Hello everyone Obviously, my name is not Barbara Binova I'm a last-minute jump in because there was an accident There is an argument between Bora and the staircase here at the conference and she couldn't make it today So my name is David Halles and I would be talking about trust management in digital ecosystems Please try to sit in the first rows because in the back you cannot hear anything Stay in the front so you can hear unlike yesterday Okay, so I'm gonna stay seated because first of all I'm tired second I have some notes from my supervisor who Actually prepared this talk and I'm just the last-minute replacement so at the beginning At the beginning I would like to talk about our university, which is not this one, but the other one It was established in 1919 It's the second-largest in Czech Republic after Charles University in Prague. It has over 30,000 students Our youngest faculty is the faculty of informatics Which has over 2,000 students Bora is the vice dean of industrial partnerships, so I guess that's the reason why she had these slides there so as digitalization is advancing and getting more and more Normal in our lives. There are new challenges that we have to tackle and Also, there is the dual use dilemma that technology can be also used for good or bad and If we want to embrace the good we actually have to use it banning it is a bad idea It's the same as with fire. You can use it for good and also for bad And if we talk about digitalization there are challenges regarding Hyperconnection so everything will be every device will be talking to every device Humans will have more interactions with with machines Which brings us to the topic of dynamic Autonomous and not just autonomous but dynamic cyber physical ecosystems where Uncertainty and unpredictable situations can happen on a larger scale than before And obviously we have to secure and future prove these technologies So we can catch issues that can happen that we don't even know about right now So ours research specifically is around critical infrastructure Which Makes it critical because it's usually human lives are at stake or are the way of our life is at stake So we talk about smart grids autonomous vehicles smart cities It's it's basically everything that's around us that can harm us if it's used in the bad way I mean, that's our view. There are different definitions of what a critical infrastructure is So we believe that trust might be the way out of this the way how systems trust or not trust each other or Even humans or system trusting humans human trusting systems so our First view on this is the trust management in an internet of vehicles or a network of vehicles or vehicle area networks We can talk about collision avoidance. So if two vehicles meet then Made what may vehicle a can trust vehicle B if they behave to avoid each other from colliding Then there is Vehicle platooning when you have as you see on the picture multiple vehicles we can move them into one lane and the aerodynamic resistance gets lower for except for the first vehicle so they can save fuel for example can we trust can the Randomly joining vehicle trust the other members of the platoon or can the platoon trust the Vehicle that's trying to join the network Then there is my research kind of the runtime update or running smart agents in the vehicle and Trying to assess some kind of trust against that software that's being run and Of course as I said, it's the human to Autonomous vehicle trust. Let's say there is a human that's Driving a vehicle that starts becoming autonomous slowly. I'm not talking about like ours But like in weeks or months So a human starts driving the car, but the car is slowly taking over as the human allows it so We can have situations like this where we have traffic lights still which wouldn't be needed in a fully autonomous system because Only for only for only for pedestrians so if we look at how Trust and trust worthiness was handled by the industry before Increasing the security reliability or availability of of these services these technologies doesn't really Doesn't really improve the trust itself in the system. It's It's not a conventional problem in computer science because trust as as we interpret it is a is a human or social concept a belief that the other system will not do harm to you by exposing vulnerabilities to it and Even though the system might say that hey I'm trustworthy it still can and it's certified and everything's fine by some Checks in the past it can have it can behave bad in the future and We can even intentionally design devices that would Have one sole purpose of do harm and do damage at a certain point in a in an ecosystem Let's imagine a vehicle that behaves well for 14 days and on the 15th day It will just do something that would collapse the whole city and Kill a lot of people So that's what I was talking about the agents agents with malicious intentions Banning this Which sometimes comes up in legislation isn't really a solution Because somebody else will anyway implement it. That's that's one of the reason So we need to be proactive and come up with technologies that will solve these problems Again, so understanding trust we we started doing some service about in other fields of science than computer science about what trust is and we found these nice definitions So basically trust is a relationship between a thruster and a trustee, I mean If you want to read these I can like give you some time But what we got into is the trust in automation definition that suits mostly our needs Which is basically a belief a relationship between the thruster and the trustee in in the sig in the context of uncertainty and vulnerability to expose some kind of Some kind of side of the thruster that the trustee could exploit but in a safe environment it shouldn't happen So this kind of trust is subjective So if a is trusting B, it's not necessarily true that B will trust a which is also asymmetry and transitive so if a Agent a is trusting B, then it and B is trusting C Then a might trust C as well But not always and we we can go into like reputation and how like social structures Let's say humans gossip about each other or have reputation about each other. So I let's say One person is very famous and they talk about him and you hear good things about that him or her You hear good things about that person then then you might trust that person implicitly So we can evaluate trust in various scopes There is a local in a situation locally like two vehicles meet then they can assess trust Then based on that history based on that Relationship in the future they can build up some kind of reputation that can be consumed by other consumers of this trust framework and Of course, it can be a context specific that you can trust vehicle in Collision avoidance scenario, but for example, you cannot trust it in a vehicle tuning scenario For example, because of a faulty component or a wrong implementation so We are looking into some kind of dynamic evaluation where where we Deal with these things so we came up with this nice picture of How is trust guys if you go to the back you will not hear much So Basically, we have direct and indirect trust direct is when you interact with some some other entity Directly indirect is if you if you hear some kind again gossip if we talk about humans Then there is some kind of context information about the specific situation and based on that We can aggregate these results and make a decision about trust Which in our case as I stated yesterday if you have been on my talk Should be probably non-binary some kind of complex structure We don't really know yet what but so far we work with percentages in some kind of proof of concept case studies But it's will probably like a vector of different percentages So if we evaluate trust directly, we don't talk about reputation, but just trust only Then there are there is a quality of service metrics when we talk about reliability Availability or accuracy and there is the social metrics when we talk about these human aspects of Friendship honesty benevolence altruism on on or unselfishness and we need some kind of ways to measure these So To metrics we already know how to measure There is openness or transparency and our view on this that we could use digital twins Is anybody familiar with digital twins here? Okay, the ones who were on my talk yesterday. So a digital twin is a model of Cyber physical system, but only existing in a cyber world So you can use it to simulate what this actual system would do in the future if you put it into some certain context and If the cyber physical system shares with you this model, it means some kind of transparency like hey I'm willing to give you my model I'm open about it. You can use it to determine my future moves So this is our way of defining openness in certain cyber physical situations The other one is honesty Is how good this model is how honest this model is Basically if you run this model it behaves in a certain way But the vehicle doesn't behave in the same way then we can assess that Assume that the model that the vehicle wasn't really honest about this this digital twin Again, we have these challenges that we are trying to solve So There is a thing to think update trust So the vehicle is Trying to download some kind of upgrade a black box and can we trust it? Can we run it? Can we expose it to critical? Functions of the vehicle or will it kill us? Then there is thing to think trust when you have two entities trying to Assess each other's trustworthiness how much they can interact how much of their safety features Can they turn off to be more efficient? Usually if we talk about safety features limiting vehicles, let's say slowing them down If you trust another vehicle, you you will probably Pass each other with a higher speed because you trust it and you don't feel that much vulnerable But if if the trust level is lower, then you probably do it in a slower way when you have more time to do Sudden reactions if there is something bad happens Then there is my research about adaptive safety That how much should we impose these safety features directly based on Based on the level of trust or the trust score And what happens if I do a false positive and false negative? Assumption Which one of the solution one of the partial solutions is that as I said the non-binary the Percentage where you have much much lower chance of false positives and false negatives Because you don't don't just have the two extremes But we will probably take it more to some kind of vector which is still in progress and the last one is Governance that who should be responsible for keeping up such a ecosystem? Who should be managing the trust from a centralized way? Who should be responsible for certain things? And of course we also look into ethical the ethical side So regarding things to think update trust One of the scenarios is what I was talking about Is a digital twin being ran? Let's say a software module that ensures In a smart city speed limits or certain traffic rules How we how we ensure that this third party software will not break our vehicle? And also do its purpose limiting you in school zones. Let's say We treat it as a black box. We simulate its digital twin And do predictive simulations and based on those predictive simulations We can do the life compliance checking Assess it's how much we can trust it And based on that expose it to certain features or not Or if it's really bad, then we can trigger some kind of safety system that disables it and doesn't allow it to run the agent in their vehicle at all This is the architecture I was talking about Yesterday, so I'm not going to go into the details about it, but this is supposed to somehow enforce software module to run in a secure way on on autonomous vehicles And the next one is collision avoidance. We have some experiments with drones that assess Trustworthiness of of drones based on previous behavior and also pull in reputation Into the picture and try to avoid collision in mid-air Then there is adaptive safety my research where We are trying to adapt safety features based on the level of trust and safeguarding how how Vehicles will will behave in an uncertain and unpredictable world Not just vehicles, but we are trying to demo it on autonomous vehicles. Most of the things Again this architecture that I'm not going to go into details with We also designed some kind of safety adaptive safety framework where You have a model that calculates you a trust score or value. We propagate it to the outside world There is a safety module that based on a decision tree turns on some kind of safety features or Exposes some features based on how the trust is changing over time And there is governance at the end where we are looking into how to actually calculate the trust How to and how to represent it how to punish or reward systems that are Breaking or increasing their trust what kind of attacks are there And also we are looking into evidence collections some kind of forensic readiness That we are we can give it to legal institutions later If there is some kind of misbehavior because that might happen. There is also pre and post incident Then there are problems that we haven't solved yet like What kind of score trust score should we assess to newly joining? Let's say vehicles or entities to our system Then we will probably need some kind of erosion or inflation on the trust score Because you might have been trustworthy yesterday, but it's it's not necessary that you will be trusted today and There are some kind of attacks like blacks won't blindness and other sources That we are looking into it also So the challenges are The scope is situational So in once and as I said earlier in one scenario, you can trust it a vehicle for Let's say lane keeping but in another one for speed control. You cannot That their trust is subjective Again the default trust score as I talked about and erosion we Also need to figure out how to detect malicious intentions That are hidden. So let's say 14 days system is doing well increases its trust score Then on the 15th day, it just goes on a rampage and starts killing people How to ensure safety against untrusted agents like cyber physical system can limit The cyber part like vehicles you can disconnect them from the network, but it will be still in your smart city It can do still damage. So we probably need some kind of means to enforce our rules Like police will be not jobless at that point And there is also still a high degree of dynamism and uncertainty We will never know in the in the future how how will be the Convergence of a network of let's say autonomous vehicles or any kind of smart systems because they will change over time and you will have millions of unpredictable combinations So regarding attacks One of my colleagues is looking into What kind of attacks can happen the important part is their individual and collusion attacks And usually they can end up either either in unreliable decision-making. So we have some wrong trust Evaluation and based on that we do something that we shouldn't do and the other one is false trust recommendation when we again we have too high or too Low rating and recommend to another system that can do bad things Some of these attacks are like self-promoting When The system is trying to say good stuff about itself and there is whitewashing when Probably you've done it in your childhood that you created an email address. You did something on the internet You got banned and then you created another email address and tried it again There is a discriminatory attack when It tries to attack other Actors of the system and tries to pull down their trust score And there are other Other things like on-off attacks when it's sometimes good sometimes bad We need some kind of system that can handle these kind of situations Then there is bad mouthing when I I can give a ring up like from human social situations In in primary school when when five kids are starting to pick on one kid and start saying bad things about that kid This can happen with autonomous vehicles Or the other thing the balance of thing that Five kids will agree that one of them will have a high or five vehicles will agree that one of them will have a high trust score by trying to Prove that it's doing good and good and good and at some point on the 15th day it will start going on a rampage So This is the things we are working on Uh for different aspects of of this thing mine is more the uh adaptive safety and the architecture around Software modules, so that's the thing I can take questions to The rest of them I can try Thank you any questions Yes I cannot hear you please come closer or shout Do you need a one word answer Yeah, so I have to repeat the question So the first question was if this decision tree is static or dynamic and the second one is how it is designed It will be probably dynamic Not sure how much dynamic I cannot answer you it's right now But in uncertain situations you cannot have a static one It might happen that vehicles will exchange their decision trees at some point We are also looking into that, but we are not really deep in it And uh how it will be designed that's also an open question anybody else Please Okay, do we have any questions on matrix? Do we have the session chair? Okay, if we have no session chair, then I guess this was all thank you everybody for coming


All right, welcome to today's Advertisement of code in Haskell. It's day six Took us three hours yesterday. It was quite intense. I Mean we got to a solution in like two hours, but then we did an extra hour and we Made it like 80 times faster So we're gonna see How we do today I don't know. I Haven't like So apparently task one is not too bad, but task two is worse is all I've heard But yeah We will see Let me just check One thing real quick I'm just gonna see the Dream manager Yes, our pitch rate is good. All right, let's check it out day six. All right, so yesterday and We we were like figuring out some clouds some like poisonous clouds So now we're getting pretty deep right and it's getting steeper Okay, a massive school of glowing lanternfish swims past They may spawn quickly you search large numbers. Maybe exponentially quickly You should model their growth rate to be sure Okay and I seems like Santa is just Finding random things to do actually Although you know nothing about the specific species of lanternfish you make some guesses about their attributes Surely each lanternfish creates a new lanternfish once every seven days However, it is processed and necessarily synchronized between every lanternfish One lanternfish might have two days left until it creates on a little bit longer before So you can model each fish as a single number that represents the number of days until it creates a new lanternfish Okay, furthermore you reason a new lanternfish which really needs slightly longer before it's capable of producing more lanternfish Two more days for its first cycle Suppose you have a lanternfish with internal time around you three. So yeah, it's a two case. Okay, so you choose one zero Then it goes back to six and it creates a new lanternfish with internal timer of eight After another day the first lanternfish would have an internal timer of five and the second lanternfish would have an internal timer of Seven a lanternfish that creates a new fish which is the resets its timer to six knots seven Because zero is included the valve tower. Okay, the new lanternfish starts with internal timer of eight It does not start counting down until the next day Oh Realizing What you're trying to do this summer not only produces a list of ages of several hundred nearby lanternfish year puzzle input For example suppose you were giving the following list 3421 this means that the first fish is until number three the second head is shashed internal timer of four And so on until the fifth fish which has an internal timer of two Simulating this fish over several days would proceed as follows 34312 Okay Yeah Okay, so each day is here become six and adds a new eight to the end of them Placed while each other number decreases by one if it was present At the start of the day in this example after 18 days are total of 26 fish After 80 days, there would be a total of five nine three four Find a way to simulate lanternfish. How many language would there be after 80 days? Okay, so the input is pretty simple We don't really have to parse much today, let's say module main where Example let's just put it right in there And you know for the input itself is gonna be a hundred That's not too bad. Okay, so the first thing to realize is that a Each of these are independent All right, so We can calculate like how many the first Fish that starts with three will give us And how many official starfish four will give us? And three and one and two and then just sum them together Okay Right, so it's a three two four one and then so each day is zero becomes a six and Adds a new eight to the end of the list. Wow. Okay. Let's see so let's go for you know like a Lantern fish So we have a Internal timer and we want to simulate it for a number of days Are you gonna return it right? Okay lantern fish? So it's a timer and then days Okay So so Lantern fish So no matter the timer if the days is zero it's gonna give us a Put that here lantern fish underscores of the days is zero That's gonna be one fish Hello, little Annie Hello Bella Hello, Bella And we're working this out. Okay, it's like facial zero. It's gonna give us one. Okay Lantern fish The timer is zero It's going to give us a Days So lander lantern fishes the days are says zero is gonna give us Lantern fish Like one right six days plus lantern fish eight days Okay Otherwise If it's not zero it's just gonna give us lantern fish timer minus one days days Minus one. I think Let's have it the other way around. Okay zero days Days zero Okay, let's compute this for GCI D6 adages return Let's compute it like this now. Let's just map Lantern fish and let's see No All right, so we want this to be There's zero days left. Yeah, okay We want this to be Days and then we have this internal timer six and days and eight So what we're gonna do is like we're gonna do this right and then we're gonna memorize it to make it faster But first we check we can just do this We reload it now lantern fish we're gonna map Lantern fish 18 over Example some That's 15 Each day a zero becomes a six and adds a new eight to the end of the list While each other decreases by one if it was present at the start of the day This is maybe I think it's all right, so we decrease the days as well. Now let me get 14. Okay, wait Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do So at the end of day one, so why does it become So lantern fish 18 three why is that one? So zero should become one. Okay now 18 Zero is lantern fish six plus Lantern fish days. Oh, I forgot this 26 All right, so I think we are getting there now So okay, so we're gonna be able to Compute this pretty fast Let's just get the input, right? Let's just see if it's Super slow, I don't think this is slow input Ain't input equals quite long this input, right? But first of all, okay But let's let's do some premature. So I don't think we need to memorize the function so much Um, but like like in this input, right? We can sort it like we can just count the number of ones and We count the number of It is quite long It doesn't matter So we can so we don't need to do it for all of them, right? We can just kind of do it all at once So like yeah once for each one. Okay, so this is that we have a lantern fish function and then we're gonna say Lantern pool is gonna take a list of ints and return as an int Lantern pool is going to say Group, oh, yeah, we have to we should have the days as well here. So we're gonna take the Inits Inits and then days So we're gonna say a sort in its We're gonna group them and we're gonna import it at least So Where in its Okay, then we we have like a groups and so we're gonna say We're gonna we're gonna let me just see here undefined So, let's just look at them, right? Okay, so we reload. Oh, yeah Group in its right. This is gonna be infinite Group, okay, so we have a group of sort input All right, so then we are going to sort them I comma I and else is equal to map a We're gonna take and we're gonna take a list and we're gonna say We're gonna say here and it's x comma a ling of L group Right, so we take this and we map the L at x underscore to x comma length L So we and then so what the thing is that we could just multiply by these, right? Let's see. So we group the eyes and L's then So so num per pool is equal to This takes in the in it and the The eye and the L and it's equal to lantern fish And then the it stays and then I and we multiply by that by Oh Okay, and so number pool is an int so we do a some map some num for pool Some map number pool group No, I and L's Lantern pool. Okay, then we say here a Example and 18 26 now you say example 80 5934 Okay Now we do it for the input. It's not bad Three six five eight six two now. Let's say here print lantern pool input 80 and let's GT oh three day six Compile it Time day six Okay, it's six milliseconds. It's not taking any time And we check if it's correct. All right, you got the first gold star Are we gonna do be quick today, but I was told that the first one was quite fast But the second one was harder. Suppose the lantern fish live forever. I have unlimited food and space Would they take over the entire ocean? After 256 days in the example of other be a total of Okay, I think we can do this. We just have to Make this into integer num per pool is Going to be so this is gonna be from integral now. What's wrong here? Num per pool? Num for pool takes in an It's a list of int and int Intergr, okay, and this should return an integer Now the types are correct Time day six. Yeah, so now we should have integers everywhere and Okay, so this might be slow, but we'll see Okay, it's taking quite a long time to run But we're computing it once per day, right? Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do That's a not running for the input. Let's run it for the example first. I don't think it's any It's not it's not gonna be that much longer for the Okay, we're gonna have to memorize here Let's just run it. But so I think it's because like the six on the eight We're computing that for all of them, right? We don't really need to do that Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do Nice to see you again Good luck on this problem Thanks Uh, I think we need to memorize things because like the naive way of doing it is It's not going very fast how about we unsafe goers and i think there's like a maybe it's just like a function we can just call the memoize i'm wondering um yeah it's also like not multi-threaded or anything right and it's taking up all right let's just have it carry around right a map of int comma int here we don't care about it here we don't care about it here we don't care about it um but i mean okay actually we do care about it import qualify data map map as map okay now lantern fish so it's actually going to be here um lantern fish okay so i might uh yeah it's gonna be fine lantern fish um it just can take a slanted let's do it for the lantern pool lantern fish takes in an int and an int and returns an integer now lantern lantern fish equals lantern fish prime map dot empty empty lantern fish prime where okay so this is a memo so we do first here case um days days comma zero memo of just lantern fish prime map int comma int integer two int integer okay if if we have an answer memoized already just rest and we turn raise so if we don't have it then we say um all right and we have to return the map again right map int comma int comma the girl comma integer lantern fish uh so this is gonna be a second uh this is gonna be a memo now we just return memo comma one okay so if so if if it's in the map then we just return memo comma reds okay otherwise we say uh we say uh let memo prime comma r equal to lantern fish prime memo days zero now wait days uh days minus one days minus one uh six memo prime prime r2 you'll do lantern fish prime memo prime days minus one eight and then in a map dot insert map dot insert days comma zero into and then it's r plus r r plus r2 memo prime prime right r plus r2 do do lantern fish map empty and we take a second you can imagine we can map map map mean this one takes a map okay yeah okay sorry i always go up the order here so if then this one is an integer then we just return memo reds otherwise we lift that toe up we press it along okay this should be redundant bracket and then this this is a memo and this is just a lantern fish prime memo let's see if it works lantern fish prime in line 14 what do you want so it's int int right so this is a a day's eye this is day's eye why was it complaining i don't know let's run it for the example two six nine eight four four five seven five three nine five six seven three nine yes input i think we got it four milliseconds thanks to memoization all right that was pretty easy uh well it wasn't easy but like we knew that we just memoized it right so you went from like it's not even done after 11 and a half minutes to four milliseconds and why well the memoization really means that it really means that we we really it's called dynamic programming right we really we're really taking it from like an exponential problem down to like a linear and like blah blah problem right by just kind of computing once because otherwise what we were doing is like we were computing again and again for the same values and now we don't do that so we can actually probably make this slightly faster by by like by like folding here all right so and then kind of use the same the same memoization but i mean four you make it in four milliseconds or one millisecond zero it's not bad right and we did it in 30 minutes so i think it's a pretty decent problem today or decent solution at least okay uh yeah since this was so quick let's see what can we can we do it yeah so i think like this is also like you know if you're going for like an interview or you're like doing programming competitions um this is usually how you do it right you memoize because a yeah because they they just love to give you kind of exponential problems that are super quick if you memoize and functional languages make it pretty easy to memoize so because we just you know we just passed around a map right and then we're looking up in the map and then like we compute one thing with the map and then we compute the second and it's like and then we insert the answer we got uh into the yeah and that's like that's what we return from days of zero right and then it just works right yeah i'm actually impressed that it just worked though i uh i was expecting to have to deal with some trickiness but i think yeah i think this is a solution we can be happy with it's very inconsistent but it's like sometimes four milliseconds sometimes 10 but yeah like we're at that point where it's like it's so fast it doesn't really it doesn't really do anything right okay um let's just do the fold right and i remember which one it is but yeah so we're gonna say uh that so here then we don't we return we return the map a type a memo is that's just equal to this memoization map and then this is memo to memo and then this is so we return the memo okay and then number pool uh so this is going to take in a memo and an int comma int and return an integer and we're going to say lantern fish let's actually have it like this uh but we just kind of expose lantern fish prime and then we just call we say here this is memo and lantern pool lantern pool m so and then we just say this is uh the function we're gonna fold over here is gonna be memo and then into int and then and it returns an integer now ghi what's the type of folder i don't think we want to do like this it takes like the the current memo value and then and returns memo comma integer and we're working at g type fold l prime and we're gonna do folder okay uh which is me just means we do like this so say fold r number pool and then we say map dot map dot empty comma zero ding ding ding ding and this one is and then we take the second of that now we do here uh this is gonna be int comma int and then memo curve so we say where n res is equal to so memo prime comma r is equal to lantern fish prime and then it's going to be memo and it's going to be days right and it's gonna be okay so this is the result the new memo and the result so this so these this is going to be the new one is going to be memo prime and after like with this we don't even have to do the group and sorts right we we just look up yeah but so it's going to be memo prime and it's going to be uh curve plus from integral l times r now let's reload now let's do lantern pool m here let's see if it actually works i mean it works but the the other one was so fast that we don't really see any difference we're like at the limits of how like just timing with a bash command right ding ding ding ding ding ding ding all right so now we do it uh we can also use past the memory session in the new one so i think we'll just call it quits after this i'm gonna go climbing it's a nice port since i finished so fast uh yeah but you know some days are three hours some days is 45 minutes let's add this skit add day six at reaches skits date skit commit let's uh let's add a add a kit ignore here that says a star star star dot dump simple star star input star star example kit push okay we've updated this and uh yeah i think we did good today it was a we did it in a decent amount of time we did it like in a reasonable way we tried to do it naively just say hey you know this has called fast enough to just do it um but that didn't work out because it was yeah we'd run it for 11 and a half minutes and was still running which is a bit much but by memoization like a very simple memoization just like look up the arguments in a map and then like once you compute them save them and then use that like uh it just worked right so i think it's good all right thanks for today sorry i guess for how short it was but uh we're just too good huh all right thanks for again and i think i'll see you at 7 30 tomorrow 1930 that is my time so like half an hour later because i'm gonna go play floorball at six and you know i want to and it's from six to seven i want to be you know get be able to get ready so tune in tomorrow at 7 30 and have a nice monday all right catch you a tomorrow bye


I welcome you all to this Sunday organization at this UN wider conference and this session is on socio-economic effects in South Asia. So the session aims to bring together leading research from South Asia to discuss the effects of the pandemic on lives and livelihoods in their own countries, the policy responses and how effective have they been and how COVID-19 will transform the economy, states and societies of the South Asian nation. So I will actually introduce the panelists as I get to them for the intervention. But before that, let me kind of set out the tone and as well as share the experience from Bangladesh with you all. So looking at the kind of effects of the pandemic on lives and livelihood in Bangladesh. So what I would say that probably this is also applicable to many other countries that we can look at the three, you know, indicators, three major areas. What I call PI, PIE, Poverty, Inequality and Employment. These are the major areas where we have seen the COVID-19 had its impact on the bad impact. In terms of poverty in Bangladesh, Sanim did a lot of surveys. Actually one survey, Sanim did towards the end of last year at a very large scale national represent household survey, where he found that the poverty rate in Bangladesh went up by it was kind of doubled from its pre COVID level. And also there is a kind of serious fallback into the poverty because there are those who are vulnerable poor, but not officially poor, they fall back into the poverty level. We also saw huge jump in inequality and also huge disruption in the labor market, especially job losses, direction, income, and also job switches. We are also, so from Sanim we have done quite a lot of surveys. Actually we have done over the last one and a half years, five rounds of surveys on what we call the business conference index. We tried to look at, we are serving for more than 500 firms and tried to understand how the firms, business firms, they're actually responding to this COVID situation. And we found that, that SMEs are especially badly hit. And I'm quite sure that in many of the solution countries we also have the same kind of experiences. So what have been the policy responses and how effective they have been in Bangladesh? So immediately after the COVID, we saw that long term measures actually came in. We also saw a huge former bit of the health sector to cope up with the crisis, especially the health sector to begin with was in crisis in Bangladesh because of very low spending in health sector, public spending. At the same time, what we observed that there are serious institutional challenges in the health sector. And that continued during the COVID period and that still continue. And with respect to having access to the vaccine, and we saw that not very certainties there because of over reliance on one specific source and then struggling to get vaccine on time. And there's global politics as well. Probably we'll hear from other families, their own country experiences. Government came up with the stimulus packages, number of stimulus packages, also external social protection programs. But I would highlight that there are two major institutional challenges. First one is reaching out to the new core. As I mentioned that there's a jump in the poverty rate and which actually caused that rise in what we call the new core. But the existing social protection programs were not able to reach out to those new codes because they were not designed in that way, they could reach out to the new core. So a large number of new core actually are still left out of any kind of government support during this crisis. And the second institutional challenge, I think, which is very much related to the stimulus package, is reaching out to the micro-small and medium to crisis. And we have found that we have surveyed by Sanim and some other organizations, among others that the SMEs though they are the worst hit during this COVID situation. They are the least recipient of the government support during this crisis. And the stimulus package, the way they were designed, the way they were dispersed, were not very much helpful to actually support the micro-small and medium enterprises. And there's a strong political economy factor as well because those firms, those sectors who have strong lobbying power, strong voices, and strong links with the political and business elites, they were able to grab the major benefits out of the stimulus package and the support so far. So how is actually now they're looking forward at how the things are really going to transform and then what do we see in the coming days? So my point would be that COVID is actually here to stay. We can't expect that COVID will go away very soon. And we are seeing one after another new variant of COVID. And so that means that the health crisis or the virus later crisis is going to stay for long, which means that we have to plan accordingly. We have to devise our development strategies, factoring in the COVID situation. And I have reached and we have our group from Sanim, repeatedly in Bangladesh that we need to come up with some sector-specific and area-specific protocols to cope up with the COVID situation. That means that the protocols in the urban area would not be same as the protocols in the rural area. Also, the protocols for any manufacturing firms would not be the same as the protocol for any service-oriented firm. So we need to come up with these kind of protocols. Unfortunately, over the last one and a half years, we haven't seen this kind of development in terms of developing protocols. And while we need involvement of the major stakeholders, not only the government, but also private sector, different other stakeholders, sector experts as well. We need to, I think this is kind of looking forward, you know, how do we really see in the future and what with respect to our development strategies? We need to revisit our sustainable development goals because by 2030, we aren't quite sure that many of the developing countries will not be able to meet the SDGs, a large part of the SDGs. And then, I think, since it's a South Asian panel, I'm really glad to hear from the distinguished families that how the South Asian cooperation can actually help to get out of these crisis. We should look for new forms of regional cooperation in the health sector, how to address the pandemic, and also the new situation, what we are observing, a rising poverty rate, huge job losses, rising inequality, whether we can extend our cooperation in the social sector as well. With these, I'd like to conclude here my intervention. And I'd like to request Dr. Ganga Tilakaratna, who is the research fellow and is the head of the poverty unit of Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, is a leading think tank in Sri Lanka, and she has done quite a lot of work on poverty and social security. So what do you Dr. Ganga Tilakaratna and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, chair. And good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all of you from different time zones. Let me first of all thank you and wider and Sanem for inviting me for this session. So we all know that COVID-19 pandemic has led to massive disruptions in lives and livelihoods of people around the world. It has pushed millions of people into poverty in a way leading to a reversal in the global movement towards poverty alleviation. So as a result, many countries today have faced increasing rates of poverty and widening income inequality and Sri Lanka is no exception. As per a recent study by the World Bank over 500,000 people in Sri Lanka had fallen into poverty due to the pandemic, which has led to an increase in the 3.20 dollar a day poverty rate from around 9% to almost 12% in 2020 and even the extreme poverty as shown by the 1.90 dollar a day poverty rate, though small for Sri Lanka, it's kind of less than 1% but has almost doubled during this period. So what these actually imply is that the pandemic has caused in a way a reversal in the progress made towards poverty reduction in Sri Lanka over the past five years or so. The main contributory factors for the rise in poverty and inequality is the employment shocks caused by the pandemic, particularly in the forms of job losses and falling income earnings, etc. So basically the pandemic has affected workers across all employment categories. However, similar to many other countries, the effect has been more severe on the informal sector workers like daily wage journals, casual workers as well as self-employed persons who account for about 60% of the workforce in Sri Lanka. Now adding to this a considerable number of private sector workers to have experienced job losses and wage cuts due to the pandemic and this is partly also a result of the large number of informal workers within the private sector in Sri Lanka in the form of contractual and casual workers. So recently the studies have shown a growing informalization within the formal private sector in Sri Lanka and which is likely to worsen now due to this crisis. The pandemic also has led to an increase in the unemployment rate of the country, particularly among the youth. So as per the labour force survey data, the overall unemployment rate has increased only by around 1% during 2019 to 2020. But the unemployment rate among the youth, especially those between 15 to 24 years, has increased by around 4.5 percentage point from its already high level of 21% in 2019 to around 25.7% in 2020. So basically implying around 20% increase in the youth unemployment rate in Sri Lanka from its 2019 level. So not only the unemployment and poverty, so basically the pandemic has had a significant effect on the Sri Lankan economy. The economy contracted by 3.6% in 2019 compared to 2020 compared to 2019 and several sectors were also affected, particularly hotel and accommodation sector, food and beverages, manufacturing, construction, transportation sector, so on and so forth. In particular, the tourism industry that had already been affected in 2019 due to the Easter Sunday bomb attack in Sri Lanka was further affected by the pandemic, particularly due to the various travel restrictions and restrictions on tourist arrivals, etc. So the government now in order to provide relief to people and businesses affected by the pandemic, the government has taken various measures since March 2020. These include cash transfers and food rations to vulnerable groups and various concessions and credit facilities to affected businesses, including concessory loan schemes for SMEs and firms in selected sectors, say in apparel sector, plantation and IT sectors, and relaxed requirements on loan settlement and leasing facilities and concessions on statutory payments like income taxes and other taxes. So a long list of things. So one of the key measures by the government to support the vulnerable groups was the 5000 rupee cash grant, which was given to low income families and other vulnerable groups such as the senior citizens, persons with disability and especially those whose livelihoods were affected by the pandemic. During the first wave, these 5000 grant was basically given to vulnerable groups of the entire country for two consecutive months, but from the second wave onward, it was confined to just the lockdown areas and just one 5000 chunk for a family. So a rapid survey that was carried out by the Institute of Policy Studies, IPS that I'm attached to this year, revealed that over 70% of the recipients of this cash grant were actually from low income households and of the remaining households who were primarily from lower middle income to middle income groups, the majority had experienced income falls during the pandemic. Now, interestingly, interestingly, almost all the recipients covered in the survey have found these 5000 allowance was useful or if not extremely useful to meet their needs, especially purchasing food during that time. So let me wrap up soon. So going forward, I mean, while the pandemic has posed many challenges and has posed many disadvantages to people's lives and economies, it has also given us an opportunity for the countries to strengthen the existing systems like the social protection system and our health system and also to harness technology, particular digital technologies, I mean, all of which could help build our economies in a way back better, hopefully, in the long run. So thank you and over to you, Sally. Thank you very much. Definitely, we'll come back to you in the second round and I request the participants would like to pose any question to panellists to all of us. So please, you will look at this Q&A, Q&A section and you can actually pose your question and we'll come back to those questions in the second round. Now I will call to next panelist Dr. Vakar Ahmed with the joint executive director, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, SDPR Pakistan. Unfortunately, Vakar could not join us live because of a very sudden meeting of him with the minister. So he sent a video recording of his intervention. So I'd request Trump to play this video, please. Let's just me leave for a second and I'll come back to share. Okay, so I move to the next panelist then. Why don't you move, request Pushpa Sharma, who is the executive director of South Asia Watch and Trade Economics and Environment Nepal. Pushpa, please over to you in six minutes please. Thank you, Salim. First of all, thank you so much for organizing this panel. Thanks to Vida for having a South Asia panel here to discuss the effects of the pandemic on the lives and livelihoods, what have been the policy responses. And the way forward. Certainly, as has been said earlier, things are not different in Nepal as well. There has been 770,000 infections until yesterday with just 2.6% of the population and 10,838 deaths until yesterday. And these are official figures. Certainly, actual numbers could be much higher because many have gone uncounted. When you look at the economy, there was a contraction of 2% in the fiscal year 1920. In the last fiscal year, 2021, which actually ended 15 July of this year, the estimate was a 4% growth. But because of the second wave, perhaps this still might not be the case. It might have gone down. Looking at the poverty, which in the case of Bangladesh in Sri Lanka, also had shown that there was an increase in poverty. It's the same in Nepal as well. A report prepared by the National Planning Commission actually showed that 1.2 million additional people were pushed into poverty because of the pandemic. And which meant that the poverty increased by 4% in the fiscal year 1920. And this is because almost all the economic sectors have been impacted. But some of the sectors actually, they have been impacted more than the others like tourism, hospitality, transportation and others. Because of this impact, this disproportionate impact in some of the sectors, the impact on employment has also been disproportionate. So ILO, it estimated that 3.7 million workers, they earned their livelihoods in sectors that are deemed most at risk due to COVID-19. And out of these, about 1.9 million jobs have been disrupted because of the pandemic. And a monitoring survey by World Bank also found that more than 40% of the economically active workers in Nepal are the reporting incidents of job loss or prolonged work absence. And as is the case in other countries, SMEs and women owned and managed enterprises, they have also been hit very hard by the pandemic. In terms of food security, WFP found through a survey that there was a 23.2% spike in food insecurity in Nepal during the lockdown. And this is almost like obvious when livelihoods of people were at stake. And also in terms of children's education, as is the case I think in almost all the countries that have been impacted. So the impact of the pandemic on the livelihoods have been quite harsh. And how has the government responded to this? In terms of policy responses, certainly in terms of the budget for health before the pandemic, it was very meager. As in the case in other South Asian countries, as Salim also pointed out in the case of Bangladesh. And after the pandemic, in the budget, the government came up with an increased budget for the health sector. Also setting aside money for the purchase of vaccines. Unfortunately, though, vaccines couldn't be purchased on time. There were many different political reasons as well. And if you look at the population that is vaccinated so far, it's just 19% of the total population. When we look at the fully vaccinated population, 16%, this is a bit higher than many countries in South Asia. But only 3% are part of the vaccinated, which is much lower than other countries in South Asia. And until the vaccine is there to cover most of the adult population, things are not going to improve for sure. And in the initial period of the pandemic, when the lockdowns began through the local governments, there were some distribution of food and essentials. But because of the lack of a database in terms of who are the vulnerable and who are the needy, this didn't go as planned. And all of the vulnerable people couldn't get access to these items, to these food and other items. The government came up with a plan in terms of providing employment through the Prime Minister Employment Project and through other local development programs. But this also couldn't go as planned. And we could see queues of Nepali people heading back to India and other countries for work once the pandemic started subsiding after the first wave. One good thing that the government did was contributing to the Social Security Fund. Now, this is a fund recently set up in which 20% of the basic salary is contributed by the employer and 11% from the employee. So in order to provide that relief to the employer and the employee, the government contributed this whole 31% to the SSF for the period of the lockdown months. But what happened was that people who were in the formal sector and those who had been enrolled in the SSF could get this facility. But in the country where 85% of the employment is in the informal sector, this did not help to those workers. Similarly, there were other monetary measures rather than fiscal measures in terms of reduction interest rate and different loan interest payments that the government provided, which was quite a relief. But as in the case of Sri Lanka and other countries, the SMEs have not been able to make the most of these measures. So when we look at how to go forward, there are actually two special things that I would want to highlight here. One is regarding the attainment of the SDGs. Nepal already had an average annual financial deficit of $5 billion to attain the SDGs and now the pandemic has made this even worse. So as Salim said earlier, perhaps there is a need to revisit in terms of how the SDGs are going to be attained. Similarly, Nepal is now going for double graduation. One is that it has already moved from a low income country to a lower middle income country and it's also going to graduate from the LDC in 2026. And already because there are fiscal strains to the country, these developments are going to impact the country more in the days to come. So perhaps in terms of going with the regional cooperation, which we did not see actually happening during the pandemic, there is a need to revisit regional cooperation and also other forms of cooperation in terms of facing the impact of the pandemic. I stop here and will be happy to take questions. Thank you Salim. Over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much Pushpa. So let me then invite Dr. Prabhidhe. Dr. Prabhidhe is a professor, the research and information system for developing countries, RIS and the coordinator of ASEAN India Center AIC at RIS India. So Dr. Prabhidhe, over to you please. You have to unmute Dr. Prabhidhe. Thank you very much, Dr. Raihan. And I think there is a noise coming in and now it's better yet. And my co-panelists and Sanem and UNU wider for the invitation to come to this panel. And thank you once again for taking the lead, Dr. Raihan, for organizing such an important session. In six minutes, what India did and what South Asia will be doing. It's a really challenging task, but I will only touch upon some of the best practices of the region and on socioeconomic fronts. If you recall the eight countries in South Asia, including Afghanistan, almost all of them have met with the second wave. Some countries now having a third wave like Sri Lanka or Nepal in that way. One reason why India successfully contained virus because of its rapid vaccination program. That's actually helped India. Again, I said in bracket temporarily because our festivals are coming, which is a one and a half months from everywhere and we can see a different scenario maybe unfolding. So, so far over half of the Indian total population, statistics indicates that the vaccination has been completed. And this is the best practices that I can present and there are the implications. Now, this is so far vaccination is concerned. You have some, we had some problem initially because supply chain has got disrupted. So we talk about resilient supply chain, etc. But soon after the political interventions, we can see that supply of the important ingredients and parts and components for production of vaccines has been resumed and India. And today has started giving vaccines with several five to six new brands in that way. So in short, since supply has picked up, vaccination has picked up over 500 million people single vaccinated and where I live in Delhi here, almost about 10 million people vaccinated with single dose and about a 5 million with double dose. I am fully vaccinated in that way. So in the end, I can see there's a change in the economy. Indian economy has bounced back, but coming with a low base bouncing with 100% 20% will be misleading. The point I would like to present here that in South Asia that India has given us a scenario which could be having or it can have some implications for the South Asian region as well. But there are, you know, losses, you know, which I say the law since in terms of population in terms of economy in terms of other things. These losses was required in the sense that we need to know what how resilient is our economy is all about. So some kind of testings through this pandemic management has happened. And I think some of the regional products that we in India now present in terms of the software that India is is has introduced open source software called Cohen, you know, which is being used as a regional public goods. Of course, Bangladesh has its own own surveillance management in Bangla, Nepal has its own language arrangement source Sri Lanka. So, so the point here that when you talk about, you know, up coming up with a resilient system to look it in socio economic aspects that one project, which I present for the panel discussion and also the participants. How do we connect this all, you know, surveillance arrangements that individually they have arranged but recall soon after the COVID came in in 2020 South Asian leaders they met. Virtually the first virtual meeting in the world, which actually gave lots of inspiration to other forum like G20 and etc. So, so this is where South Asia took a lead in terms of giving a political direction but that later on it fizzled out or diluted to some extent. So this is one advantage that we received but there's also, you know, there are drawbacks because we couldn't sustain. Another minute left. Yeah, just not coming and within a minute I will conclude that in in case of in India, I mean so far is good. We have India has presented with 100 about 150 billion dollar of infrastructure package in terms of stimulus and etc. This, certainly these are having some implications to them in the down bottom. The India has introduced some structural reforms, logistics sector, financial sector, labor market, those we can go and discuss and to facilitate trade India the first country to allowed kind of a free trade I said a kind of in a vaccine for example in South Asia region in Bangladesh this company Dexinco for example Sri Lanka Nepal or Pakistan this company they come out with a vaccine and if they comply with the local procedure standards. So, so there would be a free flow of the vaccines for the betterment of. So this is what the second recommendations I would like to make to the panel that perhaps South Asia can come out with an innovative idea how to facilitate this kind of a regional package regional vaccine and the other you know health related gifts last point and I close is that that India coming up with its own surveillance system for corporate management, particularly for the poor and people at the bottom which you came out with like, you know, the survey the surveillance system the testing, the drugs and pharmaceuticals, which is a huge repository resources so that can be extended. So, one number three and I conclude that these protocol surveillance and all these kind of resources may be shared in the regions. The South Asia regions and the beyond this sharing of resources brass practices case may not need much investment in that way so itself the Sting tanks universities they can also with that I conclude and thank you very much for inviting me to the panel. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think it was extremely useful points and I wish we could have more time to discuss the laboratory on those points, but I'll come back to you in the after I check with the Trump and Trump can we play now workers with you. And start by thanking the organizers and, of course, Dr Salim Rehan for bringing us all together at this very important session. I want to quickly jump into the three very structured questions provided to us. And in the wake of pandemic public sector service delivery in Pakistan, like any other country has come under severe pressure. A concern of more immediate nature is regarding the livelihoods of those associated with various economic activities. The lockdowns have resulted in a initial negative 0.5% real growth in the previous fiscal year, putting both formal and informal segments of the economy at risk. And due to the delayed medical solutions and vaccination drive, the second and third wave of COVID-19 further exacerbated these challenges. A mid low economic growth result in decline in collections from taxes. They were of course concerns with regards to sustainability of social protection offered by the government. While some tax relief was provided to the SMEs in the fiscal year 2020. It was felt that this relief may need to be continued in the coming months to to prolonged incidents of the pandemic. And to sustain the provision of tax relief and subsidies governments borrowing requirements are bound to increase as well. While the poverty rate had declined by 40% over the past two years pre pandemic. However, we are now going to see a sharp reversal with up to 40% of Pakistanis living below poverty line in the wake of COVID. The situation of multidimensional poverty is also expected to suffer. The unemployment rate, which was around 5% according to 2019 data, could worsen due to the future lockdowns. Job losses currently stand at somewhere around 1.5 million workers. And there are additional implications which include increased food insecurities and additional 2.45 million people beyond the existing 3.9 million now suffer food insecurity. With regards to poverty there is a gender dimension as well where the household data indicates that women led households and rural poor communities are most vulnerable with recurrent challenges including social and occupational mobility. With this background the government did come up with three levels of policy response. First of course at a social protection level where cash grants and food subsidies were provided. Second there was an emphasis on reduction cost of doing business where taxes were rationalized utility rates were rationalized. Then there was a response from the central bank site where refinance facility was available in order to retain the labor force for periods of shutdown and to delay any negative impact which could result in layoffs. A mixture of these three social protection costs of doing business and the central bank response have allowed a V shaped recovery to take place and this year we have seen an almost 4% growth this year. Partly because of the low base effect as well but the real GDP has expanded by 4% at the back of negative 0.5% the previous year. The reasons for this V shaped recovery are of course amnesty allowed in the construction sector, real estate, housing sectors which are also expected to create jobs. The currency devaluation to some extent helped the export sector which has posted gains due to attractive and digital measures for the diaspora the remittances have seen increase. However there are widening inequalities which still remain a concern and many sectors in the manufacturing and services have still not opened up after the pandemic hit. There is a relocation of both human and capital resources across sectors which could also take some time. Finally how will the COVID transform Pakistan's economy, economies in the region. In my view there will be workers who may not be recalled into their past jobs indicating a permanent change in the post pandemic production structures or consumer behavior. And in the services sectors for example strict social distancing measures have already instigated changes in demand for labour and relocation of resources in favour of automation of systems and processes. This aspect is closely related to future productivity of labour force as there will be for example students or pupil and vocational training centres who will drop out and may never come back to their education or skill. And therefore a supply and demand side effort has to be simultaneously mobilized to move people towards new career paradigms. This will include active and passive labour market programs that upscale and reskill for jobs in sectors which are expected to see growth in 2022 and beyond. Pakistan government has started a Kamiab Javan program just to sort of focus on this aspect. At an individual level there are significant costs involved in carrier shift amid pandemic. Pivoting to the future is not a luxury available for many in these times particularly those in areas with low internet penetration. It is therefore important that these sectors are clearly identified by the government bodies and a plan is chalked out to divert resources to individuals who are not in education and not on job at this point. Finally as of course we are starting in a panel being represented by regional speakers, regional cooperation for three things is a must going forward. Healthcare, addressing food insecurities and building back better including bringing a renewed focus on removal of inequalities and respect for environment and natural resources in our part of the world. With this I of course thank the organizers once again for allowing me the opportunity to express my views. Thank you. So we thank a worker for his intervention and also sharing with us his recording video intervention. So we have around five minutes left, we will use that time. So there is a question on India, if you can actually quickly respond to that. On this question especially with respect to how being the largest producer of vaccines you know the spread of virus in India. So if you can quickly respond to that and also very quickly respond to Professor Kunal's question on the recovery project. I will then come back to Pushpa and then Ganga probably on the recovery part if you would like to respond. And there is a question by Ishrath Sharmin too on the deal with the data deficiency in the global south. So I think you now know that you probably have to answer on India as well. Yes, over to you. Yeah, but quickly, you know, to a response to the salam al rabadi's questions. India has success where as I said in my presentation, you know, successfully vaccinated half of total populations over 500 million people. Officially, the vaccinated. Now this has having a very strong effect on the region. So except the few states, India has 29 states and except for one particular southern state, the rest and some states in the north eastern part. Most of it, you know, the virus has been contained as the current variant. That's what I mean. So it is not that we haven't done much. So, so I'm very positive, you know, in and in that way to respond to his questions that it has done pretty well. But if you leave out the kind of a way we first in a few months before, you know, earlier from there today, it's a huge change that I have seen. And to respond to Professor Nelson's questions on on South Asia. The thing is that with the existing variant that we have, you know, the Delta variant you said rightly, India has been able to manage to vaccine it's half of its population and other neighboring countries in the region if they come out quickly. Then only we can see, you know, this region will be able to come out of the current variant. And hopefully by again, it is my purely kind of a guess and not a statistical guess by the way it's purely my own guess that by end of this year or early next year things will be much better. So so this is my response. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, I think a very important question by Professor said but I think also a difficult one, because I think we are living in very uncertain times, we don't know how the Delta variant is going to evolve with the news that there's a new variant called new with initial evidence showing that this school, you know, even antibodies, we don't know how it's going to, you know, take recovery is going to take place. But if you compare last year with this year, perhaps things have looked better for many of the economic sectors, except a few. And in Nepal, particularly, there was a seropivalent survey that the Ministry of Health recently conducted, although there are questions on the findings, but that showed that there might have been some development of kind of herd immunity in the country. And perhaps if that is the case in Nepal, it might be similar in the case of India Bangladesh as well. Now, if that is really the case, and if the natural immunity that people have acquired because of these infections is going to work in terms of producing those antibodies and getting the economy moving again, then perhaps we can see a recovery soon. Otherwise, perhaps we don't know until when we have to wait for the recovery because these are uncertain times. I think that this is a very difficult question to answer. Thank you. Thank you. I think, yes, of course, it's a very difficult question as I'm just checking whether I can see she's not connected. So we have only one minute, so I'm going to use that now to wrap up, but I must be thankful to all the panelists. So I think it was an excellent discussion. And I think some of the very important points really came up, especially towards the end, the question on the recovery, question on the management of the event, the health issues, and Walker and some other panelists also mentioned on the education sector as well, especially with respect to too important social sector, educational health, we are seeing completely two different pictures. On the education, many of the, you know, most of the institutions will remain closed for most of these countries for long. And government and management, they are actually struggling, you know, how to reopen these schools or colleges or educational institutions. And also in the health sector, though the government's actually increased allocation, we have seen serious mismanagement in many of the countries and also the government's lack of capacity to even spend the money in the health sector. So I think all these issues need to be kind of taken into account when you talk about the recovery, because recovery is not only the economic recovery. We need to talk about the social recovery as well. And where we can see economic recovery can be a bit faster. Social recovery can take much longer time because of various reasons, which actually we tried to discuss over the last 45 minutes or so. So with this, I'd like to thank again, even wider, and especially Professor Poonalsen and all my distinguished panelists to, you know, have a very rich discussion over the last 45 minutes. And I'd like to conclude this session and thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.


It's me or WikiTree Forest Elf and I'm here and we are trying a new way to do our member of the week feature. Normally we do them in written posts in G to G but we thought it might be fun to try and do a video interview so you can actually see the person and get to know them a little better that way. So this week I'm very excited because we have one of our team members Mindy Silva. I'm sure most of you have seen her around because she's literally pretty much everywhere. She is our challenge coordinator so she leads our WikiTree challenge and our sourceathons and connectathons. She leads more projects than I could probably name but I know there's quite a few and we'll talk about that in a bit here but we're just excited to share a little bit about her with all of you and so I'm excited to be here. Yay so we'll just jump in and we can find out all about Mindy. So when and how did you get interested in genealogy? I got interested when I was a freshman in high school and we had an assignment to fill out just a basic family tree and I was really excited you know they taught us how to look at microfilm and everything and then that's when I found out that I really didn't have any family members that like to talk about the family and yeah they either couldn't or wouldn't answer questions and for you know a lot of the other of my classmates they could look at the microfilm well we were all military families and moved around a lot. My ancestors weren't from that state and so yeah my teacher wound up having to grade me on effort and not what I could not produce but it really inspired me you know to look further at who I descended from. That's really cool it's neat to hear all the different ways that people get inspired to get into their family history for sure. What are some of your interests outside of genealogy? You mean there's non-genealogy interest? I know it's shocking. I know it's shocking there's time away from wiki tree. I know. For those five minutes a day what do you do? Yes for those five minutes in all my free time of five minutes. In the winter I like to crochet baby things so I do have some blankets and booties for the Ronald McDonald house and in the warmer months I do gardening and canning and cooking and my biggest non-wiki tree interest which is still wiki tree related though are my daughters and my 12 beautiful grandchildren and they are my joy so. 12 grandchildren? Yes. Your newest one was born this year or last year? Yes yeah just a few months ago. That's fun. I think there were four COVID babies so I bet there were five COVID babies. It might be five. Oh wait yeah it was five so during the yeah during the last two years and when people were locked down yeah them grand babies started popping out. One good thing about COVID right? Yes gotta look at the positive. So what is your genealogy research focus? My focus is pretty much split and really you know I do spend a lot of time anybody that knows me knows I spend a lot of time on wiki tree and you know usually I spend so much time with things like the wiki tree challenge which is just so much fun and helping others which I really like to do and I get all caught up and I don't really get to my own genealogy very often so you know when I was new on wiki tree I was working really hard to just expand my ancestors and move everything from another site over to this one and no I still haven't done that yet I have people that I haven't moved over so. I feel that yeah I always think I'm going to get mine over and someday it's gonna happen. Do you think that your focus has changed over the years obviously like with stuff you do for wiki tree? It really has and you know once again I mean I really was focused on my own family to begin with but you know I've just fallen in love with all the different projects and activities that you can do and once again I'm somebody that likes to teach and likes to help and that comes out of my background and you know and there's so many opportunities to do that on wiki tree you can just wiki all day. It's very easy to do. So true. Many rabbit holes. I'm sorry there's certain surnames or locations like they are interested in like your family or yeah well Portugal is still my greatest passion right now. I love the records I love the culture that's not something I grew up around and you know as far as looking through the baptism registers and whatnot I can literally sit and do that for just hours. I really like it I find it relaxing and I love looking for ancestors that way. Do you have a favorite ancestor? This one's hard I can never pick just one I do have one that kind of has stayed a favorite of mine and her actually I don't know what her name is and I had come across a photo on you know one of those lost sites where they have the family photographs and yeah and there was a girl that a young lady that had had her picture taken and she never went back and picked the pictures up and the photographer had made notes that he thought it was a little odd because she gave a maiden name and a married name like you know she was married or you know newly married but he said she was really just school girl age and whimsical is what he had called her and the name she had put on that was Isabella Bland Levitt which is the name of my 10th ninth great grandmother one of my ninth great-grandmothers so I think she was fancying herself you know as her much-loved grandmother or great-grandmother because she was the only one that had had that name and you know gone in and had these photographs taken which obviously daddy didn't know about because they never got paid for and picked up and you know I just really I love the thought of that that she was so you know in love with with her grandmother or great-grandmother and the family she came from that she used that name when she had her photograph taken so that was really cool yeah and the ninth great-grandmother by the way was born in 1602 and those those cards from this photography studio weren't available till the mid-1800s so you know it definitely had to have been yeah had to have been a really really far away one yeah very cool I like that she was described as whimsical yes um do you have a favorite genealogy of discovery or break like a brick wall breakthrough story yes one of my first ones on wiki tree and I was so excited because of course you know I didn't know that much about the site yet and I was so stuck on my Paul line which went back into England so there was you know no language barriers but the records were very hard to find and you know if you don't know the geography there it can be tricky and I had gone out into the g2g finally one day I'm like I'm just going to try this and I went out in the g2g and I said help you know everything I've looked at I cannot figure out who her parents are and several people just jumped right in they all started looking for records one of the people found one of the marriage documents and it turns out that her brother had signed as a witness to the marriage and since her father wasn't available and through the brother's records they were able to help me track down who the parents were and it just it was so exciting you know and once again I was very new so I was like really super impressed but you know um five years later I'm still impressed by what wiki tree collaboration can accomplish it's just amazing we really do have the best community I'm not biased but we do at all so what is your toughest brick wall right now I have several but I think we all have those several we know we're not going to get through my two hardest are on opposite sides of my branches so on my father's side I have a great grandfather that was born in South Korea so the language barrier there is obviously yeah big permanent um that's a big block for me one of my descendants is you know the great grandkids or something is going to have to learn Korean and do some research on that because um I think I'm a little bit long in the tooth to do that and then on my mother's side I have a third-grade grandmother and she was born in Ireland and right before the potato famine happened she was shipped over to the US to find a suitable husband that could care for you know and even though the potato famine hadn't happened there were a lot of really poor areas and you know it was common for people to starve and so you know her parents sent her on hoping to give her a better life but you know then on top of it she had this super common name and none of her United States documents listed where she came from but Ireland not quite helpful yeah DNA one day maybe you know could be so how long have you been on my ki tree I joined in July I had to look this and look at this earlier I joined in July of 2017 but it really feels like I've been on here forever now a lot longer than that I was I was looking for ways to collaborate with two cousins of mine and we were working on that Portuguese ancestry you know and when you work on sites like ancestry there's a lot of really great records and things that are helpful but you can't collaborate with somebody on a tree you know and we were trying all these different methods of saving our documents in the same place and starting a database system which was really just really time consuming and you know doing group phone calls and I kind of looked around and that's when I found wiki tree you know so not only did I bring those cousins over and we've gotten immense amount of work done since then but I found a lot of cousins on the site since I've been here you know and it's it's exciting when somebody just reaches out and goes hey how are you related to so-and-so that's my great grandma and you're like no that's my great grandma yeah other cousins yeah and and that's another thing on the other site you know you reach out to somebody and you're like oh I see you're working on this person how are they related and you hear nothing you know nothing and here people come find you or when you do message them they're like oh you know that's my so-and-so or oh I was helping you know a friend work on that line here's the friend yeah and you get responses for sure yeah and they're as excited as we are I know which is great I'm like cousin they're like cousin hi and that's cool because that's I mean that's essentially how wiki tree got started is Chris had all this family history that he was looking to figure out how can I share this with my family and have them that's tough and I mean that was how wiki tree was bored basically so here's the question that may take you a while to answer what do you spend the most time doing on wiki tree and why are you doing that yeah why what do I spend the most time doing on wiki tree I wiki I know my signature used to be so much to wiki so little time but right now I think the challenge is still probably my biggest focus and you know I love the fact that we can give this knowledge of people's ancestral lines and their ancestors to them and you know their cousins and whatever descendants come along and you know and that we can bring this this these people back to life and watching the researchers collaborate is amazing you know we had last year that we we broke down brick walls that professional genealogists hadn't broken down and you know it was crazy yeah crazy impressive just crazy impressive it was so much more successful than I even thought it would be and you know this year even though we're doing the more generalized focus we're doing the celebrity focus it's no less impressive you see these guys get together and work in groups and you know tear apart records and analyze everything and make sure it's done and you know and we get anybody from the new new wiki tree or two super super experienced ones and so it's just really a lot of fun to watch and then you know just the other projects I'd say overall if I had to generalize it would be projects because yeah I like the projects it's cool because especially with the challenge you really get to be in like the heart of everything that wiki she's really about like every day you get to see the benefits of the collaboration and working together and like what can be done with all of that and we get to talk to projects that you know some of us normally wouldn't have worked with and you know that's another great thing so not only are we learning from these other projects because they share their experience you know but there's people we talk to now that we would have never known otherwise if it weren't for the challenge so we're like oh yeah I love those people from another love project or you know oh I love yeah it's great that we can work and I learn new stuff about Sweden oh you know and we know we start recognizing these names as they come in and talk with us in discord and it's really great yeah that was a great way to include some of those international projects that we don't always get to come across for sure mm-hmm so you speaking of projects which ones are you the most involved with well I've already covered a lot on the wiki tree challenge so I'd have to say that you know right now a lot of time is also spent with a new Appalachian project and helping get that off the ground so the members in that are really excited it's fun and they're really eager and things are moving along pretty quickly you know we just really have a blast in there and then also had recent renewed interest in the Latin American project and so that one I would really like to cover in November when we do our wiki tree symposium or anniversary event and you know just get the word out there and and bring even more people in and you know to to help them with those ancestors and teach them about wiki tree that would be really great we can use all the help we can get yes so speaking of that how can others help with those projects and what do the projects need help with well you know the projects always have once again the different levels of experience so you don't have to be worried that you know we've had people come to us with a the new Appalachian project and go well I don't know if I can qualify but you know my family's from there can I do this well yes very definitely 100% and we don't turn anyone away you know and people can come in and add their their ancestors in or you know they can learn how to do stickers and add stickers to the the various profiles we've done a little mini tutorials and whatnot and chats where we teach people tools that they can use elsewhere on wiki tree I mean we just really have a lot of fun with it so any you know any experience level there's always something you can do some people don't like to create the new profiles at all that's great they can go around and you know improve some of the other ones somebody did go through and create for sure very cool so what inspires you to contribute so much of yourself to the wiki tradition I think it's really just you know comes down to the basics of documenting our ancestors and bring that bringing them back to life because it really is so important and you know especially not knowing a lot when I grew up I think you know now that I've gotten older I really understand how important it is that we do know where we came from and you know that we do know about these ancestors and in this way of us documenting and going through those records and sharing our experience by you know telling their stories it's allowing them to carry on for generations and generations now and you know I mean it's some pretty powerful stuff you start looking through your branches and you're like wow you know those are those are my ancestors that's really cool and so you know it is I think an important legacy that I leave from not only my grandchildren but cousins and you know other descendants well and you know you've done so much work on so many things outside your family that you'll you'll touch a lot of lives with the work that you've done I certainly hope so yeah uh what's your favorite feature one lucky tree and life that's one I can't pick this one either but one of my favorite things that I always start with is the biographies I love that we have that big what I call white space you know to me it's just like a free big empty whiteboard and you can get in there and you can tell the the ancestor story and you can talk about their kids and their life and their occupations and their tragedies and you can go in and add pictures you know and make it even more interesting and eye catching so other people will come read about them you know but I also couldn't do any more daily without all of the amazing tools that we have on hand anything from you know citation helpers to sourcing help to category selection and now we have this great cc7 you know it shows our connections within the seven degrees seven degrees of us so it's just one more kind of fun things as genealogy nerds really like yeah and it makes it even more fun to be on wiki tree doing what we love for sure is there a feature or function that you would like to see added I wish that we had I had to think about this um I was thinking about this earlier but I wish that we had a sticker selection like we do the category selection you know because when I joined wiki tree you had to go find the category and then you had to copy it and then you go back to the profile and you and now you can just there's a drop down thing you can start typing it in and it'll tell you I would like to see that for stickers where you can say like revolution or civil war and it'll show you what you can pull in as as a sticker because stickers can be really confusing if you don't know how to use them yeah and I think yeah I think more people would use them if it were a little bit easier or you know I still hear all the time people are like oh I didn't know there was a sticker for that wait let me copy that yeah that in my notes yeah you know so I think there's a lot of of underused stickers that can really help highlight specific events in somebody's life definitely I would use them a lot more if there is a sticker drop down for sure yeah definitely that's a good one um do you have a story about how someone has helped you through wiki tree has helped me yeah or that I helped um let's start with has helped you has helped me well I covered the awesome brick wall so I would have to say I think the biggest help was just really a collection of people because when I was doing on wiki tree and it seems so overwhelming at first you know there's so many things you don't know how to do and you look at people's profiles and you're like I don't even know how they're doing that you know um and so what I did is I read through the g2g every day like every day I followed the g2g and I would see what people were working on or you know what they did to find when they jump in and do that collaboration and somebody says oh look at this for this record and fix the profile this way you know but I'd also look for stuff that was broken because I'm like I don't want to break something you know and I'd go somebody go I think I broke it and somebody else would go no you just do this and I'd be like wait let me put that let me put that my notes so when I break that later I know how to fix it and you know between doing and then when I couldn't figure out just from the post man I was like fearless I'd email I don't care who you are at email hey how did you do that you know that's I saw you yeah I saw you help this person um how did you fix that sticker though and you know I never had anybody like ignore me or you know get frustrated everybody just seemed really super happy to help me understand um what they had done and that was you know looking back on it really incredible that's how many people were were like that yeah it would be great if new members could be that brave and just or even longtime members that aren't sure like just email somebody and ask and like chances are good you'll get a helpful answer yeah so and never think your questions are stupid um you know that's what I always told myself the only stupid question is when you don't ask so just ask it and the most somebody's gonna do is go you know I don't know let me check on that and they'll probably come back with the answer or someone who can't help you yeah so there's probably hundreds and thousands of stories about you helping other people on wiki tree but do you have a favorite uh I'm gonna go ahead and talk about one only because I just heard from him again this morning and you know back when I was co-leading the greeters and the mentors and mediators I had somebody that was new to wiki tree and he was really struggling you know with the learning curve and an elder gentleman and you know once I started helping him he finally told me he goes I'm just adopting you you're my permanent mentor on wiki tree and years later I still hear from him so you know he'll come and say hey I need a second set of eyes on this or you know this morning it was hey I'm trying to find this baptism and um you know I'm not sure that this taking this path is right but sometimes it's just oh you know tell me how his dog is doing or you know how the job is and I get little chitter chatter and it's just really fun to see that and know that you know that connection was made through wiki tree and you know and I have others like that so that's really fun that was really cool shout out to our greeters and mentors yes um let's see so do you have any tips for someone I mean you kind of talked a little bit about how you got started in wiki tree and what you did with gdg and asking questions do you have any other tips um you know I definitely use the g2g a lot don't be afraid to ask questions but join projects too uh you know don't worry that you're not going to be good enough because that when you go and you join a project that's what it should be doing is helping you increase those skills and learn how to do new things and you know and now we also have live chat on the wiki tree discord server and that I love love love so you know instead of just doing emails back and forth we can actually chat live and hash out a problem and you know talk about it and we get to see even more people in there that you might not see otherwise and it's just really a fun way you know and you go in and you say hey how does anybody happen to know about this obscure you know virginia law and there's usually someone why do you ask yeah oh wait I yeah I just looked at that for one of my relatives what do you need and you know people are just so friendly and helpful and you know and it's around the clock or or a global site so there's there's always someone chatting somewhere yeah there's an astounding pool of knowledge to pull from in our community yeah so don't be shy shy and then what do you think that we could do to inspire more people to participate in our mission well I like to think some of the ways we're already doing it with things like the wiki tree challenge because we are reaching out you know and there's so many people out there that don't know how good the site is and if we don't reach out somehow they're never gonna find out yeah I really wish that people would share more with their social media and you know and it doesn't have to be like oh I made this big brick wall breakdown discovery you know it can just be like huh this was interesting who knew my third great-grandfather was a carpenter you know I never knew that just the little things like that to garner interest because you never know who's reading your posts that might go oh wow I didn't know that about great grandpa so and so you know they might be really interested in hearing that information so that you know I'd really like to see more people reaching out like that and sharing what they found that's a good one that would be great yeah any little tidbit I see you know we have the facebook group for the wiki tree for wiki tree and I'm always happy when I see someone post just like even even without a tidbit just like here's my third great-grandfather yeah play cool you know because you never know that you know who might maybe it's their third great-grandfather that person they were looking for they just think it's a cool profile and get interested in wiki tree I know I got into my widgets the other day and I shared one of the images of my tree that it made on facebook and lens like that's really odd because you never share that kind of stuff like your tree yeah and I was like you know what honestly I just don't think about it yeah it's terrible you know we just we all need to think more in the mindset that we're not the only ones that are nerdy enough to like the genealogy stuff there's probably yeah there's probably other people out there that are interested also yeah definitely well cool well Mindy it's been nice to get to know a little bit more about you I'm sure people who watch this will also enjoy learning little things about you and thanks for doing this thank you this was a lot of fun back in the tree yes