Llywmin leading Good afternoon in firstз y than威 mwyn uch sindill is on education and lifelong learning.��게요, f что nid o dyna sydd fawr o iechyd yr poem dechrau, Dundee yn ysgr icingi seniorsfer o reulio'i canals ym gyffredin zienol innen i ddechrau i ysgol, a 5 oedwind yn 2,600 oedw yn amlwg lle digon i'r drwng, ac nolwg i ddechrau i ddechrau i ddechrau, ac yn oedw yn y dyfos stylingai'r ysgol. Ysgoltaeth gwybod yn ffymgietolwyr yn y ddygu o wneud ein ffrindiau yw 2.14 miliwn. Fy gydigodd chi'n gallu bod arnaeth gydigodd. Fy feyrdu hynny felly, that, as much as half of the £2.14 million funding in year 1 of the four-year challenge programme may be unspent in the 2015-16 financial year and may also not be available to Dundee city council to spend on the attainment challenge because it will be clawed back by the Scottish Government. Can she please confirm that no money that has been allocated to Dundee will yn gyfanol a i'n cael ei fod yn gweithio'n lllockd yn ddundi. A siaradau i'r mwaeo ar gael ddafodaeth yw dechrau bod all dдаfodaethiaeth y sefydliadol yn ddundig yn ddundig pobl yn ôl. Mae hyn oedd oedd yn cyllid, felly mae'n ddundig i gyd yn gweithio ddanddod for Dundee and the other areas to look at the programme over the four years. We are committed to investing £100 million over the four years. I hope that she is reassured that, as a Government, we have invited Dundee to develop their plans for 2016-17. The investment via the Scottish entertainment challenge is that we do not just allocate a sum of money, councils have to be drawing down what they spend and that additional resource has to be tied in to a bespoke improvement plan. I also hope that Ms Marra is encouraged that the last quarterly meeting on 12 January between Dundee City Council officials and my officials that there are very clear signs of increased activity across the primary schools and nurseries involved. I welcome the First Minister's recent announcement on the innovation fund. Could the cabinet secretary confirm whether local authorities and schools can apply for this and what will it fund? Cabinet secretary's question was specifically about Dundee, but if you want to answer briefly. Yes, I will be very brief. The Scottish attainment challenge innovation fund is a £1.5 million fund that was launched at the beginning of the month. It is available to all schools in Scotland, which are not already benefiting from the attainment Scotland fund. To ask the Scottish Government when it last met Aberdeen City Council to discuss education issues. The First Minister undertook a private meeting with Aberdeen City Council and Police Scotland on 2 November following the tragic death of Cults Academy pupil Bailey Gwynn. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning met the representatives of the Scottish local government partnership, including Aberdeen City Council, on 18 November and met with directors of education or representatives on 19 November at the ADES conference. Scottish Government officials also met representatives from Aberdeen City Council on 2 November to discuss their involvement with the attainment Scotland fund schools programme. Aberdeen City has four schools involved in that programme. Thank you and I thank the minister for that very comprehensive answer. Aberdeen City has had difficulties in recruiting and retaining teachers and the high cost of housing in the city has not helped the situation. Can the minister outline what actions he has taken to help to attract more teachers to Aberdeen? Will he enter into a dialogue with the housing minister to see if more investment for housing for key workers can be made in Aberdeen? The member rightly points to a problem that affects Aberdeen City Council and the number of other authorities in the north-east. There are a number of measures being undertaken to seek to address that. Key public sector workers are set to benefit from more than 120 new homes that are being developed on the Craig inches site in Aberdeen. The Scottish Government is also currently working to a timescale that will see Sanctuary Scotland begin a two-year period of construction in spring of this year. The Scottish Government is having on-going discussions, which I am sure will involve a number of ministers and their officials with Aberdeenshire Council in relation to other strategic opportunities to meet what I recognise are very real needs from the teaching profession. Minister, if you turn away from the microphone, the chamber cannot hear you. Lewis MacDonald, please. On that basis, will the minister accept that the one thing that the Government should not be doing is penalising councils like Aberdeen and other councils in the north of Scotland for the very problem that he has described of the difficulty of recruiting teachers? Surely the thing that the Scottish Government should be doing instead of reducing funding for those councils is supporting them to make the recruitment that they need to make? The member is more than well aware that the Scottish Government finds itself in a situation in which its grant has been cut by the UK Government. Of course, it did not and never mentions in those situations. Despite those difficulties, the Scottish Government has set out a number of arrangements with local authorities to ensure that the settlement this year, while very challenging, is fair given the circumstances in which the Scottish Government has been put. To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to increase the number of college places funded by the Employability Fund. Skills Development Scotland commissioning for delivery of employability fund places in 2016-17 is currently under way. Places will be allocated in accordance with that process and on the strength of bids from colleges and other training providers. Secretly and in line with standard procedure, the Scottish Funding Council will discuss with colleges the element of the Employability Fund that it manages. I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer. She is of course aware that in 2014-15 Scotland's colleges exceeded the target of 116,000 to 169 full-time equivalent places. Figures from the SFC's statistical bulletin on 14 January 2016 showed the delivery of 119,000 equivalent full-time places. There was a combination of 118,407 SFC-funded places, yet only an additional 671 employability places funded by Skills Development Scotland. Mr Brody is right to say that colleges have exceeded our commitment and have done so every year since 2011. He is also right to say that provision includes the Employability Fund, which is delivered by colleges and independent training providers. The nature of this commissioning or funding arrangements means that, in fact, since 2013-14, colleges have been funded to the tune of £24 million annually by the Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland to deliver Employability Fund provision. However, during this period, colleges have also bid into the SDS openly-procured funds to deliver places over and above the provision. Thank you. Before we move on, Dr Simpson, can I say that I don't appreciate an intervention from a sedentary position to the chair? I will keep members to order. Question number four, Margaret McDougall. Thank you. To ask the Scottish Government what support it is providing to local authority education services. Minister, Alasdair Allan. We provide local authorities with almost £5 billion of annual funding together with advice and guidance to enable them to provide high-quality education services. We also provide specific funding for building new and improving existing schools for the initial training of teachers, for the probationer scheme, which integrates them into the professional workforce and for the continuing professional development of teachers and school leaders. We are also providing targeted support for authorities and schools with the greatest concentration of primary-aged pupils living in areas of multiple deprivation through the £100 million attainment Scotland fund. Thank you, Margaret McDougall. I thank the minister for that answer. SNP held North Ayrshire Council as proposing to cut half a million pounds from its education services, and it will be the school's front-line staff that will be facing the brunt of the axe. A survey carried out by the trade union GMB in December found that 100 per cent of its members employed in North Ayrshire schools will leave a cutting back on clerical workers, homeschool inclusion workers and pupil support welfare staff will have a detrimental effect on the services provided by each school, and so do I. Councils across Scotland have increasingly cash-strapped and further cuts are coming. What assurances can the Scottish Government give me and constituents that no child's education will suffer due to council cutbacks and that has the Scottish Government been in contact with North Ayrshire Council regarding this shocking proposal? Over Scotland, the support that is given for education over the peace has certainly been maintained, and indeed it is for local authorities individually to justify their own decisions. However, I have to return to this point. If the member has views on why she feels that local government settlement should be changed or increased for local authorities, then the Deputy First Minister has made this point already. The member and her party are free to seek to amend the Government and tell the Government, indeed tell Parliament, from where else in the budget, possibly from the NHS or elsewhere, she feels that she would fund an increase in the settlement to local government. Can the minister tell us how much funding has been provided to North Ayrshire Council to enhance educational attainment through the attainment Scotland fund? I can certainly respond in writing to provide further detail, but I can say that the overall figures for North Ayrshire—I am answering the question that the member has just put to me is that North Ayrshire has been allocated £1.96 million from the attainment Scotland fund this year. That is being used to develop a learning academy with a focus on developing effective literacy and numeracy strategies and to develop nurturing approaches across the authority. North Ayrshire also received £79,000 from the Access to Education fund this year for projects in schools, aimed at reducing barriers to learning for pupils from deprived backgrounds. Question 5, John Pentland. Mr Pentland, is your card in? Can I have Mr Pentland's microphone, please? To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on how many non-Uk undergraduate EU students are studying in Scotland. The most recent data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency shows that, in 2014-15, the number of non-Uk EU undergraduates studying at Scottish Higher Education institutions was 14,300. Can the cabinet secretary tell me what does the Scottish Government estimate are the costs and benefits of this and has it made any progress towards implementing management fees? Well, I hope that Mr Pentland is not going to become obsessed with the constitution or hark back to old debates in around 2014. In terms of the wider spirit of his question, I think that there is lots and lots of evidence that gives testimony to the excellence in our higher education system. That is the reason why it is an attractive system for students across Europe to come and study. It is important that, although we have seen an increase in EU students coming to Scotland, there has also been an 11 per cent increase in first-time degree undergraduates, 11 per cent from 2006-07 to 2014-15. That has to be good news, along with the record levels of Scottish domicile students being accepted into university. I ask the Scottish Government when the cabinet secretary for education and lifelong learning last met representatives from Dundee City Council. I met directors of education or their representatives from a range of local authorities on 19 November at the ADES conference. Leslie Brennan. Dundee City Council is facing the largest council cut in mainland Scotland, and while teaching staff are protected from the redundancy round, what reassurances has the cabinet secretary sought to ensure that the important work for support for learning is not further reduced in the city? As the first opportunity that I have had formally to welcome her to her position in this Parliament, it is important to recognise that the Scottish Government has always treated local government very fairly, despite, as Dr Allan said, the cuts to the Scottish budget from the UK Government. The 2016-17 draft budget confirmed that we will make available to local government a total funding package of £10.1 billion that is obviously for across Scotland, and that will increase to £10.3 billion once other sources of funding are included. I believe that the Government is absolutely right to invest an additional £51 million to protecting teacher numbers. High-quality graduate workforce is very important to all of our children in terms of reaching our ambitions to close the attainment gap. Saying that is important to recognise that there is a broader education workforce, and it is important to remember that, over the peace over Scotland, classroom assistance has decreased and not decreased. Thank you. If questions and answers are a bit more succinct, we might get on a bit. To ask the Scottish Government whether it considers the replacement of bursaries with loans, results and students from the poorest families having the biggest debt and a reduction in terms of widening access. This year, the Scottish Government has increased the level of bursary available to our poorest students by £125. In 2016, we will increase the household income threshold for eligibility for the maximum bursary of £1,875 from £17,000 to £19,000. In tough economic times, the Scottish Government is working hard to put as much money as possible into students' pockets. Something the NUS asked us to do when the new student support package was launched in 2013-14. That, of course, is in stark contrast with the position in England, where a new student started a higher education course in 2016-17 will receive no bursary at all. Our approach to higher education means that average student loan debt in Scotland is the lowest in the UK and contributes to young people from the most deprived areas of Scotland, now being more likely to participate in HE by the age of 30 than they were in 2006-07. I thank the cabinet secretary for her reply. Young people from deprived backgrounds in Scotland who do get to university are facing cuts to grants and bursaries and now 70 per cent of Scottish students who emerge debt-free come from better-off backgrounds. Will the Scottish Government restore grants and bursaries to help the poorer students to succeed in higher education? Of course, it is the Government that has maintained free tuition and we have retained bursaries, unlike South of the Border. We have also retained the educational maintenance allowance, and as I would have hoped in my original answer that even in these tough financial times we will always seek opportunities to put more money into the pockets of students. We know that student debt is a real issue for young people leaving universities, starting their career or buying their own home or starting their own family. I am therefore pleased to say that, with our commitment to free tuition, that must have contributed to the Scotland having the lowest average student loan debt. We have the lowest average student loan debt in the UK. The average being £9,500. Compare that with more than £21,000 in England. I am confident that we are giving our young people a far better start to their working lives. The cabinet secretary is aware that the Conservatives have decided to remove bursary for the poorer students in England and for student nurses, while also removing disabled student support allowance. Can she once again give us an insurance that the Scottish Government will maintain the vital support for students in Scotland? We will not be scrapping bursaries, but we will not be scrapping DSA support. We have quite a distinct approach to H.E. and support of students in Scotland. As I said, we have succeeded in putting more money into the pockets of students, despite the financial pressures that we are under. We will always continue to look for further opportunities. To ask the Scottish Government how many students attended Edinburgh College in November 2015 and how that compares with November 2012. The Scottish Funding Council is responsible for collecting participation data. Figures for the current academic year 2015-16 will be published shortly in January 2017. Is she concerned that the largest college in Scotland at the time of merger has had declining numbers ever since? It has declined that it seems to be being managed by the college, as it has handed back £3 million to the Scottish Funding Council this year because there were not the anticipated number of students. That is also exacerbated by the fact that the college is introducing a new enrolment procedure, which seems likely to make the problem even worse. Will the cabinet secretary take a close look at what is happening at the college and strive to reverse that decline? Let me assure the member that I am taking a very close look at Edinburgh College and that the Scottish Funding Council has already given practical and indeed financial support. The news of the difficulties that are being experienced by the college, whether that is in terms of its finances or other matters or the number of students that is attracting, is disappointing. I understand that Edinburgh College is working with the funding council to ensure that the college continues to offer high-quality education for students. That will, of course, help to grow the local economy. I have indicated the support that the funding council has already given. The funding council will continue to support the college to make the changes and improvements needed in both the short and the medium term. To ask the Scottish Government when it last met Falkirk Council to discuss education matters. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning met with directors of education or their representatives on 19 November at the RDS conference. Scottish Government officials met with representatives from Falkirk Council in November 2015 to discuss their involvement with the attainment Scotland fund schools programme. Falkirk has one school involved in the schools programme. The minister may be aware of new figures released showing Falkirk Council's four PFI schools constructed for £63 million under a previous Labour administration in 1998. It will have cost around £420 million by the end of the contract period in 2025, and Falkirk Council will still not own them, making it possibly the worst PFI contract in history. Does the minister share my serious concerns that Labour's implementation of Tory policies has resulted in the Labour-Tory coalition in Falkirk having a financial black hole in their budgets that is disproportionately higher than the vast majority of Scottish local authorities with the resultant impact that that will have on education services? The Scottish Government has made very clear that the PFI approach that was used in the past has not delivered the best value for the taxpayer in Scotland, and the project in Falkirk, mentioned by the member, raises some very big questions of that kind. Alongside the Scottish Futures Trust, we have managed and have been encouraging procuring authorities to look at how they can better manage contracts to ensure that they deliver better value for money in the future and to identify areas for potential savings, such as through benchmarking, re-scoping services, sharing and insurance costs. We will continue to support and work with authorities to identify where those savings can be made, but the member makes the important point that we have to learn from some very big mistakes indeed in the past. To ask the Scottish Government how many schools and children in local authorities that do not receive attainment Scotland fund support meet the programme's criteria. The attainment Scotland fund is supporting more than 300 primary schools, which collectively serve over 54,000 primary-aged children who live in the most deprived 20 per cent areas in Scotland. That represents 64 per cent of the total number of primary-aged children living in SIMD 1 and 2 areas across Scotland. We are well aware that there are children living in poverty who do not live in the most deprived 20 per cent areas of Scotland. That is why the Scottish attainment challenge also provides a package of universal support, including the £1.5 million attainment challenge innovation fund, which will support other schools, including secondaries across Scotland, to explore and develop innovative approaches to raising attainment. I thank the cabinet secretary for her response so that it did not address the question that I asked. I think that the answer that she was searching for was 36 per cent of disadvantaged pupils live out with those areas, representing around 30,000 pupils all told. Can she perhaps explain to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in Orkney and the other 10 local authority areas why their needs are less deserving than their counterparts in the other local authority areas across Scotland? We will obviously be debating the issue at length later on this afternoon. Perhaps Mr MacArthur will take the opportunity to tell us how he intends to pay for all his plans. However, it is important to recognise that the Scottish attainment challenge, the approach there, is to focus on the areas where there is the highest concentration of disadvantaged youngsters and recognise that, in some areas of the country, the scale of the challenge is greater. Nonetheless, as I said in my original answer, we do recognise that there are children living in poverty in all parts of Scotland. Therefore, in the context of any targeted approach, we have to ensure that we have a strong, strengthened universal offer to ensure that we have as many strings to our bow as possible to ensure that we are reaching the children most in need. I have already alluded to the innovation fund, the access to education fund and the attainment advisers. There are other programmes of work in terms of the schools improvement programme, the raising attainment for all programme. There is a wealth of universal activity that is geared front and centre in closing the attainment gap and reaching those children most in need. I am afraid that I do not have time for all the interventions that are requested. I will take Mary Scanlon. Despite what is being said, in rural areas, the Scottish index of multiple deprivation is a very blunt and ineffective tool in determining children with low attainment. What is the Government doing to ensure that individual children, whether it is Betty Hill in Sutherland or in Inverness, get the benefit of additional support when it is needed and how are they identified? That is the entire basis of having a national improvement framework that is very much about identifying those children most in need earlier on in their school career so that we can ensure the right services and the right support at the right time. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the impact on poorer students in Scotland of the UK Government replacing bursaries with loans. Confirmation that the UK Government intends to abolish maintenance grants entirely for the new undergraduate students in England from 2016-17 is of great concern to the Scottish Government, raising as it does the question of the potential impact on the Scottish funding bloc in future years. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for that response. Given that SNP MPs apparently oppose that move from grants to loans in England but presumably support the Scottish Government doing exactly the same thing for the poorest students in Scotland, does the cabinet secretary believe that debate around inequality would benefit from some more honesty about who the winners and losers are in her system that sees the richer students twice as likely to get to university as poorer ones and which, as a result of the 40 million cuts to bursaries in Scotland, results in poorer students carrying the largest burden of debt? Unfortunately, what the member fails to recognise is that, in the context of a record number of Scots accepted into university, there is an increase in disadvantaged 18-year-olds in applying and going to university under this Government's terms of office. He has to recognise that, in consultation with the National Union of Students and others, that this Government responded to the very serious ask to put more money into the pockets of students. We achieved that with the introduction of the minimum income guarantee, which I have increased over the past year. The minimum income guarantee is the best support package for students living at home in the UK. Of course, as we move forward, there will be further improvements to that package with an increase in income thresholds. This Government has much to be proud of. I would have hoped that, in the spirit of having an open debate about tackling inequality, that Mr Smith would have had the gumption to recognise that this Government has maintained bursaries, has introduced a minimum income guarantee, has retained free tuition and, unlike others, has retained educational maintenance allowance. To ask the Scottish Government how many classroom assistants have been employed in secondary schools in each of the last five years. Data from the annual teacher census published by the Scottish Government shows that the number of classroom assistants in Scottish publicly funded secondary schools was 877 in both the years 2011 and 2012, 948 in 2013, 1090 in 2014 and 1052 in 2015. Those figures show an increase of 20 per cent in the number of classroom assistants over this period. I thank the minister for that information. I wonder if the minister recognises the critical importance not just of classroom assistants but of all support staff in ensuring that young people with additional needs are able to overcome barriers to learning and, critically, at secondary school level, they role in stopping young people from dropping out of the system altogether. Given their importance in closing the gap in education, what steps will the minister and the cabinet secretary take to ensure that local authorities are fully resourced to support the support structures inside our schools, as well as the teachers and materials? I recognise the importance of all support staff in the education sector. The fact that the numbers in secondary of classroom assistants specifically have shown a rise over the period is very encouraging for that reason. Returning to the issue of the local government settlement, I can only point to the fact that the draft budget confirms that we are again making available a total funding package for local authorities of £10.1 billion. I think that the important point that we have to recognise is the one that I have made many times and other ministers have made about our financial predicament as a country. That does not take away from the fact that, despite those difficult circumstances, we have shown our commitment to local government. To ask the Scottish Government what requirements must be met for homeschooled pupils to be eligible to sit SQA exams. Homeschooled pupils must be registered with a centre approved by the Scottish Qualification Authorities to set exams. That could be either a school or a college. What are the options for students who, for medical reasons, be it physical or mental illness, which has prevented them from attending school to complete the coursework that counts towards their final grade through curriculum for excellence? That failure to undertake the coursework appears to preclude them from sitting the exam. Will the minister take a look into that to make sure that homeschooled pupils are not discriminated against in terms of their coursework side if they have physical or mental illness? I am very happy to come back to the member after having looked at some of the issues that he raises. In general, for homeschooled pupils who are obviously as a member, we are not always homeschooled because of any issue around disability. There are arrangements that such pupils can make in terms of registering with schools and colleges in order to be presented for exams. We would also hope that we encourage local authorities to take a reasonable approach to ensure that other work that is necessary to gain a qualification of the kind that the member is mentioning is made possible and made available. However, on the specific issue that he raises of young people who have physical or other illnesses or disabilities, I am more than happy to make an investigation into that and get back to them. To ask the Scottish Government what support it is providing to the university of the west of Scotland to reduce the drop-out rate, particularly among first-year students. Ratencion rates at the university of the west of Scotland have improved over the past two years, although I am sure that the university would always want to do better. I am confident that the university is focused on increasing retention and is working with the Scottish Funding Council on a range of measures to support that. In the current academic year, UWS has been allocated over £3.6 million from the Wind and Access and Retention Fund operated by the Scottish Funding Council on behalf of the Scottish Government. Given the potential financial impact on the Scottish higher education sector, the Government's draft budget announcement, can the cabinet secretary confirm that the Scottish Government retains a commitment to ensuring that there is adequate funding in place to support the excellent work in student attainment at UWS, that funding will be safeguarded for this key policy initiative and that the possibility of additional funding is considered for universities such as UWS, who are successful at widening participation in higher education. The Government has invested more than £1 billion in higher education over the past four years and the draft budget, which shows a proposed investment again of more than £1 billion, that is a not insignificant amount of investment. Mr Scott is right that it is not just about getting young people from diverse backgrounds into university, it is about ensuring the successful completion of the university course and, indeed, successful progression on to the world of work. That raises issues about how we support young people who achieve a place at university both pastorally and academically. The University of West of Scotland, for example, had commissioned a very specific report and had unleashed very specific actions and initiatives to address that point. In terms of the Government, widening access is a core part of our programme for government. Through the funding council, we will be making very clear through the guidance letter, our strategic priorities for the sector and, of course, the funding council has a role in liaising and monitoring and supporting individual institutions via the outcome agreements. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will fully fund Dumfries and Galloway council for the capital and revenue costs of the increase in early learning and childcare entitlement to 1,140 hours. The Government has already provided local authorities with £329 million revenue and capital over two years in order to fully fund our most recent expansion of childcare to 600 hours. We have allocated an additional £140 million revenue and £30 million capital to local authorities in 2016-17. Dumfries and Galloway council will receive an appropriate and proportionate share of that and future funding to meet its requirements. All local authority allocations are agreed with COSLA. Thank the minister for that reply. The Scottish Government's discussion paper on expanding childcare states that providing more flexible provision will be a key element of the expansion to 1,140 hours and that the Scottish Government will build on work done through the Scotland schools for the future programme and the Scottish Futures Trust to support the expansion of local authority accommodation. Will the minister advise how negotiations with local authorities will be taken forward and what consideration will be given to the particular needs of rural areas where access to childcare and early learning can be more difficult for families? I thank the member for making the points that she does and certainly work is on-going with the Scottish Futures Trust to scope out what we need in terms of capacity and the nature of that capacity. We are also working with the Futures Trust to refine our understanding of the capital requirements. The point that she makes about the rurality of Dumfries and Galloway and not only that local authority but others is part of the consideration that we need to take forward about how we deliver flexibility. That is why when I visited the borders I was very impressed with the community childminders as a way in which they dealt with some of the barriers that they faced because of the rural spread in which their children and families live. That is why the First Minister made an announcement about how we enhance the childminder provision. We are always acutely aware of the challenges that our rural authority presents, but we have given Dumfries and Galloway so far the appropriate proportionate share of the money that we have invested so far, which is nearly £15 million for a mixture of capital revenue and additional funding for two-year-olds. We will continue to work with local authorities and the Scottish Futures Trust to make sure that we can deliver for families in the way that we have set out.


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The next two presenters submitted talks showing some pretty cool complementary capabilities to meet unique or emerging needs. I was intrigued and I think you will be too. Their presentations are short, providing a taste of their solutions, so you'll want to follow up afterwards to learn more. First we have Axel and Vangelis from Zero One. They will take CI CD standardization even further yet with advanced customization. Then we'll hear from Kevin Gilpin how Appland provides innovation to better visualize your code structure. This could be quite handy when used in conjunction with S-bombs that we discussed earlier, but it could also help with collaboration between Dev and Sec. Hello everyone, my name is Axel Tim. Hello from me as well. My name is Vangelis Kirchimas and in the next few minutes we will showcase you our CI CD architecture proposal that hopefully contains some interesting features. Setting up CI CD pipelines has never been easier than with today's tooling. KITLAB is already a tool both by itself and several other companies have been advancing various parts of the pipeline puzzle. There are existing integrations between these components which can still be optimized further to provide a complete and secure pipeline without sacrificing stability and speed. A complete pipeline has many components, both functional and non-functional. We will focus on the core functionality. Of course the pipeline requires all parts to make sense. The components addressed in this talk are highlighted in both on the left. The reason we picked this component is because we have identified a key paradigm that most integrations do not take into account. On the right hand side you can see the products we use for the implementation, both with customers as well in our labs. Of course it is possible to switch to different products, say Nexus Repository Management instead of Artifactory or a different Kubernetes Manager by adjusting the integration work. The so-on choice is our current recommendation for a modern pipeline. When you first think about integrating GitLab with other components you start placing the GitLab instance in the center of the architecture. But that is not the real story, right Axel? No, you're right Vangelis. The hard work for the integration is happening within the runner as so on the right hand side. It is the runner that delivers to the artifact store or the runtime for building, testing or deploying. Okay, having placed our bets on the runner to do the integration, let's see what challenges we usually face as a customer and what solutions we can design to address this. The most frequent issue we see is in a clean separation of builds from different branches or even projects. Very often a build gets placed in the same artifact store repository relying on versioning, tagging or other naming convention to select the right ones. This cooperative approach often fails and leads to mixing dependencies in builds or used artifacts on deployments. Both build isolation and build reproducibility are affected. The pipeline needs to take care to isolate branch generated artifacts from each other and ensure proper dependency management as well as build reproducibility. Another problem are leaked secrets, like artifact signing keys. If a user has control over a sign job, she can't extract the private keys. The main two ingredients of the solution proposed here are the following. First we need to acknowledge Francis has first class objects everywhere, not only in git. Vault, artifact, open shift all need to embed a notion of the branch as a native structure. The other ingredient is to have the pipeline take care of build isolation, dependency management, build reproducibility, artifact signing and not leave it up to the user in his script space to have to deal with it. This requires a smart runner that will take this burden upon itself in a transparent and simply way. Let's first review what branches are in git and then apply the ideas to all other components. We see some branch named x, which could be the main or master branch or a release branch or any branch for the matter, which within our changing program framework allows to branch off. We branch off the hd's branch, a new branch named y, which is the first green commit has the same code as x at that time. y will get some commit at some point in time be merged back to x. In most workflows, the branch y is discard after the merge has been approved and completed. For example, there will be changes in x happening most likely until y emerges back or some workflow model does not delete the branch y but only merge between branches. That is correct. Nevertheless, the main three operations that are of interest to map to vote or to vote at artifactory and dot cp are branch creation, deletion and branch changes. Like code commits to branch. See how I want to address the branch paradigm to vote. This is quite straightforward. When a branch is created, the vote creates a matching branch account that can be used by the runners and that contains the relevant secrets. We will see in the next slide which secrets are used but for completeness. So let's mention them here. We need secrets or tokens, taxes, artifactory and dot cp and more specifically the repositories and name spaces projects that will be dedicated to this branch. Also, we will need signing keys to sign artifacts. The pipeline will build out of the specific branch. Signing the branch paradigm to an artifact store is the most difficult of the mappings. Here we must make sure that the new branch can access all dependencies as the same external artifacts as the accessor branch as well as all artifacts built by x at that specific point of time. We need to clone or freeze any content of the repositories of the branch. Just as x will likely change during the life cycle of y and y should not use never newer artifacts from x. The exception is when there is a merge from x to y later again, replacing to master or main. This is not depict in the picture but follows the same semantics as creating the branch y. For example, the repositories from x will be cloned again. The point of creation of branches will also need newer repositories for storing and build artifacts from the branch y. These artifacts will override artifacts from the clone repositories from x. So this is indeed the most complex case but at least the end of the life cycle is trivial again, right? Once a branch is discarded we simply delete all related repositories, be that generated artifacts, cloned artifacts or even clone dependencies. One thing is very important and we have highlighted in the slide, we never use any artifacts from y outside of its life cycle. That means we do not copy or move them out before taking down the repositories otherwise we would fail the promised build isolation. Exactly, the artifacts are built in the merge request to the branch x or x anyway so there is no use for them. Finally, let's take a look at how OpenShift deals with the branch party. Here we know that for topic branch GitLab is already proposing and implementing a branch specific environment. In GitLab these are called review apps. Upon branch creation the pipeline identifies the proper OCP cluster to create a new project or namespace and sets up. After a change is committed to the branch that requires testing or otherwise deployment the runner needs to use the branch secrets to prove the environment and redeploy the application. Of course, branch deletion is again trivial and that the branch project is completely deleted. Now let's put the whole stack together and we see that the main components of the pipeline are following the branch padding from Git. From top to bottom you see Git, both Artifactory and OpenShift. This stack takes care of the challenges we mentioned like build isolation and all that by simply applying a natural branch model to the component. Now that we know what we need to do, who's going to do that Ageles? I'm glad you asked that question Axel, we have several angles to place our integration code. GitLab and Git itself comes with a few hooks that trigger upon certain events that we can use. The rest, which actually most of the work needs to be done by the runner. Already identified the runner as a centerpiece of integration in the previous slide. Correct, so let's see how a smart runner concept looks like to complete the solution. A very simple diagram for a runner to focus on two execution nodes or spaces which we like to call script space and system space. As the name suggests, the script space is where the scripts written in the GitLab CI YAML file are executed. They will run in an isolated process space in the runner without any privileges but are under control of the author of the GitLab CI YAML file. This means that anyone who can change this YAML file can output sensitive material like signing keys or authentication tokens to the logs by passing GitLab's masking. It is not suited for our design solution and certainly would mess up the GitLab CI YAML file too much if we put all the logic there. There is also the system space, which is the non-user serviceable part of the runner. This is typically used to set up the job to run, etc., download images and execute the user scripts. We are hooking into this to perform all the required tasks in a transparent way. So at the end of the day, we end up with a custom executor until there is a native branch-based runner. Luckily for us, we have been developing a custom runner since 2019 that has our needs presented in this talk. Here you can see the future of this runner. The ones we need for the concepts presented are highlighted. The rest address, other parts of the pipeline, like security or performance will even subscript your management. Our time is up. We hope you enjoyed the talk as much as us preparing it. For further information, you can fire up the link on the slide. Many thanks for watching.


Statistics and Excel. Correlation, random number generation example. Get ready, taking a deep breath, holding it in for 10 seconds, looking forward to a smooth soothing Excel. Here we are in Excel. If you don't have access to this workbook, that's okay because we'll basically build this from a blank worksheet. But if you do have access, there's three tabs down below. Example, practice, blank. Example, in essence, answer key. Practice tab having pre-formatted cells so you can get to the heart of the practice problem. The blank tab is a blank worksheet so we can practice formatting those cells within Excel as we work through the practice problem. Let's go to the example tab to get an idea of where we will be going, what we will be doing. We are looking at correlations once again, two different data sets to see if there's a mathematical relationship or correlation. Are the two data points moving together in some way, shape or form in other words? And if they are moving together, if there is a mathematical relationship, the logical next question would be, is there a cause and effect relationship? And if there is a cause and effect relationship, the next question would be, what's the causal factor in that relationship? We're going to start off this time by making two sets of data from just randomly generated numbers. And then we'll copy and paste that so we have static randomly generated numbers. We're going to notice that each of these data sets, if we were to make a histogram, are going to tend towards the uniform distribution. As we saw in prior sections when we looked at different types of distributions that are common. Uniform distribution, bell curve distribution, Poisson distribution, exponential distribution for examples. So because we use the random generate in each of those sets will tend towards a uniform distribution. We'll plot our statistics in terms of the mean standard deviation. We'll plot these two against each other to see these points in our scatter plot. And we want to then also just kind of recognize the relationship of random data to also what people often think of as random data. To do that, we'll make another data set which is closer to what people might imagine or what they often do when they're trying to come up with random numbers, which is to space the numbers out and you get a data set which looks kind of like this. So this is just to point out the difference between what random list generally kind of looks like, which is usually a lot more clumpiness of numbers. Then what we kind of think in our mind of what randomness will look like, which is this spaced out kind of thing where all the numbers have their own kind of little area. So if we were to try to make something random ourselves, we're probably more likely to do something like this as opposed to some actual randomness that would look more like that. But what we're looking for here is the relationship between the two data sets. And so whether they be random or spaced out somewhat like this, we had two different methods to create those data sets. So you would think that there's going to be a very low relationship for the regression line. And then we'll plot the correlation mathematically as well as well here and then we'll do it with Excel. Alright, let's go to the blank tab to get started. I'm going to format the entire worksheet this time doing that first selecting the triangle up top right clicking on the worksheet. And let's format the whole thing. And we're going to make it currency as we normally do. Negative numbers bracketed and red, no dollar sign, no decimals and say OK and click on OK. You can say it, you don't have to really say it, but you have to click on.  I'm going to make the whole sheet and boldened. And so let's just add our data set. So first data set, we're going to say this. I'm just going to call it Rand one because they're generated from random numbers. And let's call this one Rand two. Going to select those two and go to the home tab font group. Make it black, make it white on the letters as is our typical header structure alignment. We can just center it. We don't really need to wrap it. Then I'm going to use our random number generator. I'm going to make a random numbers between one and 100. So this is going to be equal Rand and tab or actually Rand between and then tab. And the bottom number I'm going to say is one comma top number is 100. So give me random numbers between one and 100 closing it up and enter. And there we have it. So let's see. Let's make like, I don't know, 200 and some of these. Let's go down like 200 and something of these randomly generated numbers randomly generated. Let's go 216, which should be 215. If we take the header column out there, we have it. Boom, randomly generated. Let's just copy this whole thing over. I'm going to copy this and paste it over here for more random numbers randomly generated for number two. So these have all been randomly generated, but they're not connected to each other in any way. So you would think there would be a very low correlation between randomly generated one and randomly generated two, even though there are numbers between one and 100. Now, because this random generation changes every time I do something, I want to copy these two and put them over here and paste them just formulas only so that it doesn't keep shuffling around. And then I'm going to make a skinny C. Skinny CC. I made a skinny CC. See what I did with the C. I made it skinny. I'm going to go to the home tab font group. Let's make this black and white and alignment. And let's center this. Okay, so there's our data sets. So now let's do it over here and do our statistics for rand one header, rand two header. Let's format it the same formatting as we have here. So I'll select these two cells go to the home tab up top clipboard and paint brushy paint brush it right there. Actually, I should move it to the right. I'm going to cut this right click and cut it and move it to the right by pasting it right here. That's that's just doing the same thing by the way as moving it like this. Cutting and pasting is the same as basically doing that. All right, let's make a skinny F like that and then say that we want the mean. We want the standard deviation and that let's keep it at that mean and standard deviation. So this is going to be equal to the average, which is the mean.


Welcome to the rights con studio. I'm Melissa Chan and we're in conversation the next 30 minutes with Samantha power She is the administrator of the US agency for international development and from 2013 to 2017 she served in the Obama-Biden administration as the 28th US permanent representative to the United Nations She'll be in conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter of New America she is CEO of New America and also former director of policy planning at the US State Department They will discuss how to build an inclusive and rights respecting digital future and Marie over to you Thank you rights con. It is an honor to be here with you and with this incredible global community It's also a pleasure and an honor to be in conversation with my friend My former colleague and my former student US USA IDs administrator Samantha power Samantha over to you Once a student Anne-Marie always a student. No, it's great to be here and It couldn't be a more a more timely conversation more important one Given the pace of technological innovation and penetration around the world So Yeah, I don't have to tell you that the challenges you're facing We're all facing are mounting by the day. We have war in Europe and in Africa growing inequality social fracturing in every conceivable way and declining trust in democratic institutions and processes It's also clear that digital technologies in the hands of unscrupulous And or simply uncaring creators and users are making those outcomes worse So of all the challenges that we face in the sort of intersecting Problem space, what do you see as the most urgent both in terms of of promise and of peril? Well, it's no secret that if we are to meet any of our development objectives globally Technology and the use of data and bringing in machine learning and AI I mean, all of these are going to be incredible assets whether in the realm of public health in the realm of climate forecasting And soil mapping which we're doing a lot of in light of the food security crisis So again the potential for positive impact of the use of these tools. I think knows no bounds But unfortunately, there's a lot of other things going on as well as you say in in the technology space the misappropriation of these tools to crack down on citizens who are exercising their rights Surveying those citizens and using information gathered through that surveillance Again to accelerate crackdowns as part of this democracy Recession, there's no question governments are getting savvy or doing that learning from one another in all the long ways Um, but also just in terms of what exists on platforms and we know this in the United States is that all along the kind of content propagation has outpaced potential for content mitigation um and What regardless of where you think various lines should be drawn in terms of The appropriateness of online conduct and there are a range of views. I know on that I think it'd be hard to look back, you know at the last 10 years and say that It's been intentionality that has dictated, you know, where those lines are drawn, right? It's it's much, you know, if in a social media platform sets up in a developing country like Myanmar Or even a more advanced country like Sri Lanka Chances are You know, it's going to be a little bit of a free for all in the first instance and you're not going to have people even In sufficiently staffing those operations to even be able to Take 911 phone calls, right? And and and to hear the sirens if they're issued whether around incitement to violence or again other kinds of online conduct that that One would really want to be vigilant about so I think we're at a moment. That's by the conversation I'm so grateful to you for for facilitating it and for your leadership In this domain as well and for that of everybody who's watching but thinking through, you know, what what does the rules of the road look like That can prevent misuse and abuse. What is us aides and and other development? Donors what is our comparative advantage to be involved in those conversations? We're a government, you know these Any kind of code of conduct? You know needs to be developed by the people who Use these platforms who develop these platforms were involved in governance in The countries in question in in the countries in which us aid works But you know thinking about how we guard against misuse in a much more proactive way than we are right now and by the we I mean the royal we as a community of humanity and How can we be more intentional? Given that so much of this outpaced That intentionality about the values that we are embedding In the development and the design of technologies algorithms of all kinds, you know can have Very profound human consequences And often human costs and so that kind of intentionality is something we really need in great haste uh to to to uh to embed, you know again in in design In governance in participation, and I think that's uh an inflection point that we're at right now that we cannot afford to miss You you make a number number of key points. I think the the Point that propagation outruns mitigation and that of course there are Countless unintended consequences in some cases with negligence maybe in some cases With mal intent, but that the the overall runs so fast and is so complicated And that's been true of all technology. It's all new technologies, right? There's huge promise and there's peril But at this point we have to come together to think through What a rights respecting common digital future looks like So can you talk a little bit more about how you see that process? Because usa id has really been pushing that process in the context of the summit for democracies Absolutely. So so president biden convene that summit very much growing out of his personal commitment and his recognition about how So many of the harms That occur on or are abetted or accelerated by Technology or ones that we we see in this country and we see happening around the world When you know many of the private sector actors are actually based here in the united states giving us I think a special responsibility to look at this so In the context of this on the democracy we have launched something called the advancing digital democracy program and this is again one pillar of The presidential initiative for democratic renewal. So it's not the only aspect of that There's much to be said about anti-corruption work and election infrastructure security and the like But here, you know really thinking about what a safe inclusive rights regarding digital ecosystem can look like and What we're doing is we are inviting the donor community. So donors from all around the world the private sector of course civil society advocates digital rights activists academics philanthropies and foundations and the like to join us here and The idea is To embed democratic values and respect for human rights Across the countries in which we are working's entire digital ecosystems And and that is to build resilience to digital authoritarianism that might not yet have taken root But it's always out there lurking To think through again how those stakeholders can come together to try to Roll back the rollback you might say or or slide forward after the backsliding in this space And that's you know the toolkit that you know well from from your time trying to bring the development and diplomatic tools together as part of the obama administration But there's diplomacy involved in this there's You know, certainly we would hope that congress Would be part of this effort by actually putting in place the kind of legal and regulatory reform That can help on the domestic front. So to be clear We at us aid again can't dictate that But president biden's very clear on on what his ambitions are and aspirations are in that space because What we do here, you know absolutely has to be coupled with that kind of legal and regulatory reform But right now we're going to pilot this So-called ad approach against advancing digital democracy in the country of Serbia And we're going to research and are in the process of figuring out what other digital environments lend themselves To bringing again all of these stakeholders Together if you are interested In joining us in this idea of advancing digital democracy in in all of its facets Uh, you can contribute funds or in-kind services to programming You could do whatever you are already doing and we can talk about how to align what you are doing You know under this umbrella perhaps or or you can stay under your own umbrella But like let's actually figure out how How to coordinate and on the rights con event page. I think you'll see You know more details on that but but again the idea is You know taking stock of where we are where the setbacks have been And working with countries we have entrée through our 80 missions around the world At usa and of course our ambassadors and our whole country teams As well as our catalytic convening power With the private sector, I hope but also again with with other donors And so I think there's a real chance to try to kind of refresh What exactly the approach is that Citizens and civil society and even government officials would wish to take Were they not so far down the road that they are on right now? You know, how do you kind of hit the pause button? Take stock and actually then try to embed the kinds of values that do seem to be not central To to how digital ecosystems are necessarily thought about right now in many parts of the world You're actually talking about a democratic process for figuring out a democratic digital future I know but the messiness of it and the and the horizontality of it, right? It's extraordinary to me. I mean you're there. You are the administrator of a large government bureaucracy, but you're effectively Inviting all the different stakeholders into a much more horizontal process a collective process And one as you say that there there are many different ways people can contribute I wanted to to push a little further on On what that will take in terms of culture change and you and I have both done this from government We've both done this in academia. You can you know, you can launch a new initiative You can hand out a new set of ideas But ultimately you're only going to get changed with culture change and with your long work in human rights Establishing a culture of human rights in american diplomacy and and more globally took decades So how do we how do we create new norms around this kind of process? In the digital space at new america We talk about people centered policy putting people at the center of policy But that means actually not just putting them at the center like you're the problem Rather, it's it's the solutions that the people closest to the problem come up with and that's a You know a culture shift that the communities that here at rights con the activists the movement leaders the policy advocates academics civil society And really media are craving that kind of of culture shifts So I wondered if you talk a little bit more about how usa sees that happen well, I think um first of all, this is uh A question that we need to crowdsource continue to crowdsource. I think this initiative really has come out of these kinds of conversations But famously as you know, well emory in in behavioral science Uh, you know when you tell someone to eat healthier They can't because it's not at all prescriptive if you tell somebody to drink 2 milk instead of whole milk That that one can do there's you know great adherence to that Similarly, I always say this to my team like when we say we've got to change the culture right like That's like eat healthier. You know, what what does that mean? What what is the action item for me? So uh again, I don't pretend to have the answers here, but I am I keep coming back to this idea of intentionality, you know, if you look at The generations of engineers and computer scientists that were sent out into the world Um, you know, I haven't done a survey. I'm sure someone has uh, again, this is not my specialty, but I would suspect that the amount of curriculum attention dedicated to questions of ethics or Human rights norms or the potential ulterior effects Was quite modest next to the rich array of more technical capabilities that that students Were able to get access to through their You know undergraduate or their graduate schooling We we've set up a partnership with the mozilla foundation to expand What it calls its responsible computer science challenge, which is about building curricula That integrate ethics within computer science training And trying to educate a new wave of engineers and our friend jeremy winstein Uh, who's a professor at stanford, uh, you know has been doing such important work out there embedding again, uh with his colleagues in the computer science department this kind of merger Of consideration of tech along with consideration of tech consequences And I think I think the more that that you know, again, my domain is not domestic here in the united states, but Fundamentally, this is going to have to happen in the united states Uh, you know, and and and the kinds of things that are happening at places like stanford have have to be happening across the board including Kids who are younger than university students and and part of it is also You know demand driven, you know, do the tech companies are they hearing from Those who are using their platforms that this matters the values matter And I think we've seen more of that kind of accountability public accountability But perhaps not yet the kind of groundswell, uh that would get generated in and of itself, uh, you know sufficient Uh change or traction I'm really excited about what we're doing together enmarie. Um So us aid and new america to try to now Kick off a multi stakeholder effort to develop, uh technologist code of ethics I'm the daughter of uh a mother who's a physician and this is inspired by the hippocratic oath, uh in medicine And that's again, it's 2022. I don't know how this kind of, uh, you know initiative hasn't sort of culminated yet But the purposes of this kind of code would be To support technologists the civil society actors and the academics to come together to document a set of principles For how technology should uphold democratic values and human rights And then back to the curriculum point to imbue In in principle every up and coming technologists with some sworn commitment to these ideals So that intentionality and that embrace of those principles takes holds, you know As someone goes forth into the world to do their work And then to operationalize these ideals in the spaces where technologists work and learn so they'll be universities But also the companies themselves And I guess what I will say is we're the government as I said earlier You know, this is not about the u.s. Government, uh, you know drafting something of this ambition and of this normative nature But you know, we and you together we can try to facilitate the creation of spaces whereby The true stakeholders, you know to these platforms come together and Facilitate a transparent collaborative inclusive process try to bring as much diversity into the room as possible It is going to be chaotic. I think it's it's fair to say but as Two veterans here of multilateral negotiations in the international space Um, a lot of the things we now count on as as global norms and really global goods have come about Through processes of the of that nature, but usually they're very statist And they haven't included The array of people who stand most to benefit but also most to lose From not having these values embedded Um, so there's going to be just to preview the rights con panel On a technologist code of ethics and that's right after this conversation and they're going to Gather thoughts. I think on the code um from rights con attendees and and again we We stand ready and I you can speak for for new america, but um, we're just very excited not to draft the code uh, but to use our convening power um in order to bring people together because You know, we're already way late on this given how far Things have evolved in so many countries around the world including our own You know, it really is extraordinary that there is not a technologist code of ethics I mean you were talking about the Hippocratic oath, but you and I were both lawyers And we also all had to take legal profession and there is obviously a legal code of ethics and Part of what we're we're doing together and new america has been doing for almost a decade Is to build an entire field of public interest technology So jeremy winestein and the stanford impact lab have been leaders in the public interest technology university network So that somebody who wants to be a technologist can think about You know being a technologist at usa id or in their local community, you know making traffic better or Housing better so that we we have a public interest track for technologists and a code of ethics for all technologists Just as you would for other professions It's harder because technologist is not as defined as lawyer or doctor on the other hand There are an awful lot of people who are designers or engineers who would describe themselves That way and so to be to be Facilitating the co-creation of this technologist code of ethics because I think that's really That kind of describes how we're going to work together At new america our digital impact and governance initiative will be working directly With usaid, but also, you know our open technology institute and ranking digital rights program Which are sort of approach these issues from other perspectives will be engaged as well So I would also encourage everybody to to participate on that panel I wanted to ask you though how you see specifically the role of the private sector because this is You know the private sector is vital here in some ways certainly there are big massive private companies who are part of the problem, but they also have to be part of the solution So I'd love for you to talk about how you see their role Well, let me let me just share A little bit of an oblique anecdote You know even in this in this domain I I came from traveling to the ukrainian border not long ago and was in a couple of frontline countries that are sheltering ukrainian refugees and the amount of Misinformation The amount of you know, if not outright incitement borderline incitement um the amount of lies You know relevant to everything from covid vaccines to climate change and again, we're very familiar with that misinformation here um But putting all of that to one side the Insufficiency among certain private sector actors of infrastructure. It's what I alluded to at the beginning was I was talking about Myanmar and Sri Lanka This is Europe And not having people who spoke the language who could do You know that kind of content Uh oversight right that that would be needed whether through You know algorithms or with with human judgment, uh, you know attached in real time I mean just from talking to the heads of state of countries from talking to civil society that infrastructure Uh was let's just put it this way woefully insufficient. It existed. There was something there It had been built up a little bit but nowhere near Uh an ability to keep pace with what was actually out of information on the platform Anyway, so I came back and I reached out to the company that should go should go nameless at a very senior level and what was remarkable emory is is the extent to which Their understanding of what the content oversight look like in these two european countries how just radically that departed From the government's understanding from the civil society Actors understanding who actually worked In the area like you do at new america of actually looking at tech and governance and so forth and You know, I wasn't even I can't say that the impression that I got was 100 right or but what I know is That the the canyon that separated The company's understanding of what was actually in place and what they were doing and and what at least Pretty relevant citizens like the president of the country understood were just radically different and so It just gets to it's a government that happens a lot right like inputs versus outcomes. We always have to Are we talking about how many trainings we had or are we talking about anything being, you know, kind of different in the world And and this was like that. It was it was that and so Just to say that more interaction. I mean really one can just make a kind of boring process point out of this Uh, you know, there's a critique implicit in it, of course, but but the boring process point is like those those uh gaps of Understanding that that that ability to kind of hold a mirror up to what certain private sector actors think that they Are doing and I may sound naive Because I know there's some who just say oh no, they know they're not doing anything but you know regardless we need to test the proposition And that accountability is absolutely critical. So so thinking at usa admissions how we Are taking advantage of the context that we have I mean you have heads of states of countries who wouldn't know Who to call at the big social media companies, right? And here we are, you know, uh, the largest development humanitarian agency in the world Like we should use Our contacts in order to be able to channel the concerns that that come come out of developing countries in particular Where the decisions made so far away from where the harms Could happen, you know are just seem like they're they're being made on mars You know that they're completely out of reach. So that's one aspect on the code itself I think we want to encourage active participation In developing this tech code of ethics again, you've been at this emory for A long while at at new america, you know, really kind of ahead of the curve. I think on on some of this thinking Um, and then, you know, once the code of conduct is developed Messy though that process will be and we have norms Then it's incumbent on the the rest of us to do everything we can to enlist the private sector to embrace those norms For entry-level officials and for people who've been operating Without at least formalized norms for quite some time So that is the end of our time and just the right note To end on and I just want to wrap it up in the sense of you've heard us aides advancing digital democracy initiative announced at the summit for democracy and now specifically inviting Everyone at this conference, but more broadly all the different members of the digital ecosystem To participate in thinking through the kinds of guardrails and norms Dorms that have to be inclusive And transparent and democratic And they have to advance a rights respecting digital future So we're inviting you to participate and more specifically on a technologist code of ethics Which is one piece of that larger ecosystem Of building what truly has to be a democratic digital future So administrator power such a pleasure to be able to be in this conversation with you and thanks so much No, thanks. Thank you. Ann Marie and I come back to something our former boss President obama Like to say back when we were in government together, which is when you're faced with something like this that it's can just be Very overwhelming Um, uh, you know, he would sometimes and I'd say let's solve the whole problem at once and and be, you know Super ambitious and and this is really unwieldy and there's so many stakeholders involved But he'd like to say better is good Uh, and I always just I just love that expression, right?  There's so much that we at us aid and and and all of us who care about the risk to democracy and human rights around the world In the digital space that we need to work on underlying infrastructure or how that infrastructure is adopted The digital services and platforms that operate on the infrastructure and the governance, right? Both at the companies and in the countries in question And there's so many stakeholders, you know, there's a lot here and I it may sound to some who are Pretty frustrated the pace of change and reform, you know, that this is just taking one slice and But better is good and and the you know To not have norms to not have that intention out I think we know where that path has taken us and that's you know, arguably been at least one contributor that absence Of the injection of ethics and a discussion of human rights and outcomes You know across the board so really excited to go forward and thrilled to got to have this conversation with you and Marie And thanks to to everybody who's hosting and everybody who's out there in the audience. We need you Very very badly. So so thank you for all you do every day and back to you, melissa And that's it. Thanks for joining us and as always stay engaged


So this talk will be in English because it might be a bit of a disappointment for you in the audience. This talk is not for you. I'm sorry. This talk is for you at the computer and you see me through the camera now. This talk is not for you in the audience because you live here, you are here and I hope you are not a political refugee. But some people in the United States seem to be or turn out to be political refugees. We heard the case of Chelsea Manning who can't leave the country. We heard of different whistleblowers who left the country who can't leave the country. I don't know why this is not. First of all, my name is Sarah Johnson. I'm the laser lady. I'm a bit nervous because I'm on completely new territory for me. I worked in the mid-90s in the House of Refugees during the Civil War in Europe. I worked there for one year. This is my experience with refugees. That's all my experience. I'm not a lawyer. I have no clue what I'm talking about. This talk is for folks who live in the United States who are US citizens. If you want to have more information, there are some links. It is the German Embassy. It is a Bundesamt für Migration. Some German terms. The websites are in English as well. Look at it and read it. They have more detailed information that I can give you. My intention is to give you some starting information if you are in a troubled situation, if you need to leave the country now, then I hope this talk will help you. As I said, reasons to leave. You can be a whistleblower whose cover is not far from being blown. You belong, for example, to the LGBTI community. North Carolina has very strong laws against transgender persons. This might be a reason. Police violence is one issue. There are many reasons to leave the country, also for economic reasons. For example, you want to go to university. You want to make a degree and you face the high institutions fees. You don't want to be in debt for the rest of your life for a few years of university. Come to Germany. There are some other reasons like seeing a beautiful country. Germany is a very beautiful country. I hope in the audience you all agree. This is one point why going to Germany. It is a beautiful country. We have free university. We have a good social system. We have a very affordable health insurance. That works and it is not limited. If you pay minimum into the health insurance and you get cancer and you need 100,000 euros of surgery and so on, it is covered. You never run out of coverage. You don't end up with the question, do I buy some food or do I go to a doctor?  We have a quite a stable political system. It might be a bit boring, but we have a few larger, smaller political parties. We have a two chamber parliament. In the end, we have a decent government. Everyone here is angry about the German government, but in the end, if we draw a line and compare it to other countries, yes, we have a stable government. We have a good infrastructure. If you ever enjoyed driving 200s kph on an Autobahn, it is legal on some parts and the Autobahn is mostly in a good condition. You don't get cut off by electricity because of a storm, because of snow. We are not cut off from your telephone line because some poles collapsed, so we have a good infrastructure. We have a very rich culture. Gute, Schiller, painters, sculptures, theater players, actors and so on. Yes, it is quite a decent culture and we have a very interesting history. We have the second world war. This was only six years in German history of thousands of years. We had the Nazi time for 12 years in total, which is also very small. We had the first world war. In between, we had great times of culture and development. Take a look at the literature. It is quite rich. We have two seas. We have the mountains. We have beautiful countryside. We have fantastic cities like Hamburg, Cologne, Karlsruhe as well. Yes, Berlin is nice as well.  The easiest one, of course, is you have a German passport and your parents migrated from Germany to the United States, kept their nationalities, so you are German by birth. Or one of your parents has a European citizenship. And depending on the system, you might have this European citizenship as well. Hop on a train, come here, make a living. Easy, totally. You should learn the language. There are some other ways which are a bit more of a long shot. It is you go to a university, make a degree, or you come here and find your work or be self-employed or employ others. There are some bits and pieces to look for, but it works. Another thing is the EU blue card, which you can get from different European countries, all of them. I will come to this later. I will come to the three last points later. What you should not do. I talked with a friend. She is a political refugee. She lives in Berlin. She dug too deep. She wrote a book. And she had to leave the country now. So this was half a year ago.  We talked, and she said, don't do the asylum thing. It doesn't work. Your US citizen, United States of America, is supposed as a safe country, as a safe place. So you are not in trouble then, seeing from the German law. So don't go the asylum way, please. You will go back. Lots of pain, lots of money loss. Don't do. Do the other ways. So we get into detail. There is a very, very nice law, which is fantastic. It is Article 41, Aufenthaltsverordnung. German. This says that citizens from Australia, Israel, Japan, Canada, Korea, New Zealand and United States of America can come here without a visa. You decide, okay, tomorrow I'm going to Germany.  This is luxury. You don't have to talk to anyone else before. You just do it. No visa needed. No visits at the embassy, at the German embassy. You just do it.  You don't need to talk to anyone about it. It is a bit, when you're in this situation, then you don't want to talk about your plans. It might come out. You might get arrested upfront and so. So it's a nice way to just go. You have 90 days to get your stuff sorted. Take all your original papers, university degrees, birth certificate, your passport. You need to have valid passport. Really, no copies. You can have copies, but you need mandatory to have the originals. Because if you go to the German authorities, they want to see the original. If you don't have it, you don't get the status you want to have.  Because after 90 days, your right to stay runs out and you become illegal. You are cut off of the grit of health insurance and so on. Please, in original. Yeah, as often times, article five says it, you need to have a passport. Your identity must be clear. I don't know what, suppose, how this law says it, how this law is meant. That you have to be, that there have to be no question about your identity. Yeah, keep your papers straight. You need to have an assured living. You need to have money. Yeah, you need to have money to live in Germany. And if you want to stay, you need to have an idea how you finance yourself. You can't live off the German social security system. Not now. Not when you come here. After a couple of years, when you have a different status and you get unemployed and you have a permanent status, then you can get unemployment money. But not in the first five years. So you need to have an idea how to finance yourself. There are two, article seven. There are two types of legal status, except for the first 90 days. It is the residence permit. And there's the settlement permit. I will go into the residence permit first. This is called Aufenthalz-Alaubnis. The residence permit is limited. You can't stay forever on this, on this title. You need to do something. And then when you fulfill some requirements, then it will be changed into the settlement permit. And then you can stay. But the residence permit is always bound to a purpose, be it university, be it jobs search, be it learning German whatsoever, it is limited. And it is limited to a purpose you announce when you register in Germany. So let's go through this. You land, you have some people you know. Maybe I suppose you are in the hacking community. Maybe you have been at the C3 in Hamburg or you have at other European events. You met some German folks. You made contact to hackerspaces. For example, C-Base in Berlin, which is a fantastic and big one. You contact them and you tell them, well, I'm going to leave. I need to suffer to crash. I need a place to live. You have 90 days for this.  You need to have a flat for some things, for some benefits. You need to have a place. You need to have a flat. Maybe it's living together with some other people in a shared room. Not a shared room in a shared flat. We call this Wohnunggemeinschaft. You go to the authorities, you register and say, oh, I'm living at this place, at this specific address. You need to have an address in Germany. It is very difficult without a valid address. And then you go to the Foreigner's Office, the Ausländerbehörde.  A good idea is to contact a lawyer who is specialized in foreigners' law, foreigners staying in Germany. It's a good idea. They tell you much, much, much more than I can do. They will tell you the bits and pieces. So you get your purpose straight. Be it university, be it learning German, you have one year about preparing for university, you have two years' time to learn the language. This is your purpose. You can't change backward and forward from day to day. This is a long process. So the other thing which you, in the end, want to have if you plan to stay longer, you want to have the settlement permit.  It has no purpose. It's not bound to a purpose. But you don't get it from the day one. You need to have five or more years' residency permit. You need to have an assured living. You need to be able to pay health insurance 250 euros if you are not working, if you pay it by yourself because you are self-employed 250 euros. You need to have to pay rent. You need to be able to pay tax. The taxes are a bit higher than in the United States, but it's okay. There are 80 million people living in Germany and quite a lot of them are paying tax.  Yes, but you get something from it. You get fantastic out-of-bonds. You get a social system. You get good working infrastructure. So you need to have paid five or more years into the retirement and into the pension funds. If you are older than 45, there are some different laws. This is what I show you as an excerpt. Is it condensed just for the case that US citizens move to Germany? There are other cases for refugees and so on. This law is quite big, but these are just the parts you need to know. So five years into the retirement funds, you need to have a sufficient living space. You can't live in a cardboard box. You can't live under the bridge. You need to have a flat or a house or something where you can have sort of decent life. You don't need to have a fantastic palace. A Wundermeinschaft is okay. You can live in this co-living space. You need to be able to speak German. Not just a few words. Hello, Wiggetz-Danke. You need to be on the level of B1, which is okay. You can get around. You can talk to the officials. You can talk to tax employees. You can order something at the restaurant and so on. You can live in Germany and you don't always be the foreigner. You can have a conversation. This is important. It is tested. It is going to be tested. So you can't just fake it. And you also need to have quite the knowledge about the German culture political system. How Germany runs the parliaments and so on. The countries and the state and so on. But after five years, you should be able to speak some German. And you have enough time to take German courses. And they are also mandatory for some people. In the end, after five years, this shouldn't be difficult. So if you come here for education, if you want to go to university, you need to be... It's always about residency permits, not about settlement permits. Settlement permit comes later. This is a purpose thing. You need to have the purpose to get the residence permit. You need to be accepted by a German university or high school. The purpose is acceptance. So you need to have your school degrees from the United States. And you need to have the allowance in general to go to university or high school. If you have this, then you pick a university, pick your courses, pick what you want to study. And then you have two years' time to learn German. Because German universities are run in German. There are some private universities, maybe they do the English thing, but university in Germany is in German. And you need to be able to read and understand much more than hello and danke and begez. So you have two years' time. This buys you two years' time. If you go to university at the end, it's something else. But it buys you the two years. Maybe you go somewhere else. You have nine months to find a university place. It is not within the first 90 days. You have to say, you have to claim, I want to go to university. These and that and that are my school degrees. I am able to go to university. Then you have nine months' time to find a place. And then do the German learning thing. When you've finished and you made it, you got a degree, then you have 18 months' time to find a work which fits to your degree. If you studied medicine and you want to work as a software engineer, this doesn't work. If you studied something, mechanical engineering, and you just want to work in a car factory at the car manufacturing, this doesn't work. This is not the work you studied for. You need to have a certain level of work. You can't work as a bin man with a PhD. It doesn't work. They don't accept it. If you work... No, something else. We have something very fantastic in Germany besides university. This is called the Ausbildung oder Lehre. This is an apprenticeship. It is mostly three and a half years while you work in a company and you go to school, professional school. You work a couple of weeks in the company to learn the practical things. You go back to school for two, three weeks and so on and you end up with a degree. This is quite valued in Germany. This is a fantastic system. You can do this, but you need to have the approval from the Arbeitsagentur, from the employment agency. There are some bits and pieces. They have to approve it, and maybe if you want to do something electrical and there are too many electricians in that area of the country, then they might ask you to switch to become a cook, to become a chef, for example. You also have one year to find a job afterwards in your field, what you learned. If you learned electrician, you can't work as a chef, vice versa. There's something nice. That is the EU blue card. This is valid for whole Europe, so you can work and live in Germany or you can work and live in France or you can... I don't know about the UK. They have this Brexit thingy in four weeks. I don't know how it will turn out, but there are 28 European countries, EU countries, and you can live there.  If you like cold and snow, then you go to Sweden. If you like hot and sea, then you go to Spain or Italy. There are also some rules and regulations, some bits and pieces to get this blue card. You need to have... So you apply for this in Germany. You need to have a degree, a university degree that is at least recognized by German authorities or you have studied in Germany. Or you lived... You worked five years in a specific field and have a comparable qualification. You need to have the consent from the employment agency as well. So there's always this thing of... There's an open job position and there's a ranking. If no German is found to do this job, then it is opened to everyone else. So if a German or European citizen takes this job position, then you're out. You need to have this job opening where you can fit in. Sometimes maybe it's okay. It's a good idea that you are American citizen because you have contacts to the United States, to this way of thinking and so on. You have to work at Google or something and they want to have someone specific with these specific skills. Then it works. Salary must be okay. You can't work as a doctor for a thousand euros a month. You need to be paid within the range of the other German employees doing the same. This prevents you from underpayment. This prevents you, in a way... This is a two-sided thing. It might prevent you as well from having this job. The Ministry of Labor defines the accredited jobs and the lower limits of salary. That's how it's written the law. This is very flexible. The employment agency has to has its finger into it. As well, you shouldn't be asylum seeker. This doesn't work. You need to have a settlement permit for more than 33 months to get this. You don't find a job. You have quite some skills. You are talented to run your own business. Please, you're welcome. If you provide working space for others, perfect. You need to be independent financially. You need to... Your idea, your job idea needs to be interesting for that region. If in the city there are 30 bakeries and you want to open up bakery number 31, it's a bit questionable. If you do something with software, hardware, take... This is a good idea. It might work. Very good is if what you do has a positive effect on the job market, as I said earlier. And if you need to be funded you need to have some funding, some investment. Again, the German authorities don't want you to live of the expenses of other ones. So unemployment money and so on. You get a residency permit for maximum three years and when everything works well, your business is running, maybe you have some employees, you have this positive effect on the German economy, then you get a settlement permit. Freelance work also works. Again, must be approved, but in the end it will also lead to a residence permit. So you made it somehow. You come the first time to Germany and you want to live there. Not the first time for holidays, but you want to seriously live here, then you need to learn German. You are entitled to... You have the right to take part in German courses. And if you have the right, then you also have the obligation to learn German. If your language skills are below A1, which is in a way of hello we gates and thank you and hello and what's ever, then you need to do this course. They also teach how the German system works, how the political work system works, parliament and so on.  Your status can be denied and you have to go home, find another solution.  So you should hang in there, learn, integrate, do something with a job, go to university, start make a living like all the other Germans. I talked with this friend about this talk and basically if you plan to go, then you take your time, make some savings. If you are like a whistleblower, you know that you do something at least questionable. If you get into this and get into the zone of being endangered by the American authorities, you might want to put some money aside that buys you time. You should do it quietly.  You just do this. You also should have an idea of what you want to do when you come to Germany. It can happen that you did something and you leave now and you had no time.  But if you have the time, you are into a specific special thinking and into a scene whatsoever, then you might be prepared to leave. As I said earlier, be quiet. It is like before 1889, we had the German Democratic Republic called DDR. There were some refugees and they went to western Germany and it was a very, very dangerous journey trip. The problem was if they talked to someone, parents could be friends, close friends. They never knew if one of these persons talks to the Stasi and blames you. So you have to be quiet. Try to figure out what you want to do, what your options are, what your skills are. There are some groups on Facebook, there are some websites about how to live in Germany, how to make it, how to go there. You should read this. You should read a lot to get an idea. So what I tell you is just the first ideas, first information. So if you come here, you go to the Einwundermelderamt, this is where you get registered, where you go and you say, I live in this and that specific address. As I said, you need to have an address in Germany. So this is the first step. This is a very important one. And then you go to the Ausländerbehörden, to the foreigners authorities, so you proceed. Yeah, when you come here, it's a journey, it's a trip. It's a life experience. Take everything you can get from this experience. Learn as much as you can, enjoy as much as you can, enjoy the German beer, enjoy the weather, enjoy going to the beach, take this as an opportunity, not only, wow, how it's breaking loose, but you end up in a nice place. So I came to the end. I want to thank you, I want to thank all the folks, the US folks I met at the C3, which talked about leaving the country, because they gave me the idea of making a talk about. I want to thank Vera for her input. If you want to shoot me a mail, Sarah at laserlady.org. If you want to Twitter me, it's at excelzara.hl. Shoot me a line. And if you have some questions, please, questions. Okay, thank you very much for your attention.


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