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Meeting with the Mexican Embassy in Oslo

Purpose and Outcome

The Meeting was held to update each other on the activities around National Knowledge Portal, DPGs and DTCs, as well as discuss some of the upcoming challenges for national governments.

As major outcome, agreement was reached to deepen the dialogue:

• the Embassy asked for more information on both connectivity, the freemium model for access, as well as digital health and the envisaged National Knowledge Portal.
• based on the information, the Embassy plans to involve necessary shareholders such as the Minister of Telecom, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education.
• Regarding activities in Norway, the Embassy is interested in joining meetings such as the Visjon2030 meetings

Introduction by the Embassy of Mexico

The Embassy of Mexico emphasises the need for change in order to answer the societal challenges. Some of the aspects being addressed were:

• The need to bring value to the society (information is not enough)
• The need for digital empowerment to answer the challenges of Society5.0
• Mexico has an ambitious plan for a.o. national health, already providing apps for pregnant women

As for many other governments, challenges are

• to establish infrastructure, especially in rural areas
• to provide good connectivity to the Internet
• to ensure that everyone has access to the Internet

Goals of the Basic Internet Foundation

This part is extended such that it can be shared directly with relevant shareholders.
In order to reach the targets for SDG 3 and SDG 4, digital inclusion and societal empowerment is a key area. The University of Oslo (UiO) and Kjeller Innovation have established the Basic Internet Foundation (BasicInternet.org), to foster solely on connecting the unconnected. The Foundation has established the the concept Internet Lite for All, the free access to information for everyone. furthermore, the Foundation

• has the vision to improve the life of every human through free access to information on the Internet
• promotes and provides the Freemium model for access
• builds Information spots with free access to information, and premium access to broadband services.

The Government of Norway (Research Council of Norway, Norad and MfA) supports the work of the Foundation through the Non-discriminating Access for Digital Inclusion' (DigI project), involving 11 partners from 9 countries. As part of the DigI project, the consortium has connected 10 villages in Tanzania (see DigI:Villages) and established the basis for local communities building information spots.

The provision of digital health information through publicly available information spots in remote villages has shown tremendous success.

The work of the Foundation was recognised by the United Nations' High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, and was cited as an example by the Norwegian Parliament Report Digital transformasjon og utviklingspolitikken (Stortinget Meld. St. 11, 2019–2020). See further details at DigI:Publications.

Video: National Knowledge Portal by Digital Skills Foundation - https://owncloud.basicinternet.org/index.php/s/TCH1zu9G5iL63qp