 behind is also within no one offline. Thank you very much for your attention. Excellency, thank you very much for this opening remarks and the message from the country but also making the link to the EU presidency. Thank you very much one more time for being with us and we're looking forward to the successful outcomes of the whole forum with the digital component reflected in those. Now let me turn to our colleague, Ms. Guille Yobson, Regional Director of the Development Coordination Office for her remarks. So thank you very much colleagues, especially ITU and UNEC for giving me this opportunity. The Development Coordination Office representing the RSE system, we feel very privileged to take part in this session. As was mentioned by other speakers and like all the regions, our region has severely been impacted by COVID-19 crisis. It has had drastic negative consequences for people, economies and societies with a major setback across multiple SDGs, reversing development gains and exacerbating adverse trends that predate the COVID-19 pandemic and digital access for all is one of these trends. So during the COVID-19 pandemic, as was mentioned by other colleagues, the availability of internet connectivity has helped maintain business continuity, kept children in education and ensured that people can access essential goods and services online. At the same time, the pandemic has also exposed the significant areas of inequality and exclusion in the digital world, pointing to the need to provide access to information and technology for all people. Looking at some global statistics as to how the pandemic has impacted, we see 463 million students around the world remain cut off from education in 2020 due to a lack of remote learning policies or lack of equipment needed for learning at home. So of course we need to do more. At the same time, the positive news is that 90% of countries implemented some form of remote learning policy and measures have taken reached the approximately 69% of school children in pre-primary to secondary education globally. So this has been made possible thanks to digital transformation and technology. And it also meant many children could continue learning despite schools being closed physically. Another example is how digital transformation has helped businesses to adapt to virtual office and online shopping. At the same time, micro, small and medium enterprises without digital access falling further behind and unable to stay competitive. So for instance, rural women have been hit harder from this lack of access. So a combination of digital and gender divides which actually predate the COVID-19 challenges compounded by rural divide leave rural women in particular with the greatest risk of being left further behind. To address these challenges, this digital transformation group led by ITU and UNC in our region undertook a stock taking exercise and which I think has been posted now in the chat so you can access the report and it identifies flagship digital initiatives as scalable digital solutions to advance the SDGs. The areas include as an example the participation of women and girls in the digital sector, digital agriculture and raising financing to connect every school to the internet. For instance, with the support of UN women, a number of member states can now improve participation of women and girls in the digital sector in education and entrepreneurship. With the support of FAO, member states have now an overview of digital agriculture aiming at closing the digital rural and gender divides which I mentioned earlier, which is known as the triple divide. With the collaboration of UNICEF, a number of countries have information on financing opportunities to connect every school to the internet. So the pandemic has brought risks and serious challenges to development pathways and has accentuated pre-existing weaknesses and trends, but it has also brought the UN system to work more collaboratively in a coordinated fashion to support the member states. The risks and challenges of the pandemic can be transformed into an opportunity, so it can be from digital divide to digital accessible all, from technical retardation to technical acceleration with new and innovative technologies. Elizabeth mentioned some of them and I'm going to repeat, but digitalization, automation, technology such as a blockchain and artificial intelligence can further facilitate new business models and create employment opportunities, not just any regular employment opportunities, but building back better with job standards and security, but also green job growth. So this is what we must together achieve during the nine years left of the decade of action. So let me conclude by reaffirming the UN's commitment to support the member states. The members of the digital transformation group spearheaded by ITU and UNEC, together with the country teams in the field, we will support and drive digital transformation in a positive and sustainable way to ensure that no one is left behind. The UN will be an integral partner to ensuring the digital inclusion of the most vulnerable, particularly women and girls, youth, children, persons with disabilities, the older persons, Indigenous peoples, migrants, refugees, displaced and people living in remote rural areas. The UN is committed to working with all of you, government, private sector, civil society, all of you to achieve universal connectivity for all and everywhere. So thank you very much for this opportunity, and let me pause. Thank you very much, Gui, and really grateful for great cooperation on making digital reality. So thank you very much. And with this, I would like to thank to all the speakers of the opening segment. However, I would like to encourage you to stay with us, because we are moving to a special guest of this event, who is coming from the country which puts the digital transformation at the top of their priority. So as you know, the ministry of digital transformation has been created in Ukraine under the leadership of the deputy prime minister. And today we are having the great opportunity to hear the insight on the strategy and the advancement from the Her Excellency Valeria, the deputy minister in European integration of the ministry. So Valeria, I'm handing over to you. Thank you so much. It's a big honor to be a part of this event today. I don't plan to take a lot of time, but I would like to say a couple of words about the ministry and about our achievements so far and some things about strategy. So as you know, ministry of digital transformation in Ukraine was inaugurated in the end of autumn in 2019. And we have a big philosophy to transform people's lives, institutions and businesses for better with the help of digital transformation. Our ministry has four strategic goals for the next three years to make 100% of public services available online to cover all the country with an access to the internet, to teach 6 million of Ukrainian people with digital literacy skills, and to develop the IT industry. And for achieving these four strategic goals, we have a big national project, which is called DIA. DIA is translated into English as an action. And DIA is an ecosystem of five big national projects. The first one is a DIA app, which was downloaded and is used by already more than seven million of Ukrainian people. And with the help of DIA app, we can use documents in smartphone, well, namely passports, driving licenses, and even use some of the public services. The second big project is a website of public services online DIA. The third one is the first virtual business country, DST. The first project is DIA business, the national project on the development of small and medium enterprises, which has two components. The first one is an online one-stop shop for future and existing entrepreneurs. And the second one is the network of very special hubs, offline hubs, and consulting zones where people who want to become entrepreneurs or people who already have businesses and want to develop them can get free consultations on 50 different topics, including like MVPs, marketing, HR, fundraising, access to finance, everything, and visit three educational events. And the fifth project of the DIA ecosystem is the DIA digital literacy, which also has two big components. The first one is a national online platform on digital literacy skills. We have already published more than 50 different educational series in edutainment format. These are series which have been done in a micro-learning format. So every episode is very short from seven up to 10 minutes with stop lessons, final tests, and certificates. And only for a year, we have more than half of a million of Ukrainian people who are registered on the platform and who are having the educational process on the platform. And the second big component of this project is the network also of offline hubs. Actually, these are places with an access to the internet with gadgets. So people who are living in villages or in small cities who not yet have good access to the internet or not yet have a gadget can actually go to these places and learn digital literacy there. So we have almost 6,000 hubs, which are majorly libraries, centers for public services, schools, universities, and even private sector, where people can go and for free use an internet gadget and learn through our platform. Of course, we are working with other directions like cybersecurity, innovations, cryptocurrencies, online security for kids, and with support creating a safe and empowering digital environment for children through skills development and the adoption of a multi-stakeholder approach to address the new challenges. And here I would like to express our sincere gratitude to ITU for all the support that we as the Minister of Digital Transformation are getting from you for all the projects that we are doing together. And thank you so much for supporting these important topics. Also, using this opportunity, I would like to mention and to invite every speaker and every listener of this event to join the European All-Digital Week. It will be Digital Literacy Week starting from 22 and ending on 28th of March. So we encourage you to join this big event and to initiate a range of events on Digital Literacy topic. Thank you so much. I think that is all from my side and it was a pleasure to be a part of this event. And thank you again for your support. Excellent. Thank you very much for this inspiring keynote and referring to so many excellent work which you are doing for the country which can serve also as the reference point for the others and to get additional inspiration in their work in the digitalization of certain activities. In particular, in the COVID time, we feel from this what you say that the digital helps to substitute the face-to-face interactions and this is something that we need in particular these days. Ladies and gentlemen, so thank you very much for being with us. But before we are closing the setting, the context of this event, it's my great pleasure and honor also to welcome with us the representative of the youth. We have created the Europe Youth Group under the Generation Connect initiative in order to listen here and transpose the ideas of the young generation working on the digital, feeling the digital and believing in the digital for the future generation. And this is great pleasure for us to be joined today by the Daniel Kaleini who will deliver for us his remarks on behalf of the group. Daniel, the floor is yours. Am I audible? All good. So, dear Mr. Ponder, Mrs. Twerk, your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, through digitalization, the role of youth is becoming increasingly important as younger generations become the drivers of social change. In accordance with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the outcomes of the UN World Summit of Information Society and the ITU Connect 2030 Agenda, we recognize the strategic role of meaningful connectivity for sustainable development. Taking into account the challenges and opportunities of this century in the context of the European region, the Generation Connect Europe Youth Group consisting of 24 youth aged between 18 and 24 developed a document providing the views of the European regional priorities. This resulted in 26 data-driven youth-centric actionable recommendations across 10 thematic priorities, including capacity development, policy regulation, cybersecurity, the environment and digital inclusion. As a representative of the Europe Youth Group, I'll be presenting a set of selected actions that in our review, member states can adapt to successfully advance the SDGs agenda through the use of ICTs. Starting with capacity development continues to provide empirical challenges and opportunities for young people. With more than a fifth of European youth lacking the basic level of digital skills, recognize that technological issues are shared responsibilities among all stakeholders. So to that end, we recommend increasing digital literacy among youth through high-quality free online courses while recognizing the digital skills shortage and job-related challenges. Additionally, we propose to amplify the outreach for the existing resources provided by the ITU and partner organizations. Going into the policies and regulations which can have a big impact on youth, increased communication and awareness raising may lead to a generation that is well aware of policies and regulation and the rights and duties that flow from these processes. To that end, we recommend increasing the involvement of youth in the regulatory process, ensuring improved communication and representation. We also propose an additional focus on the youth dimension in the content of ICT policies and regulations. Going into the cybersecurity, rapid changes caused by COVID-19 and the future of work forced us to move our daily lives from the real world to the online world, exposing everyone to the numerous digital threats at present. It is vital to equip youth with cybersecurity skills to prepare such literate digital citizens for future challenges. To that end, we propose raising awareness and promote media literacy and cybersecurity to educate youth on online safety, creating a secure online environment. We also recommend increasing cybersecurity skills among young people and ensure a larger representation of women in the field. We encourage to establish common cybersecurity capacity building standards for European countries with cross-sectoral cybersecurity curriculum guidelines. Going to the fourth and the environment part, the youth are currently and prospectively bearing the largest burden coping with consequences of climate change as a result of actions and decisions taken by all stakeholders. While needing to reduce its very own ecological footprint, ICT can play a key role to mitigate climate change. By including youth in this process, this potential can be further leveraged. To that end, we recommend collaboration with youth to leverage ICT to reduce the ecological footprint of industries and its own. A circular economy, including ICT industries and devices, is crucially needed. Additionally, we encourage governments to create professional roles, educational paths, and grants for startups and initiatives for youth people to specifically support sustainable development through technology. Finally, we, the European youth group, advocate for digital inclusion. Equality of access and effective use of digital platforms by all groups in society must be ensured, especially for those who experience digital exclusion based on their age, gender, abilities, geographical location, socioeconomic status, or lack of language skills. To that end, we propose that governments and industry stakeholders guarantee inclusive digital technology designed for all, particularly for those with specific needs. Lastly, we recommend that governments subsidize the cost of internet connectivity for those low-income households that provide free internet in public places to promote affordability and equality of access to digital services. Thank you very much for listening. I got connectivity back, sorry for this break. Thank you very much, Daniel, for this statement. This is really important contribution to our deliberations and the demonstration, how the participation of the youth in our discussions on the policies, but also more importantly, even the implementation can be done in the meaningful way. From the ideas, we move towards the real action. With this, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank all speakers of the opening segment. With this, we would move to the first topic of this session, which will be focusing on the connectivity. We have prepared a few slides to set the context. I will not go in depth because we are running a little bit late, but I would like to ask Sarah to display the slides in the meantime. Let's go through the setting of the context. This session will consist of the contributions of series of the reputated experts and the leaders in these fields. Let me be very short. For sure, for ITU, the connectivity is the top priority and the strategic goal. The ITU believes in the connectivity, but also not only as the technology, but more importantly as the enabler for social economic development. Next slide. This is the reason why we have recently also carried out in all regions of the world the study in order to understand better how the broadband connectivity could impact the development of the economies. We see on these slides that the fixed broadband and mobile broadband has this immense impact on the economy. But more importantly, also digitization is something that counts more and more. It's not only about the infrastructure, it's about the digital processes which are building upon infrastructure. And we see the relationship between the digital ecosystem development index and the impact on the GDP at the global level. The same relationship next slides are proven for the two of our regions, which we are considering today for the Europe and CIS. In CIS we see that the 10% increase in the ITU-ICT regulatory tracker yields the positive increase in the digitization development index. And the increase of 10% of the fixed broadband penetration would yield an increase of 0.63% of the GDP. Next slide, please. This is the reason why we need to take a look at how the strategic investment and the built partnerships should support this vast challenge of the world. And we've noticed that in the Europe and Central Asia, during the coming 10 years, we need to mobilize almost above 33 billion of euro in order to connect the unconnected with the broadband connectivity. Next slide. But this investment should not only go in the infrastructure, it also should go into the skills and the policy development and creating the full digital ecosystem and that creates the proper environment for investment, but also such meaningful use of the connectivity. This is the reason also with the recent studies, one which is already available for Europe and the other one which is going to come for the CIS countries. We're drawing attention to the main challenges which we are in front of us. Next slide. Which we are encountering in Europe. We see the emerging role of the satellite connectivity. We see that even though we are doing very well in the broadband connectivity, still we see a big heterogeneity in the region and in particular the divide between the EU and non-EU countries. We also see that the mobile connectivity plays an important role, but with the 5G emerging, it requires much more attention for making the strategic decisions. Next slide. Also in terms of the affordability, even though international cooperation, we're not standing back. There are some countries which still didn't reach the broadband affordability cap, which is for the most of the countries the necessity in order to make, transform the ICPs into the real impact. Next slide. We're also observing that we have the clear challenges still in EU skills and persisting the gender divides, which requires the joint action of many of us. And this is the reason, and next slide, why we are focusing and targeting certain group of the countries in order to prepare and customize support to those and to work together on the meaningful connectivity. But with this, let me stop my intervention. Thank you very much, Sara, for displaying the slides. And I would like to first welcome all our speakers coming from the different setups, private sector, academia and the government. And the first speaker I have the pleasure to introduce is Ms. Oksana Kukhar. I'll pronounce my last name. Perfect. Thank you very much. Who is the board member of Elements from Russia, private sector. So the floor is yours. If I can share a presentation. I'm going to just share the presentation in one second. Well, I'm very happy to see everybody's at this event. We are working closely with the UNIDA on the different projects. And my name is Oksana Kukhar-Chuk. And today I would like to share with you about the projects that we do jointly with UNIDA to develop digital skills. As today already it was discussed that currently girls and women globally are less likely to have access to digital technologies. And especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, we see a very strong hit on every aspect of our lives. And the lack of connectivity has been increasing. So that is why digital disparities amplify other inequalities that exist in our society. And Mr. Yaroslav Ponder was like talking a lot about it in the opening session. Therefore, our partner, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, has been advocating for more women in industry as an important element of addressing gender inequality. Access to higher skills, better pay jobs would allow women to share the benefits of industrialization and raise the status at home and in the community while bringing a largely unlocked skills source into the economy and fostering inclusive and sustainable industrial development. The need to make progress in this direction is getting more pressing as it is women who are bearing the burns of the COVID-19 crisis, losing their jobs and businesses at a greater rate than men do. According to UN Women in Europe and Central Asia, a quarter of self-employed women have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic compared to a fifth of men. And also, we saw today in the opening session was also saying that a small and medium business just fall behind due to the current situation. According to the International Labour Organization, overall women's employment is 19% more at risk than men. This is primarily attributed to the fact that women are overrepresented in low-paid, risky jobs than men. And millions of women currently working in labor-intensive industries such as textile and garment sectors and are forced to seek new forms of employment in higher-skilled jobs that are more resilient in the new employment landscape. So, that is why empowering women economically and digitally would help strengthen their financial independence and sustainability of families and communities. So, since 2019, we have been collaborating with UNIDA under... I'm sorry, Aksana. Can you please change slides also? I'm very sorry to interrupt. There is no sound now. I'm sorry again. Okay, no? So, as of 2019, we have been collaborating with UNIDA under project aims to develop a targeted online training course that would help women, women entrepreneurs and managers acquire or transcend their knowledge in the area of modern digital technologies and seize the opportunities of advancing labor market. We can see very well the digital skills nowadays represent a crucial precondition for social and economic inclusion. The existing skill gaps needs to be bridged to help women better integrate into global economic processes and benefits from emerging technological modalities, even those that we are able to enjoy during our sessions today. We believe that specialized training programs for women in this field, especially delivered online, would help boost economic growth and prosperity while contributing to the attainment of CDGs 5, 8 and 9 that would be particularly relevant in the aftermath of the pandemic. The UNIDA course, Digital Business Innovations for Women Entrepreneurs and Managers, is expected to be finalized and piloted towards the end of the spring 2021 and will be accessible free of charge in English and Russian in online format through the UNIDA e-learning platform. Currently, the training course consists of six initial modules on key topics that are related to business development online, namely digital technologies, digital marketing, digital project management, e-commerce, social media marketing and customer relationship management. For the development of this course, we partnered with UNIDA to conduct market studies and focus group researchers to identify the main needs and challenges faced by women in this field. We carefully selected expert speakers who delivered fully interactive lectures on these subjects and topics. We hope that our cooperation with UNIDA will really give a positive result and the online course will be utilized globally by inspired women and girls driving the achievements of the 2030 agenda. So thank you very much and colleagues from UNIDA and I will be happy to address any questions that you may have. Thank you very much for this very inspiring project and a lot of impact we feel it and now let me turn to our next speaker, Miss Nino and Kida, director of business and technology university from Georgia. Thank you very much. First of all, I'd like to say that I'm really honored to participate in a wonderful event and discuss what we can do to further support participation of girls and women in the digital sector. I'll start with the statistics. According to latest statistics, women at startups received just 2.3 of venture capital funding, which means that they are underrepresented not only in STEM industries but also are underrepresented group of entrepreneurs. Some might say that pandemic made investors more careful regarding the risks they are taking and now they are more likely to stick to the existing networks, which consists mostly by men and it's very tough for women to break into. The world is also not on track to achieve UN sustainable development goal 4 and 5 to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and gender equality throughout the different industries. Digital literacy is an additional barrier to adoption by certain communities, both in developed and developing markets. In lower income economies, only 32% of population have basic digital skills. Among them, number of men is higher than of women. Women are mostly underrepresented in technology industries, which are driving fourth industrial revolution in the world. Even though we all know that encouraging women in ICT sector will boost economies, there is a big gender gap and lack of qualified female candidates on a job market. Perhaps the most important thing which we could do is to think about digital inclusion, not in isolation, but as the part of economic, political and social context under which we use it. Developing countries and their citizens needs to act boldly to build digitally powered economy that works for girls and for women also. I'd say that private sector, global private sector donors and other stakeholders need to start thinking of themselves as critical partners around the area. So if they don't for almost half of the population of the world, maybe the pessimistic predictions about technologies might come true. I'd say that engaging women and girls in ICT sector is not only the right thing to do from the point of social justice. It's also smart for the economies. For example, we know that women let startups get funded. Whenever women let startups get funded, they are more likely to be successful. They ultimately deliver their higher revenue more than twice as much per dollar invested. This is what Boston Consulting Group has delivered as the part of the research just several months ago. The solutions are different. We can discuss many solutions. But for example, for VCs, to suddenly start supporting startups simply because they are funded by women, perhaps this is not a solution. But instead, to look for a human-centered business model, if VCs seek out businesses that will focus to fulfill gender gaps and societal need, provide increasing numbers of jobs for women over time, and provide the work culture that empowers employees with elements such as safety and career development. In economic context, the return on investment will be higher. So this model seems to be beneficial for everyone. And we're not starting doing it now in Georgia to support female entrepreneurship and transfer of women in technology industry. Here at Business and Technology University, we have launched a coding school for women two years ago with support of UN Women Georgian Organization, with support of Microsoft, with support of Women in Tech Global Movement, and many other organizations. And today, we serve hundreds and hundreds of women who want to transfer into technology industry. We teach front-end and back-end development, other programming languages. For supporting the entrepreneurship among women, we have launched a pre-identity at the Entrepreneurship Center of PTU. And we are opening the access to finances to women to somehow address these issues. So the last thing I'd like to say is that for girls and women, the cost of internet connection is also very high. 48% of the world's population remains unconnected to internet. Many countries do not meet global standard of being able to access the internet and giving women access to digital tools will be a strong drive to solve the problem and technology gap. International studies have estimated that increasing women's access to internet could add up 20 billion US dollar to annual GDP in developing countries. So just these numbers and these statistics might speak for themselves that the industry which is highly dominated by men is very much leading women participation and it's even more important than ever. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much for this and making so many good points. We encourage all of you. The work on the gender equality is very close to hearts of many of us and we have to keep this very high on the agenda, reminding all stakeholders about the importance of this issue. But now let me turn to Miss Yvette Ramos, president of the UNTA AI platform for innovative projects in the environment and high tech and the president of the Swiss engineering Geneva. So Madame Yvette, the floor is yours. Yes, hello. Can you hear me well? Absolutely. Thank you. I would like to share my screen. So I'll share my screen. Can you see it? We can see it. With the slides? Absolutely. Thank you so much. I'm very pleased to be with you today. My name is Yvette Ramos and I do represent today amongst others the regional civil society engagement mechanism that is a platform aimed to enable stronger cross-constitutes and coordination and ensure that voices of all sub-regions of units are heard in intergovernmental processes at regional and global level. Thanks so much for the very interesting panel presentations. It was great to hear all those voices and congratulations to you for all the constructive debates. The urgent needs of accelerating digital transformation and access for all, regardless of age, gender and ethnicity, give our group the opportunity to highlight our activities and offer partnerships in terms of advocacy and capacity development for the marginalized social groups we do represent. The importance of technology and equal access to all shows that yet a lot has to be done to promote coordination amongst governmental stakeholders at national and international levels on one hand and the civil society on the other hand to implement efficiently and effectively the 2030 agenda through ICTs. Challenges in accessing technology lie in many factors. First, we believe political fragility. Second, looming barriers posed by climate change. And third, gender and older discrimination factors such as age, for example, and this is what you have here. Now, I would like to focus on what our civil society do recommend. First, developing digital skills and building human capacities to reach communities such as persons with disabilities, et cetera, et cetera. Although technologies are becoming increasingly affordable, the acquisition of basic digital skills remain a barrier and the digital divides persist and excludes those who need it the most. Second, strengthening youth employment opportunities while ensuring the participation of girls and women in ICTs in all socioeconomic sectors. Third, offering technological solutions to fight sexual harassment and violence at school at university campuses and at the workplace. And for that, we have solutions, technological solutions. Then, reinforcing quality education across the life course through activities where women are the main role models. And for this, better and stronger cooperation of all stakeholders is a prerequisite ensuring convergence, synergies and interdisciplinary expertise. A collaborative and shared leadership is necessary to reflect learners' needs and transforming school and adult learning culture in partnership with local communities and local actors. Also, ensuring steps are taken at regional, national and local level to address the digital divide and that those most left behind receive adequate support. And finally, and we want to help you, we can, designing a strategic plan to address barriers to their digital access. Let's keep up the action as it is time to formalize those practices and follow the recommendations of the UN and other global stakeholders to develop strategies for equality in the public and private arenas, whether within small or large organizations, NGOs, engineering societies, engineering and science faculties and local authorities. Let us crystallize our efforts to achieve SDG 5 through partnership boosts between UN bodies and the civil society and through it all the SDGs for more inclusive and sustainable fair and sustainable worlds. Thank you very much and I wish you all and us a productive collaboration on the original forum 2021. Thank you very much for your contribution and they are ladies and gentlemen. Now, let me turn to Clorenta Yanoushi who will be talking more on the China protection also part very important part of the digital inclusion work. So, Clorenta, the floor is yours. Thank you, Yaroslav. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Clorenta Yanoushi and I currently hold the position of head of communication and information dissemination unit at the National Authority for Electronic Certification and Cybersecurity in Albania. In recent decades, the development of the internet as well as innovative changes in technology have brought radical changes and challenges in every society around the world. Albania as a developing country also relies on information technology aiming to increase the standard of living and also improving public services. In addition to the benefits of using new digital technologies, the use of the internet brings its own threats related to cybersecurity. Albania in this regard has taken important steps to improve the cybersecurity ecosystem. In addition to developments in the field of information technology and the revolution in the digitization of public services, the legal framework for cybersecurity has been supplemented and also improved. Providing safe for internet for children and youth in Albania is one of the strategic objectives of the national strategy for cybersecurity which was approved last December. For a significant number of children today, the internet, mobile phones and other information technologies tools are part of their daily life. Family, parents, mother especially, peers and schools are the three environments of children's socialization while the digital environment has become the fourth. For them, the distinction between online and offline is becoming increasingly meaningless and they move between the two environments easily. Protecting children online requires specific and articulated actions in a simple and clear manner. At the same time, the protection of children online should be proportionate to the risks they face. The policy purpose number three in the national cybersecurity strategy is related to creating the necessary mechanisms for the safety of children in cyberspace while preparing the new generation capable of taking advantage of information technology and meeting development challenge. In this regard, the authority for electronic certification and cybersecurity in Albania in cooperation with the International Telecommunication Union developed a series of trainings for parents and teachers on child online protection in Albania with a special focus on household level. This event was held online for five days last November. The purpose of this initiative was to encourage safer online behavior for children and young people, highlighting tips for parents and carers in communicating, in supporting and educating them. With about 100 unique participants in Albania and abroad, this event achieved its success by motivating and being a boost to the continuation of similar trainings in the field of ICT and online safety. I want to close by acknowledging ITU for the important work you have done and you are still doing in enhancing child online protection. We know that the pilot project in Albania took effect at the beginning of the year and we are looking forward to seeing how it will impact children experiences if we enlarge the scope of the awareness campaign with different segments of our society. We hope to see continued progress on this front and with that I land and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much and with this contribution we are writing to the questions and answers and I encourage all of participants to put their questions in the chat box. I believe that we'll not be able to take all of them and about our speakers are staying with us so they will be able to answer them on the private basis or in the chat room and also we are running with the agenda so therefore I would have only one question. This forum and today we are meeting in order to see how to advise the policy makers in the direction of actions and the particular course and to be taken to be strengthened in order in particular in this session seeking the guidance on the digital inclusion. Should we have the power of having something seen in the main outcomes of the forum? What would be your policy recommendation in terms of the strengthening digital inclusion in your respective area of expertise? And let me start from the first speaker. That's a very good question and I would like to pass the answer to our colleagues from UNIDA, Sulaimia Milian. Good afternoon colleagues, do you hear me well? Perfect. First of all, Jaroslav and colleagues, I must say that we are very impressed. I am personally very impressed by the number of pilot projects and initiatives that are implemented by numerous agencies, UN agencies and governments. We have heard so many amazing stories today and especially to my heart, since at UNIDA we work closely on gender equality and women empowerment actions, policy actions related to women equality and inclusion of women in digital economy are very, very much needed. We see at UNIDA that such policy actions specifically focusing on women economic empowerment and inclusion into the digital sector could target three broad areas. It is also a conclusion from today's interventions coming from our speakers from Georgia, from Russia, from Ukraine. So first of all, it is critically important for policymakers to focus on promoting digital skills and education. Secondly, an important area for policy action is supporting and advocating for more women entrepreneurs. We have heard the numbers from Georgia from different studies. And the third important policy action is in the area of breaking stereotypes and raising awareness on existing successful business models and projects that were highlighted numerous times today. And those policy actions can be then integrated either in the national digital agenda like it is done, for instance, in Ukraine or addressed as a spend alone issue. And one of the policy actions that we could suggest from UNIDA site and you have heard about our project is to enhance women's access to digital tools and platforms, as well as to facilitate the development of gender sensitive educational programs to help women, especially those in rural areas who it's not easy to reach out to, to develop skills that are necessary for the integration in the digital economy. We know that women often struggle in combining education and training with household and responsibilities. And these additional opportunities for women to participate in distance learning help increase chances for better paid jobs. And by bridging this gender digital divide, we could foster the resilience and sustainability of women employment in the long run. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you very much. So for sure, a lot of good points which we'll capture in order to have clear outcome of our deliberation. But let me turn now with the same question to Ms. Nino for her input. Ms. Nino and Anokidou? Yes, I'm listening. I'm sorry, I have some disconnection at the internet. So please, can you? So we are taking those messages, which our session would like to transmit to the whole forum, reinforcing the digital inclusion in your respective field of expertise. Yes, so actually we were thinking about certain messages to be delivered after the forum is ended. So I think that if I might say it briefly in a digitized world, opening an access to technology for women is the most important action we can take. Building countries own strategy of how to do so is the process we need to start already. And even though some countries and I mean countries from which the representatives on today's forums are attending already have taken certain actions and delivered strategies of how to do so, the country I represent and several others are still in the process of working on it. So delivering this strategy and covering the areas of public and private sector is the most important thing I think that needs to be done. Okay, thank you very much for this. So very well noted. So let's focus on the partnership building as well and strengthening the input of the different stakeholders to this action. And let me now turn to Ms. Ramos for her input. Ms. Ramos had to leave the meeting, so I think we can go directly to Ms. Janusz. Okay, so we are turning to Ms. Janusz for her input. Thank you. Since I represent the government sector in this session, I will of course base my answer in the action plan of the national strategy for cybersecurity. Here I can mention some of the specific objectives that we are planning to implement during our implementation of the five year strategy. And they consist in raising awareness and educating vulnerable segments and also strengthen cooperation between public and private sector in educating and also raising capacities of women and girls to ensure gender quality. And also international cooperation may be a good indicator or a step to take to implement mentorship programs for women and girls, especially in the ICT or cybersecurity field. I have seen some very good developments in this regard from ITU with the Africa and Asia region. And we are very looking forward to implement this initiative soon in Europe and also in Albania. Excellent. Thank you very much. The ladies and gentlemen, the time is a little bit against us. But I think during this session we learned a lot and we got concrete proposals for the policy recommendations to be forwarded to the forum. And it's difficult to deny that the digital skills, literacy, international cooperation and multi-stakeholder partnerships are key. But there are many, many more which will be reflected in the report. But not prolonging, I let me thank all presenters of this session for their contribution. And I would like to hand over to Flor to Ms. Sophie Treinen from Power who will be accommodating the topic together with Clayton Hamilton from WHO. And I would like to ask all the speakers to give, well, to all participants and just to thank our speakers of our sessions for the great contributions. Thank you very much. And I'm handing over to Sophie. Thank you very much, Jaroslav. In the second section, we are highlighting the emerging role of information and communication technology as an engine for agriculture development in Europe and Central Asia. So I will start with presenting the context. And it will be followed by another presentation from Esther Varga on the European Union, what the pre-accession countries, how they can prepare themselves. So I will start now with the overall context for Europe and Central Asia. And we can move directly into the opportunities and the challenges. And as many of the previous speakers ever mentioned today, of course, there are these opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce transaction costs, better management of risk, strengthen trust between the different actors, also inclusion and access to finance. However, the digital divide exists everywhere. Let's go directly into what are the roles of the technologies that can be offered by the agriculture. So I would like just, I don't tell them all for time, but sustainable farming. This is something very important to have with disaster risk management and enhanced market access. And then the food safety traceability and the regulatory framework, because this is what we also need. We need to have those. And FAO and ITU have been working together to actually understand what is the status of digital agriculture in specific countries of Europe and Central Asia. And I'm sure you will have the link in the chat. And after having done these status, we launched a call on digital excellence in agriculture. And we were quite lucky and received more than 200 replies. And I will share now in the next set of slides very quickly some of the challenges that people have been confronted with. And of course, there is the technical difficulties such as the connectivity, but also to have user-friendly software in the face of farmers. And because we are working in agriculture, the harshness of rural area, you need to have very strong divide. And this is still what we are missing. Then of course, energy is another thing and data. We will come back to data. And in the next thing, the slide or the challenges where the low profitability, the importance of having a return over investment, finding the right business, the opportunities. Again, data, the ownership, the monetization of data, because otherwise people are reluctant to share. And all these things we need to see how we can scale them up in other countries. The other challenges that were discussed were the policy. And that's why we need to have some regulation on data interoperability and to make public data available and of better quality. And therefore, here we need to have some legislation and not only legislation, but funding support and better communication between the different actors. The next challenges are skills and mentality. So yes, we have this triple divide. We need to have more digital skills, but also equipment to actually have awareness, to train people, whether they are the developers or whether they are the farmers, to have something in the local languages, in the local languages, and also not to have so much jargon. And then we have to move with the mentality, overcoming skepticism, because there is a low adoption of process and also to reduce the high financial risk. The other challenges that we can take can actually be also overcome. And so there are a few good things we are having now, some of these evidence. So for example, farm management can have a better land management. We can have weather forest cars improve soil monitoring, using remote sensing and monitoring to actually see the animal behaviors. And if you have a good management and a good usage of data, then you have a better perspective of what's happening in the farm and how to manage it. Other suggestions are from farm to fork, to have direct sale, to have direct communication between consumers and producers. And there are plenty of examples that we receive, such as the traceability, the transparency, and also providing certificates. And if I can then really show what is important, important to close this triple divide between rural, urban, gender, it's actually investing. Investing on the supply side, demand side, meaning rural network coverage, and the availability of digital applications. And then on the demand side is, as many said, digital skills, literacy, and specifically for small orders, women and men. And addressing such factors necessitates a range of public policy intervention. And most importantly, a regulatory environment that attracts private sector investment. And I would like to conclude saying that a conducive environment for digitalization of agriculture requires expanding and improving infrastructure, not only ICT, or infrastructure, improving people's ability to use internet effectively so that they can benefit from digitalization and designing a regulatory framework that is both conducive to innovation and consider specificity and risk of digitalization. And this is why FAU and ITU have joined forces and have designed these guidelines to actually develop national digital agriculture strategy. So the work continues. Thank you very much. And it continues and it continues looking at what's happening in the European Union side and also how the pre accession countries can actually prepare themselves. So I would like to invite Esther Vanka, who is working for Aki, an Hungarian Agriculture Institute, and she is going to present us how pre accession country can prepare themselves towards digitalization. Esther, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Sophie. Good afternoon or good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to introduce my presentation. I will share the screen. Can you see this? Yes. Thank you. So my presentation is on the EU expectations, the cap objectives and digital agriculture concerning the pre accession countries. First of all, I would like to talk a little bit about the European way of digital transformation because if you talk about the western Balkans, for example, and pre accession countries, the economic and investment plan states that the guiding principle is the European Union digital strategy. This strategy was prepared last year and it introduces the European approach to digital transformation. It means a special European way considering the economic societal and environmental aspects at the same time by ensuring the digital transformation benefits for the people as well and also considering the European values. If you see the three pillars of this digital strategy, the first one is the human centric technology. It means safe technology that contributes to higher quality of life for people. The second one is the economy, digital economy, which is fair and competitive single market where the rights of the consumers are respected. The third pillar is the trustworth environment, which includes the climate as well for the citizens to participate and share data. So this human centric digital path for Europe is guided by these objectives that you can see here in these clouds, namely digital technological sovereignty and cyber security, democracy, trust and diversity, boosting the economy and competitiveness, as well as digital solutions for societal challenges and climate. Regarding the objectives of the common agricultural policy, digitalization can be relevant in each segment of the cap. You can see the nine specific objectives and among these only the second one, the competitiveness states explicitly the importance of digitalization. But in spite of this, almost all of these nine objectives can consider digitalization and utilize digitalization. For example, monitoring farm activities, remote sensing, Sophie already talked about it, so I will not repeat it. But maybe there is a tool in the environmental care. It's the fifth objective, poster sustainable development and efficient management of natural resources. There's a tool, the fast tool, you might know it already, but it's the farm sustainability tool. It's a free digital tool, which can be used in a mobile application as well. And it will help individual farmers in their farm management and provide support in their decision making process. And they can use it to optimize their net nutrient use and to optimize their income as well. And in the time of COVID-19, these kinds of tools can help paying agencies because it can eliminate or reduce the need of on-site checks. And it can utilize the satellite based checks by monitoring processes and accelerate farmer access to subsidies. And also the CAP has cross-cutting objectives, sharing knowledge, innovation and digitalization, these are interconnected areas. And digitalization is a cross-cutting objective. Also modernization through digitalization refers to the first pillar as well. Integrated administration and control system can be digitalized even more, which can be a benefit both for farmers and the member states. For farmers, just to mention one example, they can do it in less time. And for example, for the member state, it means reduced costs and more efficiency. And my final slide is about agricultural knowledge and innovation system. It's a really important central theme of the new CAP. It means knowledge flows between persons, organization and institutions. You can see here in this figure that there are many partners in this system. And the main thing is that in the center, the farmers are in the center, so all the knowledge flows are going towards the farmers and to help them provide them the benefits through knowledge sharing. Also, the role of advisors are very important, especially in the countries where the farmers themselves don't have digital skills or infrastructures have less infrastructure because they can help them to be a more important part of this system. And enabling environment is also very important. If I have one minute left, then I can mention, for example, in Austria, there's a platform installed for digitalization in agriculture where different stakeholders are collected and they describe the development challenges and benefits of new technologies in this platform. And it's especially good for small and middle-sized farms. And in the Austrian Rural Development Programme, education campaigns for digitalization in agriculture and forestry is also considered. Another example is Ireland, where digital advisory tools are provided. Digital tools to support advisory services, to support evidence-based decision-making at farm levels by combining data from different sources. So there are a lot of other examples. And if you are interested, I put the resources of my presentation to the last slide. So in case of interest, everybody can find more examples as well. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Esther. This is also part of a joint FAO, the study that we are doing together in order to prepare the Balkan countries and free African countries. So in this topic too, about accelerating the digitalization of services, we also are going to talk about open data policy. And I would like to invite Milan Datic, who is the representative for Europe at the World Meteorological Organization, to talk to us about open data policy towards the benefits of the society, ensuring a climate resilient recovery from COVID-19. Milan, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Sophie. Your Excellencies, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. Climate change causes impact on natural and human systems. And the most striking feature of it is that the frequency of occurrence or whether water and climate extreme events is altered. It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer. And that extreme precipitation events will become more intense and frequent in many regions. WMO is a network of 193 member states and territories with national meteorological and hydrological services in these countries serving as principal technical focal point organizations. The basic activity in whether climate and water forecasting is use of mathematical models of the climate system to predict its future state. This work is based on observations distributed all around the world, so-called global observing system. All countries that are signatories to the WMO convention are responsible for maintenance of their part of the global observing system. The observations all around the world are exchanged through WMO global telecommunication system in a rapid manner to secure timely operational weather prediction on global, regional, and local levels. Manipulating huge datasets and performing complex calculations using high performance supercomputers on the resolution fine enough to make the results useful to help protect life and property and enhance national economies is at the core of the business of WMO and its members. So, everything is digital with WMO and its member states and hydrological services. So, climate change is a threat to sustainable development. One of the soft measures of the adaptation to climate change is the empowerment of countries to develop or improve their multi-hazard early warning systems. This needs to be done at national, sub-regional, regional, and global scales that is driven by the global nature of hydro-metallogical business. In approaches for managing the risks of climate change to adaptation on institutional level and in legislative framework, it is envisaged in Paralia to update the water regulations and agreements and laws to support disaster risk production, including the laws on hydro-metallogical business of interest of the whole country. That should be aligned with the international agreements, for example, connection with the World Meteorological Organization, UNFCCC, and other relevant international treaties. In many countries of Southeast Europe, legislative framework needs to be updated with modern laws on hydro-metallogical activities. That must be aligned with the broader legislation, in particular the one on disaster risk reduction. Part of this process is the discussion about the open data policy, a burning issue to many stakeholders in the country. The issue of data in Agenda 2030 is identified as playing a fundamental role in the sustainable development space. The European Commission digital strategy sets a vision to become a digitally transformed user-focused and data-driven administration by 2022. EU digital strategy aims at creating a single EU data space where all data, including sensitive data, are secure. Some countries from Southeast Europe and Middle East may need to align their data policies as part of the European integration process, or under other multilateral partnerships with the EU. And the way forward to eventual full open data policy, WMON in the chamber states in Southeast Europe offer a stepwise approach by adopting the data policy which would benefit the production of global, regional, and national hydro-metallogical warnings. Eighteen countries of Southeast Europe are discussing on how to improve cooperation. These are Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey, and Ukraine. With joint development of Southeast Europe, Nematica has a early warning advisory system. Fifteen of these countries already signed regional data policy agreement on exchange of hydrological and meteorological data information focused on advisories under the system. In adopting this policy, the global, regional, and local production of warnings could benefit from wealth of existing, but not adequately shared data, digital data, on observations and secure best possible quality of impact-based forecasts and warnings. Countries agreed to work together, share data, develop tools, and pursue in establishing digital common information platform which serves as data exchange, collaborative space, and cooperation tool as part of the digital cloud-based multi-hazard early warning system. Products of the system are translated to the end users to national meteorological and hydrological services serving at the end more than 200 million inhabitants in Southeast Europe. Existing national data policies, if restrictive, are hampering the research and development, but also regular operational practice of numerous specialized meteorological and hydrological centers with sub-regional, regional, and global scope. The main difficulty here is time from inadequate resourcing of national meteorological and hydrological services and similar technical agencies. These organizations are forced to sell their observations to secure revenues for day-to-day operational work, including the maintenance of the existing observing station network. The situation of under-resourced national meteorological and hydrological services is a consequence of inadequate legislative framework that does not support the production maintenance and sharing of digital information which is essential for the production of forecast and warnings and other related analysis. COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the quality and quantity of weather observations and forecasts as well as atmospheric and climate monitoring. Meteorological measurements taken from aircrafts have dropped by an average of 75 to 80 percent compared to normal, but with very large regional variations. For example, in southern hemisphere, the loss is closer to 90 percent. Surface-based weather observations are in decline, especially in countries where many stations are manual rather than automatic. In conclusion about the lessons learned, the collaboration and improved data sharing between Southeast Europe and global and regional specialized meteorological centers, such as European Center for Meteorangel weather forecast ECMWF, proved to benefit the operational production at larger scales, which in turn benefit the national authorities in their issuing of warnings at the national level. Joint work on sharing digital data, development of tools and digital common information platform, which supports the digital intense cooperation, results in better quality of information and advisories of multi-hazard risks. Further work is needed on policy framework, updating the laws of hydrological activities, providing better resourcing of NMHSs, national meteorological and meteorological services, and their core businesses. WMO is considering promoting this type of collaboration elsewhere in the world through implementation of its global multi-hazard alert system. In conclusion, we can say that digitalization, partnership, and work towards open data policy could reduce the COVID-19 pandemic impact effectively and contribute to building back better. Thank you very much. Thank you, Milan. And you made us discover how to become the invisible man just having papers in front of you. This is amazing. You should watch this later. I'm sharing this moderation with my colleague from WHO, so Clayton Almonton. I pass you the moderation from now. Thanks so much, Sophie. And I really appreciate the wonderful perspectives that we've brought in. Good afternoon, colleagues. There's a lot of information that's already been presented in this wonderful session and really cued us to our colleagues in ITU for having set this up. Very briefly, the session that we're looking at now is strengthening the national capacities in implementing mobile health in the European region and developing solutions to manage the COVID-19 outbreak. Just to set the scene, I'm going to give a very short, brief introduction to what we mean from the health perspective. Really, two slides, one key message. The first, I really want to point out, and not just to state the obvious, but COVID-19 has actually had a significant impact on health systems and their capacity to respond to this immense public health challenging that we're all well aware and all facing. It's had a number of specific perspectives that I think are worth mentioning for this session. The first one is obviously a very key disruption of traditional modes of care provision. I'm sure everyone would agree that even as little as 12 months ago, we couldn't have envisaged such an incredible uptake of digital technologies in health and their application in many different perspectives, and I'll get to a little bit more on that at the moment. What it's also done, however, is expose significant social and gender inequalities in the design and access to digital health services. What we talk about in WHO is how we can avoid translating the existing social and gender divide that we have in the real world into digital environments. Again, COVID-19 has really pushed these issues more to the forefront than we ever could have imagined. It's also necessitated a significant reconfiguration of health system resources, and what it has done is essentially forced governments and health authorities into having what we call a dual-track health system response. That means that governments have had to maintain all the continuity of normal healthcare delivery services while redirecting a significant percentage of the resources to responding to COVID-19. What it's also done is really expose a significant weakness in the ability of health authorities, and I think this is quite specific to health, to access and utilize data for a number of different things. Research and understanding of how COVID-19 is spreading, how to reallocate or allocate health workforce and resources, and also how to finally adjust or calibrate the delivery of public health and social measures. So we can realize that it's not a one-size-fits-all approach, and even within a single country, we can have many different nuances in how COVID-19 and digital technologies are working together to formulate a nuanced response. Finally, there has been obviously a great acceleration in demand for digital technologies, and health authorities have really struggled with how do they best adopt innovations? How do they best communicate to populations? And this has really been a challenge that we'll see will become a significant factor in post-COVID-19 response. So just to really sketch this out, we won't go into detail, but just to say that this is a wonderful illustration of how digital technologies have actually been implemented in many different perspectives during COVID-19. And that's really my key message is that mobile health in particular has been one very strong conduit, actually putting equality and power, empowering individuals through the mobile device that may be in their hands. But again, it also presents us with a challenge. As Jarisel pointed down in the beginning, not everyone has access to such technologies and broadband connection. So we really have to be cautious about how we design systems and how we calibrate them to take into account gender and equity perspectives. But this slide just really shows that the diversity in which digital technologies are being applied in health is immense. And it's really, I think many people can consider it just the device in their hand, but it is actually much more and in many different ways. So what I'll do now is actually hand over to my dear colleague, Stefano Quinterelli, who is the chair of the advisory group for advanced technologies and trade and logistics of the UN C-Fact in order to present his implementation. Over to you, Stefano. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Clayton. Very interesting presentation. And thank you to all the colleagues. Good morning. Good afternoon. It's my pleasure to be here and give you a brief perspective and overview of the consideration we have made over these topics at the advisory group on advanced technologies in trade and logistics at UN C-Fact. Okay. First of all, to give you a broad context, within our work in UN C-Fact, we already have some standards and interoperability frameworks well defined. We have the core component library, which is a library of harmonized business semantics in the data model. We have the subset, the relative relevant subset of XML schemas based on CCL. And that includes various certificates for related to healthcare and sanitary and fetal sanitary issues. And then we have reference data models that provide the mean by which the data may be described, categorized, and shared. So we already have a framework that somehow helps in dealing with digital exchange of data. Within the, to enter the context of the pandemic, within the group, we run a survey in last year focusing on the impact of the virus on international trade and logistics and requesting all the experts on comments on how advanced technologies could help in the scenario. And after this survey, we published a report and we defined three major areas of FACUs, which are digital platforms and digital products and interoperability. It's very interesting. Clayton said there's much more than devices. And of course, there is much more than devices. At the basis of all these, of all the practices that we can imagine related to digital health and interoperability, there is one major foundation, which is the basis of everything and is digital identity. At the basis we have digital identity. Let me just briefly show you, give you an idea of how the system should work within the eHealth program of the EU. So you have a person. The person is provided a digital identity from their identity provider in their home country. The identity provider can either be a public entity or a private entity. I will talk more about this in a second. And then the idea is that you have a trusted network of entities related to healthcare, that deal with healthcare in all different countries. Well, I had the Switzerland because of the hospitality of the meeting, but within Europe. So suppose you are an Italian citizen going to ski in Switzerland and you break your leg, you use your identification to identify to the Swiss hospital and the Swiss hospital can access, the Swiss hospital can access your healthcare data in the Italian hospital, that are relevant to you, because all of these healthcare institutions form part of the trusted networks of the institutions that have a common and shared access to data. Of course, you do the identification to the Swiss hospital and then the data flows within the trusted network of institutions. This is a possible framework and the complication of this framework is that it needs, it has a very significant burden in terms of the agreements that you have to set up and the governance of the all the related parties, because all the related parties are going to be able to share and access information. And this is very difficult to build. Something that we have seen emerging recently, rather recently, is the concept of self-sovereign identity. With the concept of self-sovereign identity, the idea is that you have your EID, electronic ID provided by your identity provider and your local hospital provides you attestations that get stored on your wallet, on your digital wallet, on your device or also on the cloud maybe. And then when you go to the hospital, you provide directly the data, access to the data to the hospital. And so the only thing that is needed is a trust verification of a certification of the hospital to which that originates the information is a reputed and trusted accredited institution. So you don't need to set up a whole network of principles and methods of transfer of data. Of course, this system is much lighter in terms of governance, requirement, and that can be more quickly deployed. From the point of view of the electronic identity, I just want to add one thing. In Europe, we have this EIDAS, electronic identification, authentication, and trust services common framework, whereby we have circulation of credential and trust, digital trust and digital credentials throughout Europe. And each member state has a local implementation of these services with respect to digital identity, the Italian one is called speed. And it's a particular model that is now gaining some attention abroad in other European countries and also Switzerland, by the way. They are running a referendum in these days. And one of the major characteristics of speed is that it's based on private entities that make the authenticators and not public entities. The reason for this is that there is a key difference between the usage of generally of EID compared to physical IDs. Physical IDs get issued and then you have no ties when you use them. You have no ties with the body that is releasing them. So you can have your IDs and use that ID to buy alcohol when you are 18 years old or older. And nobody gets notified of that. While when you have an authentication system, an EID that provides an authentication system to access data, then you have a tie to the entity that is verifying those credentials. And that entity can know all of the authentications you have run. Of course in Europe we have a lot of attention to privacy related issues. And so the way how we built in Italy the identification system is creating a federation of private identity providers that provide the authentication services. So the authentication at the root is based on the credential delivered by the state. But then the authentication services are run by a federation of private entities. In this way, the authentication system is subject to the judiciary branch and not to the executive branch. And this is one of the characteristics of our system. That was a broad overview. So to all the things related to healthcare and to automating flow of information and interoperability at the very root, we have the digital identity. Digital identity can come in various different flavors. EIDAS is a European framework. Speed is a system in Italy which has some peculiar characteristics. And the evolution that we are now going to work on with the Italian system is to implement this concept of the wallet or the pods Mr. Tim Berners decodes them within the solid framework to implement those within the wallets of our digital identity system. Can you wrap up please? We are running out of time. I'm concluding. I'm linking some additional resources so that if you want to go deeper, you can. And if you want to write to me, get in touch on these issues, these are my coordinates. That's it. Thank you. Thanks very much, Stefan. I really appreciate some very interesting perspectives and particularly the cruciality of having digital identity. I'm going to segue very quickly into our second speaker, Dr. Ana Maria Carrizio, the Senior Advisor from the Regional Ministry of Health and Families of Andalusia in Spain, who will present on the European M Health Hub. Ana, over to you. Yes. Thank you very much, Clayton. I think you're able to see my screen, right? Okay, good. So, oops, previous one. So, it's a real honor for me to be here, representing the Regional Ministry of Health and Families of Andalusia in Spain, and to have the possibility to share the experience in the development of the European M Health Hub. Today, as I've been said, mobile and digital services are a reality, and I am here to stay. And my contribution will provide a point of view from the health sector more particularly. So, let me start by saying that the hub was launched last year in February during the first moments of the COVID-19 pandemic in Geneva. It was a very important moment for all of us because together, all partners involved in implementation of this initiative, which is led by the WHO, the ITU, and the East Regional Ministry of Health and Families of Andalusia. This European M Health Knowledge and Innovation Hub is funded by the European Commission and based on the previous work by these two UN agencies, the Be Healthy, Be Mobile Initiative on M Health and Not Communicable Diseases. And together with the UN agencies, Andalusia is leading a broad pan-European consortium with diverse skills and experience in the field of digital health with the contribution of almost 20 partners from 12 European countries from the public and private sector, including national and regional governments, health care system, tech sector, NGOs, and the academia. So, based on this background, the European M Health Knowledge and Innovation Hub was established to collect and share experiences on M Health and to support countries and regions in setting up large-scale M Health programs. So, now it's a reality. It's based here in Andalusia. There is for Europe and the international community and it covers the entire European region, including Russia and all the central Eastern Asian countries. So, the work areas covered by the hub are, first, the M Health Assessment Framework with a thorough provision of different frameworks using Europe, both initiated, led, are supported by government, total institution, as well as non-governmental initiatives. The hub has produced a report on these assessment frameworks, building knowledge and contributing to assisting European countries and regions in developing, improving, or adapting an assessment framework of health apps at large-scale level. Additionally, additionally, a summary of health apps, a repository in Europe is included with information of health apps from several countries. A second work area is related to evidence-based M Health solution for policies. One of the most interesting work areas for me is the one on integration and M Health into health systems, which with specific samples from several countries, such as Tony, Germany, and Austria, governing aspects such as governance, reimbursement, interoperability, architecture, change management, clinical evidence, and sentiment, etc. The fourth one is the one related to support large-scale implementation of M Health programs, which is very much linked to the fifth one and contributions to policy frameworks on M Health topics. Here, a number of technical papers and case studies from Austria, Portugal, and Italy have been incorporated into the web. The last work area is the one on ethics, a basic element with considered health information and health care issues. I have special interest in the framework of this conference that the COVID-19 recovery faces. There is a very specific work carried out during the crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many M Health initiatives have been developed by governments, companies, and citizens movements to give the population informed and to help manage the crisis situation. The Health has included a specific repository for COVID-19 apps, as a preliminary living and non-exhausted list of some initiatives developed in Europe. Currently, more than 80 apps are listed in the web. Also, other areas the Health is contributing with actions in this recovery phase of the pandemic are the one on the evaluation and accreditation of national apps, the data sharing and interoperability, the integration of M Health solutions into health systems, and monitoring the effectiveness of apps. I am sure that this repository and all the work developing the Health constitutes a solid base for sharing this information. I will build knowledge that will help us to recover from this crisis and contribute to reaching the goals proposed. Thank you very much. Thanks so very much, Anna, for a wonderful presentation. Very interesting perspectives there. Our time unfortunately is short, so I am just going to very briefly before I hand back to you, Sophie, as my co-conspirator for the session. As you know, we have been asked to try and tackle this one question, which I think is very important, to say if we have to list one action, which would be a primary action to undertake, what would it be? So, upon handing back to you, I am also going to hand you this question and see if you can actually respond. What would be your one action? Over. Thank you very much. Maria, do you want to go ahead? No, no. You can start from the first speaker. I think what we have seen among whether it is Health, whether it is agriculture, it is not only about being connected, but it is also being able to share data and to have interoperability of data. So, when we are talking about policy, we need to make sure that we have integrated framework. And it is not only agriculture working on agriculture, but to make connectivity and connection in between the different sectors, because a person will be working in different sectors, will have connection with different sectors. And so, this data interoperability in this session was what I would say something that we really have to work on, whether it is legal, whether it is norm, standards, mechanism. So, there is a lot to work on this. So, that will be my contribution. Over to you, Clayton. Thanks very much, Sophie. Well, I am actually going to, I think, ask you if you could ask the questions from your speakers, the same question. And then pass it back to me and we will ask the questions from the mobile health speaker. So, yes, I would ask Esther, what do you think about what would be your main message for what we should tackle first? Yes, thank you. It is not an easy thing to choose one, only one. But to be a little bit tricky, I have to say that there are pre-conditions for this one chosen argument, which is eliminating bottlenecks. This is the one priority action, I think, what should be done. But the previous actions need to be done, since we are talking about accession and enlargement countries, the fundamental first idea. So, these areas need to be tackled first. Then prerequisite also the infrastructure, broadband and smartphone availability, and another very important prerequisites, political support and resources. So, considering these and taking them as even, I think, because we are talking about a lot of countries, each country needs to find in their own system that bottleneck that needs to be tackled, apart from these prerequisites. It can be digital skills, it can be awareness raising on digital technologies. So, these are all relevant, but I think it is very important to consider that certain country that we are talking about. So, eliminating bottlenecks, this is the priority action. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Mila, from your point of view, what would it be? Thanks, Sophie. I very much agree with Esther, actually, what she said at the moment. I think that in order to devise proper policy measures, we need to create science-to-policy interferences. And to have these interferences in place, we need to tackle a lot of data. We need to have a lot of data. This is a conflicting requirement to many countries, and not all countries are willing to share the data. Not all countries are in the open data policy space. That is to explain very much how useful is the open data policy. What is the benefit of open data policy? And if a country is not still ready to go for full and unrestricted access to the data, then to go to a certain data policies that are kind of intermediate action to provide the science-to-policy interfaces to be able to inform decision makers better with the proper data behind. I think this is, for me, from WMO, is a good step forward because the open data policy will not happen tomorrow as we press the bottom. It has to be negotiated. It takes some time. Even in the WMO arena, it's been there for decades, and we are now changing the data policy. In this October, we are going to have a big Congress, World Meteorological Organization Congress, and we are going to discuss about the new data policy on the global data exchange. And that would be another step for sure, the proper data policy, the proper resourcing. As Zesta said, resourcing of the important science, scientific, and operational institutes and institutions in the countries is also very important and not pushing these organizations to earn money on the market in order to cover their day-to-day work and providing the observations that we all need. So that's very short. Thank you. Layton, I pass again the floor to you, and I wanted also to tell you that when I had seen your slide about what were all the challenges that could be faced in health sector during COVID, actually these are very similar challenges and difficulties that we face in the digital aspect of the sector. So I think that together we could really join forces and really find solutions together, because they will be very similar. Thanks. So I completely agree. And again, it's almost remarkable when you see across different sectors the level of similarities makes us realize that sessions such as this aim to bring us together, really there are a lot of synergies that we can really use and leverage each other's skills for. I'm just going to pass directly. Unfortunately, Stefano Quintarelli had to leave us, but I'm going to actually ask Anna if you would like to give your perspectives on one recommendation that you would actually give a policy recommendation or other can be based on the mHealth hub, but which would you give? Thank you, Clayton. As Zesta said, it's very difficult just to pick one solution. And as everything has already said regarding infrastructure and open datasets and everything, I will stress the need for collaboration and for sharing experiences to better improve our knowledge about how to implement, how to mobilize mHealth in particular, but in general, digital solutions, the field of health, very important at this moment, but also in all the different aspects in life. So collaboration and sharing experiences will be my key message. Thanks, Anna. And just before handing back to Jaroslo, I'd just like to give my one perspective as well. And I would really capitalize upon data. I think really within health in particular, we've seen that we really don't mind or capture the level of data that we really need to to move on. And this is not unique to health, but I think the COVID-19 pandemic has particularly pushed that aspect into the spotlight. Even if we could improve that situation by 10 to 20 percent across the European region, I think we'd see a market difference in the way that we are able to respond to public health emergencies and challenges such as the one we're in now. And on that note, I'd happily hand back to you, Jaroslo, and thank you so much to my co-moderator Sophie Trinen and to all the speakers of our session. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to all of you for this great session. And now we are moving to the next session before we are moving. As you've noticed, we run a little bit late with the agenda, but we're aiming at closing the event around 12.50 or 13 hours. With this, I would like to ask the interpreters and captioners would be able to stay with us for these few minutes more. For this meeting, I don't hear the interpreters as I'm... Is it okay? Interpreters? Okay, I don't hear. So we'll check offline. But with this, I would like to hand over the moderation to Elisabeth for the next session, which is focusing on the digital trend. Elisabeth, the floor is yours. Many thanks, Jaroslo, and indeed, let's proceed on the assumption that interpreters stay with us, because I think we have still a very important and interesting dimension left. It's been fascinating to listen to this cross-cutting session covering gender, health, education, agriculture, and so forth. And I'm very pleased now to welcome speakers and participants to our third session, which is about creating an enabling environment for digital trade. So when we talk about the COVID response, it's clear that COVID has significantly impacted trade. And trade will play and is playing a major role in the recovery. And we recognize that very strongly in UNICE, where just recently we've looked at e-commerce and e-commerce developments in our region and how e-commerce can help us get out of the current crisis. And also last week as part of the regional forum, we had a specific session looking at now trade, trade facilitation, and its role in the current recovery efforts. Now, what I hope to do for this third session is add two elements to this debate. Add, on the one hand, the very important digitalization dimension, which is the core of our event here today, but also at the dimension of environmental sustainability. So when we talk about recovery, it's clear that today we are not talking about business as usual, but we are talking about building back better or building forward better. And we are talking about the recovery where issues of inclusiveness, but also environmental sustainability play a major role. And with this, I'm very excited to introduce an amazing lineup of speakers, which I think are extremely well placed to discuss with us the environmental dimension of trade and the role that digitalization can play in making trade sustainable and in harnessing the power of trade for sustainable recovery. I'm very happy that we have representatives from two Secretariat of Multilateral Environmental Agreements, so the environmental pillar of our governments. I'm very happy to have with us representatives from CITES, the Convention on International Trading in the Agent Species, and also from the BRS Secretariat, that's the Basel Rotterdam and Stockholm Convention. And I'm very happy that we also have a representative of a member state working closely on this MA related issues. And last but not least, a representative from OSCE and from the Environmental Grant in this regard. So let me introduce and let me see whether we have our speakers here on the podium. Let me introduce Ms. Haruko Okuzu, who is the Chief of Outreach and Project Unit of the Secretariat of the Conventional International Trade in the Agent Species of Wild Fauna in Flora, CITES Secretariat. Secondly, I'm with great pleasure introducing Mr. Matthias Lorto, who is the Head of the CITES Management Authority of Switzerland. Thirdly, I'm very pleased to introduce Ms. Maria Cristina Fischer. She's a Senior Policy and Strategy Advisor in the Executive Office of the BRS Secretariat. And fourthly, it's my honor to introduce his Excellency, Ambassador Wuk Sugic, who has been the co-coordinator of the OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities Fund. Can I see whether all our four speakers are with us? I trust that they are. And without further ado, let me give the floor to our first speakers, Ms. Haruko Okuzu. And Ms. Okuzu, I understand that you will be talking to us about how to strengthen sustainable trade through ICTs and how to promote inclusive, transparent and traceable value chains. So that's a really important topic for UNICE and our Economic Cooperation and Trade Division. And the floor is yours. Okay, thank you very much. And thank you, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, for staying long enough for this session. I'd like to give you a brief introduction about CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, is an international agreement whose aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species. Now, CITES is considered to be an agreement that crosses between both trade and environment sectors. And we currently have 182 countries plus the European Union that are controlling trade in over 38,000 species of animals and plants. And this includes live, dead, parts and derivatives of them. Our member parties have an agreed system for issuing and exchanging permits and certificates for those species in order to ensure legality, sustainability and traceability of trade. In the topic of this particular meeting, the digitalization of trade has brought many opportunities for bringing more effective implementation of the convention in a few different areas, but I'll try to focus on the direct trade transaction aspects here. As some of you might know that a lot of the regulatory control of global international trade has already been on the path of electronic information exchange, automated risk assessment and targeted inspections. And CITES is currently trying to catch up with that trend as well. Now, trade and specimens of CITES listed species have particular characteristic that needs to be addressed carefully. First of all, CITES currently has a record of about 20 million trade transactions and they are increasing by about 1 million transactions per year. And actually this number is rather small compared to the overall size of the global trade in general. Also, CITES regulates at the taxonomic level and it doesn't distinguish too much at the commodity level, so it covers many different sectors including furniture, cosmetics, pharmaceutics, food, fashion, collections, pets, ornamentals, etc. etc. So this challenges bring a new dimension to how do we regulate as a convention better all of the trade that includes the CITES listed specimens. On the other hand, there are increasing concerns for stronger law enforcement measures needed to prevent and minimize illegal wildlife trade for a number of reasons. First of all, these trade are considered highly lucrative, transnational, and poses a serious risk to the conservation of wild species and this can come at a very high cost considering the end value of some illegally traded materials as well as the value of the ecosystem services that are lost as a result. So electronic permit systems and information exchange can potentially strengthen permit insurance control and information exchange to fight illegal trade. Now the current status is that a lot of parties have agreed that the electronic CITES systems is very important and is a priority for them and especially there has been an increased interest due to the COVID-19 related restrictions because more authorities had to issue and evaluate permits remotely and they also had to make the process less face-to-face and paper-oriented. Right now a bit over a dozen countries have electronic systems in place and maybe about 30 or 40 more that are considering. However, support from donor agencies is crucial for implementation in developing countries. The Secretary has distinguished four distinct sections or processes for implementing an electronic permitting process. First, there needs to be an automation of internal workflow in a country from application to the issuance of the permit. Second, there should be an integration of border agencies for cross-checking the permits with electronic border declarations. Third, there needs to be an automated generation of reports both for CITES reporting purposes and other customized reports for analyses. And lastly, exchange of electronic permit data between authorities in different countries would be facilitating a lot of the objectives that I have noted earlier. There are many challenges and opportunities involving this, especially there are complex environments and requirements at the national level involving many different agencies, different species, and all of these systems that require consideration are very much case-to-case basis depending on the country's regulatory frameworks. Now also the permit volumes are relatively low in some countries, so there may be a high development cost and initial investment for very few permits being issued, so we need to look at cost effective solutions. And at the end, piloting, data standards, sharing experience are very important aspects of forward meeting these challenges. And I think I'll end it here and my colleague Matthias from Switzerland will be able to elaborate a little bit more on what a party experience in implementing E-CITES looks like and what especially with respect to the last step, which is this exchange of electronic permit data. Thank you very much. Many thanks for this excellent overview and I think you flag trust the importance of ensuring that trade is legal, traceable, and sustainable. And I think that really brings us to this sustainable post-COVID recovery and you've showed us the breadth of trade covered under the CITES Convention, including such sectors as furniture and cosmetics, which is not obvious to somebody not knowing the details. You've highlighted the importance of these electronic systems in this regard and I think you've also implicitly almost called upon donors to support the implementation in developing countries. I think that's a very crucial point when you think about how to take that forward. You flag the complexities at the national level and as you pointed out, that's the transition already to our next speaker and I'm very happy to welcome here with us Mr. Matthias Lörcher, who is head of CITES management authority in Switzerland and I understand Matthias, you're also the chair of our UNECE and UNSCAP task force on E-CITES. So Mr. Lörcher, the floor is yours. Thank you Elizabeth. I will share my screen. Can you see it? We can see it, yes. Still with the slides on the slides, but now it's perfect, yeah. Perfect, thank you. Okay, first of all, let me thank ITU and UNEC for allowing me to address this cross-cutting session on digitalization. As you see, Switzerland is a country which issues over 100,000 permits every year. As Haruko has explained, it is a variety of goods and animals and plants that are being traded under CITES. And as a management authority, our job is mainly to issue permits to control the trade, to support customs in fighting illegal trade. And by doing so, we have to make sure that that trade that we permit is legal, sustainable and traceable. You see on this graph, the number of permits issued by Switzerland since 1975 since the convention entered into force. And you see that it has numbers have increased considerably. And this is mainly due to a very successful watch industry in Switzerland. We export and import over a million watch straps made of reptile leather every year. They are fixed onto luxury watches and re-exported. And we have to make sure that this trade is well controlled and it's not a burden, a big burden for us and the trade. You also see on this graph the effects that the COVID pandemic has had on that trade. You see numbers for 2020, they have gone below 85,000 permits and before they were 120,000. So there has been quite an impact on that trade itself also. So if we want to make that trade legal, inclusive, transparent, how do we do that? How have we done an electronic permitting process? I will only look at one process, the export procedures today. So companies, they have an internet connection to our database in our office and they can submit applications online. We can then look at this application. We can ask for more information. This is also transmitted electronically. And so all the documents, all the steps who has done what in the system is then recorded. So we have an absolutely traceable process from the start of the application until we issue the permit. We then issue the permit and it can be printed either at our office or at the chamber of commerce, which is close to the business. It can only be printed once by this institution to make sure that the permits are not duplicated, of course. So everything is traceable and overseable. So this is one of the processes that we have put into place and the impacts it has had is quite large. Before we had that permitting system, the processing time for a permit lasted between 10 and 20 days. So for a company which is acting worldwide, this is very hindering. After we have introduced that permitting system, the processing time is between five hours and maximum of five days if we have to ask for additional documents and so on. So we are a lot faster now a days. The system is widely accepted now in Switzerland. After six months, there were already 60% of the permits processed and today it's more than 98% of all the permits are being processed through that system and we have over 270 companies and more than 700 users using that system on a daily basis. We have made quite some economies in personnel costs as you can see and it has been a very effective implementation. The savings for the industry, it's hard to quantify but they must be considerably because if they have to wait 20 days for permits to then be able to export the goods, these are, this is a time gain and also a gain in time that goods are not moving, are just having to be stored. Other impacts, we have been able to better use our resources, personal resources and money resources which has helped us a lot. And on the COVID-19, almost from one day to another, we had to work from home, all of us. And we have been able to keep up the processing times and the quality of our services to trade even though we have been working from home. So this has been able because of that system. And the permitting processes, they are transparent, very viable and traceable. And of course, we have a good image at the moment for our customers but also to make sure that this trade is traceable and legal. So the next steps will, as Haruku also mentioned, will be inclusion of border agencies so that our systems talk with their systems to be able to make risk assessment, automated risk assessments in their controls at the border. So we will have an electronic data exchange with customs systems and collaborate and identify with them to develop risk-based processes. So this will allow us to have a better control at the border, faster clearance of the goods, better trade statistics and also less illegal trade, less fraud. And finally, we are also in the process of developing e-exchange, that part where we want to go paperless. Papers can still be tampered with, they can be copied, that there is a lot of problems around paper documents. And we want to go digital there. So we will need to have fully automated national SID systems in both countries. We need common technical standards, which is very important. We have to adhere to common standards, which we already have developed inside these. So in the e-permitting working group, we have worked with the standard setting bodies, WCO, UNCCFAC, UNX, and we have these standards ready to be used. And we also have, of course, have to be ready to exchange the permits between parties. So this will allow us to have integrated cross-border process, reduction of fraud, pre-arrival information to be able to make targeted inspections, and, of course, better statistics. Because today, what many parties deliver as annual trade data is a permitted trade and not actually happening trade. And integration of these processes will allow us to have real time and precise trade to allow us to react when we see that things may not be going in the right direction. And as Elizabeth has mentioned, I have the honor to chair the UNCECE SCAP Task Force for Eastside ECPEX pilots. This is a platform for parties that want to go into this data exchange, the exchange of electronic permits between parties. This platform supports parties and stakeholders to start and carry out pilots. It closely collaborates with the CITES-E permitting working group, UNCFAC and UNNEXT. It is open mainly to CITES management authorities, primarily from the ENEC, UNSCAP region. And these activities are, if you look at it more in detail, we have regular non-physical meetings at the moment. We do support parties in starting pilots by giving capacity building, by sharing of practical lessons, and by also developing guidelines and recommendations. We are making studies and research and make them available. And we contribute to the development of these standards. We are present in all these standard-setting bodies. So that's the way we try to really push the issue and get parties to now start exchanging permits. Because on a technical level, everything is there. We just have to make it work now. So thank you for your interest. Thank you, Matthias, for a very informative presentation, giving member states perspective, and you've told us what you have achieved so far. Impressive increase in these permits here. You've also outlined what are the next steps, linking up to custom systems, and important for our session here today, Going Digital. And thank you for calling upon all interests that they called us also to express their interest in the joint work we are doing here together with UNICEF and UNSCAP. Now, we have a bit of a timing challenge, and I will have to ask our two last speakers to really be to the point and short, but it's great pleasure for me to welcome Miss Maria Kristina Fischer. We are now moving towards another multilateral environmental agreement. We are moving towards the BRS as secretariat. So, Maria Kristina, I understand you will be talking to us about trans-boundary movement of waste. Waste being very important for the circular economy and other hot topic these days. Without further ado, the floor is yours. Thank you very much for inviting us to this event. I will just very quickly give you an overview of the Basel Convention and what it does, and I'm going to share a couple of slides. I think you have them, or should I, I can do it from my side. Sara, would you be able to share? I can do it. We would ask for interpreters to remain with us another five minutes. Can you see the slides? We can see part of it. You would need to enlarge it. Yes, perfect. So, the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movements, including International Trade of Hazardous Waste and its disposal, was adopted over 30 years ago. It has a main objective, which is to protect human health and the environment that get against the adverse effects of hazardous waste, and today it has 188 parties implementing it. The Convention actually covers different aspects related to the life cycle, including the trade of hazardous waste and other waste, and has three main pillars, mainly the minimization of the generation of waste, the promotion of the environmentally sound management of waste, and the control of transboundary movement of waste under the prior informed consent procedure. This prior informed consent procedure is quite elaborated under the Basel Convention, where parties have the right to decide whether they can accept or not importation of waste, and for which types this information is notified. To the secretariat on a regular basis and published in the Convention website. The procedure forms the heart of the Basel Convention control system and is based in four key stages to ensure that only parties with the will and the capacity to manage the hazardous waste, other waste in an environmentally sound manner, can actually receive those waste. First is the notification of the proposed shipment. Second, the written consent of the proposed shipment. And third, the issuance of a movement document. And last but not least, the confirmation that there will be an environmentally sound management disposal. Parties also have the right to restrict bans of the imports and transits or exports. Now, to date, this exchange of information has been done mainly by mail, email, and a paper in hard copy. Therefore, recently, the parties to the Convention took a decision to actually initiate an exploration to see whether or not it would be useful to have in place a system that would allow the automation of processes under the Basel Convention. Early in January this year, we had a meeting of the Basel Convention, a workshop, where parties explored the different options that they would have in actually moving into an electronic system. As I mentioned, we are quite early in our exchange of information in our process. Maria, we lost your slides, but we can still see you. Sorry. Yeah, I will continue quickly, so I don't eat up your time. I will share my screen for you. Oh, it's okay. We have actually undertaken several service and reports that have been prepared on the topic of electronic exchange of information, and we have been working on systems and standards to support the prior informed consent procedure. We're hoping to learn from the experience of international organizations, such as the World Customs Organization, UNICE and CITES, who have, as you heard previously, been working on initiatives which are relevant to the discussions under the Convention. For us, developing countries in particular may face many challenges when they start working in this area, and therefore currently we are at a very early stage of exchanging views on what actions are required for each country to undertake at the national level or regional level so that we can in the future realize this vision of an international network of systems and increase control movements of waste under the scope of the Convention. As I was saying earlier in January this year, we organized a consultative workshop as part of the mandate given to the secretariat. This workshop actually involved a range of experts representing a milestone in the work of electronic approaches to automate the prior informed consent under the Convention. It explored options for a system under the Convention that would allow for the automation of processes of the electronic exchange of information relating to notification and movement of hazardous and other waste. We expect that there would be benefits and requirements as well as possible steps towards the implementation of such a system. COVID-19, the pandemic, has certainly been quite positive in providing a very much needed push to help catapult the Basel Convention into the 21st century. In particular, in the area of digitalization and raising awareness on the benefits that ICTs can bring towards the establishment of electronic approaches to the notification of movement documents, including by potentially reducing the administrative burden, speeding up the process of information exchange, and decreasing the transaction costs of the prior informed consent procedure. We are not as advanced as the CITES Convention. However, we believe that ICT solutions could only assist parties in implementing the Convention by strengthening the implementation of it, and also by providing a more efficient and transparent tracking system of the transboundary movement of hazardous waste. This would, for sure, contribute towards the attainment of the SDGs. I won't take actually any more of your time because I know that we're short in time, so thank you very much for your attention. Many thanks, Maria Cristina. In fact, it's a real pity that we cannot go into the details because it's really interesting what you're saying about the prior informed consent process, how this relates to trade, the transboundary movement of hazardous waste, and the clear potential that lies in digitalization here. I totally agree with you insofar as that we need to make sure that developing countries, but also countries with economies in transition, they need to be empowered to harness and implement these tools. Now, for our last four or five minutes, let me give the floor to his excellent self, Ambassador Luk Szulgic, who is the co-coordinator of the OSCE, Economic and Environmental Activities. Ambassador, I understand you'll be putting a spotlight again on the importance of new technologies, how they can support trade and trade facilitation. Your Excellency, the floor is yours. Thank you very much and I wish to make my presentation rather short, and I will send you the full presentation later on, so it will be available for our participants. Let me start by saying that nexus between peace security and development that underlines the 2030 agenda is also the core of the OSCE concept of comprehensive security. The OSCE region accounts for over 50% of global trade, and within the Secretariat in Vienna, my office has the mandate and it's actively involved in supporting the OSCE participating states in strengthening, complementing to make trade and transport more efficient, resilient and sustainable. In a nutshell, the use of new technologies can enhance the resilience of economies against external shocks like the pandemic. New innovative technologies can facilitate trade, create jobs and reduce the costs of trade. This digital transformation in turn could contribute to a sustainable and green recovery, including by reinforcing efforts to combat climate change by accelerating the use of renewable energy sources, enabling economies to be sustainable and reducing environmental challenges. To make economies more resilient against pandemics, one needs to also include potential risks to digitalization. In the context of security, more openness and use of new technologies or networks for trade also could create vulnerabilities that needs to be taken seriously by defining common threats and adequate responses we could avoid serious disruptions to trade and transport. Let me make also, I would like to make a few very brief remarks on a couple of instruments and proposal that would be needed to address the issues I already mentioned. What we need is to have a clear vision for its employing new technologies to the overall goal of facilitating trade. Government institutions, private sector, science and civil society need to increase their economic and technological competence in order to advance new technologies and their benefits to the trade. The OSCE, as a regional organization with a comprehensive security approach and field presences in various participating states, is very well suited to find common ground that work in favor of states and their societies. A consensus-driven approach on deployment of new technologies for trade facilitation creates stronger incentives. Also, the organization has long-term partnerships with other regional international organizations like the UNEC to build on each other's experience, knowledge and strength on how to integrate new technologies into existing trade infrastructure. And last but not least, the OSCE since its establishment has provided to its participating states a key platform to discuss policy choices and foster intergovernmental dialogue and its best place to facilitate meaningful inclusive dialogue and coordination in this field. This does by increasing the speed of the edges and reducing the costs of international trade. Digitalization can in fact play a key role in promoting economic connectivity between countries and contribute to sustainable development, security and stability. Thank you very much for this opportunity, just briefly to say a few words about our activities on this very important topic. Many thanks Ambassador Sugic for flagging the importance of trade in our UNEC region and for also highlighting the important role of digitalization in terms of like increasing the resilience of this trade but also in terms of making that trade more green and in so doing combating climate change. And you've also made a very important link to security. I'm very grateful for you flagging the importance of consensus driven approach and cooperation and I hope that we can continue joining hands in this regard. So with this I would now here thank our four speakers for their very pertinent remarks. For the sake of time we are spot on to 13 hours as requested. I will neither summarize nor pose follow up questions. Let me just flag to you that I'm very happy we could have this session on sustainable and the environmental dimension of trade and this is very important for UNEC's Economic Cooperation Division and it's also very important for UNEC as we are going to discuss the circular economy at our Commission session mid-April. So with this I would hand the floor back to our partners from ITU for moving us to the last segment of this very region inspiring debate. Thank you. Thank you very much Elisabeth and thank you very much when we're talking to the speakers. Ladies and gentlemen also thanks goals to you because you are holding at a place until the the last moment of this event this and this makes us very happy because digitization and digitalization is very important for our region and this can happen only with with your support and so of course during this meeting we have collected a lot of policy advisors which will transform into the report from this meeting which will be submitted as the concise contribution to the Regional Forum on Sustainable Development ensuring that we only also refer to the digitization as the cross cutting enabler for the achieving of the SDGs dose which are under investigation this year but also those which are not on the list of this year but will be investigated in the in the next coming coming years. So I would like to thank very much to all speakers for this. We would also encourage all of you to stay connected with the UN digital transformation group for Europe and Central Asia working patiently on building partnerships on the digitalization in our region. We'll be also meeting on the 26th of April within the framework of the World Summit on the Information Society to talk about the UN process related to the ICTs for SDGs and we hope to also welcome many of you at this special session and to further advance and build upon the outcomes of the forum of this session and of all great work which we are doing. So also let me thank to all UN agencies which contributed to shaping this session and to UN ECE passionately working hand in hand on the success of this event as well as to our captioners and the interpreters who stayed with us for a few minutes longer. So thank you very much. We appreciate your flexibility very much but we are so excited about the issues that this time was needed. So we thank you very much and with this I would like to close the the event also encouraging you to read our newest report on the different flagship initiatives taken in our region. It's a pleasure to talk about it.