Living in the metaverse: UN goes virtual for the public good |

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Cristina Bueti: The first UN Virtual Worlds Day aims at highlighting the transformative power of virtualworlds – including metaverse – in order to accelerate or help to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. This event is being organized by ITU together with other 17 UN entities. You and family gets together to discuss a very new innovative topic. For example, regulating virtual worlds or what are the digital solutions available in the area of metaverse and travel or metaverse in cities, we are going to discuss also, how secure safe is the metaverse, what are the challenges at stake? 

UN News: What is metaverse? How is it applicable to the work of the United Nations? 

Cristina Bueti: The ITU Focus Group on Metaverse has provided a definition of metaverse as an integrative ecosystem of virtual worlds offering immersive experiences to users. In particular, the connection between metaverse and Sustainable Development Goals is related mostly to the fact that metaverse and its enabling technologies are able to provide a great opportunity – especially to cities, but also to governments. Let us think, for example, about Sustainable Development Goal 11 on sustainable cities and communities. 

There are cities like, for example, Seoul in in Korea, that has already developed a metaverse platform offering to its inhabitants public services, certainly allowing a great improvement in terms of delivery of services, but also in terms of the quality of life. For its own citizens, they are able to be closer, especially with the mayor and its team – withdirect interaction. And this is important when we look at a technology like metaverse, which remains still an uncharted territory. 

UN News: And in practical terms, how does it work? 

Cristina Bueti: In the case, for example, of Seoul, but also in similar other cities, they have developed metaverse platforms where inhabitants will enter this platform, they have the possibility to create their own. They have a possibility to interact with a public officer. So. for example, if you need a birth certificate, you have the option to request it.  

If you have a question, you have a direct help desk that you can use through the metaverse platform and it allows also, a better interaction in terms of,  using metaverse technologies specifically when you want to organize a town hall and you want to have a specific consultation and you would like to check with the citizens of the cities whether they agree or they don’t agree.  

If for example, they think that a specific building in a neighborhood is a good thing or a bad thing. You have the possibility through, for example, metaphors to create simulations of how that building will look like and we have also the possibility not to wait that the building is built before knowing how the neighborhood will react, because they will see how that building may impact the neighborhood and they can interact and make suggestion. So that’s certainly, a participatory component which can be used. And that certainly can be leveraged by the municipalities in the future so that they establish a closer relationship with their citizens. 

UN News: How secure is it? Those avatars, can’t they be hacked? Can’t they be used by somebody else to steal the identity of a person? 

Cristina Bueti: Yes, that is possible. This is one of the challenges indeed that still remain to be solved and there are still several security challenges that needs to be solved. As you rightly pointed out, one of these challenges is really digital identity. We don’t have yet a 100 per cent secure digital identity system, and there could be a case that a digital identity could be stolen and could be misused.  

On the other hand, I would like also to share a positive experience. A few months ago, a hearing took place in Colombia where the tribunal decided to have a formal hearing with real consequences in real life. And that took place in the metaverse. The environment was considered sufficiently secure for a legal proceeding. And even the parties agreed to be in the metaverse, and the feedback that they gave was that the metaverse itself seems to be a more fair environment when it comes, for example, to legal proceedings, because the judge was able to interact with the parties and the parties were able to share their own documents even if they were all placed in different locations.  

So that gives also possibility for example. For the different parties to remain in their location without travelling directly to Bogota. So, I think that we need to find the balance between certainly addressing the security challenges which still remain and are key indeed, standardization and work, for example, that ITUis doing in developing international standards. Also, security is key in this area and now more than ever, the standards play a key role. On the other hand, metaverse has also a lot of benefits and I think that especially when we look at accelerating the SDGs is one of the technologies that we will use more and more in the future. 

UN News: Is the private sector on board? Because without technologies developed by leading companies, it wouldn’t be possible to promote the use of the metaverse. 

Cristina Bueti: Absolutely. Actually, if you look at the programme, you will find that many companies that are participating in the event, do expect also to have many industry representatives participating in person and in the remote. It’s clear that the industry has to be involved in this global dialogue and indeed the ITU is delighted to be the convener ofthis event.