 We're here at the World Telecommunication Development Conference 2014 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and I've got the great pleasure of being with Mr Bruce Gracie, who is special advisor for international organisations for industry Canada. Bruce, thank you very much indeed for being with us in the studio today. My pleasure. Thank you. Now this conference is a very important conference, it's once every four years, the last one was in Hyderabad in 2010, this is also followed by the ITU Planet Pretensory Conference, this one is in Busan and the previous one was in Guadalajara. I wanted to talk to you about what your impressions have been over the last four years. Well, at the Planet Pretensory Conference in Guadalajara I had the opportunity to chair committee six on administration and management. Now one of the key issues that we discussed at that conference was the continued implementation of results based management. Now at this particular conference, this development conference, particularly in relation to the activities of the working group of the plenary on the draft strategic plan as it relates to the development sector, we noticed that there is a concerted effort to place the activities and programs of the development sector within the framework of results based management. Now this is a very positive development, one that has continued since well before Guadalajara and continues to be strengthened as time goes on. Now what they're trying to achieve at this conference is to link goals, objectives of the strategic plan with the programs and activities of the action plan to be approved by this conference. Now why this is important because it's further linked to the financial plan and to the budget structure, the biennial budgets that will be approved by council in the next Planet Pretensory Period 2016 to 2019. So in that respect this is a very positive and critical step for the development conference in ensuring that the high priority activities of the development sector are properly financed. Now there have been some new approaches here at this conference in terms of linking goals and objectives of our ITUD to programs and activities of the Dubai Action Plan, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about those. Well as I just mentioned the effort will be to clearly link the goals and objectives in the draft strategic plan which of course will need to be reviewed, further reviewed by the council working group that was established for this purpose and further reviewed by council when it meets in May but the Planet Pretensory Conference will be responsible for approving the overall strategic plan and of course the financial plan. So the activities here in clearly linking the objectives of ITUD to the programs and activities that are to be approved by this conference as part of the Dubai Action Plan are very important, extremely important to ensure that those programs and activities receive the proper financing in the next period. Now it will be important for ITUD to develop strategies to follow in ensuring that those actions are followed up in a framework and in the overall framework of result space management. And what are the major challenges facing us here? Well I'm sure everybody realizes that the major challenge is financial. The development sector budget was approved by the council last June, the biennial budget for 2014-2015. Now the overall budget was in the neighborhood of 58 million Swiss francs but it has to be realized that approximately 80% of that cost, that price, that figure, represents staff costs. So it will be extremely important for ITUD to develop strategies to partner with other agencies particularly financial institutions such as world banks, the world bank, regional development banks, donor countries, other institutions and organizations that have the financial wherewithal to actually finance projects. It will be extremely important that ITUD develop these strategies, identify ways and means of ensuring that the programs and activities that are approved here can actually be followed up through concrete projects in the next period. And what outcomes do you anticipate coming from this conference? Well as part of the Dubai Action Plan the linkage will also be important in terms of the programs that are approved, the regional initiatives that were discussed at the regional preparatory meetings and many activities are common across the regions. Those activities clearly need to be financed in the next period. Examples are the transition from analog to digital broadcasting. Another good example is emergency communications which is very important for many countries. Broadband rollout, another extremely important topic that needs to be properly financed in its various aspects into the next period. So all of these various dimensions need to be linked clearly together, they need to be linked back to the strategic plan and of course ultimately to the budget structure of the organization. Bruce Gracie, thank you very much indeed for being with us today. My pleasure, thank you. And thank you for watching too.