This particular initiative came about when I was with my international colleagues at an OECD meeting, which then coincided with discussions on the ongoing international conference arrangements. This international commissioners conference has been extant for some 25 years. Increasingly, all of the commissioners who are there are concerned about the same issues, because the same companies and the same types of technology affect all of our societies, which are western, European, Australian, New Zealand's, and so on. That's how it came about.
My office played a leading role for several reasons. First of all, we thought that a place to launch it would be at the conference for international privacy professionals, which takes place every year in Washington, D.C. We were obviously the closest people to Washington, and we were arguably more familiar with setting things up in Washington than the Italians, for example. We also function in two official languages, which is helpful for our colleagues in Spain, Italy, and France. There were considerations such as that.