At WSIS 2026, we’re making the case that procurement — not the ethics charter — is where AI accountability is won or lost.
When AI enters public life, it rarely arrives as something a government built. It arrives as something a government bought — and the contract is where rights, transparency, and accountability are either written in or quietly discarded. Yet procurement remains the most overlooked lever in AI governance.
Today at WSIS, Public Trust and AI Procurement (Session 139) convenes the people who can change that: Women at the Table’s AI & Equality Initiative with the University of Cambridge and RC Trust, alongside Connected by Data and the Council of Europe’s CDNET Secretariat.
The session is built on evidence. The CHI 2026 Honourable Mention paper “It’s Just a Wild, Wild West” identifies six promising practices for responsible AI procurement, drawn from interviews with buyers and procurement experts across the EU and UK. Those findings have been tested in workshops with municipalities including VNG, the association representing all Dutch municipalities, and feed our contribution to the CDNET working group developing AI procurement guidance.
A question first asked at a UNESCO workshop became peer-reviewed research, became working tools, and now feeds the bodies setting standards. That pipeline is open.
The WSIS vision of people-centred digital societies won’t be delivered by principles alone. It will be delivered — or betrayed — contract by contract, clause by clause.
Public Trust and AI Procurement · WSIS Session 139 · Mon 6 July, 09:00, Room L1, ITU Montbrillant
Photo: Reihaneh Golpayegani https://betterimagesofai.org
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
An abstract spiral of dark circles appears at the centre, resembling a tornado. Several vintage magazine covers and advertisements are being drawn toward the spiral. The artworks that have already been pulled into it are becoming distorted and replaced with clusters of numbers representing their numerical embeddings.