About the forum
ABOUT KIGF:
The Internet has become an integral part of our daily lives, revolutionizing the ways we communicate, work, learn, and access information. It has broken down geographical barriers, enabling global connections and the exchange of ideas on an unprecedented scale. This transformative force has not only ushered in a new era of innovation, economic growth, and social progress, but also presented unprecedented challenges such as cyber threats, privacy issues, and persistent digital divides. To effectively harness its benefits and address these challenges, effective Internet governance is necessary.
The Kyrgyz Internet Governance Forum (KIGF), as a national initiative of the global IGF, annually organizes inclusive dialogue through a multistakeholder model between the government, business, civil society, the IT community of Kyrgyzstan, and international organizations to discuss the current digital agenda aimed at creating a safe, fair, and innovative digital ecosystem that positively impacts the lives of the people of Kyrgyzstan.
In 2024, Kyrgyzstan, as an active participant in global and regional Internet governance, faces a number of unique challenges and opportunities in the development of digital infrastructure, ensuring cybersecurity, and shaping a favorable regulatory environment for digital transformation. The agenda of Kyrgyz IGF-2024 reflects key aspects of these processes, drawing on best practices and initiatives in the region, as well as global trends in Internet governance.
The development of digital infrastructure and ensuring access to the Internet for all segments of the population, including in remote and hard-to-reach areas, is one of the priorities of Kyrgyzstan’s state policy. This year, the KIGF Forum will serve as a platform for discussing effective models of public-private partnerships, attracting investment, and implementing innovative technologies to expand coverage and improve the quality of Internet services, developing digital telecommunications infrastructure as a foundation for digital innovation, and ensuring online access to digital solutions and services for all regions and segments of the population.
Ensuring cybersecurity and digital resilience is a key condition for successful digital transformation. Like other countries in the region, Kyrgyzstan faces growing threats in cyberspace, including cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, the spread of extremist content, and cybercrime. Participants of KIGF-2024 will focus on developing recommendations for improving cybersecurity policies and the digital resilience of systems and services in both the public and private sectors, strengthening international cooperation, and raising the digital literacy of the population.
Creating a favorable regulatory environment that stimulates innovation and ensures a balance between security and development, as well as the protection of rights and freedoms in the digital environment, is considered one of the key tasks of Kyrgyzstan’s current digital agenda. Therefore, KIGF-2024 will focus on the regulation of the digital environment: from private, public, and global digital ecosystems, to opportunities for building real-time data-driven governance, implementing innovations through digital regulatory sandboxes, and utilizing machine-readable data formats.
Kyrgyz IGF-2024 will, as usual, serve as an inclusive dialogue platform for all actors—government, business, civil society, and expert communities—with the goal of developing coordinated solutions and practical recommendations on key issues in the interest of advancing the principles of an open, secure, and sustainable digital space.
PARTICIPANTS:
Representatives from government bodies responsible for favorable regulation of the digital environment will be invited to participate in KIGF-2024, including the Ministry of Digital Development, the Communications Regulation and Supervision Service (the sectoral telecom regulator), the State Agency for the Protection of Personal Data, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court, prosecution authorities, and national security bodies. Business representatives, such as telecom operators who create and develop Internet access infrastructure, and banks, will also be present. In addition, domestic and international experts in cybersecurity, digital resilience, and digital transformation, representatives of the IT community, civil society, and academia will take part. Representatives from international organizations like ICANN, RIPE NCC, and others will share the global agenda and current trends in Internet regulation.
FORMAT OF THE FORUM:
The forum is planned to be held in a hybrid format: offline plenary sessions will be organized to discuss the current digital agenda issues for the Kyrgyz Republic, while online presentations will feature international experts.
