 And now back to the session, and I will call on the floor Professor Johannes Buer, Chair of the Department of Media and Information Michigan State University and Associate Editor's Telecommunication Policy. Please, you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Your Excellency, honorable guests, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great pleasure and honor to serve as the Chairperson of the session and to moderate three excellent speakers. This is the session that you probably all have been waiting for. It's great anticipation. I regret to tell you, though, that you have to wait a little bit longer until you can access the report. I think it's under embargo until about 10.30, and there will also be digital copies at the end of the session available for you. I am, as was said in the introduction, I am mainly a researcher. I work at a university. I have for many, many years worked with regulators, public policy makers, people from industry to help them understand and work, find better ways to harness information and communication technology for society. And I have to say this report is unique, as was already mentioned, because it is driven by the member states of the ITU. It is the one index that is available globally that is most strongly based in consultation with individual members, and also it requires a lot of input from the member states. So I also would like to recognize everybody for the effort to contribute this report. Now, this morning's session will have three experts from the ITU's ICT data and statistics division, and I will introduce them as they get to the floor and present their insights. First, we have Dr. Rati Skrednatsi. He is the head of the ICT data and statistics division at the ITU. The floor is yours, please. Good morning. It is my pleasure to present to you the latest edition of the Measuring the Information Society report. This annual report presents a global and regional overview of the latest developments regarding information and communication technologies based on internationally comparable data and agreed methodologies. The report starts with an overview of the most important long-term trends in the ICT sector. The second and third chapters are devoted to the ICT Development Index, both at the global level and the regional level. The area of ICTs is very dynamic and another digital revolution is approaching, one which will transform business, government and society. Four emerging ICT trends which are at the heart of this revolution are analyzed, namely the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data analytics and artificial intelligence. Last but not least, this year's report features for the first time country profiles, highlighting the ICT market structure and the latest developments in 192 economies worldwide. Let me introduce the main findings of the fair chapter. There has been sustained growth in the availability of communications in the past decade, led by growth in mobile cellular telephony and more recently in mobile broadband. The number of mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide exceeds the global population. One of the key findings that emerges from the ITU data collection is the rapid growth in mobile broadband services. The number of mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide now exceeds 50 per 100 inhabitants. The advent of smartphones and tablets and introduction of new mobile technologies is accelerating this trend. With LTA now available to most mobile users, there is almost linear growth in the number of individuals using the Internet. According to ITU estimates now 48% of individuals are using the Internet. The number of fixed telephone subscriptions has continued to fall. The total number of these subscriptions has fallen from a peak of 1.26 billion in 2006 to an estimated 972 million in 2017. Worldwide, the number of fixed broadband subscriptions has risen to an estimated 979 million in 2017. A figure which, for the first time, exceeds the fixed telephone subscriptions. Since 2013, the number of active mobile broadband subscriptions is growing rapidly in developing countries and in LDCs. Despite the overall growth, there are substantial digital divides between countries and regions and between developed and developing countries, particularly LDCs. There are twice as many mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in developed countries compared to developing countries. Most mobile subscribers worldwide now have access to higher quality networks. However, this transition has not been immediately paralleled by a comparable upsurge in the number of Internet users. Worldwide, the number of fixed broadband subscriptions has risen from 220 million in 2005 to some estimated 979 million in 2017. The most striking feature of this chart is the exceptionally low penetration rate that it shows for LDCs. I give you one example. The ITU Africa region, with a population of almost 1 billion, is estimated to have only some 4 million fixed broadband subscriptions. Fewer than the number of fixed broadband subscriptions in Belgium, which has a population of less than 11.5 million. But it should be noted that the rate of growth has been growing. So, to some extent, dependent on the prior availability of fixed telephone networks, which are much less widespread in many developing countries and particular LDCs than they are in developed countries. The bandwidth available has also risen rapidly, particularly in developed countries. Charts show that uneven distribution of fixed broadband subscriptions by speed. Banned width available through fixed broadband networks in developing countries is much less than in developed countries. The latest ITU data estimate that more than half of the world's households now have access to the Internet at home, compared with less than 20% in 2005. Growth ranged between 7.5 and 13.5% each year between 2015. But the rate of growth in the last two years has been slower, at or below 5%. Households in developed countries are almost twice as likely to be online as those in developing countries, and more than five times as likely as those in LDCs. ITUs connect 2020 targets agreed in 2014. Call for 50% of households in developing countries and 50% of households in LDCs to have Internet access by 2020. By 2017, it is estimated that 84.4% of households in developed countries will have Internet access, compared with 42.9% in developing countries, and just 14.7% in LDCs. As can be seen from charts, the gap between LDCs and developing countries in general appears to be widening, though the figure for LDCs is now close to achieving the Connect 2020 target set in 2014. Similarly, the percentage of individuals using the Internet in developed countries, developing countries and LDCs are approaching ITUs Connect 2020 targets. The chart shows a substantial digital divide between developed countries, in which 81% of individuals are now estimated to use the Internet, and developing countries in which the figure is 41.3%. And a similar digital divide between these groups of countries and the LDCs, for which the comparable figure is 17.5%. ITUs Connect 2020 targets agreed in 2014, called for a proportion of individuals using the Internet to reach 50% in developing countries and 20% in LDCs by 2020. There are significant differences in the level of Internet adoption by different groups within society. In report, particular attention has been paid to the digital gender gap, while increasing attention is also being paid to differences between age groups. There is a significant gender digital divide. Data compiled by ITUs suggests that this digital gender gap is relatively small in developed countries, more pronounced in developing countries and substantial in the LDCs. These charts suggest that the digital gender gap fell between 2013 and 2017 in developed countries. The gap in developed countries is now estimated to be just 2.8%. It is much more pronounced at 16, 1% in developing countries. The digital gender gap is most pronounced rising to 32.9% in LDCs. In LDCs, only one out of seven women uses the Internet compared to one of five men. Digital divide between age groups. The proportion of people aged between 15 and 24 who are online is estimated to be over 70% worldwide, compared with just 48% of the population overall. In most countries, Internet adoption among those aged over 75 is below 10%. These are main findings of Chapter 1. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for these insightful remarks. Indeed, a picture of progress on the one hand and of challenges on the other hand. So thank you very much for this very detailed presentation. I would like to now call on our second speaker this morning, Ms. Esperanza Magbantai, who is senior statistician at the ICT Data and Statistics Division. Thank you very much, sir, and good morning, everyone. So this morning, I'm going to present to you the report, particularly Chapters 2 and 3, on the ICT Development Index, focusing both at the global results and the regional results. So to start with is the IDI conceptual framework, which depicts the three stages of ICT development. First is on the ICT readiness, ICT use, and ICT impact. So ICT readiness is the availability of ICT infrastructure, and ICT use is the intensity of ICT usage in the country. So these first two stages refers exactly to the first two sub-indices that are included in the ICT Development Index. The third one is on ICT impact, and to reach there, you need to have the ICT skills. That is why we have the third sub-index on ICT skills. So the ICT Development Index is divided into three sub-indices, ICT access, ICT use, and ICT skills, which is composed of 11 indicators. These 11 indicators that we included in the index this year uses data that were collected from 176 economies. The referring to data from the end of 2016, these data were directly collected from countries in the beginning of this year. As mentioned yesterday, there is a revised set of indicators that will be used in IDI 2018, and more information about these indicators will be presented later on in the EGT session that will be shown to you this afternoon. So the top 10 IDI countries, we heard already that Iceland topped the IDI ranking this year. This is followed by other economies from Asia Pacific and the rest from Europe. So these countries are top performing because they have high levels of economic development, literacy, and skills that are necessary for their citizens to make full advantage or take full advantage of the use of ICTs. So the other economies I will read them is since I'm not sure whether you can read a screen from the back. We have Iceland, Korea, Switzerland, Denmark, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, China, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg and Japan as the top 10. The most dynamic countries which are the countries that have made significant improvements in terms of their values or ranking are from the middle income developing countries. Most of the growth are coming specifically from the USUB index, particularly from the mobile broadband indicator. So the top two countries we saw this morning is Uzbekistan for the chains in ranking while it's Namibia for the change of values. So other countries that have improved a lot in terms of the values include Namibia, Iran, Gabon, Laos, PDR, Cyprus, Indonesia, Bolivia, Timor-Lest, Turkey, China, Myanmar, Uzbekistan and Nicaragua. So those that are mentioned are the countries that have made significant improvements in terms of their IDI values. However, these parties in IDI values still exist. And we found in this report particularly that LDCs are still falling behind in terms of their ICT developments. So you can see from this map that the high values, so the IDI we divided them into four groups. There's the low group which is represented in yellow, medium which is represented in green, upper which is represented in blue and the high group which is represented by the red colors. So those countries that fall in the low category, we also call them the least connected countries. And it is to note that 37 out of the 44 countries that fall into these categories are also the LDCs. We have also looked at the differences in terms of the value of the highest ranking country in the IDI and the lowest value of the lowest ranking country in the IDI. And we found that the gap is increasing. So this shows that the countries in this group, the LCC is still need catching up in terms of their ICT developments. So in terms of the regional IDI analysis, so this is basically where we look at the progress that are made by countries and we group them according to the ITU regions. What we found is that there are still considerable differences between geographical regions as well as countries within each region. So you'll see from this chart that the blue ones are from Europe which occupies mostly the highest values in the IDI and the rest of the regions are represented in green and in other colors. So I will be providing more details in the next slides. So as mentioned, Europe continues to lead the way in terms of ICT developments. Most of the countries in these regions are above the world average and very close to the developed countries average. So the developments in this region is particularly on their household internet access and progress in internet use. The two countries that are dynamic in this region includes Cyprus and Turkey and this is of course referring to the values and the progress in terms of their ICT developments. In the Americas, this is the region where improvements are recorded in the middle ranking countries which are coming from South and Central America as well as in the Caribbean. So this region is a bit mixed because we have United States and Canada who are top in the region and then we have a one LDC which is Haiti at the other end of the distribution. So the top countries in this region in terms of their dynamic movements are Bolivia and Nicaragua. Uruguay is the third. These are countries that have made progress under IDI values as well as Grenada and Suriname. And the progress in this region is mainly coming from mobile cellular and mobile broadband subscriptions. The CIS is the region which is the most homogeneous among the different regions. The values that are referring in this chart for the countries that are included in this region are almost the same and so the range between the lowest and the highest values in this region is very small. Uzbekistan is the most dynamic country in this region followed by Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. And again the indicator that has made great progress in this region is referring to mobile cellular and mobile broadband. The Asia-Pacific region is the most heterogeneous region where we have the top, one of the top IDI countries, Korea and also economies such as Hong Kong and also some LDCs that are falling behind in terms of their ICT developments. Iran is the country that has made great progress in terms of their dynamic movement in the IDI followed by Laos, PDR, Indonesia, Timoles, China and Myanmar. These are the countries that have made great progress in their IDI values. In the Arab states region, the strongest improvements were seen in the middle income economies and Algeria, Oman, Kuwait, Lebanon and Morocco are the countries that has made great progress in terms of their IDI performance in terms of the values. And the indicator on mobile cellular and mobile broadband are again the indicators that has contributed to this dynamic and great progress in the region. Africa value for the IDI is about half the global average. This is the region where we can see most of the LDCs although it is worth noting that progress has been made by most of the LDCs although not at the same speed as other developing countries. The Namibia, Gabon, Mauritius, Sambia and Cote d'Ivoire are the countries that have made great progress in terms of their IDI values. And this is mainly due to their great improvements in mobile cellular again and mobile broadband indicators. So those are the results of the IDI at the global and regional level and I invite you to check this link available on the screen. This is the values of the IDI, the results of the IDI which is available through the ITU data visualization tool. Good morning everyone. Thank you. Thank you very much for this very detailed presentation and I would like to now call on our third speaker this morning. Last but not least, Miss Lourdes Montenegro to talk about emerging trends. Good morning everyone, Salem. So chapter one to three of the MASR 2017 deals with the past and present of ICT development as you have seen. However, since ICT is constantly evolving at increasingly faster rates, we will need to talk about the future of ICT development now. So chapter four of MASR 2017 discusses four emerging ICT trends that are forming a new ICT ecosystem. These are artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things. Now these four ICT trends are discussed comprehensively in the chapter. So I am not going to go into the details of this discussion. Instead, I encourage everyone to read the report and share it with your friends, family on social media and everyone around you. So in the report, these trends will be discussed in terms of their context, what they are, what their contribution is to the achievement of sustainable development goals, their uptake in different world regions as well as what are the enabling policies that can encourage their diffusion and last but not least, since this is a statistics symposium, potential indicators for tracking progress. So again, I urge everyone to read and download and share the report and it will be discussed there in great detail. What I will do is basically just make three important points, just three key takeaways from the chapter basically. So three things to remember. One, and this is very important point, there is exponential development of advanced ICTs, exponential. So we are talking about exponential development in artificial intelligence, big data, cloud and the Internet of Things. And this exponential development will have massive consequences. So we will talk a bit more about what those consequences will be and this is very important for us in the policy world. The second important point that would be important to remember from this chapter would be that there are three, again, three things, the power of three, three things that are needed to harness these advanced ICTs to make sure that countries at all levels of development benefit fully from these advanced ICTs as well as minimize the risks and harmful consequences. So first, we have physical infrastructure, physical infrastructure requirements. You need connectivity services and last but not least, you need complementary human capital, you need skills. And then the last key takeaway message from this chapter is that the time to do measurement, to do metrics for the international community to come up with internationally harmonized indicators and ways of tracking progress in terms of the adoption and application of these new technologies is now, it is now. So I hope you can see clearly, but the important point here is that artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and IAT are closely interlinked with each other. They work together. They work in tandem. They're not alone. They form an emerging ICT ecosystem basically. So if you're wondering why, think about this. When you talk about artificial intelligence, what is it? It's algorithms and data that are used to meet certain objectives, whether it's prediction, whether it's certain decisions. It's supposed to work like the human brain basically. But for that, you need inputs. You need resources. And these inputs come in the form of data, massive amounts of data, which normal computing technology cannot process. So you need cloud services to do that at the moment. So it's being processed in large data centers in high performing computing infrastructure. So they work closely in tandem and Internet of Things creates a lot of data, real-time data that's streaming all the time, massive amounts of data. So all these four work together and it's primarily led by artificial intelligence and the key technology. Just to hammer the point about how exponential this is, I'm going to show you a stick figure. That's what we mean by exponential development. So there's a tiny human being there before the curve goes up. Because we don't see the future. We can't see the massive increase. We are at that point where we only see the past. And when we only look at the past, we think it's linear, removing in a linear fashion. But according to most industry experts, it isn't. It's actually moving really, really fast. And if you follow the news, for example, I was following the release of new phones, for example, there is now neural processing units in new smartphones, which means that you no longer need data centers to upload the data and process it there. Your phone can do it this year, some phones. We now live in a world where computer chips are everywhere and they communicate with each other. People in a phone, in a car, don't even think about a self-driving car. A normal car, a normal modern car is about 150 to 200 microprocessor control systems, including the windshield wipers. And just last year, an artificial intelligence defeated one of the world's best Go players. Go is a game that's said to have more moves than chess. In chess, after the two moves, you only have hundreds of different moves. In Go, you have hundreds of thousands of different moves after the first two moves. So you cannot brute force it. You need good algorithms, you need good AI to do that. And that was just last year, and it's making even more progress this year. So I will not go into that in more details because later, tomorrow, very exciting, I'm already plugging it, there will be a session on emerging ICT trends, and it will go into that in more detail. So look forward to that. Now, third key thing to remember as we said, that there are massive consequences. But what are these massive consequences? So two massive consequences. One is that it seems to be that there might be, again, a new digital divide. So we're still dealing with the old digital divide. We're still trying to solve it. We're making a lot of efforts to close it, and it's working. We're closing it. But new technologies are bringing in new divides, which we have to work on as well. As we can see, for example, this is example data from Cisco on cloud traffic in different regions. So we see North America is very high with blue followed by Asia Pacific, and then we have Western Europe, and then the rest of the other regions in the world, or areas of the world. So it's shaping up to have some implications, global implications. Another example of this particular possibly new divides is this is not in the report, but I just got this last night. It just came in very new. So this is a chart of publications in artificial intelligence. So if you just go to the journals, to the scientific journals in English, by the way, and you just graph which countries publish the most papers on this new field, you will see these different countries. You have China, United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, India, Spain, France, South Korea, and Italy. Now remember, this is the technology of the future. So we will have to deal with these new divides, and we will have to be careful to make sure that these new divides are also being minimized. The other important implication is that these new technologies have massive consequences on the structure of the economy and employment. In case we don't understand this clearly, let me give an example. Some countries in the world, for example, like India and the Philippines, have massive outsourcing sectors that rely on ICTs. Many of those jobs can be automated and done by machines. Doctors can be replaced by machines. Lawyers can be replaced by machines. Many things can be replaced by machines, even at current technology. And it is coming soon. So as policymakers, this is one of the important things that we also need to remember. Now the question, the second point, the second takeaway message from the chapter is, how do we harness, how do we unleash the power of these new technologies? So three things. We need the physical infrastructure. They need to be available. They need to be of high quality. So we need to look at the adoption rates of fixed and mobile broadband, the quality of the connection in terms of latency and download speed and all those other measures, international bandwidth, data centers, availability of devices, ownership and use. Then the other important ingredient is the availability of connectivity services, internet, all IP networks, next generation networks. And then last but not least, complementary user skills. We need a digitally illiterate workforce, data scientists, computer scientists, increasingly powerful software that empowers users with appropriate skills. So what is the role for public policy? Of course, there's always a role there. So one key thing is to ensure and facilitate entrepreneurship and innovation. So as you have seen, a lot of the new technologies come from entrepreneurship and innovation and government can play a role that facilitates that. The other is to make sure that there's infrastructure, that there's sufficient license and then license spectrum, for example, that there's information security and privacy in place so that people are encouraged to use new technologies. And education policy is also very important. Finally, let me close with this. As we said, the time for metrics is now. We need to start measuring because the new technologies are developing really fast. So once we wake up, it's already done. So how do we move towards new metrics? How do we have new measurements? The thing is, industry and the private sector has filled the void where governments have not yet come up with measures because they need it for their operations. But there is no agreed conventions. There's no internationally harmonized statistics and indicators. It's hard to benchmark when you have different sources that disagree with each other. Also, the data is not available wildly. It's behind paywalls. It's inaccessible to many users. Now, the good news is that we can use new technologies to harness, to solve the data issue directly from the digital infrastructure and services. And we've seen that from our parallel sessions yesterday very clearly. Networks and sensors and devices could generate trusted databases. And so government in the international sector can curate the data and make sure that they are valid and available. So the public sector can therefore be a facilitator of data collection through open data systems, curator and archiver of data and transparent algorithms. And finally, our role as the international community is to develop internationally harmonized indicators on advanced ICTs now. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for this outlook on emerging trends. We started this session a few minutes late, about 20 minutes late. So maybe we can add 10 minutes past the hour to enable our discussion. But before we go into discussion, I would like to make an announcement that is that you all will receive a digital copy or already are receiving digital copies of the report, which of course will sidetrack now attention as you're looking up how you're ranked this year. But I'd like to open the floor now for discussion. This was a wealth of information, very, very differentiated information. We see enormous progress on the one hand, and we see continuing challenges, both with regard to the existing technologies as well as with emerging technologies. I'm actually quite, I've been around quite some time. I remember the Maitland Commission report in 1981. Who in here remembers that report also? Raise your hands if you do. Very few people. At that point in time, ladies and gentlemen, I will call upon you in just one second. One of the findings was it was very eye-opening. It really shifted the attention of the global community. At that time, the city of Tokyo had more telephones than the entire continent of Africa. And we had not really realized this at this point. And the second finding was that how important information communications technology is for economic development. What progress since then, as it is reflected in this report today? But there was an intervention in the middle. Please, the floor is yours. Gentlemen in the middle first, yes. Please go ahead. Thank you very much, Chair, for giving me the opportunity. In fact, yesterday we have a sufficient debate on the calculation of the IDI index by the ITU. And it has been very well explained by the presenters and Mr. Sanu himself. I just want to make a short comment on the presentation of the ITU today. When I see the top 10 countries, my country Pakistan is in the yellow area, which is the least connected by, as per the definition of the ITU, despite the fact that my growth rate in the broadband is about 90% for the last many months and years. And I just want to make a short comment that if I have to do to improve the ICT IDI index, I have nothing to do with the ICT, rather just to reduce my population. Thank you. At the beginning, I would like to say a few words about the Tunisian government. Once again, I would like to welcome all of you, and I wish them good health and well-being. I would also like to thank the United Nations for their calls. I would like to mention that a number of calls were made on the basis of the presentation and the high-end technology which was called this publication. And in this regard, if we take into consideration the quick and quick technological advancements and the new uses of the whole network and the information, and the goals that were set by the United Nations on the one hand and on the other, the Tunisian government has some recommendations in this field. First of all, I think that we have to start in a situation and to address the related issues in the future, let's talk about it in The Crossing Matrix, which is composed of 11 steps to the international community of information and the goals of the second half of the 17th century. Also, as an important point of view, the development of publications, as expressed by The Tracking Indicators, which was expressed by Mr. Hallourd from a very young age, the idea of creating a continuous group with the aim of publishing the following documents and the contribution in the reports that will be submitted in the year 2025 and then in the year 2030 at the annual level of the United Nations. This allows us to take into account the remaining published documents that have been published by the United Nations to share the goals of the second half, which are the IAEG SDGs. Thank you for this intervention. I had two more interventions, one right to my left and then one in the back. Why don't you maybe take these two and then I give a chance to the panelists. Good morning to all of you. Let me first congratulate the countries which have come first and the countries which have improved in their ranking and their score. But I have one submission to make. Last time, yesterday also, I have pointed out, this IDI score and IDI indicator is not reflecting the two developments in a country. It's not reflecting the growth in a country. So in that sense, it seems to be a misnomer for me. And measuring countries which are having diverse geographical area, diverse population, diverse problems, different characteristics, measuring the ranking based on a particular set of indicators of all the 199 countries, I think it's not fair. There should be some parameters related to the growth should be taken into account. It's not the static indicator. It should be a dynamic. How much progress has been made over a period of time? Due weightage should be given to the population, the effort being put in by the country. India is making a lot of effort, a lot of investment. It's the second largest network after China in the world. But you see the ranking is coming out to be 134. Do we deserve that ranking? The answer is no. So my request is that there should be, the indicator should be inclusive of the incremental growth taking place every year. Secondly, the new framework has been revised, which is going to come into force in 2018 onwards. India is not agreeing to all the parameters. And in this regard, we have sent our representation to the Secretary General. Our minister has sent representation to Secretary General that we'll be sending contribution on this issue. So we'll be taking up this issue in EGTI and EGH Forum as well. And whatever new indicators are being framed in future, they should take care of the geographical area, population and terrain. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, so in the interest of time, let me give the panelists maybe a chance to briefly respond and then we have several more interventions. Thank you very much. So I have three questions that I would like to address. The question from our colleague from Pakistan mentioned that the country is one of the LCCs and represented in yellow in the map, and that it does not necessarily take into account the progress that has been made in the country and the size of the country. So I just want to address that also together with the question that is coming from, that came from India in terms of the geographical and the terrain situation in the country. So yesterday we had already mentioned that the IDI does not have necessarily the direct correlation with the geography of the country. And this was one of the results that came out from one of the reports on measuring the information society that we did that in two or three years ago. We have done an in-depth analysis also in terms of the relationship with IDI and other factors that may contribute or may hinder the developments of ICT developments in countries. We found out that specifically geography doesn't have a direct impact or direct correlation with IDI values or IDI progress. We can take a country as big as China who has shown big improvements and as well as high values in terms of their IDI scores and a country which has a similar situation which is still not at the same position. So geography does not necessarily have a direct correlation in terms of the IDI values. Instead it's the level of ICT of GNI per capita. It's also the level of urbanization in the country as well as the level of skills of the individuals to be able to use ICTs. So there are other factors and geography is definitely not one of them and I would like to really emphasize that because that is one of the main findings of the report that we published a while ago and it has been coming here with discussions and questions. Another point that I want to mention is on the comment that came from Tunisia in terms of the need to develop indicators and indicators that will be used to track the sustainable development goals. This is of course an area that we are not forgetting. The work will be presented later on in the Parallel session. It is a work that is being carried out together with other partners who are members of the partnership on measuring ICT for development. We are putting together a task group that is composed of a number of international organizations as well as experts in countries that will look at ICT indicators in different teams, in different sectors, not just focusing on indicators that are currently included in the SDG monitoring framework. As you may know we are limited with seven ICT indicators in the framework and there are other ICT indicators that may need to be tracked for countries to be able to see where they stand in terms of their ICT developments. So I just want to stress those points. Thank you very much. Thank you, Esperanza. I now have an intervention on my right-hand side in the middle of the room. Please to introduce yourself for the rest of us. Thank you, Mr. President. Good afternoon on the chat. We have all seen for the map of Africa, the John Party or the figure chat. And then we take 140 positions. So I think in the parameters that we have taken into account there are certain parties that we have not taken into account. Even if we say the geography does not take into account but the surface of the area quickly takes into account. We have seen in several cases that small countries have taken the first place. So the chat is vast. And we have connections between the cities. For example, the cities of the desert where you have 300 or 400 km to be connected by an optical fiber system. It is a colossal expense. For example, the geography and the distance, it plays a great role. And we take into account in the parameters that have made the planning of the cities. It is this element, this spirit of things. Because we have worked a lot and we have made systems of the sort of rural areas. We have worked on that. There have been colossal efforts that have been deployed. And then we have seen no result of the fight that has come out in this passage. So it is very important to take into account these types of parameters. And it is degrading. Every time we see each other in our country, the chat goes down, down, down. Although we are parents, there are considerable efforts that have been deployed. And that is why I ask if we have seen a lot of countries that have large surfaces, deserts. They come in the last position. And that is a real problem. Where? We put the classification apart from these countries with their classification. And then the small countries advanced in their classification too. And then the small countries, plus the large surface countries, to put them together in the calculation system. I think it can help us to be classified in the best position. Thank you. We have one more question, about the measurement information society report. We would like to make just a point with regards to what Pakistan and India just said about the population. In Egypt, we have the same problem of the population that is under the growth that is being invested and is being happening in Egypt. So this is one point. And we would like the I-2 Second, we are very happy with the new technologies that are now showing and they are growing worldwide, so that's really nice. But we want to take care that the new indicators that are going to be integrated into the new IDI should reflect what is happening in the majority of the world. We are pretty aware of the technological revolution. But the IDI, I think that it should represent what is happening in the majority of the world, not just the evolving ones. Thank you. Thank you. And I had somebody up here. Yes, please. Thank you. Hello. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Director. Mr. Mansoor Achari from CITC, Saudi Arabia. I believe the IDI that we had, I mean the ranking based on was set in 2009 and ITU and the expert groups plus the subgroup that was working in the IDI that was approved in the last meeting for the expert group in Geneva with the 14 indicators. I think we're expecting to have some highlights on the new indicators that will clear the confusion of the old IDI and moving to the new IDI and the trend of that some indicators have changed. And I believe the concern from most of the countries, Bangladesh, from India, from Pakistan, from Egypt, will be more clarified that we are moving towards the new IDI that will be set for the new indicators and the ranking will be approved in a better way that can really measure what the technology is moving to. So based on that, I would love that we could clarify or just to have on the screen the 14 new indicators that will make countries more likely to be confident of the new ranking how it's going to be set and how things will be moving forward from here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I just want to also reemphasize the last point that came from Saudi Arabia. So the results of the expert group extraordinary meeting that was held in March will be presented this afternoon. There will be a slide that will highlight the 14 indicators that were agreed during that meeting. And I fully agree that may clarify some of the concerns, particularly that some of the indicators are not just divided by the population, but instead by the total of that subcategory. So for example, fixed broadband subscription will not just be divided by the population, it will be instead disaggregated by the types of speed and then divided by the total subscription. So that means if you are doing well in terms of the highest speed broadband subscription, you will be showing your progress out of that indicator. So thank you very much for that point. Thank you. Okay. We can take one or two more. These three more interventions and then we have to unfortunately close the sessions of Bangladesh first, please. Thank you, Mr. moderator. From the administration of Bangladesh, we appreciate the effort of BDT and ICT data and statistical division of ITU and the expert group members in publishing this report. And we believe that IDA is the best available index to measure the status of ICT development that we have so far. And we especially thank the director BDT for his vision to make this report more relevant for its member countries so that they can track their individual progress. And definitely we understand that some of the countries may have frustration about their ranking, but as director BDT rightly pointed out yesterday, the individual values of IDI and the subindex are more relevant in tracking our progress and should be looked upon more objectively. So we are happy that Bangladesh is having an increasingly higher index values. And we understand that probably we need to do more to improve it further, especially the coordination with national statistical office, NSO, as it came out from our discussion with Dr. Zawa Zawa yesterday. So we thank again BDT and all the steps of ITU for this highly valued report. Thank you. Yes. Please. China. Thank you, chair. First of all, please allow us to express our gratitude to the work of the BDT. It is a very good report that you can first publish the country file report, which I think is more floatable to reflect the development status in the recent years. We are not so happy with the outcome of the major report to 2017, because we are hungry to get a look at the quick change in the field of the IDI system, such as I will want to, I'm willing to support delegates from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. There's concern about the demographic development status, such as in China, you know, almost two-thirds of the world mobile broadband subscriber additions are coming from China. We think some of the index can be improved to effectively reflect the market structure. So we are convinced in the future in the coming cycle, this IDI system can be improved, can be improved to reflect emerging change of the new technologies and new services such as e-commerce, such as mobile payment, which are developing very fast in most developing countries. So we support that more and more countries can be included in the work of EGH and EGTI. We propose that the BDT officials can help different countries from different regions to be actively included in the work of improving IDI systems. We propose that we can evaluate the structure and components of IDI system every two years. You know, it's so long before we can adjust the existing system, IDI system. We think in the future we can adjust or we can modify the structure and the components of IDI system in the coming cycle, in the coming cycle. So we are hoping we can get a new outcome which most of the countries can get their information, can get their expected output which can help them to foster the development of ICT services and innovations. Thank you. Thank you very much. In the interest of time, please keep your intervention to less than two minutes. Last one, please. Yes. Please go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Because this is the first time Indonesia has taken the floor, I would like to congratulate first Uzbekistan, Namibia, Iceland and Tunisia for all the progress that they have achieved in their idea rankings and values. With the new ICT trends that have just been mentioned in the MISR such as IoT, artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, we assume that this will create a new digital divide. And if they are incorporated into the new ICT indicators in the upcoming years, we assume that many developing countries such as Indonesia will be obligated to measure their use on these new ICT trends and technologies. While we see that many developing countries still continue to have problems with their idea values and rankings and solutions on how to increase them. So while we see that many developing countries still have problems such as how to move from 4G technologies to 5G and then analog to digital switch over. So with this in mind, we kindly request the ITU, especially BDT's prudence on this matter and solution on this matter for developing countries. Thank you. Thank you very much for your intervention. I would like to give the floor back to the panelists for brief closing statements now, please. Thank you so much for your interventions and first of all I would like to encourage countries to actively participate in ECTA and EJH meetings and activity. ECTA and EJH are groups in which we discuss new indicators. We discuss composition of IDI and all these issues what we discuss now. We had very long discussion regarding composition of IDI. We had subgroup representing all regions developed and developing countries which worked on this issue and this subgroup reached consensus. It was not easy. It reached consensus and later these results were introduced to ECTA, EJH extraordinary meeting. We had very hard discussions but again we reached consensus. The new composition of IDI I believe is much better than the existing one because IT is very dynamic sector and I agree that we need revisions of IDI. Next year we will publish IDI regarding this new methodology which reflects and captures development of ICT sector and just to comment before joining ITO I was part of those expert groups. We worked during year permanently on new indicators on composition of IDI etc. ITO is secretariat. You countries decided via ECTA and EJH which indicators should be collected, which methodology should be used, what should be composition of IDI and how can we improve it. So please be active in ICT and EJH activity and ITO will do its best to support this activity. Thanks so much. Esperanza did you have a closing statement? I just want to also emphasize the importance of providing your inputs through the expert groups. It may not be necessarily through the face-to-face meeting but the expert groups work throughout the year through the online discussion forums. So I encourage everyone to provide your inputs and actively participate in the different discussions not just on the index but also in defining the indicators that are to be collected in countries and at the same time it may go to the IDI in the future. And lastly the most important is to encourage countries to collect the data for those indicators. We are defining indicators but we are still having some challenges in getting timely and reliable data from countries. So it's always a big, big, big struggle for us to have complete data sets that will enable us to calculate the IDI and to include as many countries as possible. So I just want to end at that point and I would like to thank everyone for the very interesting interventions. Thank you. Lourdes, did you have some final words, please? Yes. I'll just make a few important points. One, we highly encourage coordination among the different ICT stakeholders, the NSO, the National Statistics Office, the telecom regulators, the ICT ministries to work hand in hand to ensure that you have the data to track your own progress, not necessarily just for the IDI, but more importantly for your own national objectives and goals. This is also very important. The other important point is that it does take time to develop internationally harmonized indicators. So perhaps I might have overemphasized the idea but when I say now, it means we start thinking about it and we start working towards it. But when we say developing new indicators, it may or may not necessarily be included in the IDI, depending on what the member states actually agree on what the consensus is. I think I just would like to close with the theme of what I have discussed, presented for chapter four. Implications are important because these new technologies are coming very soon and they are unlike the old ones. So think about it, many of the countries in the world are yet to industrialize, yet to have a very strong production sector, yet to have very high levels of employment. So when these new technologies are able to get rid of existing jobs, what will happen to countries who do not yet have a large share of the pie? How will we deal with that? How can countries, what will be the next ladder of development? So which is why it's important to think about these things now and start this conversation. That's all. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. This session covered a lot of ground and there's indeed much good news. I want to reemphasize this, that every country has improved over the past observation period. There's also, of course, indication of many remaining challenges that need to be addressed in the coming years. Indicators help us focus this discussion and each country has to focus on its own particular unique situation. And I think the country data that are now provided additional information and food for thought to address those issues. So without further ado, then I would like to turn the floor back to his Excellency. Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. It's a pleasure to be in this assistance and this deep discussion. And it's clear that we are in the end of one cycle life or life cycle. And we start another life cycle. The new life cycle will take care about the new technologies that are changing every day. But also, we have to take care about the improvement of the process from countryside and from the ITU side, from the expert side. So the process has to be more clear and more adapted to the new technology and the changes from ITU side. And the process has to be also clear from the countries. Because if you don't have a responsible for collecting this information, if you don't know the schedule of the collection of the information, if we don't know that 15 of August this year, while the cut dates for the information that will be used in this indicator, we cannot catch up. So both efforts has to be put in this new cycle life. I hope we will improve all this for the benefit of all the countries and for the benefit of this institution. So thank you very much again. Thank you for the team, for the moderator and for the presentation.