Luigi Federico Signorini: Digital policy and data governance in the age of AI

Opening remarks by Mr Luigi Federico Signorini, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy, at the G7 Scientific Roundtable, Rome, 3 June 2024.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

I am happy to take this opportunity to greet participants in today's G7 roundtable.

Digital policy and data governance are bound to imply complex trade-offs. I'd like to highlight three key areas: (i) data localisation; (ii) digital trade; (iii) AI governance.

I'll touch very briefly on each, mentioning issues that are in some way or other connected to today's papers.

There is of course no pretence that the list is exclusive. The number of potential issues is large; personally, I do not even know all the questions, let alone all the answers. What follows is therefore just a set of examples of some important and challenging issues that may relate to today's discussions.

First, data localisation. The key issue here concerns restrictions to cross-border transfers of data.

The OECD has shown that cross-border data flows are increasingly regulated. Over the last decade, the tally of localisation measures has more than doubled. What are we to make of this?

Even in liberal democracies and market economies, the regulatory approach to data flows entails some trade-off between liberty, free speech and free trade on the one side, and privacy, intellectual property, crime prevention and national security on the other. Balancing such concerns in a fast-changing technological and market environment is a delicate task.

Non-free regimes, of course, have other reasons to restrict the flow of data.