Find out more about 2025 UK IGF event.
Please note timings may be subject to change
| Time (GMT/BTC) | Session Title | Session Overview |
|---|---|---|
| 09:00 – 9:15 | Welcome and Opening of IGF | Introduction to the day and overview of key sessions. |
| 09:15 – 09:30 | Ministerial Keynote | Baroness Lloyd of Effra CBE Minister for the Digital Economy, Department of Science, Innovation and Technology and Department for Business and Trade. |
| 09:35 – 10:30 | Panel Session: Digital Fragmentation from a User Perspective | Digital fragmentation is a process which is driven by a variety of political, economic and technical policy decisions. This interactive session will explore digital fragmentation from a user perspective, including how users may be experiencing it in the UK and beyond, and how we can guard against further fragmentation in future. |
| 10:30 – 10:50 | Break | |
| 10:50am – 12:30 | AI Workshop | As almost every aspect of our professional, social, and private lives is transformed by Artificial Intelligence, this session enables us to take a step back and consider how AI is built and where ethics enters the system and explore some real-life examples and their consequences. It will also enable us to think about what we can actually do in practice, from technology choices to policy, advocacy and oversight. |
| 12:30 – 13:25 | Lunch | |
| 13:25 – 13:40 | Lightning talk: Power Asymmetries in Tech with Dr Cecilia Rikap | As power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few big players, this lightening session will explore power concentration as a rights issue. The session will examine how cloud giants subsume AI start-ups into their networks of control beyond ownership and how building public-led stacks that replace those giants with infrastructure and platforms as a commons could expand democracy. |
| 13:45 – 14:25 | The WSIS+20 Review: A Multistakeholder Conversation | The UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process is focused on the digital development agenda, with the goal of building a “people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society”. A 20-year review of WSIS is currently underway, with a vote on the resolution expected in New York in mid-December. This session offers a timely update on where we are in the process and the evolving outcome document, as well as reflections from the UK Government and civil society. |
| 14:30 – 15:30 | Panel Session: A UK Digital ID - how can we ensure a balance of power between the citizen and the state? | Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently announced plans to roll out a new digital ID scheme across the UK, with plans to make this mandatory for Right to Work checks, by the end of this Parliament. Proposals for ID cards are not new in a UK context; they have long been touted as a solution to solve contentious issues of the day, most recently illegal immigration. It is less clear what a digital ID would mean. Little detail has been provided about this idea, although the Tony Blair Institute’s writings on the subject may offer some clues. Rather than simply debate digital ID, this panel explores the design principles and safeguards needed to keep a suitable balance of power between the citizen and the state and considers key lessons from other countries where digital IDs have been designed and deployed. |
| 15:30 – 15:50 | Break | |
| 15:50 – 16:45 | Panel Session: How do we protect children’s rights online in 2025? | Research has shown that the average 12-year old child spends 29 hours a week on their smartphone. This panel discussion will reframe the common discourse that children’s rights online are synonymous with child online safety. Panellists will share insights on how we should consider children’s rights in the round – whether that’s the right to freedom of expression, access to information, or privacy – taking a holistic view of what digital wellbeing for children looks like in 2025. |
| 16:45 – 17:00 | Closing remarks | Closing remarks from the comperes to sum up the discussions of the day . |
| 17:00 onwards | Drinks reception |