 Good morning to all stakeholders. We are joined by some of the UN agencies who are associated with the process and some of the different elements that make the WISIS process complete like the WISIS Action Lines, the partnership on measuring ICD for development, bridging the standards gap, the regional connections and we will hear from the different representatives today. I would like to first start with our focal point from e-business which is also co-implemented by UNCTAD, ITC and UPU. Willidiana, you spoke about you know your e-business e-trade for women. Can you please tell us a bit more about what you're doing there and how is it linked to the WISIS process over to you? Thank you, Gitanjali. Indeed, this year the e-business action line focused on bridging the gender gap. We focused on women in e-business and a clear trend came up, which is that women are lagging behind in the digital economy and the digital economy in general is usually male-dominated. We need to bring more women, more women entrepreneurs to the table so that they can take advantage of the digital economy and if you allow me I'd like to touch upon three key aspects that came out of the conversation. First we need to boost women's skills in the digital space and that starts from a young age to later on while they're already in the workforce. The second is access to finance. The women digital entrepreneurs we heard and we work with all tell us that it is more difficult for them to raise funding to scale and grow their businesses. So that's another area where we can do better. And the last one which is often neglected or maybe undermined is the fact that we need more role models, more women in leadership position who can inspire others and we can bring the voice of women to the table and this is what we've been doing here at the WISIS this year. Thank you very much. Of course digital gender inclusion is one of our key priorities within the WISIS process. All the WISIS action lines are striving towards that and even at the WISIS forum we tend to achieve 50-50 gender balance and gender participation. So thank you very much for your efforts. I'd like to move on to Mr. Preetam Maloor who is implementing WISIS Action Line C5 Cyber Security. So Preetam what were the key trends you noticed this time we heard several sessions talk about cyber security. It's really the essence that cuts across the different action lines. So what are your key takeaways? Thank you Gita Anjali. So this year along with the conversation on you know cyber threats that we've been hearing over the years at the WISIS forum and other places you know we noticed that there's a lot of conversation on attacks on you know fundamental infrastructure such as subsea cables for example this conversation on you know risk to satellite communications and here it's quite interesting because you know the we've noticed that you know the topic of space has reached a tipping point with new actors in their new services being offered you know broadband services obviously being offered through Leo Geo satellites but also you know universal IoT coverage which is becoming a reality thanks to satellite communications. We are also obviously you know hearing a lot about you know new and emerging technologies such as AI with chat GPT for being you know an epicenter of the conversation and the metaverse you know these technologies offer a lot of opportunities but also bring in some challenges so this is what we are we are seeing and generally we are you know seeing a more holistic conversation on digital resilience because of all these different aspects coming together and even in our action line meeting at the WISIS forum you know we had C2 and C5 come together that's primarily because of this reason thank you Gitanjali. Thank you Preetam of course yes space as an enabler of sustainable development was a theme we heard running across and of course chat GTP most of the leaders who had come here they joked that their speeches were written by chat GTP but like you said the challenges were also highlighted so of course with every new trend is a challenge of cybersecurity which we are looking at it in an inclusive manner thank you very much Preetam. I'd now like to move on to Davideh who is the WISIS focal point at UNESCO so Davideh UNESCO implements several action lines and really you are the knowledge societies component of WISIS so could you please bring in some of your thoughts the key trends that run across your action lines. Thank you Gitanjali yes I think these are very interesting times so we have seen you know the in the in the wave of the recovery from the the COVID pandemic we have seen now the focus on the effects that the digital has brought to the to the stage in many ways including for example the education following the Transforming Education Summit of last year and we have seen here that now the focus is very much on going the implementation how this can be how this is implemented now this is done in locally for for bringing this transformation actually in practice because in the emergency mode let's say these these things are implemented quickly so now we need to make it more systemic and bring the change so one take away from from these conversations that we had here not only on education but in many other action lines is about the digital transformation I think the handling of the management of change the management of change is probably the the barrier that keeps us still keeps us you know far from reaching some of our goals and the effect also of digital transformation so we have we heard about you know the difficulties for example in in gender gaps and for example the effect of particular some technologies like AI in on the working life so women for example is one thing that UNESCO has been highlighting as well but there's a way again also the challenges the main challenges of the technologies that are bringing as Pritam was mentioning and how this necessitates the attention to ensure that actually there is a dialogue between public and private sector so that there is a sort of understanding of what are what is the maybe some principles that should be applied in terms of so to enable digital to bring the good commons the good the good part and be paying attention to the harmful and you know sometimes dark side of this technology so we highlighted this also very much in this forum the ethical aspects linked to many of these technologies including AI and of course we have been speaking also about the UNESCO multi-stakeholder consultation which is going on also at the business forum on the principle for regulation of internet platforms that we are conducting this year in ahead of of course in the processes that are happening at UN level like global digital compact yes thank you very much David and one thing that we really enjoyed was the alignment with the decade of indigenous languages we work together for Action Line C8 to have a hackathon and to have several workshops to highlight that we are also connecting with these UN processes which are ongoing so thank you so much for this great collaboration David and now I'd like to move on to Mr. Bilal Jamusi so Bilal you are primarily bringing in the angle of standardization and bridging the standardization gap so how does bridging the standardization gap help us bridge the digital divide great question thank you Gitanjali so an equal access to technologies and low digital literacy skills are among the biggest contributors to digital divide and this influences and impacts the ability of developing countries to access and influence international standards making processes and this is why the ITU came up with the bridging the standardization gap program to foster the participation of developing countries in the standards making process but also help developing countries in the implementation of international standards across the sectors thank you very much Bilal it remains an important component of the Geneva plan of action and the WISIS outcome documents thank you very much now I'd like to move on to Esperanza who's representing the partnership on measuring ICT for development of course Esperanza we heard in most of the session the importance of data and importance of having the correct data for analysis and for being able to plan the future activities so what has the partnership been doing regarding this it's a partnership of several UN agencies please indeed so the partnership was formed as a call from WISIS 20 years ago for the need for more reliable and quality data so the partnership with 14 international and regional organizations has been working to improve data availability and quality in developing countries so far much progress has been done but we are not yet there there's still a large number of countries where data gap exists and so therefore there was a call for more efforts in improving data availability more resources in helping countries build capacity in producing those data as well as looking into sources that will provide more timely and real-time statistics including the use of big data and that has been an area where ITU for example has been doing a lot of work in the area of using for example mobile phone big data to complement and supplement existing traditional data sources to produce data that could estimate for example the number of internet users in a country and that is the hope of the partnership that we will be able to explore these new data sources to complement and help other agencies provide or produce the data that they need for policy making thank you thank you very much SP we always need the correct and good data to be able to implement our WSIS action lines and of course data also indicator of what more we have to do to ensure that we can use the WSIS action lines for helping to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs thank you so much we have with us Mr Yaroslav Ponder so at the regional level the WSIS action lines are implemented by the regional commission in coordination with the regional offices of the UN system so Yaroslav what are your key takeaways and impressions from the region of Europe over to you thank you very much Gitanjali it's in Europe and Central Asia and I will talk about the both regions because for the implementation of the WSIS we have created with the other UN agencies over 30 UN agencies the so-called United Nations digital transformation group for Europe and Central Asia in order to mainstream the outcomes of the WSIS and to make sure that we are aligning the WSIS with the SDGs expectations making sure also that we are identifying the policy areas where which have to be rolled out at the national level and supporting the UN country teams in implementing and translating the political vision into the action and this is the beauty of the WSIS that in fact we are able to make sure that this what we are debating this week at the global level with grassroots stakeholders with all stakeholders coming from the different regions but also from the different origins in the private sector academia that all this we can then transmit and transpose into the bankable projects at the country level where the one UN acts for the digital development this is the reason why also this week the UN group launched the UN digital transformation toolbox and to equip the UN country teams with the necessary tools policies frameworks which can help them to form the partnerships and to to advance digital development at the country level so this year we had really very good participation from Europe and Central Asia we had a lot of cases from Moldova Ukraine from Georgia from Albania amazing development in terms of identification of the real needs where not only UN itself can act but also UN can forge the partnerships in engaging the private sector in the our joint vision of advancing the SDGs thanks to the digital thank you Yaroslav of course at the heart of the WSIS process since its inception is the multi-stakeholder spirit and this is what I believe you have displayed and Slovenia the chairperson of the WSIS forum has highlighted this in their workshop that they led the Slovenian country workshop they were presence of so many European countries at the WSIS forum led by our chair woman minister from Slovenia so thank you very much I would like to do a very quick round just identifying a concrete examples why not two examples in your respective area of work so let's start with e-business thank you Gitanjali I'd like to share one example that was present here at the WSIS this year so we had a session on women in e-business and we invited several women who are somehow change makers already trade blazers who have succeeded in the digital economy and came to share their experience and show that it is possible so for instance we heard from Leni Zeng she's the advocate of the e-trade forum and initiative in Southeast Asia and she told us how with her company Dropi she's providing a platform for moms and pop stores to digitalize to buy online manage their inventories and she has helped digitize over a hundred a thousand small businesses across her country in Malaysia so this is an example I would like to share with you and hopefully it will inspire others inspire yes of course so many role models all over the world so thank you for bringing them here and for sharing them with the entire world thank you pre-term some concrete examples for c5 thank you Gitanjali I'll highlight one which has to do with you know the opportunities and challenges that emerging technologies bring so just in December last year ITU set up a group on the metaverse because obviously we know that it positively impacts it can positively impact all 17 SDGs but the risks are also quite obvious and are being studied so in December ITU set up a group the group is open to all stakeholders member states private sectors civil society the technical community you know the academic community everyone can engage in it and it's it's looking at various aspects you know different layers the infrastructure layer the application layer you know it's studying which layer to focus on of course and the first meeting of the group was in Riyadh just a couple of weeks ago and more than 600 stakeholders participated in it it's housed in our ITU standardization sector ITUT and we would welcome all stakeholders to participate thank you pre-term Davide of course you need a whole day to summarize the different activities but some concrete examples that really stayed with you and have formed an impression yeah absolutely so I think the one example that I would mention is the work we've done in this forum for the consultation multi-cycle consultation on the implementation of what we call the Rome X indicators for internet universality where Rome stands for right human rights based open accessible and multi-cycle they're exactly so this forum is really the place where to discuss this and where to engage to do this kind of assessment for ensuring that the internet is a place for an accessibility and for a human right is is important to bring exactly everybody on the table the technical community yes of course the governmental actors yes but also the civil society and everybody so a country cannot do an assessment of this kind without you know engaging the whole community so I think that that was I think a fantastic discussion that happened in this forum I think it's a good example this will enable UNESCO also to work on the refinement of the indicators that are part of this assessment maybe simplifying some of them and engage more with the whole community in in the countries where this assessment has been is been rolling out which is by the way uh 45 44 countries are in this at the moment so thank you very much Davide Bilal for some concrete examples sure so the BSV program as I mentioned has two tracks one is the capacity for developing countries to influence and participate in the standards making process and the other is the ability to implement the the international standards so I'll give examples in both tracks the first one um we have perhaps three elements one is an online free course on the ITU academy on the process for standards development and we encourage everyone interested to take that online course the second is hands-on training that we do along with our study group meetings and regional group meetings and the third is that we have many regional group meetings of our study groups in the region in the language of the region which lowers the barrier of access from a linguistic perspective as well as from geographic perspective because it's closer to the developing countries and these the combination of these will enhance significantly the ability of developing countries to participate in standards making on the implementation side we have some examples of in the financial inclusion for example we have key standards on the security aspects of digital financial services and we have a lab in place to not only raise the capacity of the telecom and the central bank regulator but also be able to audit the security solutions and another example in terms of the implementation in the space of smart sustainable cities where we have key performance indicators that are agreed by 18 UN agencies under the umbrella of united for smart sustainable cities and we have implemented that in 200 cities around the world developed and developing and that's another example concrete example of trying to help countries implement these standards thank you Bilal indeed we did see a glimpse of localization and smart cities in the mayor's track at the visis forum so if we have more and more mayors joining the process it's a new community but it's a very important community because engagement of local communities is extremely important for the implementation of the action lines thank you very much Esperanza something that the steering committee of partnerships has been implementing yes i mentioned earlier the challenge of unavailability of timely and reliable data so the it us a lead in the steering committee has been also working in a group in the UN committee of experts and big data and data science and we are leading the it is leading a task team on the use of mobile phone big data for official statistics and so in this group and this is our contribution also to the partnership in terms of improving one of the sdg indicators which is the percentage of the population using the internet we have been exploring ways in terms of using mobile phone big data and this case that we implemented in brasil and in indonesia has been very successful where the different stakeholders are working together and using the UN agreed methodology in terms of using mobile phone big data for official statistics and so in this project we were able to test the methodologies and the national statistics office of both indonesia and brasil are able to produce data that are coming from mobile phone data sources and these results are very convincing because they are as close as possible to the results of the household surveys so in this project we concluded that mobile phone big data could be used but we have to address and work with many stakeholders to ensure that data access issues could be addressed and and solve in the near future thank you thank you usb yaris love what are some of the concrete examples from europe yes thank you very much this year we are very happy with the meetings which we organized because it was really the demonstration how the europe and central asia works being facilitated by the by the UN we had in the discussion not only the receiving countries with the UN presence but also those who are interested to see how they can help so the presence of the greez slovenia uk and many many others east was a real demonstration that the digital development is really the issue of the whole community and digital doesn't have the frontiers and talking about the concrete example is the the publication which we are co-creating with the all UN country UN members called digital development country profiles which we launched this week for the bosnia and hercegovina were together with the other UN partners we identified clear advancements of the digitalization in bosnia but also identified the areas where the intervention would be useful and based on this based on the discussions at the workshop we were able immediately to follow up on the discussion on the concrete actions which will be transformed into the bankable projects and matched with the interested parties which are interested to help there where the help is the most needed so we're really creating the value chain which ensures the proper impact impact for development and we will continue doing so in the future thank you very much jereslav so as we heard vices has several pieces and components it's the UN regional commission's UN group regional inputs different action lines which are implemented by several UN agencies itu unesco umtat fao who so many of them more than 32 UN agencies working with us the united nations group on information society which ensures that you know the UN stands as a ready as a ready framework for digital cooperation the standardization gaps the partnership on measuring ICT for development so thank you very much for joining us live from Geneva and we look forward to welcoming you all in vices forum 2024 thank you