Our CC4DR’s conference organised during the Smart City World Expo on Digital Rights in cities, from challenges to solutions, offered a lot of insight regarding the impacts of technologies on human rights, and the political and concrete role of cities to ensure a human-centric digital transformation.

Global technological evolution is currently raising unprecedented issues about human rights and democracy. While the societal impacts were never asked during the initial and rapid deployment of these technologies, the world is now starting to focus on crucial questions. Who should own and govern our digital infrastructure? Who decides how algorithms shape our (urban) lives? According to Professor Jung Hoon Lee, the first answer is to ensure that, within the development of digital policies, policy makers are prioritising to safeguard human rights. Governments should especially focus on protecting privacy, addressing the digital divide as well as encouraging civic participation. 

“Digital rights are a very critical topic with multiple issues, such as protecting data and other fundamental rights such as accessing the internet and using basic digital services.” 
Jung Hoon Lee, Honorary Mayor of Seoul Metropolitan Government and Professor and the Yonsei University of Seoul.

While the answers had been looked for at the European Parliament and the national governments, we are choosing today to focus on places where they take concrete shapes: in cities and local communities. In our increasingly connected world, cities are not just physical spaces – they are becoming the mirror of things happening in the digital space.

According to Alexandra Briem, City Council member and Chair of the Digital Committee of the City of Reykjavik, cities witness firsthand the impacts that digital technologies have on human rights. That is why they have a moral responsibility to act as guardians of these rights. The current priorities are set on using data for security, pro-active surveillance and crowd composition. But these technologies can be dangerous, and cities have the capacity to develop policies that protect data protection and combat digital discrimination. 

To ensure that cities are up to the challenges, they need to become more proactive on topics such as digital inclusion. The lack of leadership on the matter needs to change, both thanks to external cooperation with national and international organisations, but also by promoting cooperation within the cities’ administration. A holistic approach is indeed necessary to ensure that not only the IT department but all departments are aware of the consequences of digitalisation and involved in the process of digital transformation.

However, we find ourselves in a context that makes it difficult for local governments to have the suitable capacities to answer to these needs. While we can write frameworks and publish articles about digital rights, we seem to have an increasingly reduced capacity for meaningful dialogue with the actual shapers of our digital reality – the hyper-powerful supranational tech entities that operate with light political oversight in their home countries. 

As Michael Donaldson, Chief Innovation Officer for the City Council of Barcelona,  said, “the times are changing and really fast (...) The first quarter of the century has seen more technological disruption than all humankind has seen before”. “We need to have our voices heard”. That is, for Michael Donaldson, the main takeaway of this ascertainment. And this is precisely why the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights was created. For Pr. Lee, the Coalition exists to address globally the urban social challenges related to digital technologies and upscale cities’ ability to protect digital rights. 

Cities are where digital rights – from privacy and data protection to equal access and digital inclusion – become tangible and where the urgent matters are revealed. When a smart traffic system is deployed, when public Wi-Fi networks are installed, when surveillance cameras monitor our streets – these aren't abstract policy decisions but immediate realities affecting, positively or negatively, citizens' lives. Disinformation and fake news are also increasingly impacting our world, including in urban settings, which push local governments to address this topic from a digital rights perspective. 

That is why projects and initiatives from cities can really make the difference. These initiatives demonstrate how cities can ensure that digital transformation serves all citizens, not just a select few, and how local action can drive broader systemic change.

In Brussels, the municipality launched in 2023 their Digital Rights Charter, a set of principles that aimed to promote human rights and address the digital divide. The charter is divided in five chapters that not only set up political directions, but also concrete actions that need to be achieved by 2030. These actions are based on a human centered vision, which means that the technologies deployed should be used when necessary and with the purpose of making the city more inclusive and dynamic. 

“Digital human rights are not new rights, but existing rights in the digital sphere”. 
Manon Reniers, Smart City Project Coordinator, City of Brussels.

The five chapters are stating concrete initiatives that the city is undertaking. For example, to promote transparency, accountability and freedom of choice, the City is ensuring that citizens can engage with the administrative centre (online or offline) through an omni-channel approach that allows them to contact the City via the MyBXL online platform, by telephone, e-mail or in person at a counter in the administrative centre or one of the liaison offices of the City. Brussels is also developing clauses, protocols and registers concerning artificial intelligence in order to ensure that the algorithms developed or purchased by the City are supervised throughout their life cycle (from purchase to implementation and updating), and that they are safe and do not violate human rights in accordance with the UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.

In London, the municipality has opened a digital inclusion service that helps thousands of local communities and civil society organisations that already have a strong relationship with citizens. “Get online London” pushed for the creation of one thousand digital inclusion hubs, in which they distributed seven thousand up-cycled devices, conducted skills training programs for more than ten thousand citizens and provided seventy-five thousand free sims cards to people in need. 

A second initiative led by London is the data ethics framework. The purpose of the framework is to set up foundational ethical principles that need to be legally complied with to interact with the city. It is giving precise guidelines on how to evaluate risks regarding data and privacy, as well  internal policies and governance procedures on public procurement. Sam Nutt, data ethicist at the London Office of Technology and Innovation also insisted on the importance to “giving the right skills for the right staff” - cities need to make sure that their staff working on digital technologies developments are aware of the impacts of such development in human rights and social inclusion, in order to build responsible technologies.

Are you a local government? Then join the movement to make digital human rights come true! 

Author: Léa Lebon