 The lawyers need to clap every now and again as well. And my guest will be Malcolm Johnson, Deputy Secretary General of the ITU. So please greet Malcolm. And Malcolm has an illustrious career over many years in the ICT sector and at the ITU without going into all of his background, just to also mention that he has served in his current capacity for the past two years and before that was the Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, where he spearheaded activities in particular in cybersecurity, climate change and accessibility. And of equal interest to this audience increased the participation and involvement of developing countries and the academia and standard setting, which is part of the mission of PTC in terms of developing countries in the Asia PAC region and kind of bringing academia and research and business together. Malcolm, thank you for joining us today. Appreciate it very much. The art topic today is talking about the business case for sustainable development and of course in particular the role of ICT in achieving those goals. The ITU has many functions including as we know spectrum allocation and standard setting. But in terms of the sustainable development goals, if you can kind of educate all of us here today as to what those are and how the ICT sector can relate and support those goals. OK, thank you very much. Tara, good morning everybody. Thank you for coming along. I'd like to thank PTC for inviting me here. I did have the pleasure of joining PTC four years ago, so it's very nice to be back and to see how much the participation has grown in that time. So yes, I'm going to talk to you about the UN's sustainable development agenda. This was adopted in September 2015 by the UN General Assembly. So that means it's been adopted by all the heads of state of the UN member states. So it has the highest level of political endorsement. And this was established to replace the millennium development goals, which finished in 2015. The sustainable development goals, SDGs, they applied to all countries, whereas the millennium development goals were only for the developing countries. So this is an important difference. And they're very ambitious goals, which are intended to be met by 2030. So just to give you an example of what they cover, they state that we should end poverty and hunger by 2030. Everyone should have the provision of quality education by then, and also issues such as health care and many other issues. So they're very, very ambitious. And if you look at these goals and the targets related to them, there aren't any countries at the moment that meet them. So even the developed countries are going to have to do a lot of work to meet these goals. And countries will be providing information every year on how successful they are in moving towards the achievement of these goals. And that will be done each July. So if you look at the targets, it's quite clear that they're all going to need to rely heavily on information and communication technology. Just to give you an example, one of the targets is to have the number of deaths and injuries on roads. So clearly, ICT is going to be used there for traffic management, for anti-collision radar on cars, for autonomous vehicles, self-drive vehicles to be able to achieve that net goal, and then substantially increasing water usage efficiency is another critical goal because there's a lot of critical shortage of water in many countries. So there again, you're going to need the technology for RFIs for identifying water leaks so that people can quickly get to them to repair the leaks, but also for measuring and making the irrigation more efficient. Many irrigation schemes over water. So we can use the technology to make sure that it's the optimum amount. And that's been estimated to save about 70% of water to use for irrigation. And then there's combating climate change as another SDG. And here, ICTs would be vital there for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, especially in the sectors which are causing a lot of pollution, energy generation, buildings, transport. A study that's been conducted recently showed that through the use of ICTs in all these polluting sectors, you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2030. So there's going to be a lot of use of ICTs in that area. And the challenge that we have, of course, is that we need people to be able to have access to this technology. And as we know from the statistics, that there's less than half of the world's population is currently connected. So this is going to be one of the issues. And a lot of effort is going to have to be made to improve the connection number of people online over the next few years. And this particular relates to the rural areas, which is a less connectivity to poor people. Women, women, it's estimated there's 250 million less women and men connected. And of course, there's a lot of illiteracy. So this is a big challenge that we're going to have to address. And the good news is that the mobile broadband rollout is the fastest growing technology that human history has ever known. Already, we have 2.2 billion smartphones in use. But that, of course, means that there's still a lot of people unconnected, 3.9 billion people unconnected. And in fact, in the Pacific region, two out of every three people in the world that are unconnected or in the Pacific region. So this needs a lot to be done. And when you look at the least developed countries, there's a very high percentage of unconnected. Around 85% of people living in the 48 least developed countries are unconnected. And so there are many huge challenges that are going to be addressed. And we really need to have the technology rollout there to be able to address this, especially the broadband. We need to have the connections between the hospitals and the clinics. People in remote areas can benefit from e-health. We need to have the universities connected to the schools and the school children of all ages. And of course, we've got to get the governments to connect to the people to make them aware of the benefits of this technology. And a study that was done recently in partnership with ITU as trying to emphasize the need for the industry to get involved and has done an estimate of the benefit to the industry, the business case for being involved in this, and came out with a detailed study carried out by Accenture, which shows that if you look at all the various aspects I've mentioned and the potential for the business areas in satisfying the sustainable development goals, by 2030 it should increase the turnover for the ICT sector of $2.1 trillion a year by 2030. So that's a 60% increase for the sector. So there's a tremendous business opportunity that we really need to get industry aware of. So you just made the business case, which is very nice. Can you talk a little bit about the role of the ITU in helping to be a catalyst and to push toward achieving those sustainable development goals? You've explained the business case beautifully. What is the role of the ITU in realizing those goals? Yes, well, of course, as you probably know, the ITU is the lead UN agency for ICTs. So we have a big advocacy role, more or less, saying what I've said to get industry involved. And of course, the core activity of the ITU is a spectrum and standard. So as I mentioned, it's going to rely a lot on people having connectivity, and especially the mobile broadband. Most people now connect to the internet through smartphones. So I said 2.2 billion smartphones in use currently. So there's more and more demand for faster downloading of more and more data, which puts a lot of pressure on the spectrum. So this has been an issue for many of the ITU World Radio Conferences in recent years is to find that additional spectrum. And of course, we've heard about 5G this morning, which will require considerably more spectrum for mobile. And of course, there's very little spectrum that's not used. So if you're providing more spectrum for mobile, then you're having to take it from somebody else. So this is a very difficult issue when it comes to the World Radio Conferences. And it's very important that we agree these spectrum on a global basis. It's only if it's agreed globally can you be sure of the fact that the phones are going to be used when you move from different countries, different regions of the world. But also, if it's a global allocation, then you're going to benefit from the economies of scale that will result. So it's very, very important that we agree this spectrum at these conferences on a worldwide basis for global allocations. And of course, the standards that work to them also have to be agreed globally if you otherwise you won't get the interoperability, which is essential. So that's a core function of the ITU, the spectrum work, and the technical standards to go with it. But of course, we also do a lot of work on encouraging countries to adopt an environment which will encourage innovation and encourage investment in the infrastructure and the rollout of the technology in countries, especially in the developing countries. As you mentioned, we have a majority of developing countries. Of course, other members of the ITU. And we're pleased to have seen a lot more of these countries participating in our work in recent years, even on the standards' work. And that means that they're better able to select the technology that suits them best, also make sure that their own specific requirements are included in these standards, and that they're better able to implement the standards when they go home. And thinking about one of the major areas where ICTs can solve a problem is in millions of people who are unbanked. And they have their cell phones, but they still don't have access to financial systems, to banking systems. And I think that's one of the challenges is to pull together, as you say, the private sector, certainly, but also the regulators in different both in the ICT sector, but also in other regulatory paradigms, such as the financial systems. What do you see there in terms of how to bridge all of those kind of regulators pulling them together in a common objective? Yeah. Well, we've been doing quite a lot of work on financial inclusion. And this again relates to the Sustainable Development Goals, because Sustainable Development Goal number one is no poverty. And that means that we've got to include everyone in the digital economy. There are over 2 billion people currently without any bank account. So it's very difficult for these people to be able to get involved and participate in the development of the economy. What we've found is that of these 2 billion people without bank accounts, it's estimated that 1.6 billion of them have mobile phones. So mobile banking has a big potential. But there are various systems around for mobile banking, but there's no interoperability between them. So we established a focus group a couple of years back to look at this issue. It was led by the Billy Melinda Gates Foundation. They put a lot of money into helping to involve everyone in this work. So we had the central banks, we had the World Bank. We had a lot of the digital financial service providers. And also some consumer protection organizations all to look at how we can develop standards for digital financial inclusion, in particular mobile banking using mobile phones. So this work has recently come up with a number of recommendations, which will be forwarded to some of the study groups. But we also have a collaboration which will be starting in the first meeting, will be in April with ITU, the World Bank, a number of other organizations open to anyone to participate, mostly the digital financial service providers and the central banks to develop the standards necessary. With the objective of getting at least 1.5 billion more people into the digital economy by 2030. It's an ambitious goal. And I'm going to open up for questions in just a moment. It's a little hard to see, so if you make yourself known, if you have a question, I will do my best to acknowledge you. The PTC global organization focused on the Asia Pacific region, large region. The Asia Pacific region has made many strides in innovation, mobile communications, as you say. However, many millions in the Asia PAC region still are offline. And so what do you see as the biggest challenges to getting ICT adoption and getting the next billion users online and having access? Well, the Asia Pacific region is the biggest region. In ITU, we divide the world up into six regions. Asia Pacific region is by far the biggest, but it's also the most diverse region as well. And if you look at the ITU statistics for ICT development, the leading seven economies in this region are in the upper quartile for that. But at the same time, there's a large percentage of people still unconnected. 45% of the population, I believe, so about 2 billion people unconnected. So there's clearly a big challenge, and it's mostly infrastructure, of course, especially the challenges of getting the Pacific Islands connected. But I was very pleased to hear about the PETA workshop on yesterday, Sunday. That cable is now running out to some of these islands and a lot of new initiatives with low-earth orbiting satellites and such like for improving connectivity. But it's not just an issue of connectivity because there are statistics to show that even when people have this connectivity, they're not connecting. And so there's a need to increase consumer awareness of the benefits of connecting. This is something that perhaps is not being addressed sufficiently. We pull a lot of emphasis on providing the infrastructure. But there's clearly statistics show that even when the infrastructure is there, people are not using it. So people need to be educated as to the benefits of connecting. But also there has to be real benefits to them to connect. And this is another issue that clearly needs to be addressed because there's a lot of content which is not relevant to people living in some of these regions. And also, of course, there's often a language issue. So we need to put more emphasis on developing relevant content and in the local language as well to encourage more people to come online. I think that's something that could be addressed more. And I think that should encourage more people to come online. Get the whole technical literacy education piece to make sure that folks know how to use the technology. Then, of course, the language, particularly in the HVAC region, so many different dialects. And to really be able to achieve that is a challenge. Are there questions? I'm sorry, it's hard for me to see. Yes, over here. Is there anybody in the room? Sorry. Shout it out. And I'll repeat it if anybody can't hear. Well, and just before you go, you were telling me, Malcolm, that I think you were asked to figure out what happened with the Russian hacking in the US. So if you could comment on that. If you have a solution, that'd be much appreciated. Thank you, Tara. I made a mistake of telling Tara that a few weeks ago, I was invited to Carnegie Mellon and Pittsburgh conference on cybersecurity. And I was asked to do a 30-minute keynote followed by 15-minute questions. And the press were there. So the first question I got is, what is the ITU going to do about Russia hacking the US presidential election? I'm going to put onto your question and wash yours. I won't repeat the answer. But no, this is a very important point. Because we want to get people online. We want to persuade people to go online. And they're not going to go online if they don't feel secure and they don't trust the technology they're using. So this is a particular issue. And clearly, we're in turbulent times at the moment, which is a good reason, which is congratulate PTC for choosing the title of the theme for this week, changing reality. It was a very, very important, appropriate title. But this has been an issue for the ITU for quite some time. Because back in 2005, the World Summit on Information Society recognized this as an issue. And it gave ITU the lead responsibility for ensuring that there is trust and security in the use of ICTs. It's so the World Summit on Information Society adopted some action lines. So it's actually Action Line C5. So it's something that we've addressed in ITU for quite some years from a policy point of view, but also from a technical point of view. We have a study group on security developing standards. But there are many organizations, of course, that are working on cyber security. And the important thing I always say is that we need to collaborate and cooperate with all the various organizations that are all trying to address this issue and pool the resources and work together. So this is what we did by we formed a partnership together with 15 other organizations, both governmental but also private sector and organizations specifically dealing with cyber security to develop a model that countries can adopt for their national cyber security strategies. Also providing information on how to establish computer incident response teams. We do a lot of work on policies for ensuring the protection of children online. Do a lot of work on that. And generally encouraging everyone to work together to address this critical role. And it's clearly becoming a bigger and bigger issue. In ITU now, this was dealt with only by our sector members, industry members, and the governments represented by ministries of communication. But now we find that this issue is more and more being dealt with by ministries for foreign affairs. And we even have defense ministries coming along. So it's a very big issue. But we can only address it, I believe, through all the various organizations cooperating together. But the main need is, and the advantage of ITU, is the fact that we have this big private sector membership. We have over 700 companies of members of ITU. So all the work on the technical standard is done by our industry members. And so that's the benefit that ITU has in participating in this activity. Thank you. We have gone over by a couple of minutes. So I'm being asked to wrap it up. But you will be here, I think, for the remainder of the conference, if folks would like to engage Malcolm in further conversation. But I hope you'll join me now in thanking him for coming and spending time with us today. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.