 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 here in Bucharest, Romania where I've got the great pleasure of being joined in the studio today by Ivan John-Whee, who is Minister for ICT for the Philippines. Minister, welcome to the studio. Thank you, that's indeed. Indeed. Now I would like to start off by asking you about ICTs and the role of your department in preparing youth for jobs because I believe that ICTs can very much lead to employment. Indeed. And the Philippines has a unique distinction of having one of the youngest population in the world. Our average age is 23 years old and so we have a large segment of the youth that is very dynamic, very passionate. So all we need to do is upgrade their skills. And the ICT, the Department of Information and Communications Technology of the Philippines, have many programs in order to do digital upskilling. And in digital upskilling it's not just limited to basic computer knowledge. We need to push for a strategic approach where we identify what are the demands of industry of the world employers and really pinpoint with more accuracy what specific skills, what specific knowledge is needed in order to be employable. And these are mostly in the high-tech areas like artificial intelligence, blockchain, 3D printing. And we are also pushing on the creative side. We have a program on animation, on graphics design that are bringing out the creativity side. So it's not just the left brain but also the right brain. And this is what we're currently exerting a lot of effort in building up these digital skills. And how have connectivity programs helped in the development of Philippine communities? Perhaps many people don't know. The Philippines is comprised of more than 7,000 islands and connectivity is an issue when you're trying to connect all these islands. So we're approaching it in many ways by using either fiber optic, terrestrial submarine cables but at the same time we're also exploring satellite technology in order to just jump into the islands without spending so much time and resources and laying out those cables. Once those islands are connected, can imagine the communities on those islands that were outside of the digital economy suddenly being brought into as participants in the digital economy. So these people will have access to digital payments, to the digital marketplace and we have content, we have applications that will ride on that connectivity and this will indeed bridge the digital divide. Have you got any targets for your department in e-government? Definitely. Government are designed, most governments are designed in the industrial age where everything operates in silos. So you have each department or each ministry handling each of the different respective mandates. However, with technology, with connectivity, a lot of these have to interoperate and they have to share information. So the challenge in governance is there are legacy systems that are operating in those silos. They do not have common standards, they do not interoperate, they do not share. So we need to have very good data governance policy so that these information can be synchronized and they can be shared among the different government agencies and deliver citizen-centric digital governance. And that is the mission of the ICT and we have the mandate from our president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that we need what we call an agile bureaucracy. Just wanted to ask you, what would you think are the principal challenges and opportunities for ICTs in terms of ICTs in the Philippines? Well, a lot of opportunities to bring the unconnected into the connected digital economy. This will definitely bring up the financial status of many of those who were left out in the regular economy. If you would notice during the pandemic, a lot of businesses closed down because during the lockdowns they could not survive. However, those businesses that move into the digital arena, they were the ones that thrive and they were the ones to survive and that's the key point of digitalization. Minister, thank you very much for sharing those insights with us and we hope to catch up with you again very soon. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.