After more than two years of consultations and negotiations, the Global Digital Compact will be adopted at the Summit of the Future in September 2024 in New York. Internet governance has been acknowledged as a 'critical global facility' that must be open, global, interoperable and reliable. Looking ahead, the challenges linked to the GDC are twofold.
In the short term, the key issue will be to ensure that the Global Digital Compact is an operational document that serves as a truly tangible digital roadmap towards the fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Goals' agenda. In the long term, the challenge for the international community will be to ensure that the Global Digital Compact is a dynamic and flexible document that is future-proof and provides solid foundations for dealing with the emerging areas of Internet governance in the coming years, including the governance for virtual worlds, neuro-rights and physical-virtual integration, which will have effects in socioeconomic development.
The launch of the Global Digital Compact provides an opportunity for a broader reflection on the needs and preconditions to make the GDC process meaningful, especially in light of the upcoming WSIS+20 review conference. This event is meant to address the 'days after' the launch of the Global Digital Compact, on the one hand, by signalling next steps in its implementation and translation into practical measures and, on the other hand, by indicating emerging policy needs that should start being part of the conversation for a future post-2030 SDGs agenda. These reflections are part of two issue briefs developed under the Global Initiative on the Future of the Internet.
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