Data for Policy 2022 Conference Asia-Pacific was a great success, with more than 50 participants joining in-person and online. This year the Data for Policy Conference were organized in three locations - Hong Kong, Seattle, and Brussels - in close collaboration with University College London, The Alan Turing Institute, University of Cambridge, New York University, University of Washington, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Lisbon Council, European Commission, OECD, and HKUST. PPOL hosted the first conference on Monday, 5 December, at HKUST’s Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study Lecture Theatre. The theme of this year’s conference was “Ecosystems of Innovation and Virtual-Physical Interactions.”
In the opening remarks, Professor Masaru Yarime, Chair of the Asia-Pacific conference, highlighted the overall trend and challenges related to data and policy, and Professor Naubahar Sharif, Acting Head of the Division of Public Policy, addressed the challenges and barriers faced by policy-makers due to political, socio-economic and legislative constraints. The keynote speech by Professor Noboru Koshizuka from the University of Tokyo provided stimulating insights into the democratization of data-driven innovation, decreasing cost in data access, data security across the border and the implementation of data-sharing platforms to establish autonomous distributed societies.
Distinguished researchers, experts, and scholars participated in the conference from local and international leading universities and research institutes, including HKUST, CityU, CUHK, University of Tokyo, Seoul National University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University College London, Nanyang Technological University, University of Melbourne, Tsinghua University, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth, and United Nations University Institute in Macau. Innovative ideas were introduced, and diverse perspectives were exchanged on a wide range of issues in two plenary sessions and four presentation sessions. Among the topics discussed at the conference include smart cities, data governance, artificial intelligence, e-government, public participation, and the use of data for addressing sustainability challenges. Case studies in China, the EU, the United States, Japan, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, and United Kingdom were presented to illuminate key opportunities and challenges in data and policy in different institutional environments. The audience both online and onsite actively participated in the discussion and raised thought-provoking questions to explore significant implications for public policy in the future. Some of the papers presented at the conference are expected to be included in a special collection of articles in the journal Data & Policy published by Cambridge University Press.
For media enquiries, please contact Miss April Chiu of the Division of Public Policy at HKUST (Email: aprilchiu@ust.hk / Tel: 3469 2721)
Data for Policy 2022 Conference Asia-Pacific was a great success, with more than 50 participants joining in-person and online. This year the Data for Policy Conference were organized in three locations - Hong Kong, Seattle, and Brussels - in close collaboration with University College London, The Alan Turing Institute, University of Cambridge, New York University, University of Washington, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Lisbon Council, European Commission, OECD, and HKUST.