The Asean Economic Community celebrates another significant achievement in its digital transformation journey. The World Summit of Information Society has just awarded the top WSIS prize under the category of 'International and Regional Cooperation' to Asean in recognition of its initiative on the Asean Data Management Framework (DMF) and the Asean Model Contractual Clauses (MCCs) for Cross Border Data Flows. This is an accolade for Asean's contribution to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals and is one to be celebrated and discussed.

The digital economy will play an increasingly large role in the post-pandemic world, especially in Southeast Asia. In Asean, 60 million new digital consumers have been added since the Covid-19 pandemic started, making the region the third-largest internet base with nearly 400 million internet users. Asean digital revenue increased from $117 billion in 2020 to $174 billion in 2021 and is expected to hit $363 billion by 2025. As a result, the Asean digital economy is projected to grow significantly, estimated to reach $1 trillion regional gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030. Given this potential, Asean needs to focus more on the digital sector to ride the wave of growth in the region and ensure that it continues to be sustainable, including through the Asean Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), which we hope to commence negotiations by 2025.