What the heck is the Global Digital Compact and why is it so important? 

You may not have heard of the Global Digital Compact yet, but if you are interested in tech policy, you will have by September. 

It’s one of three international agreements expected to be approved during this fall’s global Summit of The Future event at the UN. The two-day conference in New York is expected to include numerous government heads and be attended by 195 countries.  

The summit has been developed and planned by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and his staff since 2020 and reflects widespread beliefs that humanity and the global systems are at a turning point, for three reasons:  

First, existing international organizations, like U.N. agencies, lack the authority, resources and structure to deal with increasing global crises, such as the COVID pandemic or climate change.  

Second, there is no effective international structure to deal with the enormous changes that digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, are having on politics, war, economies and society.

Third, existing multilateral arrangements — including the U.N., the multilateral development banks and the international financial system — continue to be dominated by a group of developed nations that has changed little since the 1950s, notwithstanding dramatic global changes, mainly in the so-called global south or non-aligned countries.  

Supporters of the summit tie these all together with the concept that leaders today must change international governance to make way for coming generations, who will inherit the results of our current generation’s inactions and actions — resulting in, for instance, the Declaration on Future Generations.  

By any estimation, this describes an incredibly broad agenda, stretching from arms control to reforming the international financial system to reorganizing the U.N. itself. None of this can be done in a global summit without paying due attention to such cross-cutting priorities as gender equality and sustainable development. In all of this broad mixture of issues and topics, high-tech is given a very prominent place — one of just three agreements expected at the summit. 

The prominence given to high tech among the many, many other possible summit topics can be explained by tech’s pervasive impact on the politics, military, economics, finance, education and media in every country, contrasted with the control over high tech that is concentrated in a handful of countries. For the leaders of most countries, the closest they will normally get to the rules governing the future of AI, digital platforms or the Internet is reading reports of developments in Washington, Brussels or Beijing.  

For such countries, this summit offers the possibility of a seat at the table (however illusory) in influencing the rules governing digital technologies that are having enormous consequences inside their own countries. Their fear of being left behind as the rules for the digital economy are being written elsewhere is strengthened daily as the U.S., European Union and China announce their own rules for AI, platforms and digital technologies; virtually none have had input from developing nations. 

Historically, this concern by unaligned nations echoes comparable concerns more faintly expressed in earlier decades: the development of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons during the 1950s and the development of space technology during the 1960s. Partly to head off resentment and opposition to these technological developments, President Eisenhower launched this “Atoms for Peace” initiative in 1953 and President Kennedy his COMSAT initiative in 1961.

Rhetoric notwithstanding, nothing comparable has emerged in the digital age, partly because — unlike nuclear and space technologies — the U.S., EU and Chinese governments have their hands full just trying to deal with their own domestic interests in writing the rules for these digital technologies. So, for many supporters, the Global Digital Compact is where the nonaligned nations get to have at least some say in the rules governing the future of Internet platforms and AI.  

So, what’s actually in the proposed compact? Anyone experienced with UN documents knows such agreements will be wordy, diplomatic and try to leave no concern ignored. The compact’s preparation has been guided by UN ambassadors from Sweden and Zambia, along with a UN staff, and it has gone through multiple drafts with input from the UN’s 195 member or observer states. That’s a lot by itself; however, because these digital technologies are primarily owned and operated by businesses and affect nearly every segment of every society, the UN’s preparatory effort included an outreach to the private sector, including business, nonprofits and individuals.  

The resulting Global Digital Compact draft is currently 76 (often very lengthy) paragraphs long. It asserts five objectives, ranging from “close all digital divides” to “enhance international governance of AI,” and 12 “principles” ranging from “innovation-friendly” to “gender equality.” And it makes somewhere around 120 “commitments” that the countries participating in the summit will collectively make, ranging from “refrain from Internet shutdowns” to ensuring regulations “in areas such as surveillance … are in compliance with international law.” Even the briefest summary beyond this would take volumes. 

Despite, or perhaps because of, its breathtaking scope, the compact draft and the drafting process have drawn some criticism, notably from some nonprofits and individuals who believe that their input was inadequate, their concerns insufficiently addressed or that the entire process is too government-centric for a medium like digital technologies, the Internet and AI. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some governments have also criticized the global process for not being government-centric enough.  

Now only weeks away, many important details about the summit and its Global Digital Compact remain unclear. While the high-tech agreements coming out of this event will inevitably be diplomatic, vague and cover more topics than one can count, they will establish a foundation for the regulation of the Internet and AI for years to come.  

Roger Cochetti has served as a senior executive with COMSAT, IBM, VeriSign and CompTIA. A former U.S. government official, he has helped found a number of nonprofits in the tech sector and is the author of textbooks on the history of satellite communications.