 Welcome to the World Summit on the Information Society 2017 here at the ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Co-organised by ITU, UNTAD, UNESCO and UNDP in collaboration with all UN agencies, WISIS is the world's largest summit dedicated to information and communications technologies as a force for good. Over the course of six days, more than 2,500 participants from more than 150 countries will exchange knowledge and experiences working together to achieve the United Nations' sustainable development goals. We are strategic partners of the ITU, and WISIS is the exhibition on which all the ministries of communication and communication are represented. Throughout the week, participants from government, civil society, the private sector and academia will focus on sustainable development trends and inclusive ICT initiatives. We are having a lot of exciting things happening. Yesterday already we started with the hackathon and dealing with the solutions for the health. Of course we will have the release of the 18 winning prizes which will be awarded tomorrow during the opening ceremony with a special recognition for the prominence and for the best practice in the world in the implementation of the projects. There is generally a focus on innovation this year, a key sustainable development goal. Other priority areas like health, education, gender empowerment, the environment and infrastructure will also be discussed at more than 160 sessions and more than 200 specialised workshops. I can see two main roles of ICT in the sustainable development goals. One is the role of enabler, and the enabling role comes with innovation being able to achieve more with less. And that resonates very well with developing countries where we have to get to where everyone else but using much less means. The other role is an accelerator. We know that the ability of ICT to shrink distance and to kill time, if you apply that power to the different challenges that we are facing as we work towards the sustainable development goals, we're going to be able to achieve those results much faster. Don't miss this opportunity and join us in person or remotely, because more than 40,000 people already today followed us remotely and many more will join us tomorrow when the opening will take place at 9 o'clock here in Geneva.