 Welcome to the ITU Plenty Potentiary Conference 2018 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today Mr. Malcolm Johnson who is Deputy Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union. Malcolm welcome to the studio. Thank you very much Max. Now you've just been re-elected as Deputy Secretary-General you've got another four years which is fantastic I just really wanted to ask you a little bit about the fact that this Plenty Potentiary Conference has seen calls to modernize ITU and over the next four years perhaps you could tell us where could ITU make the biggest strides. Yes well you'll recall that the last Plenty Potentiary Conference adopted a number of efficiency measures 30 in fact. So we've implemented most of those I'm pleased to say and made quite a lot of gains through doing that. However I still believe that we can go further on some of those in particular with regard to the duplication of activities and functions in the ITU and also do more to centralize some of the administrative and finance services in the ITU so that we we have more specialized workforce on these areas rather than having it spread across the different bureaus as well as the general secretariat so that's one area. We've also done a lot of work on simplifying and digitizing our internal processes and a lot of these processes were paper based. We can do it we still have a lot more to do in that area but we've also reduced the use and dependency on paper quite significantly I'm pleased to say since since I started we're now using three million less pages a year than we were doing. And it's noticeable at this conference too. Exactly so that's another area that we can do more of especially you know in in the headquarters and then also we are looking at trialling some machine translation and machine captioning tools. These technologies are developing rapidly so I think in the next few years they're going to be sufficiently the quality will be sufficient to be able to use them and implement them and thereby increase the amount of translation we do for the same budget. We're also trialling outsourcing the translation of the web pages you know that's a trialous ongoing at the moment with a number of member states and that's also proven to be quite beneficial. And the captioning will make ITU much more accessible as well. Exactly yes we do provide captioning at the moment but it's manual captioning. We've already done a trial comparing manual captioning with machine captioning and it's rapidly catching up with the quality and accuracy of the manual captioning. So there's that area and another area that I'm particularly keen on taking further is the remote participation to our meetings because this will reduce the cost of course of participating, cost of traveling and cost of accommodation for participating in meetings most of them being in Geneva. But also for those countries that are far from Geneva and with limited resources and not able to come you know to the meetings it mean they'll be able to participate at no cost. So it will increase the inclusiveness you know the opportunity for all our members to participate in our work. So that's also something I'm very keen on. But the one thing that will give us a huge move forward on modernizing the ITU I believe is the new building. Now the new building of course is going to be a smart building environmentally sustainable. It's the design that's been chosen and provides tremendous amount of light the way it's been designed and also capacity so this spacious accommodation. It'll be an environment I believe that will inspire staff and delegates for future generations. So that's an opportunity for us to introduce modern working methods, flexible working. So not only will that improve efficiency but it'll also enhance staff life work balance. It's proved to be very effective and many studies have shown that to be the case. So I think that's that's something that's really looking forward to taking that project forward. And as you know we've been very fortunate to get to generous sponsorship from Saudi Arabia, UAE and Czech Republic and made a donation. So with their support you know we will be able to enhance this building and make it something that we're all very proud of. And I would encourage of course other member states and sector members to follow their example and make a contribution to this new building. And that's a brand new building that will be replacing a building in Geneva that's been there for how many years now? Well since the late 50s yes that building no longer meets a number of requirements, safety requirements, accessibility requirements. So yes that building will be demolished and the new building will be built on that site. So it's a complex project because we have to relocate the 300 staff in that building will need to be relocated. But the main thing is the main challenge I think is this change of culture of the organization moving into an open space environment, paperless working, modern working methods, flexible working. So it would be quite a change for ITU but I think definitely a change for the better. Absolutely and talking about change you brought gender parity to the standardization bureau when you were director of it. I wanted to ask you what would it take to get gender parity across the whole of the organization? Yes well as we know less than half the world population is currently connected and statistics show that over 250 million more women are offline than men. So a lot of women and girls they're missing out on that opportunity of empowerment, social and health benefits, educational benefits and the opportunities that will come from future jobs. I mean most of the jobs that will be available for today's generation of girls don't exist at the moment but one thing we can be sure of is that whatever career they go into they're going to need digital skills. So it's very important all the work that we're doing to encourage more women and girls to come into the sector and acquire digital skills. And yes in the TSB when I was there I'm very proud to say that we increased the percentage of women professionals from less than 20% to over 40% while I was there. And I always like to say that that's not because I chose women candidates because they were women. I chose them because I thought they were the best candidate on merit. And I'm pleased to say they proved me right you know. But we did introduce a number of other measures that helped. I mean we introduced leadership courses for the women professionals. We introduced unconscious bias courses especially for those that are going on to the interview panels. And I myself completed the UN Women online course I Know Gender and I encouraged all the staff to take that course. So I think you know leading by example is very important in this area and if the women can see that they have the support needed to progress their careers in the ITU then that makes a huge difference. So this is what we're looking to extend to the whole of the organization. And we can see that we're making progress. I mean perfect example here is Doreen being elected as the new BDT director. Doreen started as a junior professional in the ITU. So it's perfect role model. And role models are very important of course. But also we've seen in this conference that a number of women taking leadership positions. I mean we have more women chairing the committees than men. So we're definitely making progress and we have the ITU gender policy very sound policy. So implementing that I'm sure we'll continue down the road of reaching gender parity. Finally after your reelection what message would you like to convey to both the people here and to the wider audience as well. Yes well as we know ICT is going to be essential for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. And ITU as a lead UN agency on ICT is clearly got a very important role to play there. But there are many organizations all involved in implementing the SDGs and using ICTs to help implement the SDGs. So I would say that collaboration, coordination and cooperation are the key to ensure that we all bring our own specific competencies to the table. That we don't overlap and duplicate our efforts and pool our resources to the common good. So that we do achieve the implementation of the SDGs and bring this wonderful technology to everyone everywhere. Well congratulations once again for being re-elected as Deputy Secretary-General. We look forward to catching up with you again over the next four years and thank you very much indeed for joining us in the studio today. Thank you, it's a bit of a pleasure. Thanks very much.