February 12, 2023
The United Nations Centennial Roundtable with Professor Alex Pentland
Live stream here
Digital Future toward the Age of Global Enlightenment
Time: 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM EDT, May 6, 2021
How are AI and data systems evolving? What is the future of digital Government, Commerce, and Citizen Services? Broad technology trends and urgent needs are shaping how digital technology is developing and being deployed.
Initiative “Digital Tax and Trade Consortium” as a pioneering practical solution for AI- Government and remaking the world.
How AIWS City and NovaWorld Phan Thiet host and support this initiative? Chair/Moderator: Mr. Ramu Damodaran, Chief Academic Impact of the United Nations. Keynote speaker: Professor Alex Sandy Pentland, MIT
Panelists:
Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, Executive Director of the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative (DIGI) at New America
Mr. Jeff Saviano, EY Global Tax Innovation Leader
Mr. Anders Hjorth Agerskov, Lead Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank Group
Chair/Moderator:
Ramu Damodaran
Chief, United Nations Academic Impact, United Nations
Editor in Chief of the United Nations Chronicle Magazine
Mr. Ramu Damodaran is Deputy Director for Partnership and Public Engagement in the United Nations Department of Public Information’s Outreach Division and is chief of the United Nations Academic Impact initiative, which aligns institutions of higher learning and research with the objectives of the United Nations and the States and peoples who constitute it.
He is also the current secretary of the United Nations Committee on Information.
His earlier posts with the Organization have included the Departments of Peacekeeping and Special Political Questions, as well as the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. Mr. Damodaran has been a member of the Indian Foreign Service, where he was promoted to the rank of Ambassador, and where he served as Executive Assistant to the Prime Minister of India as well as in the diplomatic missions in Moscow and to the United Nations, and in a range of national governmental ministries.
Speakers/Panelists:
Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland
Director, MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics lab
Co-author of Social Contract for the AI Age Member of AIWS City’s Board of Leaders
Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland directs MIT Connection Science, an MIT-wide AI and Data for Good initiative, and previously helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab and the Media Lab Asia in India. He is on the Board of the UN Foundations’ Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, co-led the World Economic Forum discussion in Davos that led to the EU privacy regulation GDPR, and was central in forging the transparency and accountability mechanisms in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. He has received numerous awards and prizes such as the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review, the 40th Anniversary of the Internet from DARPA, and the Brandeis Award for work in privacy.
Tomicah Tillemann
Dr. Tomicah Tillemann is the Executive Director of the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative (DIGI) at New America, where he develops opensource technology platforms to power the public sector. Prior to New America, he served as Senior Advisor to two secretaries of state, leading a team of experts that built 20 major initiatives in 55 countries. He joined the State Department in 2009 as Hillary Clinton’s speechwriter and collaborated with her on over 200 speeches. Previously, he spent four years on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee working with Joe Biden, John Kerry and Barack Obama.
Tillemann is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the United Nations World Food Program Innovation Advisory Council, the Lantos Foundation Board of Trustees, the International Advisory Council of MOSIP, and the board of the Global Blockchain Business Council. He received his B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University and holds a Ph.D. with distinction from the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Jeffrey N. Saviano
EY Global Tax Innovation Leader; New America Senior Fellow; MIT Connection Science Fellow;
Boston University School of Law Lecturer in Innovation
255 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel +1 617 374 6202
Email [email protected]
Twitter @JeffreySaviano
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-saviano-1398775/ Podcast Host of the Better Innovation podcast
Jeff Saviano is the EY Global Tax Innovation Leader. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts Jeff is a Partner (Principal) with EY and a member of EY’s global innovation leadership team. Jeff leads teams in the discovery, design, and commercialization of new solutions, with an emphasis on the development of new advanced technology platforms and business models grounded in artificial intelligence, blockchain and data science.
Jeff is a founding member of The Prosperity Collaborative, a multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated to helping countries create better tax systems through innovative technology as digital public goods. The mission of the Collaborative is to build and deploy new technology, improve capacity of tax administrations, and advance opensource technology governance models that promote transparency and interoperability. Founding members of the Collaborative include, New
America, MIT, EY, The World Bank Group, and the Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation.
In 2018, Jeff launched the EY global Advanced Technology Tax Lab network in collaboration with MIT and Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland. The Tax Lab is dedicated to solving complex tax issues for both the government and the private sector through the application of emerging technologies and business model innovation. Jeff is also an MIT Connection Science Fellow. Jeff is the host of the Better Innovation podcast, featuring interviews with technology and innovation thought leaders. The podcast explores stories of how innovation is reshaping and transforming our inextricably digital world.
In October of 2020, Jeff joined New America as a Senior Fellow with the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative (DIGI). New America is dedicated to renewing the promise of America by continuing the quest to realize our nation’s highest ideals, honestly confronting the challenges caused by rapid technological and social change, and seizing the opportunities those changes create. DIGI is renovating democratic institutions by developing world-class, opensource digital infrastructure to power the public sector.
Jeff was previously a long-time leader of EY’s Americas Indirect Tax Practice, where he helped companies manage their indirect taxes globally. In that role, Jeff advised government and private sector clients on tax policy matters. He has more than twenty-eight years of tax, innovation, and advanced technology experience.
Jeff delivered a TEDx Talk in Brookline, Massachusetts in the fall of 2016 based on the idea that imposing a carbon tax could help mitigate the harmful effects of climate change. He has been a frequent speaker on tax policy and innovation / advanced technology matters across the globe, including presentations on this topic in Davos, Switzerland aligned with the World Economic Forum in 2019 and 2020.
Jeff received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Iona College, a J.D. from Syracuse University College of Law and an LL.M. in Taxation from Boston University School of Law. He has published articles on tax policy and practice, innovation, and advanced technologies.
Jeff is on the Editorial Advisory Board for Innovation Leader, content deliverer and developer of the largest network of corporate innovators in the world; Board Member of StreetCred, a non- profit organization providing free tax preparation in hospitals and clinics targeting families eligible for antipoverty government programs; and Council Member of The Digital Economist, an NGO launched in Davos in 2020, defining a bold vision of technology convergence for the new human-centered digital economy.
He has taught tax and innovation courses at Suffolk University and Elon University School of Law. Jeff has recently joined the faculty at the Boston University School of Law, where he taught an advanced technology/innovation course in 2020. Also, in 2020, Jeff served as a Colleague Instructor with Development Ventures, an Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for students interested in founding, financing, and building entrepreneurial social change ventures targeting developing countries, emerging markets, and underserved consumers throughout the world.
Anders Hjorth Agerskov
Anders Hjorth Agerskov leads the World Bank’s Fiscal Policy and Sustainable Growth unit’s work on tax and digital transformation. Anders is the co-founder of the International Audit and Integrity Group that counts the audit and integrity units of a number of bilateral aid agencies, the World Bank, and UN organizations; founder of the World Bank’s Preventive Services Unit responsible for assessing and supporting the mitigation of fraud and corruption risks in the Bank’s international investment operations; co-founder of the Prosperity Collaborative, a multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated to helping countries create better tax systems through innovative technology, involving EY, MIT, New America, and Boston Global Forum; coordinator of the Executive Program in Tax and Digital Transformation, a leadership program involving twenty tax administrations, private sector partners, and academia; and lecturer on integrity risk management at the International Master in Public Procurement at Tor Vergata University.
The United Nations Centennial
Boston Global Forum and United Nations Academic Impact Initiative
Remaking the world – The Age of Global Enlightenment.
The United Nations Centennial was launched in 2019 by the United Nations Academic Impact in partnership with The Boston Global Forum.
The UN Centennial programs host roundtable discussions, conferences, new concepts, solutions, think pieces, and reflections as we look ahead to the global landscape in 2045—the United Nations Centennial year.
This initiative will examine issues impacting technology, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, diplomacy, warfare, and other pressing concerns. Our goal is to look to the future and the role the United Nations will continue to play in making our world more peaceful, democratic, prosperous and universally secure.
The Boston Global Forum contributes AI World Society initiative to the United Nations Centennial.
The mission of UN Centennial Initiative and AI World Society: Remaking the world – The Age of Global Enlightenment.
Prosperity Collaborative
The Prosperity Collaborative is a multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated to helping countries create better tax systems through innovative technology. Our work focuses on building and deploying new technology, improving capacity of tax administrations, and promoting opensource technology governance models.
We are led by a broad coalition of stakeholders, including The World Bank Group, MIT Connection Science, EY, New America, and the Boston Global Forum Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation.
Revenues in 39 of the world’s 75 poorest countries are inadequate to finance basic state functions, let alone the additional investment needed in physical infrastructure, education, health and social protection to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Yet there are signs of hope. New advances in technology have the potential to fundamentally transform government revenue and expenditure systems.
The Prosperity Collaborative brings together a diverse coalition of public sector, private sector, and non-profit partners to build new opensource technologies to help governments solve their most urgent tax problems, while enhancing local capacity. By working together, we can create a new generation of digital public goods that help governments to improve trust with taxpayers, achieve more sustainable funding, and further progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.
AIWS City
AIWS City is a digital virtual city founded on principles stated in “Social Contract for the AI Age”, “People Centered Economy”, “Trustworthy Economy”, “Intellectual Society”, and “AI- Government.”
AIWS City was introduced on 08/21/2020 at the United Nations Centennial Roundtable, co- organized by the United Nations Academic Impact and the Boston Global Forum.
The AIWS City Board of Leaders are: Governor Michael Dukakis, Chairman of the Boston Global Forum; Nguyen Anh Tuan, CEO of the Boston Global Forum; Professor Alex Pentland of MIT; Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist of Google; former Latvian and Club de Madrid President Vaira Vike-Freiberga; former Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina Zlatko Lagumdzija; Professor Nazli Choucri of MIT, Professor David Silbersweig of Harvard University; Professor Thomas Patterson of Harvard University; and Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki.
AIWS City includes distinguished world leaders, inventors, and innovators, as well as faculty from universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, UC-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, and Cambridge.
NovaWorld Phan Thiet
Phan Thiet, Vietnam is known for its white sand beaches, temperate climate, and proximity to an international airport and port of call. Less than 100 miles from Ho Chi Minh City, Phan Thiet was historically a place of the Champa people and the enlightened Champa culture, remnants of which still exist in the area.
Phan Thiet is emerging as a worldwide destination. At Phan Thiet, Novaland Group is creating a “World Beach City” for vacationers that will also be an international hub for world leaders, creators, innovators, and scholars.
Although virtual in concept, AIWS City will have a physical location – NovaWorld Phan Thiet. AIWS City will bring to NovaWorld Phan Thiet a rich set of activities designed to highlight intellectual and creative talent and progress. Together, AIWS City and NovaWorld Phan Thiet will serve as a model for sustainable development and high standards, embodying the ideals that marked the founding of the United Nations and that will sustain it as it moves toward its centennial year.
The city of Phan Thiet will be the place for the World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid and the Michael Dukakis Institute to hold important annual events that gather presidents, prime ministers, and the top thinkers around the world. Especially, the year 2022 will be a highlight with the theme of Building a New Economy, a New Finance for the world in the digital and artificial intelligence era.
