 ​​​​​​​​ There were no numbers as it was workingci, y'all know them None of them are cooking that's going in there, right We are going to start with our mic. Can you please turn the music off? And now you should always put the music on when you stand up and walk. Please, someone has to change back the image in the room. Please turn it off. Just turn it off. Let's try the mic. We have some success. Excellent. So, we are going to be looking at the ranking of different economies in the IDU. We are going to try another mic. How about this? Is that even better? Excellent. I see some thumbs up in the back. We are going to be acknowledging of course the top ten performing economies. And we are going to be congratulating the 2014 top spot in the IDI. Who could that be? Might be a big surprise. Joining me today, I am very pleased to welcome his excellency, Mr. Dmitri Kumsishvili, First Deputy Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development from the Republic of Georgia. Thank you for being with us, Mr. Kumsishvili. Mr. Hunan Zhao, ITU Deputy Secretary General. And Mr. Brahim Asano, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. Great to have you with us. Lovely to see such a packed hall over here. And a number of dignitaries from around the global community. I hope that you will join into this conversation as well. So, it's not just from the stage. So, very soon I'll be announcing the top ten performers. But first shall we take a deep dive into this report? What's it all about? I'm going to ask Mr. Zhao in a minute how he sees the importance of this report. But first let me tell you that it's a global launch. Simultaneously, we are launching the report in Addis Ababa, in Bangkok, in Brasilia and in Cairo. So, Mr. Zhao, may we all extend our congratulations to you on becoming the next ITU Secretary General on your election. Can I ask you to find a mic? Is there a mic for you? No, you can use mine. How about this? Why is this report important to you? How does it help to build an inclusive IT society, do you think? Yeah, thank you very much. I'm very pleased that your question is just matching to my answers. I think that statistics is quite important. This morning we had a ministerial round-table meeting and many people talked about the importance of statistics. And we have to know where we are today so that we can know what we will go tomorrow and what we can do better tomorrow. So, it's quite important to have statistics. And this report is only and most comprehensive annual statistic publication featuring the latest ICT trains and data. And it features ICT development index. And our data is collected and established extensively relied upon by governments, financial institutions and private sector analysis worldwide. It is based on official data received from countries all over the world. Of course, today we have a lot of statistics, but why our statistics are so competent, so respected because our data coming from government and we collected them based on the official publication of the data by the government. So, this report is widely recognized as a repository of the world's most reliable and impartial global data and analysis on the state of global ICT development. And our report was widely used by World Bank, by many universities, by many research institutes and by UN families. I think that this is my short answer to your question. Thank you so much, Mr. Jao. And Mr. Komsishvili, can I ask you as representing Georgia, Georgia has very kindly hosting this WTIS symposium this year, how do you see the significance of this occasion? Thanks a lot. One more time, hello to everyone. This is very important event to our country. Because we host more than 18 countries right now and all of you knows where we are, who we are and what we are thinking about the ICT development. This symposium gives us the sorts, what is the world trained, how the data should collect, what methodology should use and how we should manage the data which will be collected or are collected from the globe. So, one more time, I want to thank you to all participants and all of organizers. This is very important event for our country. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Komsishvili. So, we've heard from Mr. Komsishvili and Mr. Jao. Well, what are your views, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen? How have you used the report? This is the fifth time it's being published, I understand. How have you used it in the last five years? How do you see its importance? Do you have any suggestions to us about how we could improve it perhaps? I'd like to ask you your views. Yes, sir, we have the representative from Iran here. Let's see it works. I think it's working, yes. Okay, first of all, on behalf of our country, I want to congratulate ITU for producing this kind of, this flagship report. And thank to Susan and his team for doing this challenging task actually in Iran. We have two kind of indicators. One of them is national indicators and that are aligned with our development goals. And another one is international indicators. One of the indicators that are used in our core ICT indicators is IDI. We have a specific target for reaching to a specific ranking to IDI. Every year. Have you seen yourself moving up then? Sorry? Have you seen yourself moving up the ranking? No. But what is important for us is the report. We analyze the finding of this report. We use it as a benchmarking tool. And also we use it as a tool for finding the gaps for further development. And also we have used the IDI calculations for identifying the digital gap in the country itself, between the provinces. Because we want to reach to social equity in our country. And we have used the methodology for the calculation digital gap in the country. But also we have some suggestions. And I think the ICT skills part of this component of this index should be improved. There are some work in the ICT edge. And from UNESCO they have some work for improvement of the ICT skills. Because the indicators in the ICT skills somehow are proxy indicators. And mainly if you take a look at there is no change in the value of these indicators here by here. Okay. Well thank you very much for that contribution. We are listening. And hopefully we shall respond before long. Anyone else want to make a contribution? So how you use this index? This is I think the representative from Qatar. I'm from Qatar, yes. We will use this report very extensively from Qatar side. Two objectives are there. One is about to benchmark Qatar versus other countries, especially the developing countries and developed countries. We will also see the regional comparison for analyzing this data. And what we are going to achieve from this report. We will see that what are the strengths of Qatar for each indicator. We will also see what Qatar needs to improve in some of the areas from this report. So that's why we lose extensively this report. Thank you very much for your contribution. Anyone else want to add their voice to our discussion at this point? I think this lady from Colombia has only just joined us. Would you like to tell us how you use this report in the past? In Spanish. We don't need to use it on our headphones. Hello. My name is Andrea Mendoza from Ministry of Information Technology in Colombia. We use the report, we monitor the report of the OIT annual. It serves as a basis, as an experiment to know not only our reality in front of other countries, but also to make a balance. This has been very productive since we started two years ago to build a special committee of international organizations, not only the OIT, the OSD is also in our profile. And we do this information report with this group, which already handles 15 institutions in Colombia, which provide the TIC data not only for the OIT, but also for other reports. This committee has been quite interesting, it is a joint work, and it is the result of knowing the OIT tools of other organizations, to give this information. Mr. Sano, how does the, a round of applause for Mr. Sano. What does this year's index tell us, what should we be looking out for? Thank you very much. Before I go to the IDI for 2013, let me just mention two things, if you allow me. The first thing is to tell you how I am very excited with this meeting and launching this report, the information society here at the opportunity of the World Telecommunication, the World Telecommunication and ICT indicators in Persian. I am excited because for the first time this report will be in mind in front of those who made the report. The second thing is about the idea itself. I know if I have become something very, let's say emotional, the idea now. Let me say just the reading we should have of the IDI. The first reading we should have of the IDI is that we should compare to ourselves. So, and in development one needs to be every time your own competitor. And the IDI, first we should read it, have I improved yourself? When we change from your voice to the microphone, you are happy, we improved. So, this is what is happening. And second reading I will have of the IDI is to compare my situation to other countries who have got similar economic and geographic situation. And to see if I found that those are better than I, I have to learn from them. This is where the benchmarking is coming. And this third part of learning from others is very important. If you read your IDI and just stop there, then we are not achieving our objective. Our objective is for you to go and learn from others. So, as we said that of course the IDI of 2013, we have noticed that we have almost all the countries have increased the level of their IDI, which is very good, congratulations. And secondly, more and more we could see that one less broadband is driving actually the IDI in a lot of countries. And thirdly, we could see a stronger correlation between the IDI and the achievement of some goals of the million development goals. So, this is what I can tell when the IDI are now, and this is very new for us, because it touches strong correlation between the IDI and the million development goals. Thank you. Thanks very much, Mr. Sano. So, I detect a sense of pride there in your comments there about the correlation between the IDI and the MDGs. And also you are getting us all to be more competitive and more rivalrous. So, that is the spirit in which we should listen to the announcements coming up. Before I unveil the top ten performers, the ITU would like to recognize one of the strongest candidates really in recent years. Indeed, the country which was the top performer last year, and that is the Republic of Korea, and make a special award to you. Dr. Kim, can you please... Dr. Kim is looking a little embarrassed and come on up onto the stage, sir. First can I ask you... This painful question, what is the secret of Korea's success? You have done so well in recent years. Because I am very nervous. During the last four years, we are ranked first. But still now, I don't know the 2014 result. And then my minister and my president want to know what exactly. But we report 130. But it is almost past 20 minutes. My president is still waiting for the result. Hey, please don't make a universe. And then please pronounce the rankings. Your wish is my command. We want to give you an award for your very good record so far. Please, sir, we'd like to take a photograph. And we have a certificate for you too, Dr. Kim. Thank you very much. Not much longer to wait, Dr. Kim. We should put you out of your misery very soon. So, the moment has come. Are we ready to hear the rankings? May I have the special envelopes, please, Nina? Here they are. Number ten. The tenth ranking country is a very long one, ladies and gentlemen, Luxembourg. Let's put our hands together to congratulate Luxembourg. In ninth position, ladies and gentlemen, we have Hong Kong China. Well done. Dr. Kim, you've made me so nervous that I can't open this myself. Number eight is Finland. Congratulations. In seventh position, I'm pleased to say we have the Netherlands. Number six. Ah, number six is Norway. And then a European country. Getting closer to the top slot. Number five, the United Kingdom. Number four is Iceland. And it's another European country, Sweden. Come on, rest of the world. Where are you? Who position we have? Mr. Kim, I have your answer. The Republic of Korea. So, who could be in the top poll position? Number one. At the very top of the IDI for 2014 is Denmark, ladies and gentlemen. Now, there's a surprise. Can we have the representative for Denmark? Please come and join us. Mr. Anberg. You look a bit surprised, Mr. Anberg. Well, I was wondering why I was invited to an IT conference, because I'm the Danish Honorary Council General in Georgia. So, I live here. And so, first of all, I have to apologize a little bit on behalf of my ministry that they could not be here today. They ended up sending me as a second best solution. We're delighted to have you. Thank you so much. And obviously, I think that the only thing that I really wanted to say about this is that one of the reasons probably that Denmark was chosen here is because of a lot of e-governance and so on. And this is actually something that Georgia is doing as well. So, I hope to see Georgia on the list as well. And then we have a goal, I know, in Denmark that we wanted 100 megabytes per second, download and 30 megabytes per second upload by 2020. That has been a public goal in Denmark for quite some years. So, I challenge Georgia. Thank you very much, Mr. Anberg. Before you go, we'd like to just make a small present to you with this award, please. Oh, yes, and there's a certificate to give to you too. Thank you, Ms. Anberg, and on behalf of us all, congratulations. I don't think Dr. Kim is going to allow you to keep that trophy for very long. So, we all have work to do, don't we? Just heard. So, before we conclude, our presentation is almost over. I'd just like to ask Mr. Sanu to give us some concluding words, because it gave us some very inspirational ones earlier about the need for competition and benchmarking. What is he going to send us out into the conference with? What are your final thoughts, Mr. Sanu? Thank you very much. I would like to thank all the people who have been here today. And to thank all the countries that have been ranked the top ten. Actually, it is, as I said, the most important is to be your own competitor and to see that everywhere the value of idea is increasing. So, we will continue to do this work. And the good thing about this report, and this is where I really am excited about the report, is that it is a report based on international agreed framework. It is very important, very natural, very objective and is giving us information what we use as part of big data we are going to discuss this afternoon. I thank you very much, Nisha, for giving us this opportunity. You are so wonderful in launching this kind of report. Yes. All we could find, Nisha, to launch this report, you are so fantastic. I think at that point, I better take the mic back from Mr. Sanu. Thank you very much. That pretty well concludes the launch of the MIS report 2014. Members of the press, those journalists who are with us, we are going to be holding a short press conference in room number six. So, do make your way there and you will find that your reports are waiting for you in room number six. Everyone else here, of course, we have reports for you too. So, please go to the registration desk where your report will be ready for collection. So, make sure that you take it to bed tonight and digest it. We will be reconvening, ladies and gentlemen, in half an hour for, as Mr. Sanu said, what I hope will be a lively debate on big data and its impact on development. I think finally the mics are working. So, ladies and gentlemen, it's been great to have you and see you in half an hour. We shall start promptly at 2.30. Thank you for your participation.