| APrIGF 2026 Session Proposal Submission Form | |||||||||||||||
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| Part 1 - Lead Organizer | |||||||||||||||
| Contact Person | |||||||||||||||
| Ms. Bea Guevarra | |||||||||||||||
| Organization / Affiliation (Please state "Individual" if appropriate) * | |||||||||||||||
| NetMission DotAsia | |||||||||||||||
| Designation | |||||||||||||||
| Head of Program Development | |||||||||||||||
| Gender | |||||||||||||||
| Female | |||||||||||||||
| Economy of Residence | |||||||||||||||
| Philippines | |||||||||||||||
| Stakeholder Group | |||||||||||||||
| Youth | |||||||||||||||
| List Your Organizing Partners (if any) | |||||||||||||||
| Sherry Shek, Program Manager, sherry.shek@netmission.asia | |||||||||||||||
| Part 2 - Session Proposal | |||||||||||||||
| Session Title | |||||||||||||||
| Who Gets a Say? A Regional Dialogue on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Governance in Asia-Pacific | |||||||||||||||
| Thematic Track of Your Session | |||||||||||||||
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| Session Format | |||||||||||||||
| Workshop (60 minutes) | |||||||||||||||
| Where do you plan to organize your session? | |||||||||||||||
| Hybrid (with onsite moderator and speakers both online and offline, with online moderator for questions and comments from remote participants) | |||||||||||||||
| Specific Issues for Discussion | |||||||||||||||
| Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), digital IDs, payment systems, and platforms that deliver public services, now underpins how governments across Asia-Pacific deliver services and how people access them. As these systems expand, important questions remain: Who gets to shape how DPI is governed? Are accountability and public participation built in? Who benefits, and who is excluded or harmed? Can countries build systems that work together across the region? This session shares findings from the APPO DPI Research Group, a youth-led initiative under NetMission. Since March 2026, youth researchers across Asia-Pacific have crowdsourced country-level observations through questionnaires and community contributions, then worked collaboratively to analyze this evidence for regional patterns and governance gaps, grounding the research in local context rather than desk research alone. Emerging patterns such as countries prioritize efficiency and digital transformation while oversight and participation vary widely, tensions between privacy, inclusion, and convenience are resolved differently across contexts, since DPI development is shaped by each country's own social, political, and infrastructure realities, questions remain on whether national systems build regional interoperability or fragmentation and space for affected communities in governance stays limited. Discussion centers on three questions:1. Governance and accountability, how are DPI decisions made, and what oversight or participation exists? 2.Values and priorities, how are efficiency, inclusion, privacy, and security weighed, and who benefits or is left out? 3.Regional Cooperation and Digital Resilience, are countries building interoperable systems or isolated silos? Rather than fixed conclusions, this session is a regional dialogue! Participants reflect on findings, share country experiences, and test if similar patterns hold locally, directly shaping APPO's final DPI report to be published in Nov 2026. |
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| Describe the Relevance of Your Session to APrIGF | |||||||||||||||
| Trust is the throughline connecting this session to the Digital Resilience and Building of Trust track. DPI and the digital economy depend on trust to succeed. Trust here is shaped not only by technical reliability, but by governance choices, transparency, accountability, inclusion, and public participation. Through comparative research and regional discussion, this session explores how different approaches to DPI governance strengthen or weaken that trust. Emerging observations from APPO's research suggest countries often share similar digital transformation goals but take very different approaches to oversight and accountability. Understanding these differences matters for identifying what actually builds trusted and inclusive digital ecosystems, rather than assuming trust follows automatically from good intentions or technical design. The session also connects to the Future of APrIGF & Multistakeholder Ecosystem track. The APPO DPI Research Group brings young people from across Asia-Pacific into policy research, regional dialogue, and evidence-based advocacy. By sharing findings and inviting direct feedback, the session creates space for youth researchers and the rest of the stakeholders to collaboratively examine the region's DPI governance future, as equal contributors rather than separate audiences. This discussion contributes to APrIGF's broader goals through multistakeholder consultation on an issue actively shaping the region's digital future. Participants gain a clearer understanding of how DPI is evolving, the governance trade-offs countries are making, and where trust is being built or eroded. Feedback gathered will directly inform APPO's final DPI report and policy recommendations, ensuring the research reflects lived experiences. The best-built system in the world still fails if the people using it don't trust it. But please do trust me, this will be a good session hehe. 🙂 | |||||||||||||||
| Methodology / Agenda (Please add rows by clicking "+" on the right) | |||||||||||||||
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| Moderators & Speakers Info (Please complete where possible) - (Required) | |||||||||||||||
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| Please explain the rationale for choosing each of the above contributors to the session. | |||||||||||||||
| The proposed contributors have been selected based on their active involvement in the APPO DPI Research Project and the regional perspectives they bring from across Asia-Pacific. As youth researchers contributing directly to the project, they have been involved in collecting country-level observations, analyzing emerging patterns, and developing the findings that will be presented during the session. Beyond sharing research insights, contributors will help facilitate discussion and encourage participants to share experiences and perspectives from their own countries. As the session is designed as a regional consultation rather than a traditional research presentation, contributors will also help gather feedback and identify perspectives that may not yet be reflected in the research. Bringing together researchers from different APAC contexts helps ensure a diverse discussion and creates opportunities for exchange between participants. 🙂 | |||||||||||||||
| Has AI been used to develop this proposal? | |||||||||||||||
| Yes | |||||||||||||||
| How: | |||||||||||||||
| Just for rephrasing sentences to fit the 2000 Characters 🙂 | |||||||||||||||
| Please declare if you have any potential conflict of interest with the Program Committee 2026. | |||||||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||||||
| Are you or other session contributors planning to apply for the APrIGF Fellowship Program 2026? | |||||||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||||||
| Upon evaluation by the Program Committee, your session proposal may only be selected under the condition that you will accept the suggestion of merging with another proposal with similar topics. Please state your preference below: | |||||||||||||||
| Yes, I am willing to work with another session proposer on a suggested merger. | |||||||||||||||
| Number of Attendees (Please fill in numbers) | |||||||||||||||
| Gender Balance in Moderators/Speakers (Please fill in numbers) | |||||||||||||||
| Consent | |||||||||||||||
 I agree that my data can be submitted to forms.for.asia and processed by APrIGF organizers for the program selection of APrIGF 2026. |
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