 Thank you very much secretary general excellencies distinguished colleagues ladies and gentlemen. Good morning And happy new year to you all It's a it's a great honor to sit before you As director of the telecommunication development Bureau I sat on this podium for many years as your secretary Your secretary of counsel and it's really a great honor to sit before you as director of the BDT And it's actually the first time that in the ITU they had to make you can see on the other side direct threes And I can tell you that that was quite a lot of discussion If it should be direct to her because we're sort of gender neutral or if it should be direct threes And I thank legal affairs and others for agreeing that it could be direct threes. So Really it is it is a great honor to to sit before you and and I'm so excited to To be in this role and to be working with all of you to advance Global connectivity as the secretary general mentioned and the deputy secretary general as well We hit the milestone in in December We hit the 50% of the world being online or more than 50% now And that's great, but we got to connect the other half of the world and that's where the role of the BDT Really comes into play and and we need to play a leading role In advancing global connectivity and we know it's not going to be as easy as getting the first 50% online And we need to look for innovative solutions innovative financing We need to make sure that the right regulatory framework is in place And we need to be advancing with all of you because we can't do it alone Partnership is is key and we need to all work together to advance global connectivity Because if we don't do that we we've run the risk as Malcolm was mentioning of not Achieving any of the sustainable development goals So that is absolutely key to to me So to the diplomatic Corp in the room and to the executive heads of international organizations if we if they're with us today Really my message to you is is we want to partner with you We want to to partner with your countries with your organizations and really to ensure that we can advance universal connectivity I believe that together we can turn the digital revolution into a development revolution As director of the BDT, I intend to to lead a BDT that is very much focused as I mentioned on partnerships Partnerships that have measurable results and positive impact. I think it's all about impact We need to be empowering our regional offices We talked a lot about this at the plenty potentiary conference Making sure that our regional offices represent the union as a whole That's a key priority and of course making sure that they're more Relevant We need to strengthen our capacity building efforts Work on data collection analysis forecasting Enable to be able to excuse me facilitate evidence-based policy making I am Committed to making a BDT that's more efficient That's more modern and more innovative to serve all of you our members And to empower all of you the staff of the ITU We are already in full gear. It's been two weeks on the job and it's been Sort of a roller coaster, but we are fully Into into the work. We had our first all BDT staff meeting in this room yesterday And we connected all of our our regional and area offices We're focusing on our first big event, which will be In march and Mauritius. It's the global emergency telecommunications forum It's about ICTs and disaster risk reduction and and management is about saving lives So I encourage you to think about that We're also focusing on girls in ICT day the fourth Thursday of the fourth month This year we will not have the global celebration here in Geneva We're going to take it on the road and do it in Addis Ababa, which is the home of our Regional office for Africa. So it'll still be a global celebration and we encourage you to Celebrate it, but we will have our our physical celebration in Addis Ababa And I'm excited about that And I also wanted to mention in July, of course, we have our annual global symposium for regulators That will be in Vanuatu kicks off on the 9th of July And the GSR is is our key platform For bringing all of the world's regulators together To discuss some ICT policies strategies to Enable sustainable development And finally I would like to thank all of the ITU staff For their commitment and for sharing every day their talents and their expertise You are the engine of the organization And it's really a pleasure to work with you all I would also like to thank the secretary general the deputy secretary general the director of the br And the director of the tsb I'm excited to work with all of you in the spirit of one ITU to Achieve the expectations of our member states. Thank you very much