.

Participation and public accountability are recurring themes in the conversation with Passoth. Interoperability, he argues, is often presented as a technical quick fix to make things more open and collaborative. ‘But this is not just going to happen through the tech stack’. In practice, there are power plays around making systems interoperable, and there will be policy and digital industry players who will have a strong voice about what kind of interoperability we will have.

In other words, it is not the shape of technology that allows interoperability, or even democracy, but the governance of it. Therefore, Passoth argues, it is crucial to give organized civic actors as well as ‘silent voices’ a seat at the table, and we need strong governance forms to make sure these actors keep their seats at the table.

‘That’s also where cooperatives can come in’. A cooperative is just one example of how one might structure democratic governance, one which might not scale well or even be too centralized. Perhaps that’s true, Passoth adds, but the practical advantage of a cooperative is that there is an entity, a place where people can effectively be included. If you want to give people a seat, in other words, you need a table first.

Too much faith in the agora

But even a solid table and well-structured civic participation might not be enough, Passoth warns. In the 70s and 80s, Internet governance was fairly transparent, participatory and thereby democratic. Later, this changed. For Passoth, the lesson we can learn from these ‘implemented blueprints for participation’ - like internet standards - is that they can be hijacked. This happens, for example, when big companies and their engineers are overrepresented in efforts to reform the internet or when one single corporation introduces parallel standards (like Huawei’s proposal of an alternative to the Internet Protocol).

‘It seems to me that there’s too much faith in the agora’, Passoth claims, arguing that it is not enough to create open and participatory processes. ‘The consensus seems to be that if we create participatory formats, then we will have democratic regimes. But democracy works not only through the agora, but also through its institutions, and representation does not only mean allowing the place at the table, but actually creating the need for participation as well, even if it’s a burden sometimes’. So instead of an “open agora”, we need specific institutional setups that will enable participation, and help to deal with power imbalances.

Hard work

The Data Governance Act - proposed by the European Commission in 2020 and provisionally approved by the European Parliament and Council - threw ‘data cooperatives’ in the mix of possible strategies for a fairer internet. An interesting, but barely developed proposal.

But treating promising governance structures like cooperatives as organizational fixes often ignores another important aspect: that their implementation and maintenance is complicated, hard work and often ‘messy’. Passoth: ‘Just look at the world of coops that we already have, in health, in food delivery, these realities are not so romantic, right?’ He has a ‘heart for cooperatives and the idea of using them for governing data sharing. But at the same time, he argues that we must learn again from the history of cooperatives, of real-life cases, and realize how complicated cooperative organizing is.

Interoperability’s image of being a technical or organizational ‘quick fix’ for a fairer internet directly contradicts this ‘messy’ reality. Take discussions about what kind of interoperability is needed, for instance, about whose standards are in the API’s, about what types of interfaces are used or about what data formats are opted for. In this sense, interoperability means hard practical work, especially when you make a case for participation or even cooperative governance.

Tick-the-box-exercise

Does or could interoperability lead to unfavorable outcomes, we ask Passoth. He shares a more common fear that it might, especially when it comes to control over components that make up the digital sphere. That’s why he ‘always’ stresses that interoperability as a tech-political goal is a very limiting frame. ‘Take messaging. A check-the-interoperability-box exercise would mean that, if you send the message from Whatsapp, you can receive it in Telegram. But who actually gets to monitor the transmission, who has the data on that, who can collect the metadata? This is not defined, sometimes not even discussed’.

Thus, merely creating technical interoperability is just one step of the way, says Passoth. It might not immediately lead to unfavorable outcomes, but it does leave control over technologies to the players that are currently running them. Such models of interoperability don’t touch the business model of the big players, like a certain standard or data format, keeping the power structures intact or even reinforcing them. ‘The question is: can we do more?’

Having put too much faith in the ‘agora’ and participation, what are possible alternative solutions? Passoth points to institutions. ‘A solution can be to have certain types of transparency obligations or accountability obligations for industry, not only in terms of data use but also in terms of what kinds of formats and standards are used. Public institutions or agencies acting in the public interest can be charged with this responsibility’. These new institutions, supported by public and civic actors, are crucial for ensuring and maintaining the balance of power in interoperable ecosystems.

This blog series is a co-production of  Commons Network and Open Future in the context of the joint project Shared Digital Europe.

The European Commission published a proposal for the Declaration on European Digital Rights and Principles. This is a long-awaited element of Europe's Digital Decade strategy, which with this addition will be complete with a framework.

We have previously argued that the declaration can make the strategy more focused on societal objectives, instead of just the attainment of quantitative measures. The declaration, in the proposed form, will not serve to fix this issue. The principles proposed by the Commission mainly confirm a general commitment to protecting fundamental rights and regulating digital markets.

The declaration does include a significant new concept–“Participation in the digital public space” is one of the core six principles. This is a principle that we have been endorsing, together with the SDEPS coalition. This is potentially the first step towards developing a stronger policy vision for shaping the European online ecosystem as a digital public space, and not just a market. As such, this is the most promising principle being added to the policy frame underpinning Europe’s Digital Decade strategy.

Until now, the Digital Decade strategy lacked elements that would fulfill Europe's ambition of true digital transformation, understood as more than just growth in the reach of technology, and market growth (which was the focus of the Digital Single Market strategy of the 2010s). The draft digital principles, published this week, ultimately do too little to improve Europe's Digital Decade strategy in this regard.

Europe's Digital Decade misses a society-centric vision

Together with other civic organizations, we have been arguing that the other parts of this program do not meet the Commission's ambition for a transformative digital strategy, centered on European values and the needs of citizens. The quantitative objectives of the Digital Compass are based on a mechanistic vision, in which more technology, and larger digital markets are meant to provide beneficial societal outcomes. And the governance structure, while it introduces important cooperation mechanisms needed to effectively spend budgets allocated to the twin transformation, is weak on civil participation.

Our initial analysis of the Digital Compass program showed a discrepancy between ambitious policy objectives, related to the twin (digital and green) transition, and to building a more just and equal digital society, and the quantitative targets on which the program is focused. The list of objectives is "stuck in the basic vision that more technology means better society, defined several decades ago. Europe needs a vision that connects technological development to broader societal goals". This has not changed with the publication of the Path to the Digital Decade policy program, which is mainly a coordination mechanism for public funding (our analysis on the Path to the Digital Decade).

In our response to the initial consultation on the declaration, we argued that it needs to be used to put bold societal objectives into the Digital Compass framework so that they complement the quantitative targets.  Without such reorientation, statements about "human-centric digital transition" sound like empty policy buzzwords or–in the worst case–even like a digital equivalent of greenwashing.

The value framework of the Declaration

The draft digital principles, published this week, ultimately do little to improve Europe's Digital Decade strategy in this regard.

• The principles framework, when the most generic buzzwords like "human centric" are put aside, consists of three core elements: principles that confirm connectivity and access as a matter of social justice and equality; principles focused on confirming Europe's attachment to the protection of basic rights, also in face of challenges related to emergent technologies; principles that aim to curb the power of commercial platforms and define their social responsibility.
• As such, the declaration largely confirms–without any significant additions–the policy frame behind European Commission's current digital strategy, including the ambitious policy package. Proposed principles align well with core goals of the Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act or the AI Act, confirming the "digital constitutionalist" approach, focused on regulating markets, reducing harms and securing basic rights [https://openfuture.eu/publication/digital-public-space/].
• The declaration misses a fourth set of core principles, one that would frame digital transformation in terms of collective rights, for example by referring to the provision of digital public goods or digital infrastructures. The digital commons, as a principle, could also have been introduced. Tellingly, there is no mention of principles related to data governance in the public interest.
• The term "digital public space" is introduced as a high-level principle, but understood only as regulating commercial platforms. There is no reference to a positive vision, built around the idea of strengthening the role of public and civic actors in the digital environment, and in particular public digital infrastructures.
• Overall, the European Commission sees itself as a defender of rights and regulator of markets, and not as a builder and maintainer of digital ecosystems.
• In addition, the governance mechanism reads as very conservative: focused solely on coordinating the European Commission and the Member States, with no meaningful civic or multi-stakeholder participation.

Digital Principles: a missed opportunity for true value-driven strategy

The press release for the Declaration quotes Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who in a speech in 2021 stated “We embrace new technologies. But we stand by our values”. As a general principle, this encapsulates very well an approach that we have been advocating for: a society-centric digital transformation, based on a strong adherence to principles and a focus on societal objectives.

The declaration does not provide a strong and holistic values framework that gives a sense of direction and purpose to Europe's digital transformation. And it includes a few new ideas or perspectives that could shape European policy. Instead, it seems to rehash obvious commitments (for example to the protection of basic rights) and connect them with largely existing initiatives or policy directions.

What were we expecting from this declaration on rights and principles? Most importantly, a strong, value-based vision that would frame the digital strategy in different terms than economic growth or technological expansion. As the world changes and new technologies emerge, we direly need new frameworks for "embracing new technologies".

We also need to go beyond the "digital constitutionalist" approach, which focuses on the protection of basic rights, market regulation and reduction of harms. These are all necessary goals for Europe's digital policies. But a protective stance, on its own, will not suffice to meet Europe's ambition of creating societies that are sovereign and able to shape technologies to their needs. (We made the argument for the need to go beyond the digital constitutionalist phase, and to develop a new policy frame based on the idea of the digital public space in our paper on the Digital Public Space as a missing policy frame in Europe)

An in-depth look at the Declaration

The declaration consists of six chapters, each one framing one of the of six key principles that Europe will adopt: 1. Putting people at the center of the digital transformation, 2. Solidarity and inclusion, 3. Freedom of choice, 4. Participation in the digital public space, 5. Safety, security and empowerment, 6. Sustainability.

The contents of most chapters are relatively predictable, and the first chapter provides a high-level commitment to democracy, respect of individual rights, or duties of digital actions. Reading the declaration, it often seems that it largely connects existing digital policy initiatives with high-level principles. For example, a section on "Connectivity" states that everyone should have access to affordable, high-speed connectivity. But this principle adds little to a direction that Europe has been taking for at least 20 years. Calling it a principle will do little to change the pace of development in this regard. And the connections made sometimes seem haphazard, for example when issues related to algorithmic power are framed as "freedom of choice".

Chapter two focuses on inclusion, connectivity and accessibility–on "a digital transformation that leaves nobody behind"–as well as respect for people's rights. An interesting passage mentions "developing adequate frameworks so that all market actors benefiting from the digital transformation assume their social responsibilities and make a fair and proportionate contribution to the costs of public goods, services and infrastructures"–signaling possible redistributive policies, such as digital taxes. Another section, on "working conditions" includes an interesting passage on the right to disconnect (from work) and benefit from a work-life balance. This is an interesting principle which, if developed, could lead to much stronger "right to disconnect" safeguards for social life, as it becomes increasingly digitized. And the section on digital public services online is disappointing–instead of a bold vision of public infrastructure, we see goals defined around existing initiatives: trusted digital identity, reuse of public sector information and interoperable health data.

Chapter three, on freedom of choice, is a surprising mixture of issues. One part of it concerns algorithmic and AI systems and introduces principles of transparency, reduction of algorithmic bias and systems that pre-determine people's choices, and safeguarding fundamental rights and safety in face of AI and digital systems. And the second part of the chapter seems to focus on competition and consumer choice–albeit framed as social values. The Commission commits to a "safe, secure and fair online environment where fundamental rights are protected, and responsibilities of platforms, especially large players and gatekeepers, are well defined".

This last passage signals the next chapter, which frames participation in the digital public space in terms of the diversity of content, pluralistic debate, participation in democracy and freedom of expression. The list of measures begins with a statement on the duty of very large online platforms to "support free democratic debate online". And overall the chapter sees the digital public space largely as a matter of market regulation–the framing is "competitive", not "generative". The Digital Public Space is implicitly defined as that of commercial platforms, only properly regulated ones. This concept should instead frame a new generative policy, where Europe sees its role to build and sustain an ecosystem, in which alternatives can also function–including decentralized and federated networks, open source infrastructures, or new types of public and civic platforms.

Chapter five offers a necessary but by now well-established framing of the commitment to ensuring safety and security. A key part of the chapter addresses privacy and individual control over data–yet with a frame that largely covers the data protection perspective of the GDPR. This could be seen as a potential win of advocates of data minimization, as the chapter pays little attention to other aspects of data governance, that are relevant for the new European Strategy for Data, as it aims to build some balance between data protection and minimization, and data access and use. Tellingly, a commitment is made to data portability (enshrined in the GDPR), with no reference to current interoperability proposals.

The last chapter, a much-needed one, frames the ambitions of the twin transition, as sustainability is the principle that connects digital transformation with care for the environment. A commitment to a circular economy is an important one, and should translate into specific measures like the right to repair. Similarly, an obligation to make environmental data accessible will translate to a strong push for open data.

Coordinating with Member States does not mean governance

While the core chapters of the Declaration delineate specific principles and rights, the proposed governance mechanism is just as important. It is through governance that abstract principles gain their strength, as they are used as levers to push policies in new directions, defined by these principles.

The "Path to the Digital Decade" includes a governance mechanism that is solely tailored at coordinating the efforts of the Commission and the Member States. In our consultation response [link] we argued that the Commission should follow the Quadruple Helix model, in which government, industry, academia and civil participants are treated as equal stakeholders. We proposed that an Expert Group should be established in particular to monitor adherence to the digital principles.

Unfortunately, the new Communication does not fix or expand the governance model proposed for the "Path to the Digital Decade" policy program. It seems strange that a framework of principles and values described as "human centric" will be overseen by the Commission and the Member States. A new report on "The State of the Digital Decade" will assess "the state of measures following up on the principles enshrined in the Declaration"–as seen solely through the eyes of Commission officials. And a dedicated Eurobarometer survey is planned as the only opportunity to hear "the voice of the people".  As such, the declaration is a missed opportunity for more participatory governance.

How could this governance be shaped differently? Europe has been prototyping a mission-driven approach which sees public institutions not as core actors of any strategy, but conductors of a process that is much more peer-to-peer in nature, in which societal actors from different sectors and all sizes can contribute [link to our previous analysis that highlight this further]. The blueprints for such an approach are readily available and the digital transition, with its complexity but also crucial social significance, seems the right space to deploy them.

The Digital Decade could resemble much more the Sustainable Development Goals [link] - a framework that creates space for meaningful participation for everyone. The list of initiatives connected with particular principles, presented in the draft, feels at times random. What if a platform managed by the Commission would allow all actors to peg their activities onto this framework of principles, declaring not just overall support, but specific commitment?

The European Parliament as the positive force in European policymaking

The Commission acknowledges that it was the European Parliament that called on it to ensure that the EU's approach to digital transformation is fully compliant with fundamental rights and that it secures important societal objectives like fostering a strong digital education ecosystem, ensuring media freedom or combatting disinformation. The declaration is one of the steps taken to meet this request.

The European Parliament should increasingly be seen as a positive force that pushes European digital policies in a direction that pays greater attention to society's needs, and not just the market. We have seen this recently in the policy debate on the Digital Services Act, where important amendments were tabled by members of the Parliament (and some of them therefore making it into the trilogue).

As the draft Declaration is now reviewed by the Parliament, improvements to the framework can still be made. The "Digital Public Space" principle should be expanded upon, to secure a stronger focus on societal objectives and collective rights.

Today (January 26th 2022) the European commission adopted a proposals for a European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade.

See the press release here and the actual declaration here. The published version of the declaration now has a chapter IV that is called "Participation in the digital public space”. Here is the relevant section:

Chapter IV: Participation in the digital public space

Everyone should have access to a trustworthy, diverse and multilingual online environment. Access to diverse content contributes to a pluralistic public debate and should allow everyone to participate in democracy.Everyone has the right to freedom of expression in the online environment, without fear of being censored or intimidated.

Everyone should have the means to know who owns or controls the media services they are using.

Very large online platforms should support free democratic debate online, given the role of their services in shaping public opinion and discourse. They should mitigate the risks stemming from the functioning and use of their services, including for disinformation campaigns and protect freedom of expression.

We commit to:

‌‌• supporting the development and best use of digital technologies to stimulate citizen engagement and democratic participation.
‌‌• continuing safeguarding fundamental rights online, notably the freedom of expression and information.‌‌
• taking measures to tackle all forms of illegal content in proportion to the harm they can cause, and in full respect of the right to freedom of expression and information, and without establishing any general monitoring obligations.
‌‌• creating an online environment where people are protected against disinformation and other forms of harmful content.

The Internet is busted. Huge corporations are calling the shots, extractive business models prevail. And safe and privacy-friendly online spaces have become scarce. How do we move from extractive practices to regenerative ones? How do we retain public control and move to a people-centered internet?

In our research on a Shared Digital Europe and public-civic spaces, we argue that public and civic actors need to build these alternative spaces. And that interoperability is an essential principle, through which they can together form a bigger ecosystem.

Over the course of summer, we consulted friends and experts on the question: how do we get to public-civic spaces, what role does interoperability play? And what is holding governments and civil society back to make the shift? In this series we share the insights of these conversations one at a time.

Previously in this series we published conversations with Nathan Schneider, Mai Ishika Sutton, Jaromil, Geert-Jan Bogaerts and natacha roussel.

This time we chat with Aik van Eemeren, Public Tech Lead at the Chief Technology Office (CTO) of the Amsterdam municipality. The CTO team focuses on the question: how could and does Amsterdam contribute to the development of public technologies for society? The work has a wide range: from digital inequality to universal internet access. Van Eemeren describes his role as gathering knowledge and creating a framework required for the digital transition of the region of Amsterdam.

Critical questions in the digital realm have slowly but surely become politicized in Amsterdam. The impact of technology on the quality of city life is becoming increasingly clear. The policy agenda Digital City, co-written by Van Eemeren, outlines the city’s digital ambitions over a four-year period (2019-2022) and builds on three fundamental principles of a Free, Inclusive and Creative Digital City. In addition, it lists concrete policy actions, many of them research or experiment-oriented. We’re in the agenda’s final year, so what are the lessons so far?

From experiment to scale

‘We have done many interesting pilots’, '' says Van Eemeren, “one is that we’ve seen it’s hard to scale them. There’s just not a whole tech industry working on public technologies”. So how dó we scale? Larger public institutions or coalitions or networks of institutions can play an important role. There is, for example, the Regionale Ontwikkelingsmaatschappijen (ROM), regional public investment banks that invest in innovative (digital) economies, and the Open Agile Smart City (OASC), which brings together cities to support their ‘digital transformation journey'.

Ideas for scaling public technologies are conceived of in Amsterdam itself too. Van Eemeren shares the idea of a ‘bit book’: a collection of current digital transformation experiments, initiatives and projects, and a search for a frame in which they all fit. Why is this important? ‘Because then we can better explain why we invest in this domain, to ourselves but also to private or public sector organizations who are willing to provide support’.

Too many standards = no standard

A related issue concerns standards. If there is a standard, technologies may become interoperable. For example, because we have a standard Internet Protocol (IP), computers are able to send and receive information in a network of computers we now call the Internet. But when different groups invent different standards, the idea goes to waste. Currently, according to Van Eemeren, ‘everybody’s making their own standards’. He describes ‘a competition for the winning standard’, where organizations like the World Economic Forum, the United Nations and the IEEE Internet Initiative all develop standards in the hope of universal adoption, which rarely happens.

So one crucial challenge is that there are too many standards. Amsterdam has set an interesting example when it drafted standard public purchasing terms for algorithms and made them available to local governments throughout the Netherlands. This proved scalable as other cities committed to using and developing this standard further. There is a downside, though: it takes a lot of time before everyone is on board. Van Eemeren adds: ‘We don’t need a lot of policy, what we need is someone to give direction and say: ‘It’s going to be these two or three platforms and open standards and from now on everybody’s using them’.

Think big, start small

In Europe the belief is growing that the European Union can play such a role. And there are reasons to justify this belief: think of the work-in-progress Data Act, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), guidelines governing AI, and the research and innovation programme Horizon Europe comprising many calls for proposals on public tech-related subjects. Also, the Brussels-based Gaia X is a prime example of how selecting one standard and applying it within a broader community might help bring about truly transformative shifts.

However, within Europe different digital mindsets exist. South Europe - especially Italy - are a few steps ahead in terms of thinking critically about technology, of using open standards and applying them universally. Cultural differences play a role. In Germany for instance, Van Eemeren shares, standards are applied to everything, ‘even down to the colour of pencils used by customs officers’. Whereas in the Netherlands, standardization is culturally much more complicated.

But we can make progress, he continues, as long as we don’t bite off more than we can chew. This means breaking down the digital work field into workable parts and standardizing one piece of technology at a time. The Foundation for Public Code, for example, focuses specifically on open source code and assisting public organizations with ‘codebase stewardship’, allowing codebases to mature and organizations to collaborate.

Policy advice from a policymaker

Though not quite fitting the traditional box, Van Eemeren is a civil servant working for a local government. He knows a thing or two about policy. So in getting to open, interoperable digital spaces, where should we focus on, policy-wise?

First of all, he confides, it is a matter of language and attitude. We are used to calling open, interoperable technologies ‘alternatives’. ‘But if we want to make open normal, that’s how we have to think. If we continue to label them as ‘alternatives’, we put ourselves out of business’.

Second, we lobby the wrong way. Lobby, Van Eemeren is convinced, is ineffective when one drafts a comprehensive vision document and proposes it integrally to policymakers. It might work better when lobbying responds to existing plans and policies and ‘reacts’ by inserting clauses and proposing additions and tweaks. ‘There is upcoming regulation on who gets to issue our digital identity. We have to lobby on this specifically and propose alterations’.

But overall, lobby is not the answer. Van Eemeren: ‘Talking to European parliamentarians and lobbying them has marginal impact. I would say the power of local actions is more effective, of creating examples, of telling that story and consecutively building standards together’. By ‘together’ he refers to translocal collaboration between cities.

The power of example

Van Eemeren, on behalf of Amsterdam, works together with cities across Europe and the world, such as in the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, a club of cities that works together ‘to protect and uphold digital rights’. ‘The coalition says: this is what we all think is important when it comes to digital rights and technology. Currently we’re digging a little deeper into the meaning of the manifest in order to get to a political agenda’.

But to do this, he continues, we need examples. Examples of what ‘secure online services’ or ‘locally-controlled digital infrastructures’ - phrases from the manifest - might look like. And this, he adds, is a complex and difficult process. ‘Can you name one successful example of a data commons in the Netherlands? If no one starts building it, we as a city can’t support it.’

This blog series is a co-production of  Commons Network and Open Future in the context of the joint project Shared Digital Europe.

Democracies can only function properly if they are underpinned by a public sphere. But online spaces are controlled by private interests and traditional media are mostly providing national perspectives. The inhabitants of Europe lack the space to debate a shared interest for the public, based on solid facts and a culture of care. We need a media landscape in Europe that re-constitutes the citizen at the center of public debate. And we need a European digital infrastructure that is based on values of collaboration, sharing and safeguarding the privacy and freedom of people.

From 16th until 18th of November the European Cultural Foundation hosted a policy forum in Brussels in partnership with NESTA and the SDEPS coalition on how Europe can provide alternatives for both the profit-driven big tech companies, as well as for media reporting through national lenses. The debate involved media, journalists, civil society and policymakers, debating pathways to a more open, inclusive and democratic European public sphere. The debate was part of the projects MediActivism and Next Generation Internet – Forward.

From the perspective of the inDICEs project, digital public space is a focus area in the process of formulating policy recommendations. Being involved in the SDEPS coalition from the very beginning and addressing the importance of public space for the cultural heritage sector is key for the quality of next year’s recommendation outcomes.

The Event

In a series of roundtable sessions, a public programme and co-creation sessions, participants all over Europe explored how EU policy can foster digital European public spaces, by addressing issues such as how Europe can provide alternatives for both the profit-driven big tech companies, as well as for media reporting through national lenses, and how a European blueprint for media collaboration and digital infrastructure can be used in other contexts.

Throughout the three sessions, participants had the opportunity to join and contribute to conversations and to the production of tangible outputs related to media collaboration tools, digital infrastructures, inclusive storytelling, media policymaking and advocacy, among others. The Co-creation Labs were a space for open networking and getting to know each other’s practices; to identify specific collective needs and how participants can feed into and support others’ practices; and to collectively develop tangible outputs designed to explore possible sustainable relations in the movement towards a value-based European public space from different areas.

After the working sessions, the results were shared and debated in an assembly setting, exploring the ties created during the Labs and wondering about how the European movement for media and digital space might move forward with concrete next steps in the future.

SDEPS Coalition

During the first SDEPS roundtable, all participants introduced themselves and addressed their interest in focussing on the involvement in the SDEPS coalition during a three-minute pitch. After the introductions, two external guests, Olga Perez (EFA Advisor on Culture and Education, Greens, European Parliament) and Philippe Gerard (advisor at European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology) discussed insights and gave feedback on the participants’ pitches.

From the perspective of the cultural heritage sector, we have agreed upon a common focus together with Europeana’s Eleanor Kenny that is based on the shared contribution to the public consultation on European Digital Principles:

Cultural heritage is a basis to European public identity, making it one of the key assets to the public, now and in the future.The main idea behind the value of the public sphere for digital cultural heritage, is that the resources coming from cultural and knowledge institutions are reliable sources of information in the time of disruptive consequences of misinformation to our democracies. From the point of view of the inDICEs consortium I would like to focus on the specific topic, addressed during the public consultation on European Digital Principles:

Universal access to internet services

The inDICEs consortium believes that a fundamental principle is missing in the European Digital Principles discourse – that of universal access to cultural heritage online. The role of digital technologies in enabling access to culture as a means of promoting inclusivity, creativity, critical engagement, education and knowledge-sharing, is essential in empowering citizens and creating fairer societies. Ensuring the principle of universal and continuing access to culture online will be fundamental to achieving that goal. The inDICEs consortium pleads for the universal right to open, public alternatives and for access to an open, decentralised, trusted European digital public space, built on democratic values and public digital infrastructure that ensures a rights-based, people-centred alternative to commercial platforms. Aside from technical tools to foster interoperability, we would need to work on standardisation of governance and legislation in favour of the public mission of cultural heritage institutions.

Public programme

On the 17th of December, the public part of the forum was focused on the central question: How can EU policy foster digital European public Space? Trying to respond to this question, researchers, media professionals, civil society, and policymakers explored how EU policy can foster digital European public spaces. The dialogue was based on two case studies – MediActivism and SDEPS – and the outcomes of the roundtable sessions of the 16th of November.

André Wilkens, the director of the European Cultural Foundation opened the programme by making an observation that the public lobby needs to get more organised by building consortia and cooperations, quote:  “We are being colonised. We focused on telling stories while we should have focused on developing infrastructures’’.

Charlie Tims and Ivana Pejić presented MediActivism – a case for citizen-centric media, Next Generation Internet / Forward – a case for an internet of humans – was presented by Katja Bego, who stated: ‘’We need to imagine something different. Just having a European stamp on it doesn’t make it better or less extractive than current practices’’.

After came a panel discussion with Nicola Frank (European Broadcasting Union), Ismail Einashe (Journalist, Lost in Media), Latifa Oulkhouir (Le Bondy Blog), Paul Keller (Open Future), Christophe Leclercq (Euractiv). The discussion was followed by a response from funders and policymakers who worked on concrete initiatives and a conversation with the panelists and audience featuring Marijn Duijvestein (DG Connect), Kim van Sparrentak (EP, Greens) Saskia van den Dool (Adessium Foundation) and Mieke van Heesewijk (SIDN Fund).

SDEPS to action

After a few intense days discussing the need for the European public sphere and how we are going to get there, some short term plans were made. The event was very insightful and fruitful as, thanks to the cooperation with the Europe Cultural Foundation, we were among many journalists, public broadcasters, news organisations, newspapers and media coops. They are also very clearly seeing the reality of the big tech takeover of the public space, the lack of public infrastructure and the loss of democracy.

The urgency of our cooperation has become even clearer during these days and the general message, also coming from the members of the European Parliament, was that this is the right moment for change. The need for a coordinated message of civil society, hackers and public institutions on the discussed issues towards policymakers and others is huge. There is a need not only to see this as a grassroots change but also as a top-down one, where European politics must play a part. There is too little, well-organised lobby from culture and media –  more collaboration is essential to get the politician’s attention. Big tech is omnipresent and public interest is nearly absent, while politicians are very open to hearing about alternatives to a public digital environment without big tech and company domination. Yet how and what the alternatives are is still unclear. And here is where there’s an important role for us to play.

With the SDEPS coalition, we came to an agreement to organise the work better and spread it more among partners. What is needed now is a commitment and work to put in. Organisations have to decide how they want to engage.

With the SDEPS group, we discussed strategies, targets, grand schemes, prototypes, existential questions and broader alliances.

In the coming months, inDICEs will work on the policy recommendations where the role and place of the cultural sector in this process of developing a European public sphere will be presented. Why is it important, how do we see this future and what does it take to get there?

In the past three weeks, the coalition had three meetings to agree on the basics of our cooperation, namely membership and decision making, communication channels, and website and newsletter editorials. The outcomes of the meetings will be collected in initiative statutes, and the work can get started!