 Good morning everybody from Geneva. It's a very sunny day and we are on the fourth day of the WSIS Forum 2023. We have concluded our high-level policy sessions and today I have with me high-level policy session track facilitators who have moderated the different high-level policy sessions. I'd like to move directly to Antonio. Antonio, what was the key takeaway of your session? So good morning. So we were discussing trade on finances for ICT and the opportunities that the new digital economy can bring to everyone. And we had an interesting discussion. Everybody agreed on two key points, which is everyone should have equal access to these opportunities. So no one should be left behind. We need to bridge the digital divide. We need to make sure that underserved communities have proper connectivity, affordable connectivity and so on. And the second thing is that we need to boost confidence and trust to make sure that this digital economy really realizes these opportunities. So it's really important that we fight against cyber crime, against scams, against child abuse and all these things. So I believe these are the main takeaways of my session. Thank you Antonio. We would like to move on to Claire. So Claire, what were the key takeaways and highlights from your session? I heard you had a very interesting discussion there. We did indeed. Thank you. Our main takeaway was really that I'm delighted to see this, that the conversation has moved on the digital gender divides beyond just counting women. We all we've known for a long time there has been an absence of women in the industry and in research. But today and yesterday we discussed sorry we thought about ways in which this was much more intersectional and considered other dimensions of discrimination from race, class, income, age, geography, which brings a much more transformative and sustainable approach to achieving gender equality in the sector. Thank you Claire. Bridging the digital gender divide has been one of the main focuses of the entire business process because gender equality is a cross-cutting theme that cuts across all the business action lines. So thank you so much. I'd like to now move on to Pierre. Pierre, what was your session all about? You had so many ministers participating in your session and there was a very interesting debate and dialogue. So can you please highlight the key takeaways? Itanjali, the key insight that came out of our session was that digital divide is being addressed aggressively by countries to narrow it. The key insight is that digital divide is not just one country versus another. It is gender related. It is cities versus the countryside. It is generation related. So we need to address the digital divide holistically in a country in order to narrow it and address all key stakeholders. Thank you. Pierre indeed digital inclusion is really important. Gender, youth, older persons, we had a older persons high level track where we focused on how we can align with the decade of healthy aging. You know healthy aging is a very important concept today and how can technology help enhance healthy aging? Thank you so much Pierre. We'd like to move on to Dr. Liberato. Liberato, please what were the key takeaways of your high level policy session? Our policy session Itanjali focused on e-learning and innovations around that and I think the the emphasis given by my panelists has to do with making sure that the infrastructure for e-learning is not only there for all but including disadvantaged and vulnerable populations but that there should be resourcing from both government and private sector to make possible for that. My closing statement in my report yesterday has to do with making sure that digital rights are equally the rights of everyone and so the funding for for ICTs for all populations the ages the disabled women and girls etc must be met. Thank you Liberato education and ICTs for education are playing a key role to connect schools and to get education to the last mile you know so it's it's really making a difference and partnerships are very crucial to make this possible so thank you very much. I'd now like to move on to Alessandro so Alessandro what so if you could also highlight some of the challenges I know that you had several opportunities which were highlighted so could you also highlight some challenges that were highlighted? Well the main aspects in my session was about providing information and knowledge access to all and three key dimensions emerged as challenges but also as opportunities. First of all is a multi-layer approach starting from infrastructure and coming to capacity building so to foster both development but also adoption by the population of the technologies. The second point is multi-stakeholder approach so involving private public partnership together putting together government companies and also NGOs and association from the civil society and the third point is find ways to be human-centric to catch the real needs of the citizens and associations in order to develop technologies that actually foster the development of countries and citizenships. Thank you Alessandro you captured the real essence of the visis process you know it's a human-centric process and we have been engaging all stakeholders civil society private sector technical community academia so many of you are professors into the process to see how we can work together to ensure that all expertise across the action lines are inputted into our work so thank you very much. So Antonio we heard from many countries and diverse stakeholders in your session can you cite some of the examples that remained with you? Yeah of course so I bet you a few good comments were shared there for example I can cite the digital identity project in India where they are trying to get authentication and authenticated identity to the whole population in a huge country like India to allow them to securely access digital services or we can talk about the partnership in Lithuania with different agencies governments private partners to fight cyber scam to fight child abuse online or affordability projects in Thambia. So a lot of good projects were shared in the direction of bringing this digital access to everyone. Thank you Antonio we always try to ensure that each session is covered and well balanced within the regions and diverse stakeholders so thank you very much. So Claire of course your session also had participants from different regions and they shared so many different examples of how they're bridging the digital gender gap so could you share some of the examples that stayed with you? Well I'm pleased to say that our panel was very balanced on gender generations and geography which of course led to a very exciting discussion. I think one of the things that came up is whilst we can see a lot of work going on on gender equality within terms of leadership and representation we also need to focus upon those who are working on the platform labour systems in the gig economy where we continue to see gender inequalities persist and going forward to the digital compact I hope that some of these discussions can be brought forward so that we can make a really transformative and sustainable compact in the future. Thank you Claire we're striving towards 50-50 gender participation at the WSIS forum the delegations are also very gender balanced so we are very excited to see that and we do hope that all of us can make our contribution towards achieving digital gender equality. Pierre how about your session you know there were really some interesting case examples with you know good statistics coming out from your session so could you please cite some of them. Yes Gitanjali a particularly interesting example came out of Malaysia where accessibility and connectivity is provided to the broad regions of Malaysia. One thing that stroke out is that Malaysia really focuses on human intelligence and at a time when everybody's talking about artificial intelligence making sure that we connect human intelligence is really important and this example in Malaysia really stroke me as being forward looking. Thank you very much Pierre. Liberato how about your session you know you had a diverse stakeholder type in your session who spoke about the different activities and projects in their respective countries could you please share some of these examples. Gitanjali as the leader of a non-governmental organization was struck with the most in the conversation comes from my only civil society speaker from open UK and it has to do with free access to information free access to data and remember that the WSIS action lines are hinged on the sustainable development goals. The impetus for sustainable development goals has to do with the eradication of hunger and poverty the 17 goals reduced to one aim is the eradication of hunger and poverty and if the ICT infrastructure does not visibly and right away stereo in the eye as something that eradicates hunger and poverty but rather widen the gap for those who have access to ICT and those who do not we will have failed and so I was happy that the session 11 focus on that. Thank you very much Liberato since 2015 we've been aligning the two UN processes the WSIS process and the 2030 agenda for sustainable development where we have been highlighting how each WSIS action line whether it be infrastructure access cybersecurity is contributing towards the advancement of the achievement of the SDGs. Thank you Liberato. Alessandro how about your session you know you had some interesting discussions at regional and national level projects could you please share some of those with us. Yeah I would like to pick one the Slovenian example provided by our chairperson who uses 2023 the minister of digital transformation in Slovenia because you know is an example of that multi-layer approach I cited before they structured this approach providing first network coverage for all the country providing connectivity in all the regions then they structured an intervention for financial support for citizens for purchasing devices enabling the access to that network then they started with providing skills and knowledge with programs both in schools but also bridging the gender gap for women for silver age people and finally they are digitizing the services provided at governmental level so health education public administration this integrated approach represent a best practice on how to provide the real access for all through digital transformation. Thank you Antonio of course we have to keep in mind like Liberato said that you know we have to make sure that the digital transformation is reaching the last mile and we are able to align the different sustainable development goals with what we've been trying to achieve with the digital economy digital sustainable development. Thank you so much for joining us today we had a very very exciting high level track we heard from different high level participants from ministers from head of regulatory bodies head of civil society organizations universities technical communities united nations agencies on what's happening all over the world with respect to their mandates and it was really exciting to hear about these interesting case studies vices forum is about networking learning and sharing and we are very happy to learn that all of it materialized at this vices forum 2023 so thank you very much