 Now, we would like to commence the ministerial round table. I would like to introduce Dr. Kosumatsu Zawazawa of the ITU as the moderator of this ministerial round table. Dr. Zawazawa, please have the floor. Thank you very much and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is with pleasure that we sit here and commence the round table, which is the ministerial round table. I will just introduce to you the format of the round table. This is not a speaker's panel. This is a discussant panel. We are going to give opportunities to the ministers to share their perspectives, particularly to share their vision, also to exchange information with regards to the practices in their own respective countries, and then we can try to draw lessons as a result. You have heard from the opening speeches that the sustainable development goals for the next 15 years are going to touch on things that relate to disaster risk reduction, and we have to measure in order for us to take appropriate measures. You are going to look at health issues. You are going to look at climate change and the impact. You are going to look at food security, poverty reduction and education, if possible, environmental protection, and many other such interesting issues, and we want to know what is the catalytic role of ICTs. So our aim is to demystify technology. We want to remove the mask and see the human face. What is it that we can do with technology? And before we proceed and before I introduce the panelists, I would like to say to you we are going to watch just a very short video, three minutes, which is going to set the stage and capture the great work that ITU and the membership are doing across the world. So please enjoy it. ICTs, or information and communication technologies, are essential for the achievement of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. People everywhere can reap the benefits of connectivity. Let us empower individuals with these transformative technologies so that they can advocate and innovate for our common future. Digital financial services lift people out of poverty. Not everyone has a bank account, but many have mobile phones. As mobile digital technologies spread to even the poorest and most remote regions of the world, we have an opportunity to reach this underserved population and bring it into the global economy with expanded access to savings accounts, lines of credit and other financial services. ICTs can build a more inclusive society, driving social and economic progress for all. When I see the world in general, how many people are not connected to the digital ecosystems. And it is our duty, I think, to bring the opportunities of more people to get engaged. Giving women and girls access to ICTs has the potential to empower them in all aspects of their lives. The power of broadband and mobile technology must be harness to reach the unreached girls and women with quality learning opportunities. This technology must be available to female students, entrepreneurs and policy makers. New technologies have the power to open up endless opportunities for those living with disability. My quality of life has changed dramatically since I started using technology and only the other day I told my mother that technology is the name I never had. ICTs significantly improve quality healthcare for people in poor and remote areas. In Kenya, doctors in rural hospitals use telemedicine technology to get advice from specialists on how best to treat their patients. ICTs are part of the solution in ensuring the sustainable future of our planet. Smart cities will be safer for their citizens and more resilient to a changing climate. As the world faces more extreme weather events, ICTs can save lives. Mobile systems and technology are the instrument that we have to develop further now to save even more lives. We get good evidence that it works, but we also have evidence that a lot of the disasters cost more and more in terms of lives lost and economic losses. Broadband alone is not going to solve those problems, but it can be a really substantial ticket to improving access to the information needed to solve those problems. I believe the challenge now is for the international community to come together and harness the huge potential that these technologies hold for economic growth and development. Thank you very much. So to react first is going to be Excellency, the Minister of Japan, Madame Takayuchi. ICT is the role of the ICT to achieve sustainable development goals. ICT is the key role of sustainable development, and it has a great potential for development. But in the face of the IOT era, the way the data is used is also changing rapidly. Thank you very much, Your Excellency. I would like to request from the panelists if any one of them intended to intervene quickly. The Minister has touched on very interesting topics that include Internet of Things, machine information communication, and big data. If you could share your perspectives on any of the topics. Let me invite the Ministers from Thailand. Okay. It's quite impressive to come here. In Thailand, in the policy level, we think that the first step, we should make sure that we have a good enough infrastructure. We mean the digital infrastructure that comprises of at least three things. The first one is the broadband connectivity. This is a critical step that everybody in Thailand, Thai citizens, even the foreigners in Thailand can access to the broadband anywhere in Thailand. Even in the rural area or the remote area. The second critical infrastructure, maybe the super infrastructure, we call the law and the decoration that allows everyone who uses Internet to have a trust and security to use it confidently. In Thailand, now we are in the process to upgrade many laws conform to a new standard or even the international standard one. And the third one, when we emphasize on the big data, I think the most important for big data is the result, how to use this type of data. So in Thailand, we start from how we can use the data from the government sector to convert to a smart service that allows everyone in Thailand to benefit from the service from this sector. So we try to transform the government services into a smart service so everyone can use this via many media, just as the mobile phone, tablet or whatever. And beyond that, we also focus on the economy and society segment that focus on SME and the citizens. This is the, I think, the most important for Thailand and maybe all over the world. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. So yeah, excellent. The Minister of Japan has excused herself, but the Vice Minister is here to contribute to the debate. I would like to open the floor if there is any indication. Yes, the Minister, I'm going to be in some place. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Allow me to outset to thank the government of Japan for this warm hospitality. For Mr. Chairman, sustainable development goal nine, build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation is the only one that clearly talks about communication infrastructure. And yet this infrastructure is extremely important on the majority of the goals. For example, if you take goal nine and poverty, this could be strongly advanced if we could, if the basic financial services could be reached to the extreme poor, financial services including loans, credit, savings. And yet these profitable models are being used across Africa, and the extreme poor are having access to these type of models without even meeting the banks, the commercial banks. Well, on the same note, we could take, for instance, sustainable development goal three, good health and well-being. And this could be greatly enhanced as well by the ability to reach to the poorest of the poor or the least healthy to have all these kind of information. For instance, Guinea-Bissau, as member of the COAS, is part of the West African Health Organization. And part of this process is to design a health information system that take full advantage of a whole data that is generated over cell phones and SMS applications. So we think that the key issue here is to see how we're going to make sure that ICT could be used to the poorest by lowering the cost of delivery of services. So the same thing, we could have the same analysis with regard to how ICT can drive innovation and entrepreneurship. And if you look from a government standpoint, we think that there are three things that could be done. First of all, we think that government should not place heavy rules on how innovators should innovate. We think that government should create the spaces and access to technology and that get out of the way. Second thing, we think that the governments should help with mobilization of capital in order to help innovators innovate. And third, it's our understanding that governments should work towards creating incentives for these young innovators. And we have seen a lot of hubs, innovation hubs and maker spaces around Africa. So to sum up, we think that in order for ICT to play a very important role in achieving sustainable development, we have to work towards reducing the cost of delivery service. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. Let me move on to His Excellency, the Deputy Prime Minister of Tonga. His Excellency, Sovaleni, he comes from a small island developing state. Last year, there was a huge United Nations conference for the small island developing states in Samoa. And the international community adopted the Samoa pathway. We know small islands developing states are unique in many respects. I would like to understand from His Excellency what are his perspectives with regards to measurement with regards to deployment of ICTs and the use of it to mitigate, for example, the impact of natural disasters or to reduce disasters. Your Excellency, the floor is yours. Thank you, moderator. This is the first time I'm actually taking the floor to take the opportunity to thank the government of Japan and ITU for hosting this very important event. As the moderator explained, I'm from a small developing state. Tonga, very close to Samoa. So if you've been to Samoa, it's only one hour flight time from Tonga. As discussed in many forums, the challenges that we face in the small island developing states, the fact that we're small, so we don't have economy of scale. And because we are an island, we tend to have a lot of islands. And actually connecting them up or providing the services to all these islands is one of the major challenges that we face. So when we're talking about big data, sometimes the problem in the small island developing state is small data, the lack of data. So that need to be taken into account, the fact that some of us actually do not have the data. And as policy makers and ministers, what we tend to do is actually provide, through the assistance of ITU and other development agencies, the mechanism to actually collect the data so to know where we are, so we can actually try and progress to where we want to be. So that's some of the challenges that we face in the Pacific. In talking about some of the key sectors like health and education, as I mentioned earlier, we tend to have a lot of islands and actually providing these essential services like education, health, comes with its own problems. And actually pushing an ICT project per se is not that easy because you actually have to wait up, okay, I have these limited resources, I have this, you know, bilateral assistance with these particular development agencies. So which one is important? Building roads, providing transportation, shipping, or providing ICT. You know, so we need to be very careful on how to articulate the benefits. We need to be very clear on the benefits of ICT because you actually have to wait up using the limited resources for ICT project or some other development projects which are for us equally important. So indicators is one of those key, I guess, factors that comes into play when considering what we use those limited resources to. And in that same line of thoughts, it is very important to actually link the indicators that will be, I guess, released tomorrow to the sustainable development called indicators. Because I'm pretty sure development agencies and other partners have realigned their development assistance in accordance with the SDGs. And actually having the indicators that actually related to the SDGs indicators will help us tap into those resources. And I agree with some of my colleagues when actually, you know, government playing in an appealing role. But hopefully some of the points or the issues that I raise can probably generate a few more questions that I'll be happy to answer later on. Thank you. Thank you very much, Excellency. Dr. Mlambo Zimbabwe, okay, simultaneous request for the floor. Excuse me, I will move on to the minister of Zambia. Zambia is a list-developed country and it has got a lot of challenges, but I know that there is quite impressive growth rates in terms of ICTs. Could you, Honorable Minister, share your views? Thank you so much. First and foremost, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the government of Japan for hosting this very important symposium. I also want to thank ITU who have been very candid in regard to the hosting of this symposium. First and foremost, I'm coming from Zambia, I'm the Deputy Minister of Transport and Communication. Coming from Zambia, you know as an African country in the southern part of the continent, there are a lot of challenges. The government must be able to look at what are the areas of priorities. The challenges are so many. You look at poverty, you look at health. In these areas, then the government must be able to sit down and say, where do we go? As a Republic of Zambia, what the government has been able to do is something that is worth noting. The President of the Republic of Zambia has been able to create what I can co-ecid at the President's office to deal with Excellency. And this Excellency office is specifically to address the issues of ICT because if the government does not have a deliberate policy to move the ICT development, you find that you always give it a lip service. For example, the government must be able to sit with that in its budget, it must be able to factor a large chunk of resources to go towards the development of ICT. So in the process, the Republic of Zambia has been able to create 204 towers that they've constructed. In addition to the 204 communication towers, they've further increased by 464. And these 464 will be able to cover the unsaved and undersaved areas in the rural areas. This is how committed the government is as regard to the coverage, which means immediately we are going to finish the 464 towers, the coverage will come to 100%. Furthermore, there is the terrestrial ICT infrastructure that is being laid. And with this, it will mean 108 districts will be covered. And these districts that will be covered in the 108, mostly will be inclined to the rural settings. The other important thing that I think as a government, we've been able to do is to ensure that from the positive development that a government is embarking on the construction of the 409 towers and the coverage of the 100% of the government, the government has also established a terrestrial ICT infrastructure backbone that will connect the district with particular emphasis on the connectivity, like I said, on the rural areas. This intervention has resulted into having access to broadband services. For example, the transfer of unbanked money in rural areas. As you know, in most of the rural areas, there are no banks. Most of the commercial banks are not there. Hence, you find that people keep this money in their homes. But they will be able to do that once the connection is done. Then the government also has continuously go on reviewing the legal and the policy framework. And this is a platform that has resulted into a traction of investment in ICT. Hence, I am here also to try and lobby to you people that those who are well-vested in the investment in ICT can come along. Because Zambia has been able to revitalize this area. And you can be able to come and invest. And this also has also created an enabling environment, like I have said, for the participation of the private sector. So Zambia is a fertile ground for all those that have the knowledge in the investment of the ICT. Then furthermore, the government is looking at the issues of the e-government, which has been introduced. In the e-government, we have what we call the e-visa system. We have also the e-voucher system. This e-voucher system has impacted mostly on agriculture, where the farmers can be able to access inputs using the electronic system. And as a result, this will be able to cover a wider area. We have also looked at the issues of health. Because we have come to acknowledge that ICT would be able to accelerate the implementation of the health sector, so that most of our people are in the rural areas, can be able to access health. By ensuring that this system goes to those areas, because we are laying the fiber optic, which is cutting across the country. And with the intention to see to it that there is connectivity in the rural cities. Hence, the health areas will be also touched in that regard. I think these are some of the areas that Zambia is doing. And these are the strides that I can see, that without the ICT being emphasized, I don't see us as a country surviving. Because the only way to go is ICT. Thank you. Thank you very much, Deputy Minister. So I would like to challenge the ministers. It is usually a very rare occasion that we have policy makers with us. We have a lot of technocrats who meet from time to time through online dialogue to develop methodologies for the IDI and to improvise and come up with the new innovative ways of data collection. Would like to hear from you your views pertaining to what you think we could improve, or maybe what you think should be done to enhance cooperation between national statistical offices and telecommunications regulatory authorities in order to minimize expenditure in terms and also avoid duplication of effort and resources. So I move on to Thailand. In 2005, the first part, our Secretary-General, who was then the director of our Standardization Bureau, was in Thailand in Phuket just after the December 24th. And the major discussion there was the establishment of original tsunami early warning system. And we know Thailand is also one of the vulnerable countries in terms of natural disasters. You are a primary provider for rice, and the climate change impacts are felt across the world. Those countries that produce rice like yourselves, you are holding more and more and exporting less. Can you please share with us? And also if we can concentrate also to some extent why it is so important to measure and for us to collect the statistics. What is the role of the National Statistical Office in carrying out censuses? And how can we also, during the carrying out of censuses, make sure that those same persons can collect data and information related to information and communication, technology, availability and affordability. Please, the floor is yours. Yes, thank you very much. The first point about the disaster, I think not only in Thailand we have to face and challenge every country around this region should work together. Thailand is the one part that we have to handle. In Thailand we set up the alarming system around the country, alert and try to educate the people in this region how to handle if something's happened. So the technology we work on is how to send the message, important message to everyone in some certain areas. But the most important point is the second question that you mentioned how we can manage a big data for in the condition of the climate change. In Thailand we have both the first season and the last season in the same year. It's very strange for us, but so we have to make sure that how we can use water and everything in a sufficient way and right way. For the collecting the data in our countries, many organizations working on that but now we try to use the term the sharing data, open data for both the government agency and the private sector. The Minister of ICT, the statistical bureau, responsible for the standardization for all the data, metadata for example and try to create a method to correct the data more efficiently. I mean the data may be real time and correctly, this is a very critical thing. Now we think about how we can use a new method, a new technique to collect the data as the big one, the big data. This is the process that we are focused on. And now I think in Thailand we some kind of showcase for the water management, flood management for both agriculture and disaster management. So thank you very much. I would like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister from Ethiopia to intervene please. Thank you. It's okay. So first I would like to thank Japan Government as well as ITU for inviting us for this important platform. And well I'm not going to introduce about Ethiopia but I would like to highlight some points for you for how we see ICT in terms of our development. It appears one of the poorest countries in the world but at the moment it is one of the fastest growing economy as well. We have a vision to be a middle country in 2025. So the last decade we are growing double digits. And in view of this we see ICT is one of the critical intervention that we need to accelerate our development. We are working on agriculture, that's our priority. Our priority is to eradicate poverty. So we have to highly invest in agriculture, education, health. But we fully believe that without ICT we cannot move fast. So we feel ICT is a necessity. And this is a very great instrument and intervention to speed up and to catch up for the other countries. So we have a policy that addresses ICT as a two prong intervention. When we say it's an enabler for all of the development interventions we have, as I said, on education, agriculture, we have ICT to speed up. The other prong is to take ICT as a sector, as an industry. But the main trust in our case is to use ICT as enabler. And just to mention one, to have a quality of education we need quality instructors, but for countries like us who is very big, we cannot have quality teachers in all areas in urban and rural. So we use digital content to broadcast to all the remote areas using satellite. So our high schools are connected by satellite. So we say this is helping us to deliver quality education in all the remote areas by using ICT. So we are addressing the shortage of skilled manpower in education and also we are addressing the distance gap by using ICT. We have also used ICT in health and like telemedicine and many others. So it's incorporated in our development strategy. And we feel that government has a big role to play for countries like us who are, as I said, left behind who have to move fast in a great gear. To do so, government has to have a very clear policy, but not only policy, but it has to be an interventionist government, that's what we feel. And being in Japan and learning also from the history of Japan, the government has had a big role to change and to bring the latest developments in the country. And we are learning from Japan as well as from Korea at the early stage you have to intervene. Every intervention should not be left for the market or for the private sector. In fact, for countries like us where we have a weak private sector, even to develop the private sector, the government has to have instruments to encourage the private sector to get the business, to get into the development. So government has a lot to play in poor countries like us. So this is just an introductory remark, but I will come back later on on other issues. And thank you. Thank you very much, Minister. So I think my understanding, we got from the Deputy Prime Minister two key points that relate to the need to mainstream my cities and also to convert whatever we have in terms of communications to an instrument that we can use to facilitate socio-economic development. Let me go to the Philippines. Sorry, Minister, I'll come back to you a little bit later. But I know that in 2013 you suffered a major disaster, which was one of the most powerful. Supercycle on iron brought a lot of challenges, infrastructure was wrecked and destroyed, and many people lost their lives. But we also know that you are on a faster track in terms of development. If you could share with us what it is that you are doing and doing right, which is making you speeding up development and also what are you doing because we know your statistical office is doing a great work and they work with us in the expert group on telecommunications indicators and group on households indicators. So we would like to hear your perspective from my policy level. Thank you, Minister Moderator. I would like to thank the country of Japan for the kind of hospitality and also for ITU for co-sponsoring or organizing this event. I'd like to share with you the Philippines experience on how the use of ICT as a driver for sustainable development. Sustainable development is getting growth, economic growth that is environmentally sound that focuses on poverty elevation and sharing of prosperity across the society. In the Philippines, we use the best science and technology to come up with initiatives that supports our development programs to be able to achieve sustainable development. And always, in all our initiative, ICT is embedded directly or indirectly. It cuts across all different initiatives for sustainable development. Now, sustainable development touches many areas that includes agriculture, energy, water resources, among others, and also disaster preparedness, as mentioned earlier by our moderator. I'd just like to share with you two examples regarding smart agriculture and how ICT was enabled us to improve our disaster preparedness. We call it smart agriculture. So ICT will be able to come up or be able to process, our scientists will be able to process, come up with information that benefits the farmers. Using weather information and coming up with, again, as I mentioned earlier, information that enables the farmers to guide the farmers when to plant, what to plant, when to apply fertilizer, when to harvest, based on site-specific weather information. And this results to lesser fertilizer needed. We are looking at 25% lesser fertilizer inputs, lesser water needed than the normal practice that our farmers is doing, but it is true ICT that will make this available, make this available to all the farmers in the Philippines. And in parallel to this program is building up of our connectivity infrastructure, again, to enable our farmers to get this information and improve their efficiency, their productivity. Again, going back to inclusive growth, directly benefiting the people in the countryside. Now let's go to how ICT has really dramatically improved our disaster preparedness. We do it two ways. One is improving our weather forecasting, improving our modeling, improving the way we, using data from more than 1,500 to 2,000 weather sensors to come up with modeling, to come up with early warning for flood, landslide, and others. We have been hit by, as mentioned by the, Mr. Moderator by Typhoon Yolanda, which resulted to thousands of lives lost. And this is not only one, this is only one of the extreme weather events that has affected the Philippines. But because of ICT, because of our improvement in providing early warning, we have been hit by many other extreme weather events, and yet we suffered zero casualties in most of them. Only last month, we were hit by Typhoon Lando, which caused massive landslide and buried thousands of homes, and yet there was no casualties, all because of using ICT to be able to deliver early warning to the public and to our disaster manager and come up with a proper response. This just shows how powerful and how beneficial ICT, especially in the Filipino countries like the Philippines and maybe to all the, all countries. And that is, we're touching only in two areas and there are several areas where in ICT is really a great enabler. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Thank you very much, Minister. Dr. Mulanbo, the big minister from Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is the landlocked country, and in 2014, there was a conference in Vienna and that conference was on the ALMAT agreement, which seeks to assist landlocked countries. What do you think in terms of having access to the sea, dependence on coastal countries for you to have access for purposes of cutting costs, increasing speed and bandwidth, and also we have noted that we have got a delegation which is composed of both the statistical office and the regulatory agency, and both of them seem to work together to collect data. What are your perspectives and what are you doing in Zimbabwe to improve connectivity, usage and skill sets in terms of ICTs? Thank you very much, Rappoto. I think being a landlocked country is very, very bad because it has costs that have to be driven down to the consumer and they don't like it. But let me first add chorus to Meno Faso who have thanked the host for the hospitality and everything which we are enjoying. I want to make two broad statements before I go into specifics as requested by the Rappoto. Firstly, being an MP just like Meno Faso, you will be transiting during the week between police makers, that will be your audience, and come the weekend you will be seated under a log, under a tree, on a log and addressing the pluriatariat and the most uneducated audience. Now, what is common between the two distinct audiences is their need for solutions, ICT solutions to address their different types of problems. Now, I also then realize that many solution providers make a mistake of thinking on behalf of the rural folk, for example. They come up with solutions which are a complete misfit to the rural audience, to the challenges that they have. I'll come to that a bit later on. Now, when you are a consumer of bandwidth and you are a landlocked country, it means that you have to pay costs. You are charged by countries through which you are bandwidth transits. And those costs have got to be, if you are a businessman, transmitted down, as I say to the consumer, and that means the rates have got to remain high. So, these are issues that the common consumer does not understand or they don't understand why the rates are so high. And those who have the ability to read around and also compare the rates, perhaps in the surrounding countries, some of them have access to the undersea capers. Do not understand why you yourself, your rates are high. And when you explain that you are paying rates, you continue to confuse them. I wanted to debunk the mythos around these ICT issues when it comes to provision of solutions. You know, they talk about big data, internet of things, which keep on frightening people and make them fail to implement solutions on time because they are not very, very confident. And they keep on hoping that perhaps the next symposium or conference will give them enough information to then start implementing. Now, these comments are more appropriate to developing countries like Zimbabwe. Instead of, in my view, yes, we must think big, but we must then start small and start immediately to implement. Then the next symposium or conference will then give you information which you are going to use to panel bit the works in progress, to panel bit what you are already implementing and you move forward. I can talk specifically then about some of the solutions that are in the raw areas, which I think needed to be adopted or implemented almost now in a very small, very simple way. We can talk about the unavailability of cell phones in the raw areas. And yet, those people require, again, solution providers make an assumption that everybody in the raw areas can afford a cell phone, which is not true. And for that matter, smart cell phones, which are expensive, which is also not true. And yet, as I said earlier on, they require solutions. Now, by creating what in my mind can call a virtual cell phone, then you will be targeting those many people who don't have a platform like this one here to discuss or to tell the solution providers about their plight that we want also to receive money through a cell phone, but we don't have the cell phone. So what do we do? You can provide a virtual cell phone. You can create an agent at a central place. Then you create virtual numbers, specific numbers and unique numbers associated with each household or a member of each household. So the agent once received money, once that agent has received money, tied that number, which in turn is tied to a certain member of a household, can deliver the money to that person. We can talk about clinics. In Zimbabwe, we have a problem that many patients do not have doctors. In other words, the doctor to patient ratio is disappointingly low and that is going to remain with us for quite some time. And yet people need solutions. So what do you do? It's up to us now to think about how to include those marginalized communities quickly and now, and by being very simple. This is my point. You then can start with a very simple phone. Not these multi-coloured smartphones that are multi-coloured with apps and so forth. Loaded with apps which people don't really need and will never use. By just coming up with one app with a very simple cell phone and you load it with medical information there which can be used by nurses which also are too busy to scan through a lot of apps to identify the app which they want to access medical data and to consult a virtual doctor on a cell phone. I'm talking about simple things that can provide immediate solution and reprieve in the rural areas. What do we then use to measure that simple thing? If I'm given the opportunity later on I'll give more examples which again for African countries can become beneficial. You use simple things. Again, let us not become complicated. If we provide medical information to the rural folk what then do you look for to assess whether it's making an impact? You look whether they are dying or not. That's very simple. You look whether there is an increase or not in the usage of these mobile phones. You look at increased infrastructure because when all these fundamentals are taken care of to find the economy setting to react to that basic solution which you have given them. Increase in businesses and so forth. These in my view are simple indicators that can tell you that your solution is becoming useful or it's not. If it is not then you are just through the information gleaned from symposia like these ones. Let me stop there. Thank you very much. So one point which I liked was the fact that he says we are going to raise the issues and come back to see whether these were taken into account. So you are most welcome. I will come back to you, Honourable Minister. Allow me please to move to Malaysia if you could make your intervention please. Thank you, Excellency Moderator. Very good morning and thank you to Japan. Thank you to ITU. You make it happen that I'm here today and I feel so honoured and privileged to be here because I thought that I'm going to be the last Vicar, Mr. Moderator. But it's okay. I'm trying to set a little bit of a new approach when we talk about data collection, statistics and indicators. What I want to introduce here, Mr. Moderator and ladies and gentlemen is about the citizen-centric data collection which I think have been discussed many, many times but have not been successfully implemented. What I'm trying to say here is that I think Excellency Brahima said that ICT is about people. So I just would like to pose a question. To what extent actually we use people, we communicate with people, we consult people on the ground, we engage them, we co-create with them and we co-produce the data that all statisticians, regulators, we, the planners and also decision makers. What is it that we have done so far that actually make people on the ground feel that their inputs are recognised and that their feedbacks are taking into consideration for data and for the statistics to be used. We all know that ICT is an enabler. It is a driving force to generating knowledge, to creating wealth and to uplift the well-being of the people. But still the question is to what extent do we engage those people who are actually the users of ICT? In Malaysia, we have, we call it the Blue Ocean Strategy or we have, we call it Citizen-Centric Service Delivery and we have implemented a lot and a lot of programmes that actually base on that. Where we use people, we use their inputs because we believe in social inclusion. We believe in inclusive innovation. Inclusive innovation is to tap the mind of the people, the innovation and the creativity of the people on the ground, of the B40 if you wish, we call them now. And to Malaysia, we feel that we have been quite successful when we do this because actually we take care of their interests, of their concern and what exactly do they need for their own specific problems that we come up with the solution that just now we are talking about. So, for example, we introduce Connecting the Unconnected. That is one of our programmes now. Where we reach out to the people on the ground. We go to them, we went to the remote area, we ask them what is exactly your problem? Do you have a penetration? Do you have access to broadband? What is happening actually to you here? Do you have a clear television? Do you have a radio station? What is it that you have? I'm not talking about urban or suburb. It is about a very, very remote area that I myself will go down. It took us nearly the whole day. You climb up the hill, you go down, you go by boat and at the end of the day, you meet them. This is what Citizen-centric Administration is all about. So, this is what we have been doing. We use crowd sourcing for E-Rusky. That is one of our programmes. E-Rusky is like the entrepreneurship where we put them online, we teach them, we coach them, we mentor them and at the end of the day, they earn more than what they are supposed to earn. And we also have our E-Ushawan or we call it like more entrepreneurship as well where we get into them, we talk to them and most of them are actually from the Tibet. They are there, they are just like very young people and one of them at the age of 18 year old, the result is awesome, the result is amazing where you can see this 18 year old now is no more a mediocre. He is now a leader and entrepreneur who earn like 95,000 a month. That is great and all is because of ICT and all is because we reach out to the people on the ground. This is what actually I would want to inform the statisticians, the regulators, planners and decision makers that if we say the mind of the people, the mind at the margin should not be marginalised because they know exactly what they want. We cannot make decision for them and when we are with them, we can indeed create what we call an informed decision, a sense of belonging, a sense of ownership which finally will help us in the implementation of our work which is not easy. It is always very, very difficult to deal with the people who are actually the users and to take care of their concern and their interests. So that is for a moment Mr. Moderator. Maybe we would want to come back later to talk about citizen-centric blue ocean strategy and things that we have implemented in Malaysia. Thank you. I think you are quite well invited to the cyber jire in Malaysia as well. Thank you very much for that. Let me move on to the minister of Namibia who made every effort to be with us. I know that you wanted to be with us from the beginning. May you please take the floor? Well, welcome. Is it already on? Thank you. Technological challenge. Well, when my colleague from Tonga was talking, he reminded me our game of World Rugby at Exeter in the UK. But this is now ICT platform. There's no more rugby where you hammered us. Thank you for being here. On behalf of my delegation, they had warm reception. I cannot say the same. We leave it there. In Namibia, we have this component under one roof called ICT information, communication, and technology. Friday, the 27th, we had our regional and local authority elections. We used technology, electronic voting machines for the second time. And as I was travelling and today, merely after 48 hours, from all 14 regions, 121 districts, we have all results known. From a landscape of over 824,000 square kilometres, simply by the use of technology. We have a taste of that. In Namibia, we use technology in government, in government hosted by the office of the Prime Minister, but when it comes to these systems, they resort under the Ministry of ICT. The police are using e-policing. Criminals that run from Namibia across border through Interpol, we use technology. In the Ministry of Home Affairs, the processing of documents such as passports or visas, previously it used to give us nightmares, and nowadays the many months has become to mere three days by using technology. As far as the democracy is concerned, of which most of us are concerned, we use technology to reach out to the rural community, to involve them, to participate through radios. Television, my colleague from Zambia spoke of the digital terrestrial television DTT. In Sadek, we have given ourselves a D-day of June this year, for which Namibia has also met her expectations to meet that D-day, to reach out to the then deadline, but we actually reached up to 70% of the entire country to cover, including those in the remote areas, where they can have the necessary information about the government programs and how they can participate in terms of democratic governance. As far as the private sector is concerned, we have got online banking, e-banks, it helps the rural communities do not need to have a bank account. Simply to have a friend or a neighbor's cell phone through what we call e-wallet. They can send through e-wallet and they will receive their money simply by a touch of a button. DTT in Namibia is taking its rightful place and because of its importance to fight poverty, in Namibia we do not believe in poverty reduction, we talk of poverty eradication. Half poverty is not good enough, we don't want poverty at all. We talk of poverty eradication. What is then the contribution of ICT towards this poverty eradication? We believe ignorant through lack of information whether to participate democratically or in schools or having any information about any services is by empowering them through minds and that is through ICT. We therefore aim for 100% coverage in the whole country so that all Namibians have got the rightful constitutional obligation and the right to information and through that we will be able to communicate by using technology to the best. We can engage some more but as an introductory allow me to stop here. Thank you very much. Thank you very much minister. So it's no disaster mitigation, it's no disaster at all, it's no poverty mitigation but there is zero tolerance on poverty. So we understand and congratulations for the massive deployment of ICTs in Namibia. I've got three remaining ministers to speak. You get ready with your questions or comments. I will be opening the floor but I will revisit some of the ministers we have indicated that they have an interest in taking the floor. Once I open the floor, I ask the director of the BDT, Mr. Braimassanu, to share with you he launched a very innovative initiative which is called the Smart Sustainable Development Model, what it is and how it will contribute to the post-2015 development agenda. With these words I would like to invite his Excellency, the Minister of Gabon, to go ahead and make the floor his place. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. First of all, I would like to say thank you to Japan and thank you to the U.T. for organizing this meeting. I would also like to say that Gabon, like the other countries, shares the conviction that the technology, the information and the communication can transform life. And in Gabon's last years, strong as this conviction, we think that the first thing to do is to multiply connectivity. We have multiplied considerably international connectivity. What remains to be done is connectivity within the country. And so we are committed to a vast program to build a national amphibre network. And that is what guarantees that we can develop for the benefit of the population and put the TIC to the service of the whole population. But first of all, we did not expect that the amphibre network would be totally in place. With what has been done and thanks to the support of the private sector, we already develop a certain number of programs. As colleagues mentioned earlier, it is not possible to install schools everywhere, nor dispensaries, often in very high countries, thanks to the TIC, experimental projects in terms of education and health are currently in place in Gabon. It must be noted that the TIC sector in Gabon is among the most dynamic where small secret companies are created. And currently, the TIC sector weighs about 5% of the national wealth. But this figure is called to progress. Thanks to the technology of 3G and 4G, we will improve the digital and financial inclusion of the population. As we mentioned earlier, thanks simply to the portable telephone that becomes an electronic wire. We can transfer money, we can also manage our account at the post, thanks to the TIC, which constitutes significant improvements for people's lives. But I would also like to mention a very interesting experience in terms of the fight against climate change. Gabon recently received a space observation station. This space observation station aims to monitor the consequences of climate change on Gabon's forest cover, its biodiversity, and on the repartition of the lands. This observation station also helps farmers, especially on the meteorological level. But this station that covers 21 countries, from the west and the centre, Gabon is ready to share the results of space observation to all countries that want it to be able to benefit and engage in scientific research programs in terms of climate change. So here we are, on Gabon, what the TICs have begun to do and probably in the future, all of these programs will be systematised. Thank you very much for your contribution. Let me move on to Guinea-Bissau. Your Excellency, if you could make your intervention. I know the man. Equatorial Guinea. Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau. Well, I'm glad that I'm here with my colleague from Guinea-Bissau, but I'm from Guinea-Quatorial. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. And I'm also going to add to the gratitude to the country of Amfitiron, which is Japan, also to the international telecommunications organisation. We are talking about the TIC, the technology and information of communication. I'm going to do a brief review about my country, what we are doing, what we have done and what we hope to achieve. Guinea-Quatorial is a small country of just 28,000 km2, less than 1.5 million inhabitants. Guinea-Quatorial, since the year 2000, we are in a vast development programme called Guinea-Quatorial Horizonte 2020. This means that for the year 2020, we want to become an emerging country. We are aware that the economic emergency cannot reach the economic emergency without the full development of the technology, the information and the communication. Taking into account this, our government, in the last 5 years, has made a huge effort, an important investment in these technologies. Today, in Guinea-Quatorial, we have about 2,000 km of optical fiber that connects the entire country. We have the United States. The country consists of two regions, an island and a continental and we have the island and the continental with two submarine cables and we are also joining the last months with Cameroon with a third cable. This means that the new technologies of the information and the communication are going to accelerate the development of the country. Without them, it will be impossible to achieve the objectives. Even now, the statistics of our country are low, low on the internet because this could not be done without investment, without means. Recently, we have grown economically thanks to the discovery of oil. I think that many African countries have this problem. The low use of technology and the communication technology also depends on the level of the economic capacity of the countries. We have been lucky that in the last few years the country has grown economically and we have been able to make these investments. Our statistics are still very low. For example, the use of internet despite having the country almost 97% connected the use of internet only exceeds 10%. This also depends on the formation of the population because the government is making great investments but that investment is for people to use it. The government is informatizing the administration and we believe that in the next few years our statistics will improve and the use of information and communication technology will be a reality in Guinea. This morning I looked at the statistics published by the International Organization of Telecommunications and I must admit that they are very low due to lack of data to update our country and we believe that the government will improve the statistics because we believe that we cannot progress without using these technologies. Zambia and Zimbabwe Zambia and Zimbabwe these are no separate countries. I think most of the challenges we face are very common. On the use of statistical data Zambia we have realized that it is very important in the sense that it will be able to give us the near to measure of assistance in terms of quantity in the provisions of goods and services. What type of assistance in what quantities and what should be done and how it should be done. Zambia is further being a landlocked country constructing several rail lines to open the country. We are constructing one line which is going to Mozambique. We are also constructing a line which is through Malawi which we are calling Chpata Mucinji. We have also a Banguela rail line going into Angola. We have another line which is going into Zimbabwe. We are trying to open up because we have appreciated that ICT plays an important role. Then the other important thing that Zambia has been able to realize is the development of alternative energy because for ICT to be continuously there there is need for energy also to be provided for because what has been happening is that we have been dependent mostly on hydro electricity. Now we have gone further to try and open up but we go into alternative energy like solar. So, coal and the other thing that we have been able to look at is the level of literacy. You would find that if you are talking about ICT you must be able to create a base from primary school. So Zambia further has factored an educational curriculum where there is ICT programs starting at the primary school. Mr. Moderator, I thought those are some of the issues that I would be able to contribute. Thank you. Thank you very much, Minister. Before I open the floor I see there is a request for the floor from Dr. Mulamba from Zimbabwe. The other minister wants to take the floor before I open the floor. Yes. The Deputy Prime Minister after that then I will open the floor. Please, the floor is yours. Thank you very much for allowing me to come back. Again, in an attempt to encourage African countries who are here and other developing countries but for the developed countries these are opportunities for you to make money. I wanted to say to you the perhaps we can draw lessons from Peter Drucker who said big thoughts are fun to romanticize but it's many small insights coming together that bring ideas into the world. I thought this becomes very relevant to what we are doing here to say let us implement now the ideas which we have said earlier on we cannot beat them as we get more information from conferences like these ones here. We shouldn't delay. That is the import of that quotation from Peter Drucker. In the examples I gave where we address our people giving them a solution. Before I came here on the eve of coming here I received a message that a certain blind person wanted to see me wanted to see me then I couldn't because I was already preparing but I said can you try to get the message to me by internet which he did. I received the message yesterday. It's a moving one. In there the blind person cited why Nokia removed the E-5s and E-75s from the market which they were using as blind people and they introduced smart phones which are very complicated and out of reach. That's a blind person. Coming back to the question that the developed world are leaders in technology developing world are consumers of technology but unfortunately the people who are in money who are the developed world craft inappropriate solutions for those people who need the solutions and in the end you lose money and those who are supposed to get solutions don't get the solutions. Quite a misfit. I liked what my colleague here said it's very very appropriate let us take solutions to people rather than people moving to solution centers or surface centers. No. Otherwise I see it is meaningless they are supposed to make humanity better. Civilizations better. In Zimbabwe again coming back to my colleague from Zambia where we think that less that simple. You find that pensioners those people who retired from their jobs and are waiting to get a little money every month. Some of them travel long distances to payment centers they use more money to travel than the money they want to get when they get there they are given that they are forced to sleep overnight because they will belong queues now when they do that they are forced again to borrow some money for food the following day they get the little money then when they pay back the money for food they remain with nothing they don't quite understand they get back poor they don't understand what has gone wrong with them and yet now by providing ICT solutions and taking payment centers to them where they come from would have resolved a problem under the import or context of including those marginalized communities using ICTs I said we tend to be very complicated in thinking about simple solutions we shouldn't do that let's start simple the same with the GA green marketing boards as we call them in Zimbabwe because the greatest contributor of the step of food in Zimbabwe are the communal farmers they contribute more than commercial farmers they are spread around the countries but when it comes to payments for their contribution to the green centers we expect them to move to travel to green centers to get their payments but again by thinking about appropriate solutions ICT solutions we then make them receive their payments where they are so that they concentrate on farming rather than them getting them inconvenienced and narrowing their profit margins by getting them to profit centers allow me, I know I'm running out of time Mr. Rapporteur why is it that people might have GPS gadgets in disaster areas but they still die why is it that we attend so many conferences but we don't implement solutions people remain poor why is it like that I've identified lack of clarity of awareness at the police level and at the political high level of the issues which we are discussing I've also identified lack of follow through and follow up of things which we do starting from these workshops when we get home another bag we already packed it to get to the next workshop and there's no time to analyze what we have gleaned from such a workshop and its importance and to make an effort to implement what we have done so the cycle repeats and people become poor so we are meetings of people who discuss contradictory issues when it comes to implementations what we discuss and what we implement are two different things otherwise thank you very much thank you very much for your contribution thank you so thank you very much I recognize the deputy prime minister and then the vice minister of Japan deputy prime minister of Tonga I just want to have a quick intervention because I have to leave the room pretty soon you can catch me on a tea break or lunch sorry in the latest world risk register I mean listing all the vulnerable countries in the world number one is Vanuatu number two is Philippines number three is Tonga so a lot of the top 10 vulnerable countries in the world actually I mean from the Pacific or around here in the panel here I mean basically what I want to say is that disaster is something that we live with day in day out and it's something that we take seriously and one of our policy one of our direction that we're taking right now is actually investing more in the resilience of our countries with the hope that that will reduce the aftermath or the losses after cyclones or volcanoes or what have you there for example some of the project right now are more inclined focusing on building our resilience where currently it's all like implementing a project to actually strengthening our institutional arrangement our key agencies and one of those components there is actually providing a more robust communication system to ensure that even in a cyclone category 5 cyclones these key stakeholders can still communicate we believe that's how we can mitigate how we can reduce potential problems from natural hazards or natural disasters so I mean we have that component and it's disaster related and at the same time thinking outside of the box we actually run e-government services on top of that disaster infrastructure I mean toners or development partners are very hesitant to actually provide funding on a purely ICT project but we have this particular component on reducing the risk associated with disaster by providing more robust communications and therefore we can actually run services on top of that disaster network so I mean in a small country such as Tonga we have to be innovative in how we actually try and make the most of the resources that we have and we'd like to acknowledge the assistant from ITU in providing communication services to some of our unconnected islands in Tonga because that also serve as a backup to the telecosies that are actually in those islands if those telecosies goes down we still have the communication system provided by ITU as a backup making it more resilient in our case to disasters. Similarly I appreciate the government of Japan's assistant they provided some sirens because Tonga as in most specific countries they have a lot of low lying islands that are more susceptible for storm surge tsunami and so forth so we learn from Japan's experience and actually trying to put a few sirens in place so that hopefully we can actually warn our people and give them enough time to actually evacuate and just to add into it we recognize the need to actually bring taters together and so what we're trying to do because right now we have different agencies that actually collect different information about weather and what have you so what we're trying to do is actually bring them together into a maze here what they call multi-hasset early warning systems basically having all those information in one place can actually make you give you the opportunity to make informed decision about warning about raising awareness about training and actually about telling people about disasters and warning them about it so those are some I guess possible way forward in actually dealing with disaster and that's why I mean a lot of Pacific islands in Paris right now but a COP21 because disaster related to climate change is a serious business for us in the Pacific thank you Thank you very much the Deputy Prime Minister this is very important and because the Deputy Prime Minister might leave before I draw my conclusions he's referring of course to the ITU connectivity project that was signed by ITU and the heads of state eleven of them in Samoa when the World Conference for the small island developing states was taking place so there was a side event to connect communities in those countries and make sure that there would be a relationship between socio-economic development disaster reduction and also disaster response so thank you for making those remarks let me take okay sure please I cannot leave this all without informing you that we need the gender disaggregated data and I really would like statisticians and all of us here please pursue again the gender disaggregated gender budgeting whatever we have for the women because in Malaysia just a second I would like to inform you that the flat management system for example we simulate and there's a lot of women and children that actually helping us in the flat management system so we need to get them the gender disaggregated data to be again on the agenda of ITU thank you very much thank you for those remarks thank you I would like to invite the vice minister of Japan we have been quite instrumental the Japan the government of Japan was the first government to come on board when ITU planned potential conference in Busan Korea last year adopted resolution 202 which introduces for the first time the use of information and communication technologies particularly big data for epidemics and we launched a project which is co-financed by ITU in Japan and we launched it on the 28th of August in Sierra Leone free town and the president of Corona and 434 participants were there including ambassadors and 15 ministers divided between ICTS and health so with that we I would like to give him the floor and also of course in response to super cyclone which hit Philippines they contributed a mobile unit which is very good for disaster response efforts and I think they are exhibiting it here so you are invited to go there so the floor is yours please Thank you very much moderator and moderator already pointed out in the big data and the first challenge is how to collect a lot of data automatically and I propose from the viewpoint of government role and government has a lot of data or statistics but they are not led by computer and usually they are paper based not machine readable and we have to promote open data policy and open government it's not only central government but also local government and we set a common standard regarding machine readable and in Japan case and each ministry has own format we cannot cooperate such kind of data by computer and now we already set a common standard and when we combined government data and private data we create new value and find solution by using such kind of data and this is only Japan try and I want to I want to make common standard for worldwide this is my proposal Thank you very much minister I would like to thank all the ministers we will come to the closing we haven't reached yet because we would like the audience to share with you their perspectives and also asking questions in inviting interventions and questions I would like to urge you to be even shorter than the ministers so one minute would be good and we have a prize for the shortest intervention having said that let me invite the director of the BDT to share with you a very innovative solution which is called SSDM for Sustainable Development Model Please Thank you very much Mr. the Director I launched this initiative by taking a very simple note when a country is struck by a natural disaster the first 48 hours are important to save lives generally what happens is that we are all emotional everyone wants to do something but unfortunately it has happened a few times that the airport is closed during the first few days twice because the runway is damaged when it is a earthquake twice because it is working without a disaster so we are in a situation where we always arrive a little later and as you know in the last few years we have a lot more natural disasters than we had before there is an accelerated rate of natural disasters linked to climate change so this initiative I launched in order to arrange what we can have on the ground of equipment to help to organize the natural disaster response and of course we had cases where we had equipment like this but when the disaster arrives we will look at the equipment sometimes the batteries don't work anymore because it has been put in a corner for a long time so the idea here is to make sure that it can be used and the idea is based on the fact that we use these equipment when there is no disaster these equipment are used to do for small businesses at the level of rural areas in fact it is vulnerable and when there is a disaster these equipment become systematically the equipment to help to do face natural disasters communication needs so that's it we actually use the management of natural disasters with the sustainable development if there is no disaster it's good they use the same equipment generally in villages but when there is a disaster the business is stopped so from the first days we can have the equipment that we want to use and I put a consultative group who helps me with this initiative I am happy to know that Sakamoto-san is one of the members of this consultative group 15 people in the world and we went to a second phase where we want to work on the whole ecosystem of natural disasters before the disaster all those who are without a search the organization because also those who happen twice it's the national organization who is not there you don't know who takes power everyone wants to do we have to find an ecosystem find a place a national plan management of disasters that allows us to put all of this together during the disaster and also after the disaster because our sensitivity stops when the disaster is over but we leave behind the people who are involved and who have impacted their lives how we do after the disaster to make sure they come back this initiative I think it doesn't answer all the questions but it's already that and I think that if we work around that we have to be able to master it play our role in the case of natural disasters it doesn't answer all the questions that have been asked but it's already a part of the response if we work together Thank you very much this is an initiative as the director said which is people oriented and people centered as the representative of Malaysia said I recognize the representative of the government of Sierra Leone who would like to make an intervention please the floor is yours Sierra Leone do you still want to Yes please Thank you very much for recognizing me I apologize profusely for the absence of my minister I am the member of parliament I'm the leader of the House of Parliament of Sierra Leone I've listened to contributions of ministers I want to zero my intervention here by quoting the director when he said giving ICT a human face that's what is me related to what we have come through we have just been declared as a country Sierra Leone Ebola free about a month ago and giving ICT a human face why it touches me my old grandmother the first time I gave her a phone a cell phone to speak she told me she cannot speak because she don't understand English I said no you can communicate in any language the usual cut says in the telephone is normally hello she cannot say that so today if the director is encouraging us to give ICT a human face I give him thumbs up when Ebola hit Sierra Leone the whole world reacted in a humanitarian way sent us ambulances and medicines when those medicines got to that country the next step is how to get them to the rural poor the roads are terrible impossible had it not been for the availability of mobile phones communication would have been a worse disaster ever seen how to tell our people as a stopgap to use salt, sugar and water whites are waiting the ORS to use coconut water after the symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea the whole night this was very very serious for us if those medicines through the telephone to find a solution of that nature that is why given this ICT a human face is very very important to us ICT is very very dear to Sierra Leone during the Ebola reporting the dead reporting the symptoms in those remote places was very very possible as a member of parliament I represent a constituency one of the quickest way I really mitigates the spread of Ebola in my constituency was the use of telephone I made sure every village had a communication a way of communicating through the mobile phone that was the only quickest way because to get all those medicines from the international donations and to get of course the ambulances very new ambulances but they cannot get to those places because the roads are impossible so I'm particularly happy that I am in this meeting and I've seen a lot of people telling us about how important the ICT is Sierra Leone is coming on as a member of the ITU the government is working very hard of course it has just been mentioned by the moderator about the conference that was recently held I think I was one of those that attended that conference I want to thank the government of Japan for organizing Sierra Leone and I believe I'm going to be an ambassador for all the information I have gotten here my colleague also on my side is also a member of parliament in the opposition and both of us have listened quite attentively and we are going to be the ambassadors to take those messages to the rural poor because we represent constituencies thank you very much thank you very much for that interview thank you so we have five minutes I will need five minutes to summarize so we have 15 minutes if you try to keep your end of engines short it will be helpful because we can have more people speak if you feel inspired you can prepare a written statement we have a link on the website for WTIS 15 we will upload it so that you can share your perspectives freely is there anybody else who wants to take the floor from the floor if you could introduce yourself and then make your intervention I'm very good noon my name is Mohammed Azizi and I'm the chairman of the regulatory authority of Afghanistan I think we discussed important issues since morning what's very important is that we have to find out a way in regards the alignment of the SDGs and the ICT together because a lot of the time we talk about the importance of the two different teams but at the same time it's very important that we do speak a bit more in detail on how we can define the role of ICT within the SDGs and likewise I would like to emphasis that it's very important that we do come up with indicators that will help us on one side to specify the role of the ICT in the SDGs but then at the same time we have to find the mechanisms of monitoring the progress in the achievement of the SDGs and in particular the indicators that are from the that are the ICT relevant and I think lastly what I want to say is that the role of data is very vital and let's not take it only from the perspective of the merely using the world policy making but I think if we want to develop the ecosystem of the countries if we want to really get into the innovation in the research and development or even when we talk about the improved connectivity I think for all these matters data is very essential and in today's world and the digital world I think big data it needs to be integral component for all of the countries if we are a small country or big country we have to make ourselves ready for that thank you very much. Thank you for that intervention. Thank you. Yes please. Bangladesh. I am from Bangladesh there and actually under the SDG 16 the accountable institution so the open government data concept is being promoted by the UN department of economic and social affairs UNDESA I am going to another view of actually Vice Minister from Thailand so what steps has been taken so far by Thailand to promote the ODD to make all the data NSO, NRA or any other agency to make all the data coming in one single platform and make it easily accessible to the wider group of people thank you. Thank you very much for that intervention is there anybody else the other side can you do a bit of gender balancing? I only hear very thick voices can we my sister here represented many ladies and that was very impressive can ladies also tell their stories I will just pick one randomly yes Brazil please thank you very much gender balance thank you very much and I would actually like to draw on a subject that was raised by the representative of Malaysia I am from the regional center for the development of the information society in Brazil and I would like to touch on the SDG number 5 which is actually achieving gender equality and I would like to hear from the representatives what efforts are needed to reduce the ICT gender gap and the role of gender equality thank you very much for that I think I will do a one rounder to is there anybody else who is asking for the floor I don't see any great so I will ask our panelists to try the 30 minute rule and see if they can answer quickly so that all of them can have a round if they wish so there were two questions a comment that came from Afghanistan and Brazil raised an issue on the issue of gender and before you take the floor so that you put your mind together I see a hand up there please go ahead good morning to all I am from Ministry of Communication Government of India regarding statistics I have one question there are 11 parameters in the ICT index so I feel that certain of the parameters need to be overlooked to see the actual ICT connectivity in the country for example there are some parameters on access parameter on usage and parameter on skills so we need to actually really objectively see whether these parameters are how much relevant and how much they can be modified to see and to reflect the real ICT index so thank you thank you very much for that I think we should acknowledge by right so allow me to respond to the last one just to let you know that we are member driven organization and we are proud of that democratic right to comment to propose and to advance an argument we have two groups that deal with statistics stretching from data collection, processing and reporting the expert group on telecommunications indicators and also the group on household indicators there you have two ways of contributing one you can go to the online platform and you can register yourself if you are not registered and you wish to participate see anyone of our team member and you can register and you are free there to make contributions and you will discuss with other experts then once a year we have a meeting one week meeting where you can present and share your ideas because as you understand we have many countries 193 we need to build some kind of consensus but we are for improvement we are for better reporting we are for quality and we would like to hear from you and I think the secretary general called that this morning in his opening remarks so please feel free but please join those two groups and contribute as much as you wish but you raise a very important point let me move on to anyone from the panel we have five minutes if you wanted to say something yes gender balance in the urban areas we don't have much problems regarding the differences between men and women but in the rural areas the difference is very distinct so what we are planning to do we will be setting up a fund what we call a young innovators fund because we have realized that we have the potential in youth especially all we need is to create what they require to tease this potential in reality so we are setting up the fund we are drawing in businesses just talking with them last week before I came here partnership between businesses so that business inject into this fund and then we make these funds available to young people who then create solutions and one solution to address gender balance in the youth of our cities is to create appropriate ICT technology for these women like appropriate mobile phones that they can use in the rural areas imagining the environment in rural areas where an African or Zimbabwe woman wants to do up her house using cow dung as they normally do and the mobile phones dropped into the cow dung she needs to take it up wash it and use it and then on the cell phone there is a prompt that she has been sent money by her daughter or her son in the UK then she rushes to a collection center and get the money that kind of practical application to our environment that's what we are trying to do thank you very much for that I would like to give the Deputy Prime Minister from Ethiopia to be also quite brief then I will move on to Malaysia and I will conclude okay before I conclude I will go this way okay good so please let's be very very brief I beg you because there is another program which will be commencing shortly please I just want to comment on two points that have been raised of course they are very important points this alignment of ICT and SDG I think this is it should be the preoccupation of all of us and well two goals definitely have been specifically address have a specific address in our ICT as well as infrastructure and social inclusion so that speaks by its own a lot about ICT but all the targets definitely should be aligned with ICT and this is homework for ITU and for all of us to do I think there are a lot of exercises that should have been so we have to integrate all these ICTs with all the targets and the goals that have been mentioned specifically in all our development engines of the countries regarding gender with this ICT issue it's also part of it but I feel that this ICT gender must base mainly on other development agendas there must be a gender balance on education it has to start with education if there is imbalance on education it just cannot balance it on ICT it's not about distributing on apparatus it just cannot secure gender balance gender balance has to be first address of education health poverty alleviation and ICT can be an instrument for that too so I think we have to combine with a major interventionist to address gender balance thank you very much let me go to Malaysia but before I do that I will come back to you are not asking for the floor very good are you asking or not very good again so just to let you thank you very much you raised a very important point that ITU is in the forefront in fact since the times of the MDGs ITU has been in the forefront working with other UN agencies through a framework that we call the partnership and we are developing indicators including those for the sustainable development goals and we agree with you fully that we have to map those indicators because we are in a world of indicators for indicators so the SDGs and we also follow the WISIS the World Summit on the Information Society which has got also its own part so we have to make sure that there is some kind of convergence in the coherence in that area but Malaysia plays on gender thank you I just would like to discuss a little bit more on the gender balance with gender equality I think Mr. Moderator it is always good to begin in this context that we are discussing today it's about indicators, about the role of the statisticians, role of the data collectors that data collectors and statisticians cannot be at the peripheral of gender issues they must be at the center stage because it is very important for them like journalists to know the gender issues all about if they do not know then they cannot create that kind of ecosystem where you can spur gender equality that is one second one is about to make sure that actually whatever that is happening around us here today we must make sure that we go back and implement it it cannot just be discussing here and make sure that all countries will have to begin with if you have not already done so gender sensitization program gender budgeting gender mainstreaming is no more integration of gender issues into the policy making it is the mainstreaming part that is very very important thank you Mr. Moderator thank you very much and you were brief so I recognize the minister of well thank you Moderator I'm not going to talk about gender at all I just have a general comment and after everything that was said the question for a list of other countries like Guinea-Bissau is what is next and I think it should be interesting for us and probably is the challenge for the audience to see how the audience mainly the researchers to see how we're going to make sure that we as an organization we can work together in order to make a sort of developed countries working with at least developed countries to reduce this digital divide I think that this is one of the questions that we haven't probably put forward to see ways in which you could strengthen our cooperation for instance how can Guinea-Bissau benefit from the experience of Japan I think these are issues that probably researchers could help us to find ways in which we could improve it thank you so much thank you very much for that comment let me invite the minister of Zambia to say a few words thank you sir first and foremost I would like to say that with the Zambian government on issues of gender we have specifically created a ministry which is a ministry of gender which is mainstreaming most of the gender activities hence the issue of budgeting has been addressed from that angle because the ministry of gender gets a budget from the national budget that's what I can say thank you thank you very much vice minister Japan please thank you very much moderator and as you know many statics are made in the industrial age not information age we want to build a new statistic in the information age and we can physical data we can collect physical data easily but information data is difficult and however several countries have best practices to exchange best practices therefore the role of WTIS is important thank you very much thank you very much can we thank all the ministers for their active participation and for their invaluable ideas so let me do a quick summary before I close for the purpose of the report you are going to have a report for this session and it is going to be integrated into the main report of this event and my colleagues are taking note of the report and I would like to conclude as follows we the policy makers sitting here in Hiroshima on this debt have agreed on the following one to increase clarity on all issues pertaining to data collection data processing and ICT in general second to make sure that we optimize the use of all those resources that are at our disposal for purposes of reducing debts when disasters do strike but also for contributing to sustainable development by making sure that we grow economies second making sure that we all at our level as policy makers promote gender issues by focusing on inclusivity and that brings also the people with challenges, physical challenges people with disabilities that we shall use ICTs to mitigate the impact of climate change and help countries to adapt that we shall innovate continuously and innovate not only in introducing new appropriate affordable technologies but also in terms of data collection as we move from the industrial age to the information age capacity building has been recognized as one of those key drivers and the direct of the BDT has committed to run capacity building events for policy makers and I think we are lucky to have members of parliament who are lobbied when public policies are being formulated we are lucky to have the ministers that are responsible for ensuring the implementation we are lucky to have experts who are dealing with the statistics but the next point being that we have to embrace new technologies as they do image that goes to the issue of big data the Deputy Minister of Tonga said small data for small countries but we are integrated into the international community so small plus small we have big so big data so innovation has been repeatedly mentioned by all and we have to make sure that we embrace machine to machine communications because our statistics indicate that today there are over 25 billion devices talking to each other by 2020 it is estimated 45 billion devices will be talking to each other and how can we capture the data that comes out of all those sensors that we have at our disposal big data for better decision making and better impact I think that is very important the final point being that we the policy makers sitting today have committed to go beyond talking and to make sure that we implement those decisions that we are making and undertake that next year when WTIS sits that will be reviewing the progress that we have made until then I thank you very much for your participation including the audience thank you very much Excellencies Deputy Prime Ministers and Ministers thank you very much it was a lively discussion and we were delighted the thoughtful ideas and the comments by each panelist thank you Dr. Zawazawa for finding modellership once again let's applaud the participants on the stage so before ending I have three announcements number one WTIS 15 quiz all of you already gather one page of quiz it will take just two minutes please refill it and leave it as a registration office ITU and Japanese Government will make a good present for the winners the announcement of the winner will be announced will be done as a reception tonight so please never fail to register it this is number one number two those Excellencies who participated in this Ministry Roundtable and who will participate in the Leaders Dialogue and all the other registered BIPs by the ITU are invited to the BIP lunch from now on this is the second point and the third point other guests other guests will be invited to the BIP lunch as a whole next to this meeting venue today's concept of BIP lunch is vegetables and mainly Japanese the concept of tomorrow BIP lunch is vegetables and mainly western on the third day the lunch is vegetables and mainly Chinese so please don't miss each of the buffet lunch alright so BIPs will leave the room firstly before that yes photo time sorry so Mr Yasuo Sakamoto Vice Minister of our Ministry escort all of the BIPs to the venue of the BIP lunch so please follow Vice Minister Mr Sakamoto and after the BIP lunch the briefing for the next Leaders Dialogue will be done at the same place of the BIP lunch so those people who participate in the Leaders Dialogue please follow Mr Sakamoto also