 Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to the ministerial roundtables that are going to happen today. These are happening in the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the ITU telecommunication development sector. And this will be the first of two roundtables with the theme of the ICTs for the sustainable development goals. We're going to address them as SDG mostly today. And there will be a second roundtable after a coffee break on the digital economy. I am very pleased to introduce to you the panelists for both roundtables sitting next to me, as well as the ITU elected officials. The ITU elected officials are Deputy Secretary General, Mr. Malcolm Johnson, the Director of Telecommunications and Standardization Bureau, Chai Soob Lee, Director of Radio Communication Bureau in François-Ren-Sea. I will also be introducing the other dignitaries and guests and speakers as we go along. And the first person to introduce now is Mr. Holin Zhao, who is Secretary General of the ITU. Mr. Zhao. Yes, good afternoon. First, I want to thank Argentina's Minister of Modernization, Sr. Andres Ibarra, and the high-level dignitaries of our panel, who have been coming here to join us for these roundtables. I also want to recognize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who is the platinum sponsor of the 25th anniversary celebrations. Thank you for your un-wearing support. Our first roundtable, we are focused on the theme of WTDC 2017, ICT for SDGs. Then, we will discuss the future of the digital economy. Both topics are interconnected. Information and communication technologies now form the backbone of today's digital economy. Meanwhile, ICTs are driving substantial transformation in many development-related sectors, acting as an accelerator for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The vision of the SDGs is why the world where everybody has equal opportunities, where no one is left behind, is a world where everything and everyone is empowered by ICTs. So, we want to recognize that sustainable development has driven the work of ITUD for the past quarter century. ITU and ITUD will play a critical role in the successful achievement of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. But as 3.9 billion people around the world are still not connected to the Internet, so let's bring the power of ICTs to all people and all segments of our society. Let's use today's roundtable to move one step closer to achieving progress towards the universal and affordable access to ICTs for sustainable development. So, ladies and gentlemen, I wish you enjoy this afternoon's roundtable discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chairman Tao. Now I introduce His Excellency Minister Andrés Ibarra. He is Minister of Modernization of Argentina and will be chairing this ITUD 25th Anniversary Ministerial Roundtable. Mr. Ibarra, please address the audience. Well, good afternoon. Again, it is very important for us in Argentina to have, as we said on Monday in the opening, to have this opportunity to share with all of you these days. And, of course, in that line, I want to thank again the Secretary General, Minister Chao, and the entire Board of Authorities who are present here, because really, 23 years have passed since that meeting of the UIT here in Argentina, and really for us to have this new opportunity is very, very valuable. It is very valuable because Argentina is in a real process of enormous transformation of all the rules of game, of its coexistence as a country, of the rules of institutional games, becoming a country where the law is above everything, the institutionality, the juridicity, and from there all the rules of game of the different sectors of the economy, of the different productive sectors. We are, if we review each of the areas where the government is working and making true transformations, we are in a structural and fundamental change task in each of them so that Argentina, again, inserts itself in the world in a competitive way, in a way of great trust regarding countries, regarding international organizations. And, precisely for us, this is a north, because the fact of belonging to these organizations, to share these days here in Buenos Aires, to work together with the OSD, together with the United Nations, in all the organizations and working areas, as we are doing today, not only in the economy, in what has to do with the open government, in what telecommunications are, the truth is that for Argentina it is extremely important, because after years of being absent from this and, in many cases, losing the direction towards where the world is going, this is a great opportunity for us, as a state and as a government, for our businessmen, for our community in general. So I want to really thank this opportunity. And also mark the role of international organizations in that sense, because the possibility of generating a genuine exchange in terms of strategies, in terms of innovation, in terms of technological evaluation is a really important opportunity. I would like to today, and perhaps as a complement of what our previous meetings were, the opening that we made on Monday and some complementary talks, simply refer me and enter into some level of additional depth, some of the aspects that Argentina is taking forward in this matter. Because, indeed, when we talked on Monday that we are looking for the construction of a true digital strategic plan, and from there that Argentina has a digital agenda, we are talking about what I was telling you, a true transformation in the rules of the game of this sector. And when we talk about transformation, we talk about huge opportunities that we want to develop and generate, because above all we want to give our country, our citizens, our community, the opportunity to have a sustained country, first in an economy in growth, an economy open to local and foreign investments, with rules of the game absolutely clear and predictable. And in particular to this sector, which I see as a sector of a huge potential growth in itself, we think that there are numerous sources of statistics through which we see that the dynamics of this sector pushes the raw product of the countries. About 20% of growth in a sector like this leads us to growth of 1% to 2% in the internal raw products of the countries. And this means not only the dynamic of the sector itself, but the transfer of dynamics to all sectors of the economy. Because as we said in our initial talk, this is the necessary condition for our economy to grow in a sustainable way, that we generate a productive plan in each of the areas, in each of the regions of our country. It depends on the fact that we have a wide range of telecommunications, of telecommunications, of velocity, suitable for this to be possible. Because above all, today the dynamics of the countries is going towards the need that this transformation is supported in the knowledge, in creativity, in innovation. And all this is impossible to carry forward if it is not supported in a need to go back and forth with communications and a structural development of funds in its communication system. It is the only way we can reach each corner of the country with knowledge and distance. This greatly facilitates all the innovation work, entrepreneurship, the development of small companies, of course the big companies, which are the ones that have the most possibilities and potential to achieve it. But when we want to develop a region at 1,500 km away from our capital, it is absolutely key to the development of this industry. So you will see in the coming years a revolutionary transformation of this industry, because it is the necessary condition that we have so that Argentina grows sustainably and generates a real boom of investment, economic growth and employment. But I also want to tell you that this is not a dream or a simple vision that we have and we know perfectly where we are going, but that that path has also begun to move forward. And I want to rescue and highlight some of these important items that we have been taking forward because they are like the initial credit to show that the path has already begun. This is how in one of the important premises that the UIT has proposed, the concept of spectrum, the expansion of spectrum and the expansion of frequencies is a condition and in Argentina we have already taken the first steps, going from about 290 to about 500 megs, but of course we need a lot to reach the 1,200, 1,300 megs that are the aspiration and the objective that the International Telecommunications Union plans. But let's go on that path without any doubt and towards it we will reach the necessary condition for the development towards which we are going. We have dictated and the government and the president a series of regulations such as the DNU 267 and the Decreto 1,340 that go towards the promotion of this propitious environment for innovation, the integration of infrastructure and the optimization of services. And of course that the final aspiration of all this is what I was telling you the other days, is that convergence to which we are walking and to which we have to surround the right normative framework. Argentina is going to have its laws or laws in terms of convergence and for us it is going to be in a description associated with our infrastructure plans as a true previsibility autopist. That is what we have to achieve, this true previsibility autopist in normative terms. And on that path we are going. And of course why all this? Because we believe fervently in the need for private public investment. Recently we have sanctioned the law of private public participation because we believe in the need for a shared, complementary and absolutely synergistic development which is the state has to plan the rules of the game and has to invest. But private investment is fundamental and we are going to create all those rules of the game. We are going to add rules of the game so that the local and foreign private investment at a great scale and at the level of the pimes is a reality. We want previsibility, we want profitability and we want from this previsibility and profitability a generation and a true explosion of investments in the sector that leads us to enhance the economic growth of Argentina and to increase the employment of this sector so but so important. In that line the state is doing its thing through, as I said the other days, the plan of the Federal Network of Optical Fibers and of course there is an objective of 1300 localities. We are around 300 connected, we are missing but we are going on that path to connect all Argentina with a wide band that really gives us a speed which is what today demand is demanding. And of course we are also working with the plan of rural schools with the satellite connectivity of 2800 rural schools and of course also with rules of the game so that the small companies and the smaller operators also have their rules and that is why we have to see with the OMB or the OMB which are the virtual mobile operators that also for us have a fundamental importance in terms of sector development. Obviously we are going to complement all this with the other part of the development of the STICS and it is what has to do with the audiovisual industry. Argentina has a huge talent in its people, in its entrepreneurs and really the audiovisual industry has to give a leap of quality and quantity, very but very important for which also our rules of the game will allow to generate that important growth in this sector and then transform all our STICS in a sector that really generates innovation in Argentina and also produces a leap, exports and generates a kind of light towards the region and towards the rest of the world. We want to position ourselves in this way, I told you that I saw that the future is going to find Argentina in a very important role because sincerely we consider that the necessary condition for the growth that we are looking for in our country is the development of this sector it is an innovative sector, entrepreneur and that gives us the conditions and the possibilities so that the rest of the economy and the productive sectors in Argentina grow in an innovative way. I thank you very much, we will continue to talk in these days and I insist again that for us it is a great opportunity that we want to take advantage of the fact that this congress is being carried out in Buenos Aires. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Minister Ibarra. There is a situation unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances Mr. Ibarra has to leave us now. He will be replaced by Mr. Héctor Wissi. Mr. Wissi is Argentina's ICT Secretary and Head of Delegation here at the WTDC 2013. Thank you very much Minister Ibarra. Thank you very much Minister Ibarra. Now we move on to the first of the ministerial roundtables ICT for Development Goals is the topic here and we will have the opportunity to attend the launch of the ITU book ICT-Centric Economic Growth, Innovation and Job Creation and I should say that it is an honor to introduce to you the people responsible for this meeting and this situation. Here of course this book. The first one who I'm going to introduce is Mr. Brahim Hassanou and together with him Dr. Ahmad Sharifat and Dr. William Ler here next to me. Mr. Brahim Hassanou Director of Telecommunications Development Bureau from the ITU of course. We invite you to have a few words of address to us. Excellencies, Ministers, Partners, Academia Distinguished delegates, good afternoon to all of you. I'm standing here to talk to you about the project initiative I launched two years ago. ITU D start having Academia as member of the ITU and I found that we should ITU D particularly try to take profit or to use the opportunity of having Academia as our member to do something and one day I told Dr. Ahmad Sharifat I told him I'm going to challenge you with the Academia. You need to produce something for ITU D. We need to produce a study that can take the world, a study that can go back to your universities so the student can use it as a reference paper and you become as such, you become the link and the bridging the gap between ITU and Academia. Here we are today with this first book entitled ICT, Scientific Economic Growth, Innovation and Job Creation. You can see this is not far, I would even say it is at the centre of what you're talking about today which is ICT for development. We know today our young people are suffering from lack of jobs. We know today that the peace in the world is threatened by the fact that our young people don't have jobs. This book I think is touching this very important issue for our society. I was happy to have that Dr. Sharifat together with Dr. Lear and other people you will see in the book, they put together very, very high level Academia members to work on this book. As I've been working on it now for more than one year, as I said, this is the first book we are going to continue like that. I feel today so happy and so proud that those very high level Academia members come to ITU, you have the photo, sit down together and do this work for the good of humanity and for the good for all the people, the young people, for the good of Academia again finally for ICT for development. So thank you very much for joining me or they will be talking to us about what is in the book because I just launched the initiative but they are the brain behind it. So it's better to leave them to the floor to talk about what they know more than myself. Again, thank you very much for joining us and thank you. Thank you very much Mr. Senu. Now we move on to the presentation itself. Right now we will see a short video on the content of the book and invite you to take your eyes towards the screens. Presenting the ITU Global Study on the Impact of ICTs on the Achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The book ICT for SDGs, ICT centric economic growth innovation and job creation, addresses the opportunities information and communication technologies offer and provides insights and direction on how to encourage and facilitate collaborative digital entrepreneurship. It offers practical examples to leapfrog the innovation gap to ensure sustainability and create new job opportunities. The study offers a roadmap with practical strategies for utilizing advances in ICTs to foster an environment that nourishes ICT centric innovation, economic growth and social change consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals. Its holistic and integrative view makes the study a comprehensive resource for all stakeholders within the ICT ecosystem including policymakers, regulators, operators, academics, funding agencies, regional and international organizations, financial institutions and citizens to encourage collective action towards sustainable development. ICT for SDGs, ICT centric economic growth innovation and job creation. Visit www.itu.int forward slash ictimpact-study. Excellent. Let's continue and let's move on with this presentation. I now introduce Dr. Ahmad Sharifad. He's from Tarbiat-Modares University in Tehran, Iran. And he's the chairman of the ITUD study group too, sir. Thank you very much. Indeed, it gives me a great pleasure to be part of the team who contributed to this book. ICT centric economic growth innovation and job creation. As Director Sano mentioned earlier, two years ago he gave me a big challenge. How academia could participate in the works of the ITU to produce something which would be rather unprecedented. I was involved from the very beginning and I'm very fortunate to be part of the team as the chief editor of this book. I have been fortunate to be associated with a number of colleagues in the academia. And I would like to use this opportunity to personally name them and thank them for their contributions. As the co-editor, I'm very happy to introduce to you Dr. William Lair sitting at the beginning of the table. He's from MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And together we edited this book and wrote the first chapter. I will give you the titles of the chapter after I thank the other authors. Then in addition we have Professor Tim Unwin from the University of London. Alex Wong from World Economic Forum. Professor Emmanuel Giovanetti from the University of Cambridge. Also Dr. Shai Laja Fennell from the University of Cambridge. Professor George Barker from London School of Economics and also Australian National University. Together with Professor Prasit Mongkul Karan and Dr. Supavadi Aramwit from Chulalungun Kurun University in Bangkok. Professor Jean-Pierre Offret from George Mason University. Professor Raul Katz who incidentally is a son of Argentina from the Columbia University in New York. Professor James Larson from Sunny Korea, Stony Brook University. This book has seven chapters. The first chapter, the title of which is ICT Engines for Sustainable Development. Chapter two, ICTs Sustainability and Development, the Critical Elements. Chapter three, Digital Divide and Digital Multiplier, a Paradigm Shift through Innovation. Chapter four, The Role of Governments in ICT Based Sustainable Development. Chapter five, Business Models for ICT Centric Sustainable Development. Chapter six, Job Creation and Sustainable Development. And finally chapter seven, The Future of ICT Driven Education for Sustainable Development. As you can see, these are addressing many fundamental basic challenges that the world as a whole is facing. And we have tried to provide the readers with how to move forward, practical steps that needs to be taken in order to address these fundamental and basic challenges. My time is very limited so I'd like to finish by thank Director Sano who engaged academia in a meaningful yet unprecedented manner and opened new opportunities for partnership with ITU by the academia. Also, Dr. Andrew Kim has been exceptionally helpful in this endeavor forward and I would like to use this opportunity to thank each and every one of my colleagues in the academia, in the ITU secretariat and the ITUD who have been involved with this book. I'm very proud to be part of this activity and I think I should stop here and see what Dr. Lear has to say on the content of the book. Thank you very much. I introduce you to Dr. William Lear from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It's a real honor to be here and I would also like to thank Professor Sharifat and Director Sano for being the inspiration behind this project and Onju Kim for helping make sure that all of the things got along. I come from academia and what makes this project new is the fact that all the authors were academics and all the material that was put together in this book was written for this book. This isn't like people pulling things off their shelves. The idea was to try and get a snapshot of the broad sets of issues that are confronting the whole community, the whole world policy community, whatever sector you're interested in. And now at the 25th anniversary of the ITU because the next 25 years are going to be even more fundamental than what we've seen before. If before the first phase for 25 years we could have focused on getting the infrastructure out there and getting people to understand what ICTs do and what ICTs need to do in the economy, the next 25 years are going to take more of that because there's more infrastructure we have to put out there and there's more trends and things we have to deal with. But it's something we have to deal with economy wide. ICTs are amplifiers and accelerators. They make things go a heck of a lot faster. So in framing policy, the connection between academics doing research and figuring out what that means in the marketplace and what that means in policy, the window of opportunity there is much, much shorter. And so those parties have to work together much more closely. The first chapter that I helped co-author looks at sort of what does the economic evidence of the impacts of ICTs tell us. And what that evidence says unambiguously is that ICTs have the potential to produce great growth and to be key drivers and energizers of all the great things that we need to do if we're going to realize the strategic development goals. For example, we are going to raise the living standards of everybody on the planet and we do it the way we did things in the past with the use of energy, not using renewables and things like that. It's going to be a disaster and ICTs have to be part of that solution in places where they haven't been before. So they have to be part of leapfrogging strategies and bringing people forward. But ICTs by themselves aren't enough and ICTs can also do bad things. They can accelerate income inequities. They can lead to things like winter take all economy and policy makers need to intervene to try and oppose that. If we're going to basically have good ICT policy we have to have everybody involved and we're going to have to have holistic economy-wide engagement. It doesn't matter if you're in a sector that's adopting ICTs rapidly or you're in a market that is not because wherever you are you will be affected by this. And if you don't deal with this in a positive way and try and address this head on you'll be a vectim, you'll be roadkill on the next 25 years development here. One of the key things and I think one of the key roles of the ITU is helping stimulate the international collaboration that's going to be absolutely essential if as a planet we're going to grow forward. And when we talk about dealing with the various policy issues that are covered in this book and the academic scholars in this book come from a range of different academic disciplines it's going to have to be a multidisciplinary engagement. It's going to have to involve people across academia, across industry, across all the various industry departments, across every sector from agriculture to healthcare to government to educational sector. We have to basically build a framework that is going to be digital economy friendly for business and the legal frameworks that will make that work on a national and global level and deal within market disruptions that are going to occur there. We need to recognize the fact that in the ICT world as we accelerate things skills are not static. We have to change the way we think about skills development. We have to basically understand we need to move towards things like lifetime learning and deal with the disruptions when jobs for the old economy are replaced by the new economy. What do we do with those people? How do we bring them along? How do we migrate them to be part of the growth that the ICTs can help deliver? That's a key challenge. And we have to deal with the sort of global coordination. International trade is going to be a huge issue at every level. The question of how we're going to deal with things like tax revenues, how we're going to deal with labor mobility across sovereign boundaries and productive activities being reorganized and shifted across sovereign activities. All of these things are going to be key issues and it's a real pleasure to be here today with this book which is a start. And what we hope is it's a start of a collaboration and continued research for the next 25 years. So with that, let me. Thank you very much, Dr. Lerner. Thank you very much. You can obtain this book right away. You can download it for free as a PDF. If you need some help with us, let us know. But this book is available to you as of right now. So go ahead. Get it. We move on. Right now it's my turn to introduce Mr. Andrews Ansip, who is vice president of the European Commission. He will address us. Mr. Ansip. Honourable Ministers, Secretary-General, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today at the 25th anniversary of the ITU development sector. For me as vice president of the European Commission responsible for digital single market, one subject close to my heart is how we can use technology to improve people's lives. In my home country, Estonia, it took a great deal of political determination to achieve full digital interaction between people and governments. Today, Estonians hardly ever need to go in person to any public administration office. The government only needs to ask for personal data once. Just using digital signatures save Estonia one working week a year, which is equal to 2% of GDP and which is equal to defence expenditures in Estonia, for example. Our initiatives to build a digital single market are not only relevant to the European Union, they apply throughout the world because digital does not recognise country borders. I hope that our work can inspire other countries and regions. When it comes to development assistance, the EU and its member states contribute 52% of the world's official development aid. The funds managed by the EU institutions alone amount to 32 billion years over 5 years. Digitalisation helps to leapfrog development stages, cutting directly through the newest and best technologies and services. E-government tools already save billions just by interconnecting public registers and eliminating irregularities. That goes for developing countries as much as for developed ones. Or take e-agriculture, which can increase the income of small farmers by up to 20%. Mobile payment systems have opened up possibilities for financial inclusion as never before. But the picture is not entirely rosy. Half the world's population remains offline and most of them are in developing countries. A major reason for this is cost and affordability expressed in terms of people's local income. This is where development policy can make a real difference on the ground. In May, the European Commission published a strategy to mainstream digital technologies and services into all our development cooperation activities. It has four main priorities. Ensuring access to affordable secure broadband and to digital infrastructure. Promoting digital literacy and skills. Supporting entrepreneurs and digital innovation. Promoting the use of digital technologies and services across sectors to increase accountability, transparency and governance. It will also help to empower women. Our policy will assist the management of vital resources like water, food and energy. This will mean more effective public services such as health and education and the use of civil registers based on EID to provide identification for everyone. Africa is our immediate priority. I can tell you today that the European Union, the African Union Commission and the International Telecommunication Union are close to signing a new project where the ITU's vast experience will support partner countries in Africa to better manage their spectrum and achieve a higher quality and affordability of mobile broadband. We also want to use the EU Africa Summit in Abidjan at the end of November to agree with our partner countries on a common way forwards. Next year the Community of Latin America and Caribbean State Summit, CELOC Summit will provide us with more opportunities to engage with Latin America and boost the digital economy in both our continents. I look forward to working together with all of you to achieve our common aim to put digital properly into development. Thank you. Thank you very much Mr. Ansip, thank you very much for your words and valuable discussion so far. It is now time to start the interactive part of our session today. I will first try and coordinate and help all the dignitaries here, ministers, deputy ministers, C-level representatives of other organizations if time permits. We're looking for the biggest and most diverse views we can possibly have today in the event. By the way, I invite all ministers to take the front seats now. If you're at the back, I invite you to take the front. There will be guiding questions, there will be principles, ideas that will take us through today's discussion. Firstly, can you provide examples of technologies, projects and initiatives that have the greatest impact towards achieving the sustainable development goals in your country? What challenges do you face in implementing these SDGs and how do you see ICTs making a difference? Taking into account the 25 years of achievements of ITUD, in your opinion, how can the enabling role of ICTs for SDGs be strengthened through global efforts at regional and international level? Remember, please remember that my role is to maintain interaction quick and moving forward. I kindly ask you to use not more than three minutes when addressing these issues. Of course, please understand that if I have to interrupt you, it is because we want to keep discussion as diverse as possible. Remember that you can raise your flag or just put it vertical if you want us to go to you. At this point, I invite ministers to start addressing us. In first place, we have Bangladesh who is going to address us now. Mr Chairman and honourable speakers, distinguished delegates, we all know that telecommunication and ICT are key enablers in achieving SDGs. Telecommunication and ICT directly impacts SDG goals one, two, three, four, five, eight, nine, ten and other goals in various degrees, which involves ending hunger, poverty, promote well-being, inclusive and quality education, empowering women and girls, sustainable economic growth, reduce inequality, etc. So, keeping all these in mind, the Government of Bangladesh has prioritized the issue of building robust infrastructure, connecting the unconnected ones to promote e-governance, e-learning, e-health, m-agriculture, e-commerce, reducing the digital divide, banking for the unbanked population, IT literacy training, accessible and affordable internet, ICT industry development, skill development, engagement of women in digital economy, encourage innovation initiatives and development of entrepreneurship amongst women. So, if we go for a few very effective initiatives that Bangladesh has taken, I would name Union Digital Centres, which has so far provided 116 services and 6 million population of rural areas have taken the advantage of these services amongst whom 2.5 million are women. Post-e-Centres have created 17,000 total entrepreneurs amongst whom 8,500 are women and the Government has created an e-commerce platform called JOITA, which helps the rural women to market their products which we have created using the Social Innovation Fund. E-Healthcare Services, Sean O'Kishore platform has been created by using mobile phone and laptop only regarding the adolescents health care education. We have created Teacher's Portal, around 95,500 teachers are well connected, they share their problems, solve their problems online. It's a very popular social media amongst the teachers and we have National Web Portal, which is a gateway to 43,000 plus Government services and around 2,327 million services has already been provided. I'm confusing with numbers though. So, one question that I have, it was in my mind since long, that according to the SDGs, if we look at SDG Goal 4, ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong earning opportunities for all. I would like to emphasize lifelong and for all, because it does not specify any specific age. Goal 5 achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, all means all women irrespective of age. I'm raising this issue because we all know that in countries life expectancy is increasing and in Bangladesh life expectancy has increased to 74 and most of them are female. So, what are we actually looking at in future, how to address this problem as we know that affordable and accessible internet is a precondition for achieving the SDGs and using ICT for SDGs and also involving women and elderly population. If we look at Goal 3, ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all, at all ages. I would like to give emphasis that for all ages if we want to ensure health care access, how do they really access the health care if they don't have the basic skill to know how to access the services already provided to them. So, this is actually not a statement. I would like to have the input of the honorable panelists present on the podium that how can we collaborate and work in this issue. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Bangladesh representative, thank you very much. I would like to know if someone in the panel next to me would have some comments to add, some questions to reply, something to say. Yeah. Please go ahead. Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. I think that the Minister of Bangladesh have part of the answer because the Minister of Bangladesh was one of the pioneers with ITU development sector when we initiated for the first time the meeting between ministers of ICTs and ministers of education in the Ecuador or UNESCO. You said it very well, you talked about collaboration. I think that this is where the issue is. Of course, you have the in-job training, you can raise awareness, but at the end of the day education is part of the education sector and we should be collaborating more and more with those sectors so they can use ICT as a tool. Because so far what I'm seeing is that I have the impression that we are talking to ourselves. I tried to sketch it by saying that sometimes we are trying to sell medicines to people who don't know they are sick. So we need to be more proactive in talking to other sectors. There are our new clients, we should be talking to them, collaborating with them in the way that they can fully use the potential of ICTs for development on all those SDGs. This is what I would like to contribute at this point in time. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Sanu, Dr. Sharathat. Yes, I would like to also reply to the very important question that Her Excellency the Minister from Bangladesh raised already. For your information, in ITUD we have two study groups. In study group two, where I had the honor to chair the study group, one of the questions that in the previous study cycle we studied was on eHealth. And in that question we were working on new platforms, new applications that specifically address the problem that you mentioned. Now the question, of course, needs to be evolved and amended as we have progressed in committee three and committee four in this very WTDC. We would be formulating new questions, part of which would be on eHealth. And I would encourage all countries, including colleagues from Bangladesh, to participate in the works of the study groups that would be focusing on many issues, including the eHealth. That was part of the question that Honorable Minister from Bangladesh raised. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Sharathat. Our next intervention is by the Russian Federation. They were all accompanied by some side effects that were not really positive. As for our goals of 2017, I would like to say that we, as responsible organizations, have to understand all the consequences of the decisions that we can take and accept here. So it turned out that this new revolution of the fourth is primarily related to the ECT, that is, the organization with the Ministry of Industry, which we all represent here. As for our country, we can say that the digitalization and the new revolution have been happening for a long time, and there are many signs of what will happen tomorrow, which we can see now. The biggest challenges for Russia are our territory and the fact that the population density is not always the same. If you look at the specific project for us, the most effective project we had in recent years is a project on the spread of the EDP in all the settlements of the Russian Federation. This has given us an exceptional effect that we are currently observing. This is also visible because the number of citizens has begun to use electronic services. We see that in many settlements, where the Internet has already appeared, there are already opportunities for remote medical services. We have laid nearly 230,000 km of the windows, and this is enough to turn the Earth around 5 times per equator. And this was the biggest project for us in recent years. And I say that infrastructure is a very important element in order to meet all the challenges that will come with the EDP. I believe that if we talk about the ETIU, it was a big event for us to meet at the highest level in the information community. Many of the goals that we formulated then are directly correlated with the goals of the ETIU and its development. I would like to emphasize once again that we have a very big responsibility in order for the side effects of any revolution that happened before humankind. This has not happened in our case. Thank you. Do we have representatives from the panel with a devolution for Russia? Something to add? We go on to our next intervention by the representative of Benin. Please go ahead. We're having a technical problem. Do we have a mic available? Oh, there we go. Hello? Okay, that's good. Thank you. This is Benin. I would like to highlight the hostility of the ecosystem. The book has highlighted the ecosystem that characterizes the ETIU and has made the link between the ETIU and sustainable development. But in our countries, the major challenge is to be able to integrate all the ETIU into the national political documents. Because for a long time, the ETIU did not have the documents considered as the business of partner development, and the national political documents also did not have the documents. The major challenge today is to be able to design the national development tools with the ETIU. The ETIU is to be able to serve the target audience and to be able to place a framework of follow-up both at the national and regional level. Thank you. Thank you very much. I invite all other ministers to please raise your placard, show your flag, raise your hand. Let me know that you want to address the rest of the dignitaries and of course the experts. Please, Doctor. I want to thank the distinguished delegate from Benin for this very important question. I'd like to use this opportunity and refer you to chapters one and four of this book. In chapter one, of course, we consider the ecosystem, and in chapter four, the role of governments in ICT-based sustainable development. That's a subject treated with enough detail, and I would like to again inform you of the fact that this question is already addressed in this book. Thank you. Mr. Chow. Secretary, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to add some information. I visited Benin in March of this year. I was honored to be received by Excellency, the head of state, the president. And then I was also honored to be received by the president of the parliament. And that is the country where I also have another honor during my short visit of today to have a meeting with several ministers in the same room. What happened there is they're talking about E-Strategy, and they realize that today the system infrastructure may not be that kind of base to use ICT to transform the country. While the infrastructure is basically invested and developed by our operators, they have several operators in that country, like many other countries. While the government realized that ICT can help agriculture, can help science, technology research, can help public health, they would like to have national E-Strategy to develop. While the president of parliament told me that he now has a task to ask parliament to approve some laws submitted by one ministry and then other by another ministry, that seems to be not very much coordinated. They'd like to see a consolidated way to see how can we develop the national E-Strategy to guide the next step of development. Then I presented to the president of state and the president of parliament that a little bit earlier I visited Slovenia. I met with Deputy Prime Minister of Slovenia and he gave me more or less similar information that today the government has put in national strategy as a priority to look at the whole picture so that you can make the best strategy to guide the ICT development to facilitate the social economic development rather than to let each ministry to develop their own strategy. That way the Deputy Prime Minister of Slovenia wished to share that view with colleagues. I'm very pleased that he is with us today. This kind of thing is relatively new to us and I got similar comments from the minister of Uganda during our WISIS forum process in Geneva. He came to me that today he thinks that the individual project is important but it's not that urgent and he'd like to have an ideal advice to see how can we develop national ICT strategy to address our issues. This strategy will guide the investment for ICT infrastructures based on the national ICT industry. I think that those kind of things are something much in my opinion and also have a profound influence to the future development of ICT. So those issues, I think that this book gives us a lot of guidance but that question raised by the authorities to me in March seems to be some new challenges to us and we have to also have some kind of studies. By the way when I was there I was also invited to visit one of the big universities. The university has 8,000 students but I was somehow a little bit surprised that over the last decade there are few good students to study the engineers, engineering, mathematics and for mathematics for example almost one decade there are no good students for mathematics. So that also worries us a little bit. So to address the general balance, to address this kind of equal opportunity for women and girls with boys, I think that we have to also to be aware that the challenges, thank you very much. Thank you very much Secretary General, your excellency, Mr. Kapitipnikan. Yes, thank you and thank you Secretary General for these kind words but what we learned in Slovenia regarding to your question is that there is more or less when we talk about the services, technology, knowledge, it's the question of the chicken deck. So you have to find a way how you in constant cooperation develop all those things together because if you build infrastructure and there is not services to use it it will not be recognized. If you have services without infrastructure, if you have services and infrastructure without knowledge, again it's not okay. If you have services which are not connected in behind between the different governmental resource, again they will not be effective. So for us the most common or the most important way to approach to the national strategy is to establish constant national cooperation and widely I'm strongly convinced that we have to deliver not only national but strong, constant international cooperation that we can synchronize our systems. Then our services and our infrastructure will have much bigger impact on quality of life and business opportunities. Thank you. Dr. Lera, please go ahead. I lend you my mic. Thank you. So I really like this discussion and I would like to applaud all the folks that have spoken about this. One, for example, one example that people have talked a lot about is the use of creating digital platforms. Digital platforms can expand inclusion by allowing people to work more flexibly and schedules that work for them. The potential downside of that is that labor laws that are designed to create safety nets don't necessarily cover them. And then you end up with these disruptions where you have digital workers being treated differently from other workers. And these things happen across the different sectors. When it was just something that existed in the digital world, then just the people that were worried about that could worry about it. But now with things like Airbnb and Uber and the sharing economy, it affects all these other sectors. And so the idea that you would have national coordinated policies that would go across all these different sectors and then also international coordination just seems absolutely essential. And I think the ITU is one of the key players in this space going forward. Thank you very much, Dr. Lera. Of course, this is the main point, international coordination. That's what we're trying to do here. And I invite now to the minister from Mali to share his view please. This is the objective number nine. That is to say how to reduce these digital fractures. So my question is especially addressed to our LVT partners. What are the new initiatives that they would encourage so that our other developing countries can go to this reduction of the digital fractures that makes more and more sense in our economies? Thank you very much. Minister of the economy and of course our sector, very interesting. Do we have contributions from the panel? Do we have contributions from the rest of the floor, of course? Do we have elements? No? Okay, please go ahead. Thank you. Of course everybody knows that there are no simple answers on this question. But I would like to return to this very first topic also dealing with healthcare and connectivity issues. I think through digital public services we can create somehow public demand. And if people they would like to get those services, then there is a reason for telecom operators, for example, to make those investments. And I don't think it's the right way to say that at first we have to cover up all the country or all the continent with good networks and then we have to educate our people and then we will start to provide those services. For me those services they are even the most important part in this process. In some cases it's possible to provide, for example, really good healthcare services in the way that people they are not able to understand. Is it digital or not? Let's take e-prescriptions, for example. So it means people they have to have identification cards or digital identities and on basis of those identities when there is in the country e-prescription system those people will get their pharmaceuticals from every drug store and in cases of chronic diagnosis they don't have to visit their general practitioner in all those cases they can just call and they will get those pharmaceuticals from every drug store. So those people they don't know about this, how the system works. They will ask, how did you call my son this system? Ah, e-prescription. This is e-healthcare. I like it. I want to get it. And I would like to say in many EU member states people they are extremely happy because of those e-prescriptions but we created another problem. So in Finland 100% of medical doctors are e-prescriptions in Sweden, in Estonia, in Denmark increase but when Swedish people, for example, will travel to Finland paper is still needed. So those e-prescriptions they are not able to cross borders in digital and trusted manner on the 21st century. So we have to go on with this process where we have to enlarge the whole system across the world, I would like to say. So I would like to say that governments they can create through providing digital public services, people's demands and if people will say that I like this system then politicians they have to invest much more and into digital and it means also that this digital divide will be not so big problem anymore. So the fact that people they are not enough educated for those digital public services does not mean that it can be like an excuse for governments not to provide those digital public services. Thank you. Thank you very much sir, please go on. Today we connect to the Internet. The second is how to do it in a way that is financially accessible for those who will be actually convinced. So these two aspects are in reality in the sense of providing frequencies bands which allow a better coverage, a coverage at a lower price. And bands that have been identified since 2007 by the UIT for this are bands below 800 MHz so bands that we call digital divide bands and so the UIT has tried to make these bands available in several ways. The first way is to identify them in the global conferences about communication and what has been done. The second is to accompany the member states to accelerate the transition to digital television. So to free these frequency bands which are now used by analog television in many countries. And the third is the initiative to coordinate the member states at the level of the use of frequencies to make these bands usable without noise. So this work has been done for African countries and for the Params countries for two years and we are conducting this effort today for the countries of Central America and Karahim. So this is what I can tell you for the initiatives that have been taken. Thank you. Mr. Nsi, thank you very much. We now move on to Iran. Representative Minister from Iran, please. Make sure your light is red. Red light, the other button? No? Oh, there we go. Okay. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran I would like to congratulate the 25th anniversary of ITUD. We all believe in the importance of digital inclusion concept as devising the objectives of ITU. The digital inclusion for communities means access, adoption and application of ICT for better life and provision of equal opportunities for all. By new opportunities which is brought in through advances in big data analysis a new dimension in appearing is appearing namely the power of predicting the future and I think this is the basic point that brings ICT into real life for the benefit of people. New technologies like 5G IoT cloud computing artificial intelligence and so on are paving the way for such an extraordinary power of predicting the future. This power of course can be used as a tool for better life for everyone and at the same time can be misused to increase the digital gap between communities and countries. It is a really important fact that if countries in the world do not have the knowledge, infrastructure, human resources and competency for using such a power the digital gap will be increased exponentially and the situation would be worse for countries who have less access to such a power. I sincerely hope that ITU can help the world to equally gain access to the technology, knowledge and human and institutional capacity for a balanced access to such a potency. I would like to have the comments of gentlemen that what could be probably the program of ITU to help countries that have less access to such power in order to get the potency which is actually necessary for keeping them on way and helping them to be part of the international community as much as possible and as fruitful as possible. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Minister. I would like to add a few comments here. We noted that in our opening remarks from our Secretary General of the United Nations we recognized that ICT is the enabler for each and every SDGs. That is a very, very good encouragement to us. And ICT is very much progressed everywhere. We are very proud of our achievement. But here we do have challenges that we are talking about 3.9 billion people not connected yet. If we have to connect them, we have to go there to connect them. We have to extend our infrastructure there. We have to provide a good ICT to us to connect them. We need investment. ICT talked about the Connect 2020 project and to have next 1.5 billion people online by 2020 someone calculated we need a 450 billion dollar and we went to a water bank to ask if they can help us. They told us that they don't have money because they have their own project. They have own priorities. But when we talked to our industry the industry told us that 450 billion to connect the next 1.5 billion people we need more. So we have the dilemma here. And here, of course, that people all talk about public-private partnership. I think the absolute is correct. We have to encourage public-private partnership. And we also have to encourage our authorities, government to create a good environment to attract the investment because you cannot force the private sector to invest to the places they do not see anything profitable. Now, there is another problem. There is a general perception that the ICT is a business-making process. It's profitable, self-settlement. Therefore, you don't need to worry too much about ICT development. So in any country you have your financial ministers they can give money to any other ministries may not give money to you to our telecom ministry while you need investment for connected people. So this is somehow a dilemma for us. And I am also very pleased to note that many partners wish to cooperate with our developing countries to do the business. For example, we just heard from Mr. Ansip, our leader of the European Union that they put Africa as a priority. I also noted that for example, Japanese Prime Minister Abbi went to Kenya to talk about their project. And then the Chinese President went to Japan's book to talk about their cooperation with Africa. And we have also India Prime Minister talk a lot about the cooperation between India and Africa. So we have a lot of partners that are willing to come to help, for example, our Africa. If everybody come to Africa with their own project with their own ideas, those things may not be really to the best interest of our Africa members. Africa members may see some problems conflicting of project overlapping some kind of some investment. So in my opinion that our members should also look for opportunities to come up with our own priorities, own project, and from ITU we also try to go to the other so called ecosystem. So I myself went to visit FAO to try to look at the cooperation between ITU and FAO for IE architecture and actually in fact 18th of September we signed agreement in New York to increase our cooperation. And next week we will have Director General of WHO come to our conference to develop E-Health and to modernize the E-Health the public health systems and all these kind of efforts I think will give us opportunity to see more and more chance to have the new initiative, new projects. But in the end I think that still it's our members who really have to come up with our own guidance, own ideas, own visions for our own development and priorities on the table for discussion with partners. So that is what I'd like to add. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chow. We now go to the representative of Samoa Minister. It will go red. Yeah, just let it rest. It will go red immediately. There we go. Thank you. I'll be very brief. It's a request to ITU. The biggest challenge in our side of the world is capacity in terms of building applications that will make life easier in the country. I'm hearing around the room and I heard a few friends yesterday talking about their countries already developing applications in areas of agriculture in connectivity in terms of schools, in teachers, communications. These are the challenges that we're facing and not only that we are not able to produce these ourselves or start deriving these ourselves but also financially we're not able to. I wonder if ITU can take an inventory of the ITU members who have already developed these applications like mobile applications and if these can be shared amongst countries, member countries. Some of these applications I'm hearing ITU have been involved in terms of funding and developing them. If you have developed some in the continent of Africa I wonder if you can bring it to our side of the world and share with us instead of us reinventing the wheel but share free of cost as a matter of cooperation and working collaboratively and that to me is strengthening and bringing the ICT for SDGs to the regional international levels. Thank you. Thank you. Let me just give general comments then my colleague Prakima will provide his advice. I think that this particular request could be something for us to do very quickly that if we do not find the answer from us I think we do have some information but we do not consolidate those information and your suggestion to have good experiences when we work with the other continent to extend that kind of benefit to Asia-Pacific regions I think that is also reasonable expectation or request and we should certainly do that. I'd just like to add one more information that during my previous intervention I talked about the possibility to have suggestions and another important project I see from Africa is Smart Africa and Smart Africa is absolutely marvelous project I appreciate that very much so such kind of request such kind of presentations from our members I think that will give us opportunities to look for good partnership with other ITU who would like to work with you and we would like to thank you for your advice Thank you very much honorable minister not well taken we have resources personally I took the initiative four years back to put in place a brainstorming group of diverse background and around the initiative we called Empowering Development and the first thing we did was to make a stock taking of all the application existing so the document exists can be shared and you could take let's say start from there but I also understand that we need to do something more than that and find a way to share to go and share with the Pacific Islands not so well taken and all the region of the world as well thank you Thank you very much Mr. Kuprivnikar Thank you just shortly on what you asked this is something that we are also very keen about sharing the application sharing the knowledge but we have a problem something like this is developed in one country probably it will not just function in other you have to adopt it so there is the question of compatibility maintaining and data supplying this is why it is so important inside the country and also wider that you synchronize the platforms and we start to exchange part of applications if we agree on what kind of a data sets we all use and what kind of communication means sharing the software solution is possible otherwise it is very problematic because it is not only software that you take download from our app store plug and play you have to support it, maintain it, feed with data and this is more complicated Thank you When talking about app industry then we have to understand that this is a rapidly developing area and not only in the United States of America or in the European Union but in the European Union the volume of app industry was in the year 2014 17 billion years and according to prognosis it will be 63 billion years in the year 2018 and when talking about jobs then 2014 1.8 million jobs just in app industry in the European Union and according to prognosis there will be 4.8 million jobs in app industry in the European Union I was in Nigeria and we had some meetings also with local startups for example one really smart guy created an app allowing to order natural gas just in time in right place the same type of solutions are like people they know about Uber or Taxify or how to get food at home and so on I don't think it's somebody in Europe will create that kind of apps it's possible only there where there is a real demand for that kind of apps then all the governments they have to support those really creative people and maybe one day they will provide something for the whole world in Africa Empesa was created and now this mobile payment system is used also in some European countries so of course we have to cooperate we have to share experience but at first all the countries all the governments they have to support creative people inside of those countries thank you thank you very much Mr. Ansub thank you very much Mr. Koplipnikar following your point minister from Samoa I would like to bring into this discussion someone else from the UN the representative of the UN high office of the high representative for the least developed countries landlock developing countries and small island developing states it's Miss Heidi Schroder's Fox and I would like to ask you a quick question to just try and close this session you know we are seeing the low development countries have a number of challenges and of course your office has a major role coordinating following up what happens afterwards and concern is about of course leapfrogging sorry moving forward and very importantly coordinating a number of actors to interact how can from your point of view make sure that LDCs are not left behind thank you very much Mr. moderator and excellencies ladies and gentlemen it's a great pleasure to be here and our office as was mentioned represents the 91 countries that are the most vulnerable the least developed landlocked and small island developing states and many of the representatives and the honorable ministers have already talked here in particular I think put forward very relevant questions to these groups of countries they face multiple challenges that make it very difficult for them to reach the SDGs and build their economic growth and unfortunately the trends have not been very good recently for example in 2015 the average annual growth in gross domestic product was 3.8% which is the lowest level of economic growth recorded in LDCs in two decades and also for the second year LDC exports dropped out of world trade dropped under 1% that's very low under 1% so if we are to make sure that the least developed countries are really not left behind in the spirits of the SDGs we need urgently to reverse the declining trends and building productive capacities of course central priority for the least developed countries and one of the key drivers of productive capacity building is ICT and this is ICT as we have heard is a key priority for all LDCs small islands and landlocked countries as well my office has worked together with ITU and we have come out with not yet out but should be out soon saying it's called achieving universal and affordable internet in the least developed countries and this highlights that for example there is relatively high mobile subscription penetration in LDCs but internet access remains low in LDCs it's estimated at 17.5% at the end of 2017 who will be using internet this is growth but still it's at such a rate that we are very unlikely to reach the SDG target 9C which as for providing universal access to the internet by LDCs in 2020 but I like to finish with a piece of good news and also directly to the question of the Honorable Minister of Mali of what is being done in order to help in particular these countries that are lagging behind just a month ago during the high level week in New York at the UN the United Nations and the government of Turkey after five years of negotiations by all UN member states signed a host country agreement which is the least developed countries technology bank and so the bank will provide science technology and innovation related services to all LDCs it will start beginning next year and it really will help all the least developed countries to integrate them and their societies economies into the knowledge based economy it will be based in Turkey and the first years will concentrate on needs assessments and also digital research access and eventually it will be working on all LDCs and in the name of partnerships I really would like to invite you all to partner with the new technology bank for the LDCs to help the most vulnerable countries reach their science technology and innovation needs Thank you. Very interesting Miss Trotters Fox right now we have to break we have to take a short break this debate was amazing excellent thank you very much for your contribution we have a number of speakers I promise we've taken good note and in the next session we will address you and you will be joining in you will be jumping in with your opinions and comments remember just one quick thing you're all invited to attend the Gala Dinner at the Alvere Icon Hotel it's just walking distance from here there will be security stationed along the way so you can walk over there they will guide you it's a couple hundred meters if anyone has specific needs there will be shuttles for you departing from the main entrance of this hotel the Hilton at 645 at the end of the Gala to take a 1030 p.m. local time of course to return to the official hotels additionally I'd like to let you know that if you have not already seen it there's a booklet in front of you you can take a peek at it it's our history it's these 25 years of the ITUD and you're welcome to take a peek look at it closely of course and take it with you with this we break the session we take a very short break at 15 to the hour at 445 we reconvene so enjoy your coffee and see you in very strictly 20 minutes thank you very much