The main objective of the NGI Forward project was to set out a tangible, actionable vision for the future internet, to articulate concrete policy proposals and interventions that might make that vision a reality, and building a coalition around these ideas.
Mid-way through the project, we released a 90+-page vision paper, which set out such an ambitious vision for a more democratic, resilient, sustainable, trustworthy and inclusive future internet by 2030, and outlined how Europe could move from being a reactive, regulatory force to a proactive innovation superpower in its own right. To make this vision more tangible, we have also set out many concrete policy recommendations, which were further explored in detailed policy reports on topics such as the sustainability of the internet and the European Green Deal, public digital infrastructure and data governance, procurement of fair AI, technology trustmarks and online identity. We organised a large number of policy engagement activities with MEPs and others and translated this work in policy briefs to help bring some of these proposals on the policy agenda. So far, we have successfully influenced at least three current Commission agendas, and also saw the significant media coverage and public attention for our work. Our outputs have generated at least 600,000 views. Our experimental €80,000 Policy-in-Practice fund helped translate insights into tangible action, through the granting of four local experiments.
As the NGI’s Policy and Strategy arm, we organised many highly interactive and future-facing events, targeting different audiences: from events in the European Parliament on Europe’s regulatory power to public webinars on shaping a more human-centric post-COVID internet. We in total organised 54 events, from workshops to summits, bringing together over 5,000 participants. As physical events were difficult, we have seamlessly pivoted to more online engagement, such as webinars and distributed online conferences. Our two Policy Summits, held in September 2020 and November 2021 respectively, brought together leading policymakers for multiple days of discussions about tangible interventions that could support Europe making the objectives of the NGI a reality.
Our online Exchange Platform, which collected 4,099 contributions from 339 unique participants, was the avenue through which our various stakeholders could connect and continue to discuss the project’s topics. Investing in a well-maintained, lively online space allowed us to maintain momentum after physical events, and continued to function well when the COVID pandemic made offline interaction difficult. By combining events and online conversation in this way, we have been able to grow a lively community, who feel meaningfully engaged in the NGI. Through ethnographic mapping, we were able to also actually capture very meaningful insights from these conversations, data which flowed back into our data-driven analysis and identification of trends and dynamics, showcasing once more the strong links between the various elements of the project.
Using novel methodologies such as machine learning, natural language processing and other data science tools, we were able to map emerging trends and dynamics in the internet ecosystem. Insights generated from this cutting-edge research were used to identify the first series of eight key topics likely to shape the future internet (both social and technological issues) that were put forward to the European Commission as recommendations for the design of future NGI funds. These analyses, which have been turned into highly interactive and easy-to-understand data visualisations so as to be more accessible to a general- and policymaker audience, have not just been used to inform the selection of this set of topics, but have proven much more versatile. Indeed, the consortium has shown its responsiveness and agility by rejigging these tools to map conversations in the context of COVID-19, allowing policymakers to understand emerging conversations about, for example, contact-tracing apps.
