 Excellencies, honorable guests, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all of you. On behalf of the elected officials of the International Telecommunication Union, Mr. Hulienzal, Secretary General, Mr. Malcolm Johnson, Deputy Secretary General, Mr. Mario Maniewicz, Director of the Radio Communication Bureau, Mr. Chaysub Lee, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, and Ms. Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau. Receive a warm welcome and a big thank you for joining us from around the world to celebrate the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day WTISD 2021. On this day, we commemorate the founding of the ITU and the signing of the first International Telegraph Convention in 1865. WTISD helps raise awareness of the benefits that information and communication technologies and the internet can bring to societies and economies everywhere and focuses on ways to bridge the digital divide. The theme for this year is accelerating digital transformation in challenging times and will feature a high-level panel discussion focusing on how ICTs and digital transformation contribute to reinforce the new normal and to build back better. Without further ado, we will begin with an introductory video on WTISD 2021 with images from videos submitted to date by ITU members, to whom we thank very much. The digital transformation is happening all around us. Information and communication technologies sustain life, work, health and learning, but these are challenging times. In the COVID-19 crisis, ICTs ensure access to healthcare, education and essential goods and services for billions of people. Radio communication, telecommunications standards and telecommunication development, all support, growth, inclusiveness, sustainability, innovation, partnership. The Connect 2030 goals of the International Telecommunication Union, ITU. Today, ITU calls on its unique, global, public, private membership to further accelerate digital transformation in challenging times. Today, our members can adopt a digital agenda and strategy, offer government services online, strengthen cybersecurity, develop national emergency telecommunication plans, foster innovation and infrastructure, build effective partnerships. Together, we can make humanity safer, stronger and more connected in this decade of action for sustainable development. Digital technologies are vital to fulfill the promise and build resilience against future challenges. And yet, nearly half the world's population remains unconnected. ITU fosters international cooperation and supports universal connectivity to make the transformation equitable, safe, inclusive and affordable for all. 17th of May is World Telecommunication and Information Society Day. Keep on sharing your stories. Find out more. www.itu.int forward slash wtist. And now, how the great pleasure of introducing Mr. Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary General, who will read the message received from the United Nations Secretary General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, on the occasion of WTISD 2021. Thank you very much, Mario. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Let me add my welcome and wish you all a happy World Telecommunication and Information Society Day. I'm very pleased to read the following message from the UN Secretary General to celebrate the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2021. Digital technologies sustain life, work, health and learning for billions of people. In the face of COVID-19, businesses, governments and the digital community have proven resilient and innovative, helping to protect lives and livelihoods. These challenging times have accelerated the transformation everywhere. Yet 3.7 billion people, nearly half the world's population, remain unconnected to the internet. And of these, the majority are women. They too must be included if we are to make the possibilities of 5G artificial intelligence, the internet of things, digital health and other technologies truly transformative and sustainable. We must also protect against the dangers of digital technologies from the spread of hatred and misinformation to cyber attacks and the exploitation of our data. The United Nations, through a roadmap of digital cooperation and the vital work of the International Telecommunication Union aims to make the transformation equitable, safe, inclusive and affordable for all with respect for human rights. On World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, let us commit to work together to defeat COVID-19 and ensure that digital technologies are a force for good that help us to achieve the sustainable development goals and leave no one behind. Many thanks to Mr. Guterres and now let me welcome ITU Secretary-General, Mr. Houlin Ja for his opening address. Houlin. Okay, thank you very much, Malcolm. Excellencies, distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to ITU's ceremony of World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2021. We have come together on this special day to reflect on the development of information and communication technologies, the challenges they pose and the actions we can take to connect the unconnected every year since 1969. Allow me to take this opportunity on behalf of ITU management members, including Secretary-General, Deputy Secretary-General, Director of Radio Communication Bureau, Director of Standardization Bureau and the Director of Development Bureau to express our sincere appreciation to the global ICT family, all the leaders, experts, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, people in small and large companies, partners and others who are engaged in ICT development. Congratulations on your marvelous achievements and thank you for your excellent contributions to ICT. Happy WTIST 2021 celebration. I want to thank the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Guterres, who joined us today with his powerful statement that the digital technologies are a force for good that can help us achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals and leave no one behind. For information, this morning, we also noted that he put his Twitter to share the happiness with us to celebrate today. The big challenge caused for multi-stakeholder cooperation, the kind that we have seen from ITU members and partners since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. So today, on WTIST 2021, I call on all ITU members and other stakeholders to continue our efforts to harness the power of ICTs to advance ITU's Connect 20th City Agenda, the WISIS Action Lines, and the UN SDGs. Ladies and gentlemen, the pandemic has brought us many challenges. ICT has proven its power to keep our businesses running and our lives going. We see many opportunities and challenges ahead. We all wish to accelerate the digital transformation for a better future. Yet, if we continue on the path we are on, it will be very difficult to achieve the SDGs and connect the other half of the humanity by the end of this decade. Now, it's the time to accelerate the digital transformation with those not connected, leaving largely in poor areas that struggle to attract investors and with limited investment resources not always being focused on ICT infrastructure. What we need now is a new mindset, a new strategy that promotes investments in ICTs and encourages all actors to make the best use of limited resources. We have the privilege today to have a high-level panel that will address the key role taken on by ICTs in the ongoing global pandemic. I'm very grateful to the Executive Director of UN Habitat and my UN colleagues, as well as the ministers coming from different parts of the world who will share their insights with us. We will all benefit from their conversation. On this day and beyond, I hope that we can all pull together to build back better with ICTs and unite the world in pursuit of digital transformation in every area of business, all parts of life and for everyone. I thank you very much. So, Mike, I return the floor back to you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Secretary General, for your rallying call for a much needed new mindset and strategy to promote investment in ICTs and encourage all actors to make the best use of our limited resources to connect the unconnected. It's now time to welcome our distinguished panelists that are with us today to discuss this year's theme, Accelerating Digital Transformation in Challenging Times. Many thanks to all of you for joining us today. Privilege to have you with us. So first, I would like to welcome one of ICT's closest partners and part of our UN family, Ms. Mahmoud Sharif, Executive Director, United Nations Human Settlement Program, UN Habitat. Last October, ICT and UN Habitat signed an MOU to significantly increase our collaboration and support the new urban agenda. I'm pleased to say we are working together to develop the toolkit, which helps cities accelerate their digital transformation. So, Ms. Sharif, thank you for joining us. UN Habitat is advancing a vision of people-centered smart cities. What do you mean by that? And what can cities and local governments do to contribute to countries' digital agendas? Ms. Sharif. Thank you very much. Welcome. Excellencies, Mr. Haulin, Drow, the SG of ITU, colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for having UN Habitat together with this important afternoon from Nairobi. I think that's what Secretary-General of ITU mentioned. That's now two of the most important transformation that the world is currently facing is brought about by rapid urbanization and digitalization. So they are both very key to overcoming the COVID pandemic and the climate crisis. As you mentioned, Mr. Malcolm, that UN Habitat has signed collaboration review and also working together on sustainable and inclusive digital transformation of cities and communities that help governments all over the world to advance their digital agendas. So I would like to call upon UN Habitat and ITU Haulin and the others to align the key UN agendas on urbanization and ICT, including the new urban agenda and Connect 2030. So UN Habitat is committed to mainstream the sustainable urbanization on ITU's technical and standardization on smart cities, including in the study group of 20 of Internet of Things and Smart Cities and Communities. Now let me bring you to the question that you asked, Mr. Malcolm, that the people-centered smart cities we launched in the World Urban Forum in Abu Dhabi, Malaysia just before, in February, just before the COVID-19. And why we call it people-centered smart cities? What do you mean by people-centered? Because we believe that cities is for the people and people is for the cities. Even the COVID-19 has already shows the proof that people is very important. So first we would like to show that our deep commitment to leave no one and no place behind and UN Habitat basic mandate is to improve quality of life for residents of cities and for the people in the cities and human settlement with a priority on those facing the greatest challenges. So smart cities need to use technology effectively to contribute to this goal. So this requires a ship away, a ship away from the smart city approach which is technology supply-driven towards the one that is needs-based driven. So this is very important that the development of technology should be human-centered and considers the needs of the cities and the communities. That's the reason why we put in our, we launched our people-centered smart cities. Second, UN Habitat approach is grounded in a firm commitment to digital rights and digital inclusion. So technology should be used to fulfill people's fundamental needs and improve their quality of life. So government at all level are responsible for respecting and protecting people's right. That is the second. The third, the smart city strategies, policies, physical infrastructure need to be developed through meaningful participation and engagement with all urban residents, people who live in the cities or in the human settlement, even in the rural areas. So I would like also to touch a bit on the impact of the digital divide. The full impact of a smart city vision cannot be achieved without addressing the digital divide which is still persist even within a well-connected cities. Globally, 28% of urban household lack of internet connection and 37% lack of computer. So even in New York City, one of the world's most developed cities, 1.5 million people still do not have broadband at home or on their mobiles. So for people in developing countries and informal settlements, internet access remain unaffordable. So we fixed broadband cost exceeding the broadband commission's affordability target in 111 of the world's cities countries. So the COVID-19 pandemic has made the situation even much worse and cities across the world are becoming aware of the digital divide. And imagine a family of five who are teleworking and tele-schooling, they would need a very fast connection and up to five devices. So as far as you inhabit it, colleagues and excellencies, we are committed to advancing and inclusive technology agendas for the world cities. We are currently working in Cambodia, Nigeria, China, Myanmar and Iran on smart city strategies and policies. Even our Cameroon Digital Governance Life is working with young people to develop community-appropriate local government digital governance framework. This will be published this year, a new publication of global research into how government can access and address the digital divide in cities. Last month, funded by the government of Germany, we launched the United Nations Innovation and Selectors for Cities, a unit like a new center to advance the people-centered smart cities vision globally. So we are dealing with people. So Markham, let me go to your second question on the local government. I hope I can have enough time, but me as a former mayor in Penang, Malaysia, local government is very, very important. And now as an EDOU and habitat, we know that cities and local government are key actors in digital transformation and needs to work with national government to advance the inclusive digital agenda. So local government should have a clear strategy, establish the right kinds of local digital governance framework and engage effectively with national government in conversation with multi-level governance of digital reform and data. Data is very, very important at the local level. So this is baseline data is very, very important. So the cities and local government has a significant possibilities to set direction of the technological innovation in line with the national government or regional government, appropriate regulation, working with private sector. I always promote for peace, public private people partnership. So this is very, very important to have the partnership for significant infrastructure development to ensure that technology is used to address the real world challenge and create tangible new opportunities. So this also involving the youth. So by having the digital governance framework, ethical service standard data ownership policies and making the right, making the right digital infrastructure investment, local government can steer technological development in more people are centered direction. And last but not least that is for you and habitat national urban policy is very important. The key instrument to ensure urbanization become a national development priority, which is vertically and horizontally connected. This is very important through our national urban policy program. We are supported countries all over the world in this process. And we're putting additional effort by adding digital transformation component in this work. And we are now set in our work, our recent book. And we already published that is developing national urban policies ways forward to green and smart cities. So I will add a few more after this because local government also can continue to achieving the ITU connect 2030 agenda. So they should digitize their service, ensure their resident and assess the government service online, crucial also for the local government to understand informality, digital divide to deliver essential services. And the one that is mentioned by the secretary general of ITU and habitat new guide on assessing the digital divide provides guidance on how to carry out urban digital divide assessment at all level, including the local government. And we are also working in Brazil for example, to map up over one million households in hundred informal settlement through an innovative methodology called quick participatory mapping. In Mosul, Iraq, our team has met critical urban infrastructure enabling the authorities to improve their delivery fundamental basic services like water and sanitation. So digitalization, data, local government, national government, regional government and global like us have to work as a team together with the communities and the private sector. Thank you very much, Mr. Malcolm, over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Maimouna. It's very nice to see people being put first and we very much look forward to continuing our excellent collaboration with you in habitat, not only for smart cities but also as you said, smart villages that might hopefully reduce or even reverse the move into cities. So thank you very much. Now I'd like to welcome the honorable Ursula Wusu Ekwufu, Minister of Communications and Digitization of the Republic of Ghana. Minister, thank you very much for joining us. We know Ghana has a digital transformation and infrastructure development program. So could you please share with us some details and the challenges you face, especially during this COVID and how you see post-COVID being a challenge for the technology minister. Thank you very much, Malcolm. And it's a pleasure to join the other panelists on this very important discussion and congratulations to the ITU as well. I believe this is on an anniversary day for you, May 17th and so congratulations to the ITU. Yes, we have a digital transformation and infrastructural development program that we're currently rolling out and this government since it took office in January 2017 has emphasized digitalization. Recently, the name of my ministry itself has been changed to include the digitalization, communications and digitalization to show the emphasis that we're putting on one government's rolling out interventions in all sectors using technologies. We're focusing on infrastructure and connectivity, digital skills, research and innovation, digitizing our postal and courier services, data protection, privacy and trust for digital networks and services, working on the legal and regulatory and policy framework and of course cyber security as well. We believe that without connectivity and inclusion, all the digital initiatives that we're putting in place would be limited to only particular segments of the population. And so digital inclusion is a key part of the programs that we're rolling out and the government is working with our universal service fund and her secured funding to extend connectivity through our rural telephony and digital inclusion project to the 20% of our population which does not have connectivity as of now. And so we're rolling out 2016 sales sites to cover over 2 million people within the next 18 months to provide voice and data connectivity to all of them as well to be part of the digital transformation that is taking place. We're building interoperable systems and linking our systems and working on the foundational pillars to ensure the transformation of our country. And so we've been implementing the National Electronic ID Project which so far has registered about 17 million out of our 30 million population and they're on course to do, conclude the process of digitizing our personal identity, identification, information by the end of this year. We've also implemented a digital property address system to identify the locations of where all our people are. And we're building that database which is linked to the National ID. Ultimately, the National ID will be the single identity document for transaction of all businesses in the public sector. So it is linked to our drivers and vehicle licensing regime. It is linked to our health insurance regime, social security, passports. And it will be the single document to be or number you need for transacting any kind of business in the country before long as we move to integrate all our systems. Financial, digital financial services is also very, very key. And so we have built the interoperability platform that links mobile wallets to bank accounts and enable seamless transfer between networks. And so we don't have that barrier and Ghana has become the fastest growing mobile money market in Africa once that was done. And over half a billion has been transacted on that platform since the beginning of this year. And that shows how indispensable it has become for procurement of government goods and services and public goods and services generally. We have built a platform for accessing all public goods and services from ministry departments and agencies which we call the Ghana.gov services platform is a single interface for applying for all services and paying for it electronically, which is linked to the Ghana Revenue Authority and the Ministry of Finance. And it is promoting efficiencies, reducing corruption, enhancing transparency and accountability in the generation of internal revenue amongst the public sector agencies, which is also enabling us to keep a handle on the revenue which is due to the state from these transactions as well on a single platform. It is being scaled up across the sectors. All this is working at linking our databases. So we can utilize that data and analyze it properly for planning and development purposes. And we are on course, of course, we can build all these platforms but without looking at digital skills, research and innovation and plugging into the emerging technologies that are taking place and building the capacity of our citizens to also engage will be short changing ourselves. And so we've set up a network of digital transformation centers using our community information centers to provide skills to our rural populations. We are focusing on innovation and hubs and technology, mobile hubs and innovation centers for our young people. And that's also working very well using the Ghana Digital Centers model and the Accra Digital Center at the heart of it. And so significant proportions of young people who previously didn't have any digital skills at all are being trained and equipped with the skills that they need to survive in the fourth industrial revolution. And that's also going on at pace. We're utilizing and modernizing our postal offices to serve as e-service centers in collaboration with our community ICT centers as well, which are also internet enabled. So even if there's no internet access, you can move to those communities and transact businesses from those locations which are dotted across the country. And we're using them to also provide training and capacity building to various segments of the community from peasant farmers, market women, small-scale traders, traditional authorities, students and young people so that they can also have the digital skills that they need. We've institutionalized data protection, privacy and trust for our digital networks in conjunction with our cybersecurity initiatives. We have a comprehensive legislation on cybersecurity which was just concluded in late last year and we are in the process of implementing the act and setting up our cybersecurity authority with a keen emphasis on child online protection as well, utilizing the ITU framework that has already been established and Ghana is positioning itself as the go-to place for all things digital. And so we need to look at privacy and trust for our systems and cybersecurity as well. And we're working on all of that and the legal and regulatory framework as well. So we've been busy and we see that all these things that we put in place to this in good state when the pandemic hit because it was possible for us to transact businesses using online platforms. The community information centers were used by young people around the country to study even if they didn't have connectivity in their homes. The drone technology that we put in place was utilized to take, collect and test samples for testing and enable us to also send our vaccine samples to our remote communities out there and it's helping us immensely in utilizing technology within our health space. We're looking at teleconsultation and telemedicine to maximize the use of the various health interventions that we have. And then the uptake in digital technologies also occasion some congestion within our network operators networks. And so government gave free spectrum to them to enable them to expand their capacity to deliver on the demands that the citizens were putting on their networks. And that helped immensely. I believe Ghana was one of the first people, the first countries to use spectrum policy to facilitate our response to COVID-19. We also used the COVID tracker app and the current initiative being rolled out by the Africa CDC and the West African Health Organization in the Trusted Travel Network which is providing digital certification for COVID test certificates was also developed by Iganean entrepreneur. And so we're proud that this technology is being rolled out across the continent with the approval of our African Union heads of staff and it is being used in the Trusted Travel Regime to facilitate the opening up of our aviation sector and coming back to normalcy of the continent. And I believe Africa is one of the only continents to have an integrated system that is being used across board. Ghana is linked on, Kenya is linked on, Ethiopia is signing on and other countries are signing on to it. And before long, that platform will also be used to validate vaccines, vaccination records of our people and facilitate cross-border travel knowing that either you've been vaccinated or you have properly certified results from accredited test centers that can be verified. And so these are the many ways in which we're using technology to facilitate our post-COVID recovery and ease the opening up of our sectors. All our schools are back at all levels and we haven't seen any outbreak of the pandemic in our educational institutions. We're working very closely with the Ghana Health Service Ghana Education Service and the ministries of health and education to see how we can facilitate E-education, E-Health and ease doing business generally. So without the digital technology that we're privileged to supervise its implementation of in our various countries, our world would be a very, very difficult place to live in and our recovery from the pandemic would have been so much more delayed. And so I think we can all congratulate ourselves and the ITU for the pivotal role that it has played so far in enhancing our use of technology to overcome the challenges of the pandemic and to ease the opening up of our various economic, social, educational activities and position ourselves for the new normal. We have to continue to work to deepen inclusion of women, persons with disability, the poor and the marginalized, unsaved and underserved communities. And we can learn from the experiences of one another in so doing. So in a nutshell, this is what Ghana has been doing in this space and our membership of the ITU has been invaluable in the ministries that we have undertaken. I believe some universal service fund our central bank, educational and health institutions, our finance ministry, we've all worked in a collaborative manner to ensure that we maximize the use of the digital interventions that we have in place currently built on them and use those to some amount the major challenges imposed by the pandemic. So this is where we are at currently and we're looking forward to learn from the experiences of others and work with them to build the new normal. Thank you very much. Thank you very much minister and congratulations on the range of very ambitious innovative initiatives that you're undertaking. So we wish you well with their implementation and a very significant name change as you mentioned in the ministry to include the word digitization, coordinating digitization government-wide so important to ensure interoperability and the digital identity initiative very important quite a challenge. So we wish you well especially with that initiative. Thanks very much. Now I'd like to welcome is Excellency Marek Szegorski, Secretary of State at the Chancery of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland. Thank you very much for joining us, Secretary of State. Let me open with a general question about how the Republic of Poland is dealing with digital affairs during the global pandemic. Now what was your approach to deal with the challenges and what difficulties you faced especially at the social level? Thank you very much for giving me the floor and good afternoon to everyone. I'm confident that we all know that how essential and critical are the aspects of the accelerating digital transformation in the whole world, especially in those difficult times. It's been over a year for Europe since we all witnessed the opportunities and advantages that came with digital solutions. We had to adapt quickly to stay sustained whenever it referred to occupation, health care, education or social life. Given example of the Republic of Poland for the pandemic governance purposes, we have introduced brand new digital solutions as well as we have developed and existing ones. We were given by the idea that every activity that helps to stop COVID-19 must be accessible, affordable and easy use for citizens. We started with mobile apps like contact trace, home quarantine and with system for testing. And from this perspective, digital solutions were obvious during our work on enrollment system for COVID-19 vaccine. Our citizens were entitled to register via ordinary call as well as through dedicated e-services by SMS or by talking to the bot. The whole process is fully digital and us for yesterday, number of given doses has reached over 15 million in the space we expect to reach 16 million by today. I am particularly proud to announce that the Republic of Poland is the first country in Europe and one of the first in the world to introduce personnel who are called for everyone who received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine within a public application. This solution was established in February 2021 and it's going to be adapted to European Commission and widely by the 25th of June this year. All this was possible mostly due to the public support in broadband development throughout the country. We have deployed over 110,000 kilometers of broadband to households and schools. This activity was a background for fully digital education that we provide with the project titled National Education Network that has won WSI's prizes in 2018. Before enrollment of National Education Network, approximately 10% of schools in Poland had access to fast internet and another 10% didn't have any access. Today, every school in Poland is in a range of high-speed services that are safe and free of charge. Yet in times of COVID-19, we had to support learning even more intensively. Under this project, we created almost 40,000 proposals of tools for homeschooling. At the same time, our government has provided students with over 250,000 laptops and tablets so no children was digitally excluded in those difficult times. I hope I got your attention with those results and please stay assured that the Republic of Poland welcomes the possibility to mutual transfer of knowledge. I'm also pleased that ITU has decided to hold the panel on such an important topic and for that please accept once more my kind of appreciation. Thank you very much, Mr. Szagowski. And congratulations on making all those digital initiatives accessible and affordable to all your citizens. This is especially important, of course, in the fight against COVID and to have every school connected to safe broadband and all the pupils equipped tremendous achievements. Congratulations. And now turning to Senator the Honorable Alison West, Minister of Public Administration and Digital Transformation in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Thanks very much for joining us. So could you tell us what were some of the key challenges facing Trinidad and Tobago during the past year and how you have sought to resolve them? And given the constraints on your resources, how has the government of Trinidad and Tobago adapted your digital transformation strategy, Minister? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning all. Like the rest of the world, big and small countries developed and developing Trinidad and Tobago was faced with a significant financial challenge brought on by the decline in energy prices, energy being our main state of the economy and significantly exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. What was required as a result of the pandemic was curtailment of economic and social activity which resulted in loss of jobs, there were concerns over the country's ability to continue to feed itself. There were concerns about the ability of the vulnerable people to survive, the loss of jobs and the slowdown in economic activity and significantly because of the measures taken to curtail COVID, we had to close down the education system as well so that we needed to address all of those issues simultaneously in the circumstances where finances were challenged. And because of that, we had to place a heavy reliance on ICT as everybody else has done. So one of the first things we did like Ghana was to look at the ICT ecosystem and we needed to ensure that we could support homeschooling and homeworking. So we also provided free spectrum to all service providers so that they could create a more robust environment in which we could operate. We had to ensure that citizens had access to the Wi-Fi in a manner that was affordable so that we provided, we have been previous to that on the program of providing free access in certain areas, Wi-Fi access in certain areas like reason of the public spaces so that the vulnerable and the people in the most remote areas would have access and we also have ICT access centers scattered throughout Trinidad and Tobago. So we use those to allow us to provide a lot of our services using the e-platform. So the health system, the judiciary, the school system, the social support services system which was used to provide support and we need to most vulnerable all migrated or heightened the use of ICT systems to allow us to continue to operate, to continue to educate, to continue to work during this pandemic, during the various lockdowns because we have had a couple, we've had to take different initiatives during the management of the pandemic. Like the, as was mentioned by the representative from UN Habitat, we also realized during this process, if not before, that our digital transformation focus has to be citizen driven because while we have been embarked on a program of digital transformation since 2017 when the ITU assisted us in drafting an ICT blueprint, we found during the early stages of the pandemic when we were seeking to help people that our approach was not sufficiently citizen-centric. So we took a step back, we evaluated it and realized that we needed to refocus on how we implemented our digital transformation to ensure that it was in fact citizen-centric. Like Ghana, we are also seeking to implement an identity program and to increase our interoperability among state agencies so we can more easily and seamlessly assist our citizens who are in need and be able more importantly to proactively identify who those citizens are and ensure that they get the support that they need. Now, all of this of course requires the use of resources which are constrained during this period because as I said again of the energy crisis and followed by the COVID crisis. So the government does have more limited resources than it otherwise would have, but notwithstanding that because of our commitment to the digital transformation process as recognized as well in the renaming of the ministry which I lead to the ministry of public administration and digital transformation, the government in fact has quadrupled the capital budget of my ministry to ensure that we can provide all support and build out all the infrastructure we need to create a digitally transformed society. It has also provided resources to each of the different ministries and the agencies to promote their individual ICT projects. More importantly, what we have done was created an ecosystem for the governance of ICT development to ensure that it happens in a less siloed, more connected way and my ministry is in charge of doing that and doing that we have brought in, try to make it more inclusive. So we've brought in representatives to the private sector, the public sector, academia and labor to ensure that all issues are taken on board and we develop a program that the citizens can feed belongs to them. So we're working on that. In addition to allocating the government, so the government structure I mentioned before, the emphasis as I said is on interoperability because what has happened traditionally is that each ministry has developed their ICT program individually and we have been not sufficiently linked and we saw that clearly during the beginning of the pandemic and so our focus in interoperability is really key and we are hoping that that will contribute to relieving our resources by providing economies of scale as we approach this in a unified way. We are seeking to create a digitally transformed society within the next two years because as the, as commentators around the world would have indicated this unfortunately is not likely to be the last of our global challenges. We expect recurrences of challenges like this and therefore we want to ensure that within a couple of years we have a system that is robust and sustainable that will allow us to more easily identify and address the needs of our citizens going forward. Mr. Chair, thank you. Thank you very much, minister. So thank you for highlighting the importance of ICTs to overcome the economic and financial challenges of the pandemic and free access to spectrum facilities through e-platforms so that even the most vulnerable and remote people can benefit. It's good to hear that there is a lot of commonality in initiatives being taken by all the speakers. It's very important that again that you've mentioned cross government coordination to ensure interoperability and that you benefit from the economies of scale. You also emphasize the importance of working closely with the private sector and learning the lessons from this pandemic because it may well not be the last. So thank you very much, minister, for those insightful comments. And now turning to His Excellency Elmer Belizade, Deputy Minister of Transport, Communications and High Technologies in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Thank you very much for being with us today. Could you tell us, Azerbaijan's lessons learned on your way to digital transformation and the challenges you've met, minister? Distinguished Secretary, General Hauer-Inzal, Honorable Mr. Malcolm Johnson, Honorable Chassublee, Honorable Mr. Mario Manevich. Glad to see you. Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Governors, it's great pleasure for me to be here with you at the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2021. On this very special day, 17 of May, we can proudly celebrate the fact that over the past decades, the ICT has played an essential role in improving people's life and facilitate social and economic development. Today, there is really a time of great changes in Azerbaijan. The government of Azerbaijan has adopted and currently developing a number of programs aimed at accelerating digital transformation to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of digital technologies. And they impact across society and economy. Azerbaijan 2030, National Priorities on Social Economy Development Strategy, endorsed in February 21st, set five national priorities aligned with those in UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. One of them is great return to the liberated territories. After last years, glorious victory in the 44 days war and the liberation of territories occupied by Armenia for almost 30 years, the government of Azerbaijan, has big plans to rebuild cities and villages which completely destroy it on base smart cities and smart villages, green energy concepts. After the construction of these cities and villages, the return of the population to these lands, which made up 20% of the country's territory, will be ensured. All the technological environments and conditions of modern cities which these people are already a customer, will be created for the population of these cities and villages. A special working group of public officials has already created draft concept. We initiated dialogues with many leading international companies to explore the opportunities of cooperation in this regard. We are also studying materials of ITU global portal on environment and smart sustainable cities. Happy to note that the first smart village project as recently launched in Zangilan district. Another priority competitive human capital and the environment for modern innovations is related to digitalization. It envisages the transformation of digital society into a major force for development, the creation of an ecosystem that stimulate the creativity and innovation of society to increase the country's competitiveness and enhance the technological capacity of the economy. To achieve these goals, we apparently prepared the concept of digital transformation according to the recent degree of the president of Azerbaijan for improving governance in fields of digital transformation. To conclude my remarks, I would like once again to congratulate all the participants on this special day and wish every success to this event. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Minister. And very good to hear that despite all the specific challenges you faced, you were accelerating digital transformation with a range of initiatives, including I was pleased to hear smart villages. So congratulations and good luck with achieving your goals. And now to Ms. Jessica Rosenwassel, Acting Chairwoman, Federal Communications Commission United States of America. Thank you very much for being with us today. Could you tell us about the initiatives that are being taken in the US on digital transformation and especially how you're dealing with the challenges that we're all faced with the COVID-19 and what's your future plans for the post-COVID era? Over to you. Well, thank you. And let me say first that it is a great honor to join you virtually for this World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, or as many of us more affectionately known it, know it as the ITU's birthday. Obviously, this year marks the 156th anniversary of the ITU and it is proven to be one of the most resilient organizations in the world. And just looking at my fellow panelists from Ghana, Poland, Malaysia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Trinidad and Tobago, I'm struck by the fact that none of the countries who are represented here, including the United States, were among the 20 countries who signed the International Telegraph Convention on this day in 1865. And I really think that's a testament to how far we have come as a global community. And I think this history is a celebration of all we can accomplish when we work together in the spirit of regional and international cooperation. So I honored to join with my distinguished counterparts, the Honorable Ursula Uwusu Ikufu of Ghana, Minister Zagorski of Poland, Minister West of Trinidad and Tobago, Deputy Minister Li Zadeh of Azerbaijan, Secretary Siddiqui of Pakistan, Ms. Sharif and Mr. Johnson also thank you for this conversation. Now as Acting Chairwoman of the United States Federal Communications Commission, I believe the future belongs to the connected. No matter who you are or where you live in this world, you need access to modern communications to have a fair shot at 21st century success. And I believe that is no more urgent than it is right now because the COVID-19 pandemic has forced so many of us to take a digital leap in our daily lives. At the same time, this pandemic and this health crisis has exposed that not all of us are equipped for this technology-enabled future. There are big disparities when it comes to accessing the digital age. And being on the wrong side of the digital divide can mean lack of access to so much more than technology. It can mean lack of access to employment opportunities, news, education, healthcare and more. We know we are stronger when we are all connected and for our part, the FCC is committed to working with our international partners including the ITU to expand the benefits of the digital age to everyone everywhere and to achieve our common strategy under the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development. And I applaud the ITU for creating the global network resiliency platform as a clearing house for regulators to share solutions to the connectivity challenges raised by the pandemic. So in that spirit, I want to highlight what the US is doing in response to the pandemic and some of the lessons we have learned. First, we are implementing policies to keep citizens connected during the pandemic. Just last week, we went live with a historic new program to help families who are struggling to pay for internet service. We created a new emergency broadband benefit and it's for Americans who have lost income or have low incomes in their households during this pandemic and they are now eligible for a substantial discount on monthly internet service. We are also offering them a discount on a computer or tablet. This program will expand high speed connections and offer a way for those households that are struggling in this pandemic and it's associated economic crisis with a way to connect. We are also prioritizing the basic education needs of children by bringing a laser like focus on a specific access of the digital divide I call the homework gap. Our data show that as many as 16.9 million children in the US do not have reliable and consistent internet access at home. That means as long as some of our schools are still relying on part-time or full-time remote learning those students are locked out of the virtual classroom. I believe this is the coolest part of the digital divide and I am proud to say in the US we are making it a priority to fix it. Last week the FCC adopted rules to establish an emergency connectivity fund program to provide our nation's schools and libraries with more laptop and tablet computers, Wi-Fi hotspots and the resources to bring broadband connectivity to help students who lack reliable internet access at home. But of course I don't believe on this score the United States is alone. According to a report commissioned by the United Nations Children's Fund in the ITU more than 2 billion children around the world which is roughly 67% also fall into this homework gap. So as we explore opportunities to accelerate the decade of action I hope we can all consider a worldwide effort to close the homework gap so every student can get connected for education. Now between this emergency connectivity fund program and emergency broadband benefit program we are really investing in families and students and to put the scale of that investment in perspective the emergency connectivity fund is the largest single effort in our nation's history to make sure students have the broadband devices they need for school and the emergency broadband benefit is the largest ever broadband affordability program we've ever had. But those aren't the only steps we're taking to bridge the digital divide and looking ahead a few lessons stand out. To close our connectivity gaps we have got to do a better job of simply identifying them. The pandemic is exposed that broadband coverage maps in the United States are just not as accurate as they need to be. We don't know with total precision where broadband is and is not in this country and I think if we don't have proper maps we're never going to be able to target policy solutions effectively. So I stood up a new broadband data task force at the FCC to help us build the most accurate up to date maps where broadband is and is not throughout the country. This task force has already made real progress bringing on design and data architects and initiating a procurement for a base layer of the map but we're not just going to ask our operators where services. We're also trying to make it easy for consumers to tell us their stories about where service is and is not. And I think that together this will make sure that our efforts to bridge the digital divide are focused on the right places and capable of truly making a difference. Another lesson we have learned is that today's internet or yesterday's internet may not suffice for tomorrow's economy. For a long time when setting broadband standards for the nation the FCC used a download speed of 25 megabits per second and an upload speed of three megabits per second. It adopted that standard more than six years ago. I think this standard might be too low for a world that has moved so much of life online. I know in the U.S. there are so many households my own included where multiple users are video calling streaming entertainment searching online and going to school at the same time. That's why I believe we need to recognize that with extraordinary changes and how we're using the internet our standards for high speed internet service will need to be rethought to. And the last lesson I'd like to highlight is that the pandemic has proven for all of us like nothing before that broadband is no longer nice to have it's need to have. This crisis has revealed a lot and when we get to the other side we need to rebuild all of our economies and I believe and I hope you do too that closing the digital divide is the right place to start. So I look forward to working with you and our international partners and I look forward to learning from you and sharing with you our own lessons as we move forward. Thank you. Many thanks, Rosen Mosel. Thank you for emphasizing your willingness to work together with ITU and all partners and it's good to hear how you're addressing one of the major reasons for people not being connected and that's the cost and affordability. I'm good to hear mention of the importance of standards one of ITU's core activities of course. So thank you very much. I now turn into Mr. Ajmal Awan member international coordination ministry of information technology and telecommunication in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Thanks very much for being with us. Please tell us about your prime minister's digital Pakistan vision and please tell us about Pakistan's digital landscape and policies for digital transformation. Thank you very much Secretary General. I really appreciate inviting us today and it's great to hear from Jessica from the USA my other fellows from Azerbaijan, Trinidad from Ghana, Poland and others. Congratulations to ITU and all the participants coming together and joining the session and happy world telecommunication and information society today. Pakistan is actively working to implement the digital Pakistan vision that encompasses digital transformation to the citizens, to the government offices and businesses. Pakistan is actively working on implementation of a lot of policies in the country. There are policies like right of way policy that removes impediments towards the growth of telecom sector and infrastructure development given by rights and making it easier for investors to build infrastructure telecom infrastructure in the country. There was a policy rolling spectrum strategy that was defined that helps the 5G implementation digital Pakistan policy there was another policy approved recently for mobile device manufacturing in the country. There is a telecommunication policy there is a national cybersecurity policy national broadband policy and there are investments in IT parts and Pakistan is working actively in setting up excellent center for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, internet of things, e-gaming, etc. There is an organization in Pakistan that is not for profit organization called USF Universal Service Fund that is actively working for deployment of digital infrastructure in the unserved and underserved areas of Pakistan. Pakistan is targeted to commercially launch 5G by December 2022 with aim to increase IT exports to 5 billion by 5 billion US dollars by 2023. There is another organization under the ministry of information technology and telecommunication government of Pakistan that is called IGNITE. IGNITE is an organization that supports entrepreneurship youth development women empowerment and organization has set up 5 national incubation centers in the country in all the 5 major cities of the major provinces. We work very closely with education and health departments to connect schools and hospitals with broadband and enable e-education and e-health services. We are working actively with ITU and with World Bank and we are doing the mapping of the areas where there are gaps in connectivity in health and in education. There is another initiative it's called Digi Skills so there is a website you may want to browse that it's called digiskills.pk and it's an initiative of the ministry of information technology and telecommunication and there are a number of trainings available about 1.5 million trainings have been conducted so far through that portal. Ministry of information and information technology and telecommunication government of Pakistan has launched a number of digital solutions to facilitate its citizens so there was a COVID-19 portal that was set up for facilitating the citizens during the COVID pandemic there's exercise and taxation portal because the government is working equally with our taxation department to make it easier for people to use telecom services with minimum taxes. Pakistan's citizen portal is another one that facilitates the citizens people can go online they can register their complaints and there's active observation and action taken by the government agencies to look into those complaints there's another application called BETI app BETI means in Urdu language in the local language means daughter and the application is used for women empowerment and it's also for women entrepreneurship development there's another application that was recently launched and it's called city Islamabad application that also has one module for women harassment if there are any issues women can go online they can register a complaint and there will be an active monitoring of the portal the police department and the concerned departments will take action immediately our ministry of information technology in telecom is committed to reduce digital divide between ruler and urban communities and it focuses on youth empowerment and gender equality in Pakistan Pakistan has over 100 million broadband subscribers and it is still growing Pakistan is ranked fourth in the global freelance industry providing excellent technical resources in various technological fields e-commerce is an important tool for women empowerment in Pakistan as we are focusing on the economic inclusivity of our women who are 52% of our population we fully support ITUs initiatives like Giga like connect to recover smart villages in Pakistan and our ministry is committed to play its due role as a focal ministry to engage with all the stakeholders to spearhead the implementation of ITUs initiatives in the country we look forward to a strategic partnership with ITU to pursue ICT for development agenda in Pakistan we look forward to work with all of you all the countries in bilateral relations where we can support each other in the ICT sector and we work very closely with other international organizations also where we learn from each other we support each other and we work for the betterment of our countries for the betterment of our people and to make this world a better place thank you thank you very much very much Mr. Awan and that's a very good objective for all of us good to hear your encouragement of startups in Pakistan including in manufacturing we hope very much they will join our new SME membership category in ITU it's a chance to form partnerships with other SMEs as well as with all the big industry players and very good to hear of the initiatives to help women especially to seek help and also good to hear your outreach to the rural communities and again a development of smart villages congratulations and good luck with all those initiatives and now turning to Mr. Robert Opp Chief Digital Officer United Nations Development Program UNDP Mr. Opp, thank you for joining us we know UNDP has been gathering many interesting insights on government's digital responses to COVID could you tell us a bit about what kinds of requests you are receiving in this regard what are the main challenges that you see governments facing in the implementation of these digital responses Mr. Opp Thank you so much Deputy Secretary General and thanks indeed to our friends and partners at the International Telecommunication Union for the opportunity to speak this morning at this year's celebration of the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day Excellencies, honourable guests distinguished delegates ladies and gentlemen indeed COVID has led to an unprecedented pace of digital acceleration among many governments worldwide and as we've heard already this morning from other distinguished panelists this is happening on a whole set of different areas and spectrums in terms of what's going on in these across societies at UNDP we have been tracking over 250 digital responses to the COVID pandemic in our country offices alone not including government independent efforts in other international organizations the level of activity is absolutely enormous in terms of digital response and these responses range across a number of different areas so for example in infrastructure and capacity building helping governments to work remotely where for example in Sudan UNDP helps civil servants work online from home by supplying laptops and remote connections Kazakhstan were providing digital literacy for civil servants and then there's the sort of space of digital solutions and this includes e-government services like for example in Bangladesh where the virtual court system has been put online that has been able to take at least 70,000 cases e-commerce platforms that are able to bring informal traders online in order to continue their work on platforms like in Sri Lanka where chatbots are being used in local languages to communicate information about COVID-19 and then governments who are asking about technology guidance and policies so where it's necessary to put in place data privacy policies or guidelines for example around data innovation digital economy strategy where we're working in places like Djibouti and Thailand and so we see that the range of government responses across all these different areas is really tremendous and creative and a few things that in terms of overall trends that I would highlight is that you know we do see the governments that have invested more in digital infrastructure prior to the COVID pandemic really were able to respond more quickly the federal secretary of Pakistan just spoke and Pakistan is a good example where having a digital identity system in place and having some infrastructure in place allowed for the scale of social protection programs in a massive way across a very small amount of time the honorable minister from Ghana also spoke about how having some of these pieces of infrastructure in place is very important for responding another trend that we see is that coming out of the COVID pandemic we see more interest from governments in looking at digital transformation from a whole of society perspective and we believe it is important to take a holistic approach and again the honorable minister of Ghana mentioned this sort of idea of looking at all of society all parts of the population from national government to local government to all different areas looking at marginalized groups and so on in an efficient and effective way of approaching digital transformation but ultimately one that really tries to leave no one behind and we believe that there are a number of foundational types of investments that can be made foundational technology layers such as identity payment infrastructure and looking at key components like infrastructure regulatory environments, innovation ecosystem and so on and we know that we have to be intentionally inclusive in our approach to digital. Digital platforms in themselves are not inherently good or bad but we must make sure that we are being intentionally inclusive when we apply them and this goes to the point of the honorable minister from Trinidad and Tobago who mentioned the citizen centric approach it's really important to put people at the center leaving no one behind Finally I would just say one of the important parts of digital course that we've talked about and one of the biggest challenges is around digital skills and we're pleased to be working with the ITU and close partnership to develop a joint facility on digital capacity building as one of the initiatives that is coming out of the secretary general's digital cooperation roadmap and it also involves creating a multi stakeholder network that brings together entities that are able to offer support for digital skills building together with those that are working for those services and we look forward to building with all of our member state partners our UN family partners civil society partners a kind of a network that can really bring us all together and overcome these challenges that still exist and finally I would say as other speakers have said there is an opportunity in all of this to really learn lessons from the global COVID crisis as unfortunately it probably is not our last time for the opportunity to join you this morning. Thank you very much Mr. Hopp and thank you very much for your review. It seems that a lot of good will come out of this pandemic in terms of lessons learned inclusivity affordability sustainability so let's make sure that we are better prepared if we face this situation again in the future. So thanks also to you for your collaboration with ITU on building digital skills so we're coming to the end of our time so let me thank again all our distinguished speakers who have illustrated very eloquently why this year may be more than any previous year we have reason to celebrate the benefits of telecommunication and ICTs that are helping people and economies overcome the terrible challenges we are facing. We have heard of the many innovations and strategies that are making digital transformation happen today to the benefit of society sustainability and the economies. As we know there are still many that are unconnected especially those living in rural and remote communities and we've heard of the many efforts that have been made to bring affordable connection to these people including in many cases work on smart villages but as the Secretary General said these efforts now have a greater urgency than ever before and we need a new strategy to encourage investment and ensure we all collaborate together. One thing that covered is that we are all dependent on each other. We are only safe if everyone else is safe. Multilateralism is more important now than ever before and so ITU's role now is more important than ever before in its long history. Excellencies ladies and gentlemen, their colleagues and friends this brings us to the close of our world telecommunication and information for the 90 day 2021 celebration. We invite you all to visit our dedicated website for WTISD as well as the Connect 2030 MicroSite and to share your experiences and success stories with us so that others might benefit. The link to access all information is on the screen. So on behalf of ITU I would like to thank you all for joining us today. To close we will leave you with some images of the history of ITU from 1865 and some previous WTISD celebrations to the sounds of the ITU Anthem which was first played on the 17th of May 1965 to mark the 100th anniversary of ITU's foundation. We wish you all a happy remainder of the day and keep safe and well.