Welcome to why in the morning the hashtag to use. If it's Tuesday, it's hashtag entrepreneurship Tuesday at Y254 channel is where you can find us across all of social media platform art. Michelle Ashira is where you can reach out to me across all my social media platforms. In this particular conversation, we look at the recycling, reusing and refurbishing of your electronics that have gotten out of use. It's a conversation you want to stick around, especially after knowing that our country Kenya generates an average of 3000 tons of waste, each air from computers, monitors, printers, fridge, mobile phones, batteries and e-waste and other electronic devices that you may know of. So most definitely lack of e-waste awareness and poor disposal system with superluting, the environment and other health issues. In studio, I am joined by Bonim Bithi, who is the general manager of We Center and CFSK. Thank you very much for creating time, Bonim. Thank you for having me. Did I say it right? Totally. All right. So, Bonim, starting us off. Yes, I wouldn't want to miss this. So, we celebrated the International Youth Day on 12th August. And we were fortunate enough to also host the youngest CFS Minister of ICT Innovation and Youth Affairs, Ms. Nadia Abdalla, right here on our virtual youth concert. You, on the other hand, you were awarded top 35 and 35 in technology, youth of the year in technology and veiled by his excellency the President Uhuru Kenya during the International Youth Day celebration, 2012 of August. Did you see that coming? No, I didn't expect it. But yes, it happened and it's very motivating to me as a person and also I believe it will be motivating to other people. It shows that whatever you do in your own small way, somebody somewhere will always recognize it. All right. How did you feel? How did it feel to be recognized for your work of putting into technology? It was, I would say it was exciting, but most importantly, it was quite motivating because, you know, we keep working, we keep pushing things hard, but not every time you get somebody to recognize you or be appreciated for your work. So it really is motivating not only for me, but also for the entire team at We Center for people to continue making sure that whatever we do, we're doing it and doing it very well. Congratulations again. Thank you very much. All right. If you're not the one who worked with top 35 and 35 in technology, who would you have dominated? Wow, interesting question. I have totally not thought about it. Yes. But of course, there are a lot of young people doing amazing things in a great tech, in things to do with creating. There are very many startups that are coming up. So I think in Kenya is one of those hubs in Africa where we have amazing things happening created by amazing innovators. And most of these innovators are young people. So if you look around most of the startups that are coming up, you find the startups that are being built by the youth, which is quite motivating. And I believe it would not only be motivating for the people actually doing those startups or doing those businesses, but also for other young people who also want to start their own businesses. So I think there are many young people doing amazing things out here. All right. So Boni, in our conversation today, we're looking at trading the e-waste. And I would like to find out what is e-waste and how harmful is it to environment? All right. So e-waste is, first is anything that is electrical or electronic that has either been overtaken by technology or has become obsolete, meaning your old monitors, mobile phones, TVs, all these things, when they reach the end of life or when you no longer use the cables, anything that is using battery or using power and has either been overtaken by technology or has become obsolete, qualifies to become electronic waste. It is very harmful. The reason why it is very harmful is that all electronics are made from metals, heavy metals. If you remember the periodic table that we used to do in high school, chemistry, and it was not easy. So 69 of those elements, they are found in electronic waste, not electronic waste in electronics. How many percent? 69 of them. And I think they should be about more than 200. So 69 of those heavy metals, including mercury, palladium, the others called germanium, uranium, lead, all those metals. So if those metals are not properly taken care of and they come into contact with your body, they bring very many complications, things to do with lowering your immunity, things to do with complications on your nervous system, cancer, a lot of them are causing cancer. So in fact, that's why you see there's a lot of cancer cases raising in Kenya and also in Africa. So you find all those metals, if you look at them, they have different illnesses that they will bring if they're not properly disposed. So ideally, electronic waste should be very well disposed and it should be done by professionals because it also requires sophisticated technology and equipment for safe disposal. Okay. So let's look at what is the role of WeCenter how to play in all this. So for WeCenter, ideally our mandate is to make sure that the environment is safe of environment, rather of e-waste. So we ensure that we collect electronic waste from anywhere we can, from homes, from government, from corporates, from schools and all institutions. Once it's collected, we take it through a rather very complex processing. We do separation because all those fractions, they are supposed to be treated separately. So you cannot just take the entire TV and start processing it. So it's properly separated. We take data in terms of tonnage to also know at the end of the month or at the end of the year how many kgs or how many tons we're able to do. So it goes through a very long process for it to be safely disposed. The other thing that we do is awareness. So we also create a lot of awareness around electronic waste. We've been doing a lot of awareness. So every year we do campaigns. We partner with different companies just to make sure that our Kenya citizens and also anyone who is in Kenya understands how you're supposed to safely take care of your e-waste. We've partnered recently with CARFO, the supermarkets. So all CARFO supermarkets have our e-waste collection bins. So if you go to any CARFO outlet, you find there's a bin that has been branded We Center and CARFO, where you're able to dispose your electronics if they've reached the end of life of they've been overtaken by technology. Also partnered with SafariCom. So that's around awareness. Of course, people know that some of the electronics have sensitive data, like if you bring your mobile phone or your laptop or your desktop. So you also do safe data destruction to ensure that your data is very well taken care of. So we do that for companies, for individuals, anybody who brings data carrying devices, we ensure that we do safe data destruction also. All right. How does the CFSK involved with We Center? So CFSK is Computers for Schools Kenya. So in fact, Computer for Schools Kenya is a founding organization of the We Center. We've been operating in ICT in education, supporting schools to bridge the digital divide, ensuring that they have high quality computers or laptops. We've been setting up computer labs all over the country. We've done over 400,000 computers everywhere in Kenya. We have eight regional offices in different counties also in Kenya. So we did so many computers and realized that we're also generating electronic waste and nobody was doing US recycling. So that's how now we evolved and started the We Center. So the We Center now purely deals with US recycling and CFSK on the other hand, supports schools. So we are still supporting e-learning like now during COVID. We still have students that we're supporting in getting affordable laptops. We are supporting parents on how to do home learning for the students. And we have different projects. So we still partner. CFSK is a nonprofit and the We Center is a social enterprise. So that's the connection and GM for both of them. Oh, nice. How long have you been the general manager for both We Center and CFSK? It should be about five to six years. Good. Okay, good. Five to six years. That's long enough for you to tell us the new products that come from e-waste. What are some of the new products that come from e-waste? So once you process e-waste, when you go to the recycling, so what you do, you get certain raw materials. So what you're doing is like extraction. So you find that with the electric equipment, there's plastics. So we're able to get the plastic. We partner with local plastic recyclers who take our plastic from the plastic that we get from the e-waste. They're able to come up with innovative products. There's plastic fence in Poles, companies that are doing that. Others are able to make events chairs. There is a company that is able to make diesel from that plastic lubricants. The other one is metal. Metal is melted to make new metal. Copper. Copper, of course, you know copper is valuable. So it's used to make jewelry and other things. Things like batteries. We also collect batteries. Batteries, we have a system whereby we're able to test the batteries that can be reused. So the ones that can be reused, we're making our own battery packs. So these battery packs can be used for solar home systems. So there's so much that you can do from the fractions that we get in electronic waste. The other bit is that there's also valuable metals that are found in electronic waste, like there's gold, there's silver, there's copper. Those ones are now properly recycled and they go back to the food chain or rather they go to the ecosystem to make new products. So instead of going to do mining, the traditional mining to get gold and to get silver and these other metals, you can actually mine them from electronic waste. And then now they return to make new products. Very interesting. So what happens at Wecent, apart from recycling, you guys are offering raw materials to different manufacturing industries on a different level of industry that is plastic if they want to do jewelry. Yes, yes. That's one of it. And unfortunately in Kenya we don't have e-west low, meaning the disposal rate is very low, but it has been growing because of the awareness that we've been creating, meaning we have to ship out certain fractions that we're not able to handle locally. Like now the extraction that I'm talking about, extraction of the precious metals and the others that are called rare raw materials. Those ones we have to ship to Europe. So we have partnered with companies in Europe who were able to do that extraction. So they extracted and then they are sold to the manufacturers. So it's a circular kind of way, economy. So you find everything that comes to the Wecent is properly recycled to form or to make new products and then whatever we cannot recycle locally is shipped to people who were able to do the extraction, they extract and then it's taken to the manufacturers to also make new equipment, even including the batteries. So even the batteries that we're not able to reuse, once we ship them back, the manufacturer is able to make new batteries from those batteries. So you find nothing will be discarded to the environment. We'll go back to the law, lack of having laws when it comes to matters on e-west and for now I would like to find out. So for anyone who wants to get into the recycling business, so what sort of skills does one need to have? If someone is watching this and do enough to be part of Wecent. What sort of skills are you guys looking for? I think if you want to start, I believe starting a business, what you need is passion. And when we were starting the Wecent, nobody had an e-west degree or environment degree. I can tell you that for sure. My degree is in law. And right now I have a lot of knowledge on e-west recycling and circular economy. So what someone needs is just to do the research. You need to study the trade very well to understand it. But where we are now, of course, we need people who have knowledge in terms of environment, environment issues, also matters to do with policy and also matters to do with technology. So those are some of the things that we would be looking at if we want someone to join the Wecent. But if you want to start the business, you don't need to know anything about e-west. But you just need to have the passion and then you go into research. You mentioned earlier that you have a background in law. How has that helped you as a managing director to Wecent and CFSK? Yes, law is a life scale. I think there are many lawyers out here who are not practicing law. But you find when we study law at the university, you study a lot of things. So don't just study the typical law that people know. There's so much that comes with law. So you find some of those things that we're able to study in law, they assist you in life. So even in business, and what I do also requires me to understand matters to do with law, legislation, policy. So it has really also assisted me. When you're having somebody who's advising you on legal matters, you know exactly what to look for. If you are getting into contracts, you know what to also look out for. So I can say it has really assisted me. What's the proper way to dispose of e-west? Considering weekends, we consume lots of electronics. When a new product comes into the market, we forget the old and onto the new. So what is the proper way to dispose of electronics? The first thing I would encourage people to do is to do segregation. It's something called segregation at source. So segregation at source means segregate your waste in your house. So don't just have one dustbin in your house whereby on Thursday somebody comes and collects your garbage, just collects everything. But if you look at what other countries are doing, there is segregation. You have different ways of segregating your waste. It says that if it is general waste, there are people who are dealing with general waste, they're collecting that. If it is food waste, there are people who are collecting food waste. If it is the plastic bottles, there is an organization that is collecting that. If it is e-waste, we centre is there to collect. So all you need to do is to ensure that you segregate your waste rather. And if you have e-waste, just reach out to we centre. If you go to a website, there's a simple form that you'll feel and say where you are. And we're able to capture your data and collect from even your house. You can deliver even your e-waste to the K4 supermarkets if you're going for shopping. You can go to SafariCom shops and take your also your e-waste there. And then once you have it, or you can also take it directly to our offices, we offer the instant bypass. And it will be properly disposed, will give you a certificate and information to show the processes that we undertook to ensure that your e-waste was properly disposed. All right. Is there a form of any payment am I supposed to pay if I feel that form from your website, which are going to give us the name of the website?  Is there any form of payment I'm supposed to make? For now, nobody is paying anybody will not pay you and you'll not pay us. As we progress and there's proper law, you'll find with proper law, you'll be expected, even without the law, you're expected to take care of your waste. But people think that now you're generating waste, but you need to be paid for generating the waste. So that's where the confusion is. But ideally, you're supposed to take care of your waste. We will not charge you to dispose, but it will get to a point where you'll be required to pay us. The normal way, we are garbage collectors.  But for now, we'll be doing these services for free and we're even doing estate drives. We're moving to different estates in Nairobi on different weekends, camping there and people bringing their IOS for us to collect. Kenyans love inducement. Now, you have said clearly that no one is paying nobody. We love inducement. I give you my old laptop, my old phone. And I'm not getting anything, nothing. You've been responsible. Why country must you be paid to be a responsible citizen? This thing, if you dispose it carelessly, it will come back to you. If you have battery carrying equipment in your house and you don't dispose them, your children will start playing with them. What if I argue that I'm giving you actually raw materials to buy other new products which are going back to the market and you guys are making money out of it? It is a circular economy. We are all in the ecosystem. So you find what you're looking at is the issue of sustainability. Because you can imagine, if we start saying, okay, now from Monday, we sent out the pain, anybody who brings this number of cages of mobile phones, you then create another opportunity for crime. You find somebody can break into your house or break into offices, steal as many IT equipment, bring to the center. How will we be able to justify that this is genuine US disposal or this is stolen? So all we need to do is for people to be responsible. And in fact, that's why you see even with a new curriculum, they have introduced environment as a course from I think class one or even kindergarten. So that people grow knowing that you're supposed to take care of the environment. If you don't take care of the environment, it will not take care of you. So we have to be responsible. You don't have to be paid to be responsible. Absolutely. All right. Apart from the inclusive of the environment course in our curriculum, how does your team go around the mentality of inducements? Because we have Kenyans who most definitely think in that manner that I'm actually giving you raw materials to generate a new product. So how do you guys go around that mentality when creating awareness? So the most important bit is for people to understand where we're coming from or why the US needs to be disposed.  So in creating awareness, people have to understand the dangers associated with the improper disposal. Because if the people buy US, they will come and buy your 10 laptops from your company. They will only go and salvage the parts that they require. The rest they will be thrown away to maybe Nairobi River or to the environment. And then you find downstream Nairobi River very big farms that have planted very good looking vegetables.  So if you look at it from a point of responsibility and being conscious about the environment, it is more fulfilling than you just been paid to dispose your US. And everywhere in the world you find there has to be responsibility from the citizens when it comes to matters, waste management.  It is not just going to buy the electronics and removing the raw materials. It is very expensive. And that's why you see even some of these things we have to ship to Euro for them to be properly extracted. If you go into improper extraction, it is very harmful to the environment and it is also very harmful to the people who are doing it. So it's a very sophisticated trade, although it also requires a lot of government intervention in terms of policy and also in terms of the law. We've looked at the proper way the consumer can dispose the e-waste. How can we reduce the e-waste as a consumer? Yeah, as a consumer, reducing is very easy. Like I'm seeing you have a tablet and a mobile phone. You don't need both. So you're also increasing chances of generating e-waste. I believe whatever the tablet can do, even the mobile phone can do. So even in offices, we are promoting a circular economy approach such that you don't need to have 10 printers in the office. You only need to have one big printer and it is connected. So reducing as a consumer, you first need to start reducing their number of gadgets, devices. Reduce your appetite for these devices. If you have a mobile phone that can perform multiple tasks, you don't need another one. You find people walking around with three phones, which you never understand why you have to use the level of status. Yes, unfortunately. So there's that bit. The other bit, of course, is buy long-lasting devices. So also go for quality. The other bit, manufacturers, they're also encouraged to make long-lasting equipment so that will reduce the amount of e-waste that will be generated. Otherwise, if you keep buying counterfeit goods, you find you can buy even two mobile phones or three in a year. But if you're buying good quality, you'll only buy one and you'll serve even for three to five years. All right. So let's say I stay in Rwisambu and a friend of mine is staying in Kareem. We can all stop by at the centre to drop an electronic device that we no longer use. Yes. It's as simple as that. It's very simple. All you need to do if you stay in Rwisambu, in fact, you can even make it easier for you. You can go to TRM. There's a K4 outlet. Go and take your old mobile phone there. If you have bulk equipment, go to the customer care, the K4. They will let you know how it will reach Rwisambu. If you're in Kareem, go to the hub. You can dispose the e-waste at the hub at the K4. You can also go to Galeria. In fact, Galeria will be spoiled for choice because it's a Faricom and there is K4. You can dispose in either of them. You can easily fill that form, even from your mobile phone, would capture your data and then we organise. But of course, we will not send a truck to Kareem to pick your one mobile phone. So you find we usually map out different people who have e-waste in different areas. Then when the vehicle moves, it collects from several locations. And then also anytime come to our offices of the Eastern Bipers, you see what we do and also dispose your e-waste there.


Many people come to OPTI nowadays with the report of fat deliver in their hand. They have two questions in their mind. First, they don't take alcohol.  And second, is it a really a threat or a serious ailment?  Around 80 to 90 percent of people having diabetes or obesity will have fat deliver and in due course of time this fat deliver leads to liver cirrhosis and can even lead to liver cancer. So yes, it is dangerous and you should seek medical consultation before it gets irreversible.


Road transport is an essential component of any nation's economy as it provides the mains to move both people and goods quickly and efficiently. However, it is also one of the largest contributors to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. To address this issue, many countries have begun to explore alternative energy sources and technologies to reduce the environmental impact of road transportation. This paper examines various energy sources, including fossil fuels, gaseous fuels, and other renewable sources, as well as technologies that can be used to recover energy loss during vehicle operation. It also looks at future developments in the field of energy harvesting in vehicles. This article was authored by Yasek Kaban, Jan Vrabel, Dorda Gornica, and others.


Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE! Covering Cisco Live Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage here in Barcelona, Spain. For Cisco Live Europe 2019, we're in day three, three days of coverage. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Our next two guests, we're going to talk about privacy, data, Michelle Denton, VP and Chief Privacy Officer at Cisco, Robert Waitman, who is the Director of Security and Trust. Welcome back. And everything we talked about kind of is happening on steroids here this year. Welcome back. Thank you, glad to be here. Thanks for having us. Security, privacy, all go hand in hand. A lot going on, you're seeing more breaches, you're seeing more privacy challenges, certainly GDPRs going to the next level. People are quote, complying. Here's a gig of data, go figure it out. So there's a lot happening. Give us the update. Well, as we suggested last year, it was privacy Palooza all year long, running up to the enforcement deadline of May 25, 2018. There were sort of two kinds of companies. There's one that ran up to that deadline and said, woohoo, we're ready to drive this baby forward. And then there's a whole another set of people who are still sort of, oh my gosh. And then there's a third category of people who still don't understand. I had someone come up to me several weeks ago and said, what do I do? When is this GDPR going to be a law? I thought, oh honey, you need a hug. Two years ago. And some companies in the US at least were turning off their websites. Some media companies were in the news were actually shutting down their site and not making it available because they weren't ready. So a lot of people were caught off guard, some were prepared, but still, you said people would be compliant, kind of. And they did that, but still more work to do. Lots more work to do. And as we said, when the law was first promulgated two and a half years ago, GDPR and the deadline, A, it's just one region, but as you'll hear, as we talk about our study, it's impacting the globe. But it's also not the end of anything. It's the beginning of the information economy at long last. So I think we all have a lot to do, even if you feel rather confident of your base level compliance, now it's time to step up your game and keep on top of it. Before we get into some of the details of the new findings you guys have, I want you to take a minute to explain how your role is now centered in the middle of Cisco, because if you look at the keynotes, data is in the center of a lot of things in this intent-based network on one side and you've got cloud and edge on the other. Data is the new ingredient that's feeding applications and certainly collective intelligence for security. So the role of data is critical. This is a big part of the Cisco tech plan, nevermind policy and or privacy and these other things. You're in the middle of it. Explain your role within Cisco and how that shape- Well, and it's such a good question and actually if you watch our story through theCUBE, we announced actually on Data Privacy Day several years ago that data is the new currency and this is exactly what we're talking about. The only way that you can operationalize your data currency is to really think about it throughout the platform. You're not just pleasing a regulator, you're not just pleasing your shareholders, you're not just pleasing your employee base. So as such, the way we organize our group is my role sits under the COO's office, our chief operations office, under the office of John Stuart, who is our chief trust officer. So security, trust, advanced research, all live together in operations. We have sister organizations in places like public policy, legal, marketing, the sales groups, the people who are actually operationalizing come together for a group. My role really is to provide two types of strategy. One, rolling out privacy engineering and getting across inside and outside of the company as quickly as possible. It's something new. As soon as we have set processes, I put them into my sister organization and they send them out as routine and hopefully automated things. The other side is the work Robert and I do together is looking at data valuation models, working about the economics of data, where does it drive up revenue and business and speed, time to closure and how do we use data to not just be compliant in the privacy risk, but really control our overall risk and the quality of our information overall. Mathful. That's interesting. And Robert, that leads me to a question. We've seen these unfunded mandates before. We saw it with the Y2K, the Enron Backlash, certainly in the United States, the federal rules of civil procedure. And the folks in the corner office would say, oh, here we go again. Is there any way to get more value beyond just reducing risk and complying? And have you seen companies be able to take data and value and apply it based on the compliance and governance and privacy policies? Yeah, that's a great question. It's sort of the thought that we had and the hypothesis was that this was going to be more valuable than just for the compliance reasons. And one of the big findings of the study that we just released this week was that in fact, those investments, we're saying that good privacy is very good for business. It was painful. Some firms stuck their head in the sand and said, I don't want to even do this, but still going through the GDPR preparation process or for any of the privacy regulations has taken people to get their data house in order. And it's important to communicate. We wanted to find out what benefits were coming from those organizations that had made those investments. And that's really what came out in our study this week for International Data Privacy Day. We got into that quite a bit. What is this study? Can you give us some details on it? So it's the Data Privacy Benchmark Study we published this week for International Data Privacy Day. It's sort of an opportunity to focus on data privacy issues, both for consumers and for businesses, sort of the one day a year, kind of like Mother's Day. You should always think of your mom, but Mother's Day is a good day. So you should always think of privacy when you're making decisions about your data, but it's a chance to raise awareness. So we published our study this year and it was based on over 3,200 responses from companies around the world, from 18 countries, all sorts of sizes of companies. And the big findings were in fact around that. So privacy has become a serious and a boardroom level issue that the awareness has really skyrocketed for companies who are saying, before I do business with you, I want to know how you're using my data. And so what we saw this year is that seven out of eight companies are actually seeing some sales delay from their customers asking those kinds of questions. But those that have made the investment, getting ready for GDPR or being more mature on privacy, are seeing shorter delays. If you haven't gotten ready, you're seeing 60% longer delays. And even more interestingly for us too, is when you have data breaches and a lot of companies have them as we've talked about, those breaches are not nearly as impactful. The organizations that aren't ready for GDPR are seeing three times as many records impacted by the breach. They're seeing system downtime that's 50% longer. And so the cost of the whole thing is much more. So kind of the question of, is this still something good to do? Not only because you have to do it, we want to avoid 4% penalties from GDPR and everything else. But it's something that's so important for my business that drives value. So the upshot there is that you do the compliance, okay, check the box, we don't want to get fined. So you're taking your medicine basically. It turns into an upside with the data you're seeing from your report. Sales, benefit, and then just preparedness and readiness for breaches. Right, I mean, it's a nice way to think about, that's exactly right. Don, you've got it right. You've got your data house in order.  When customers ask you questions about that, you're ready to answer it. And when something bad goes wrong, let's say there is a breach, you've already done the right things to control your data. You've gotten rid of the data that you don't need anymore. I mean, 50% of your data isn't used for anything. And of course, we suggest that people get rid of that. That makes it less available if a breach occurs. So I got to ask you a question on the data valuation because a lot of the data geeks and data nerds like myself saw this coming. We saw data mostly on the tech side. If you invested in data, it was going to feed applications. And I think I wrote a blog post in 2007. Data is going to be part of the development kits or development environment. You're seeing that now here. Data is now part of application development. It's part of network intelligence for security. Okay, so yes, check that's happening. At the CFO level, can you value the data so it's a balance sheet item? Can you say we're investing in this? So you start to see movement, you almost project maybe in a few years or now, how do you guys see the valuation? Is it going to be another kind of financial metric? Well, John, it's a great point seeing where we're developing around this. So I think we're still in somewhat early days of that issue. I think the organizations that are thinking about data as an asset and monetizing its value are certainly ahead of this. We're trying to do that ourselves. We've probed on that a little bit in the survey just to get a sense of where organizations are. And only about a third of organizations are doing those data mature things. Do they have a complete data map of where their stuff is? Do they have a chief data officer? Are they starting to monetize in appropriate ways their data? So there's a long way to go before organizations are really getting the value out of that data. But the signals are showing that there's value in the data. Obviously the numbers sales. There's some upsides of compliance, not just doing it to check the box. There's actually business benefits. So how are you guys thinking about this? Because you guys are early adopters or leaders in this. How are you thinking about the data measurement of it? Do you share your insights on that? Yeah, so data on the balance sheet, Grace Hopper 1965, right? Data will one day only be on the corporate balance sheet because it's in most cases more valuable than the hardware that processes. This is the woman who's making software and hardware work for us in 1965. Here we are in 2019. It's coming on the balance sheet. She was right then, I believe in it now. What we're doing is even starting, this is a study of correlation rather than causation. So now we have at least the artifacts to say to our legal teams, go back and look at when you have one of our new improved streamlined privacy sheets and you're telling in a more transparent fashion in a deal. Mark the time that you're getting the question. Mark the time that you're finishing. Let's really be much more stiletto like measuring time to close and efficiency. Then we're adding that capability across our businesses. Well one use case we heard on theCUBE this week was around privacy and security in the network versus on top of the network. And one point that was referenced was when a salesperson leaves, they take the contracts with them. So that's an asset and people get sued over it. So again, this is a business policy thing. So business policy sounds like. Well in a lot of the solutions that exist in the marketplace or have existed. I've sat on three encrypted email companies before encrypted email was something the market desired. I've sat on two advisory boards of a hope that you could sell your own data to the marketers.  We haven't really got that because we're looking on the periphery. What we're really trying to do is let's look at what the actual business flow and processes are in general and say things like, can we put a metric on having less records, higher impact and higher quality? The old data quality in the CDO is rising up again. Get that higher quality. Now correlate it with speed to innovation, speed to close, launch times. The things that make your business run anyway, now correlate it and eventually find causal connections to data. That's how we're going to get that data on the balance sheet. That's a great point. Is the data quality issue used to be a kind of a back office records management function and now it's coming to the fore. And I'll just make an observation. If you look at what were before Facebook fake news, what were the top five companies in the United States in terms of market value? Amazon, Google, Facebook was up there. It's at Microsoft, Apple. They're all data companies. And so the market has valued them beyond the banks, beyond the oil companies. So you're starting to see clear evidence and quantifiable evidence that there's value there. I want to ask you about, we have Guillermo Diaz coming up shortly, Michelle. And I want to ask you your thoughts on the technical function, you mentioned it's a board level issue now, privacy. How should the CIO be communicating to the board about privacy? What should that conversation be like? Oh my gosh. So we now report quarterly to the board. So we're getting a lot of practice. We'll put it that way. I think we're on the same journey as the security teams used to. You used to walk into the board and go, here's what ransomware is. And all of these former CFOs and sales guys would look at you and go, ah, okay, onto the financials. Because there wasn't anything for them to do strategically.  It's more activity driven.  Have you passed some sort of a third party audit? Are you getting rejected for third party value chain in your partner communities? That's the have not and da-da-da. To me, I don't want my board telling us how to do operations. That's how we do. To really give the board a more strategic view, what we're trying to do is study things like time to close and then showing trending impacts. The one conversation with John Chambers that's always stuck in my head is, he doesn't want to know what today's snapshot is because today's already over. Give me something over time, Michelle, that will trend. And so even though it sounds like, you know, who cares if your sales force is a little annoyed that it takes longer to get this deal through legal? Well, it turns out when you multiply that in a multi-billion dollar environment, you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, probably a weak loss to inefficiency. So if we believe in efficiency in the tangible supply chain, that's some more strategic view I want to take. And then you add on things like, here is a risk portfolio, potential fair risk reporting type of thing if we want to do a new business. Do we light up a business in the Ukraine right now versus Barcelona? That is a strategic conversation that's board level. We've forgotten that by giving them activity. Interesting what you say about Chambers. John, you just interviewed John Chambers and he was the first person in the mid-90s to talk about a virtual close, if you remember that. So obviously what you're talking about is way beyond that. Yeah, and you're exactly right. And let's go back to those financial roots. So one of the things we talk about in privacy engineering is getting people's heads, the concept that the data changes. So the day before your earnings, that data will send Chuck Robbins to jail if someone is leaking it and causing people to invest accordingly. The day after, it's news. We want everyone to have it. Look at how you have to process and handle an operationalize in 24 hours. Figuring out those data stories helps it turn it on its head and make it more valuable. You know, you mentioned John Chambers. One of the things that I noticed was he really represented Silicon Valley well in Washington, DC. And there's been a real void there since he retired. You guys still have a bread presence there and are doing stuff there. And you see Amazon with Theresa Carlson doing some great work there. And you still got Oracle and IBM in there and doing their thing. How is your presence and leadership translating into DC now? Can you give us an update of what's happening at? So I don't know if you caught a little tweet from a little guy named Chuck Robbins this week. But Chuck is actually actively engaged in the debate for US federal legislation for privacy. The last thing we want is only the lobbyists, as you say, and I love my lobbyists wherever you are. We need them to help give information. But the strategic advisor is to what a federal bill looks like for an economy as large and complex and dependent on international structure. We have to have the network in there. And so one of the things that we are doing in privacy is really looking at what does a solid bill look like so at long last we can get a solid piece of federal legislation. And Chuck is talking about it at Davos, as was everyone else, which was amazing. And now you're going to hear his voice very loudly ringing through the halls in DC. He's upping his game in leadership in DC. Have you seen the size of Chuck Robbins? Game up, privacy on. It's a great opportunity because we need leadership in technology in DC. To affect public policy, no doubt. We need to do that. And globally, too. It's not just DC, but DC in America, but also globally. Yeah, we need to serve our customers. That's when they win. We got to get wrapped up here, but I want to get you guys a chance to talk about what you guys announced here to show. What's going on? Get the plug in for what's going on. Cisco Trust, what's happening? Do you want to plug first? Well, I think a few things we can add. So in addition to releasing our benchmark study this week and talking about that with customers and with the public, we've also announced a new version of our privacy data sheet. So this was a big tool to enable sales people and customers to see exactly how data is being used in all of our products. And so the new innovation this week is we've released these very nice color-created like subway maps. They make it easy for you to navigate around. They just make it easy for people to see exactly how data flows. So again, something up on our site at trust.cisco.com where people can go and get that information and sort of make it easy. We're pushing towards simplicity and transparency in everything that we do from a privacy standpoint. And this is really that trajectory of making it as easy as possible for anyone to see exactly how things go. And I think that's the trajectory on, that's where the legislation, both where GDPR is heading and the federal legislation as well to try to make this as easy as reading the nutrition label on the food item to say, you know, what's actually here? Do I want to buy it? Do I want to eat it? And we want to make that really that easy. That trust transparency gives accountability too, comes into play too, because if you have those things, you know who's accountable. It's terrifying. I challenge all of my competitors, go to trust.cisco.com, not just my customers, love you to be there too. Go and look at our data subway maps. You have to be radically transparent to say, here's what you get customer, here's what I get Cisco, here's where my third parties. It's not as detailed as a long report, but you can get the trajectory and have a real conversation. I hope everybody gets on board with this kind of simplification. Trust.cisco.com. We're going to keep track of it. Great work you guys are doing. I think you guys are leading the industry. Congratulations. Thank you. This is not going to end. This conversation continues. We'll continue globally. Thanks for coming on, Michelle. Appreciate it. Robert, thanks for coming on. Cube coverage here, day three. In Barcelona, we'll be right back with more coverage after this short break.