Phase 1 Dialogue Reflection

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During this dialogue I’ve had the pleasure of attending seminars on data and computer science-related topics mainly in the context of the EU. In particular, I thought Ms. Marzano’s talk on cybersecurity at the EEAS was intriguing. She outlined current trends of cyber attacks in the EU with the ENISA threat landscape (link). It was interesting to see how with the invasion of Ukraine, cyber attacks and misinformation have become much more prevalent and frequent with Russian efforts. The threat landscape includes data and analyzes threat actors, types of cyber warfare, and more. With the third speaker, Mr. Kumpas, it was insightful to hear about the process of uncovering foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), but I also enjoyed listening to the actions that the EU is taking. Ms. Marzano talked about the NIS2 directive which is a set of legislation on all EU member states to ensure adequate cybersecurity. The NIS2 directive built upon the NIS directive in 2023 by, for example, requiring members to each establish a Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) on top of already streamlining security requirements and reports (link). In addition, Ms. Marzano mentioned new laws like the EU Cyber Solidarity Act. The more interesting part of the act that I found was that it aims to construct a system of hubs across the EU to detect and share attacks with the help of AI (link). The EU’s aggressive response to this relatively newfound issue was cool to learn about and research more on my own time during this dialogue. It is insightful to see how a powerful and influential alliance faces and responds to a growing threat in a computer science-related field. I hope to learn more about this issue as well as other topics that will be discussed about data and software in government and politics.

Regarding this project, I helped come up with the final idea which ended up being an application with the ultimate goal of showing emissions impact and combating climate change. I gathered sources on both increasing temperature datasets as well as emissions trading in the EU. I thought about potential users of the tool and created a governmental entity user persona which had user stories associated with it to foster ideas for the actual features we need to implement.