 Thanks for joining us at ITU headquarters for WSIS Forum 2019 where we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the event And I'm delighted to be joined by Vladimir Stankovic, his ICT policy analyst at ITU. Vladimir, thanks for joining us Thank you for inviting. It's a pleasure to be here. Now Vladimir to start with I'd like you to explain a little bit more about the WSIS stop taking process. How does it work? What is it encompass? Sure? I've been your guest two years ago And I think I did this claim that already. However, there are some improvements since that that time WSIS stop taking process was mandated to ITU in 2004 by the World Summit on Information Society And since then we've been collecting various ICT projects from around the world that are helping in development and also making social impact 2019 had brought us amazing improvement more than 1,141 projects were submitted for this year's stock taking report out of which 1062 were also nominated for the WSIS prize. Now WSIS prize is integral part of the WSIS stock taking and it really helps a lot in Collection of these amazing stories from around the world. Now, what else are we doing at the WSIS stock taking process? We have improved our online presence. The WSIS stock taking platform is more interactive more user-friendly I invite all of the stakeholders to use it explore and submit more to this We have we are running the third year of the WSIS photo contest another activity of the WSIS stock taking where we are asking the community from around the world photographers and all of those using photos and To actually depict and picture how ICTs are helping development on the ground and in the last two years We have collected more than 150 amazing photos And I also advise you to go to the WSIS platform and also use them for your Presentations and any exhibitions that you might be having and all often we do have troubles finding this kind of photos So very pleased that we have involved that in the WSIS stock taking process in addition to this and not only reporting on the ICT projects that are coming through the WSIS stock taking platform for the WSIS stock taking report and the WSIS prizes We're also working with some other entities and we are actually collecting projects on their behalf So I'm happy to announce that with our colleagues from the standardization department We've been collecting AI related projects artificial intelligence projects that are also helping Advanced development. So during their AI good summit for good in May this year We will be launching a special report on this in addition to this We are also working very close with the study groups of all three sectors for development Stabilization and communications to actually produce some kind of a mapping plan mapping tools that can link the ICT projects with The particular questions that they are studying. So lots of things are happening at the WSIS stock taking process We do look in for the new call that will be launched in during summer this year and invite all of you to follow Absolutely, and of course another thing you are overseeing here the WSIS from is WSIS prizes So how was it this year any any difference to previous years? Yes, the difference is huge We reached new levels. So last year the we had 492 nominated projects for the WSIS prize prior to that We had 345 and of course, I'm gonna tell you that prior to that 311 and prior to that they had 300 and prior to that we had 152 projects So the the exponential growth of the WSIS prize submissions were just Extraordinary so this year we have 1062 projects. This is more than 200 percent increase and if we are reaching to a thousand Nominations this year. We are actually looking into a possibility of having more than 2000 next year And this is something that we were hoping since 2012 when we started the process So this year WSIS prize also had different kind of us ceremonies So we had five WSIS prize and stock taking related events during the WSIS forum 2019 One of them taking place during the high-level opening the WSIS prize ceremony This was a place where all the 18 winners were announced prior to that we kept them Secretive so that we actually use this opportunity of the WSIS forum for the big announcements and Next to that we also had a ceremony networking event That was organized for all winners and champions to actually mingle and meet each other and also be awarded and Greeted by the secretary general of ITU Mr. Halenzal. In addition to this We also had two more events that are very very useful and important for this process. One of them is called the WSIS prize Focus group. So the idea of this group is to bring together all the former and this year's winners and champions of the WSIS prize And to discuss what will be their future role? How can we as the WSIS secretary at the ITU continue promoting their successes at the same time? How can they continue promoting this is process and this is prize as a good platform to promote ICT practices for development? In addition to this, I believe that very soon we're going to have several committees Organized within the group that will be targeting particular activities such as membership communication Topics for the special reporting for next year and so on I do invite all of you to also follow that and Finally, we also had the World Cafe that we do traditionally on each WSIS forum where all the participants of the WSIS forum can come and meet this year's winners and champions and I'm very happy to say that this year we had more than 20 amazing presentations coming from this community depicting their projects and Actually pitching how these projects were established and how you can replicate them elsewhere So the numbers are constantly Increasing it's interesting because obviously this year WSIS forum was reaching a milestone as it celebrates its 10-year anniversary So how will you ensure us organizers of the event that you keep it fresh in the years ahead? This is what we do each year and I have to say that we are managing it So each year I'm surprised of how the whole WSIS forum is looking and in addition to this How are we also treating our WSIS prize winners and champions coming here? It's amazing that out of 90 all together Out of which eight 18 are winners and 72 are champions We are actually having close to 70 delegations coming to the WSIS forum So this is two to three hundred people coming and more and more I see that new countries and new regions are following this process more actively So this year we had first time ever winners coming from various countries including Uganda Brazil Costa Rica and so on United States of America also joined. So what we do here is to Through small doors small steps are trying to increase our our outreach and to actually really Become a global platform for many other small regional national platforms that are taking stock and using these Repositories to promote good ICT practices for development and finally I would like to maybe just add that We are also trying to translate oral texts at least the fixed context into all six-year languages This is this was always been One of the challenges that we cannot reach out to those communities do that will not Use English language on such level that they can actually Submit these projects. However, we are still looking for better solutions on Actually allowing them to submit in six-year languages. It would be a Capacity that at the moment we are facing challenges, but maybe machine learning will help us We'll see what the technology will bring us in the future. Who knows lots to look forward to. Thank you very much Vladimir It was a pleasure. Thank you so much and I invite all of your listeners to come back to 2020 and Bring their amazing projects back to the WSIS forum This is prizes and do not submit all in their own But go and promote any good ICT practices that they see along the way. Fantastic. Thank you. Thanks again