 Ladies and gentlemen, panelists, let's begin with the second part, with the second session today. Let's take our seats and let's get started. I invite everybody to join us in the main room and to, of course, take your positions, get ready for the next chapter in today's discussion. I welcome you to the second part of our event today. This is the second ministerial roundtable. This time the theme is on the digital economy. This topic, of course, connects intimately with our previous discussion and, of course, we have a number of speakers that could not address us before but will do so in this event. Of course, I encourage everybody to let us know they want to speak after our keynote speakers now by raising their placard, drawing my attention or drawing the attention of the staff around us. Thank you very much. Gotcha. Right now, it's my turn to introduce to you his Excellency, Mr. Boris Koprivnikar. He will address us as our first keynote speaker today, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary General, Commissioner Ansip, Excellencies, Delegates, ladies and gentlemen, I'm privileged to speak to you about the topics that I'm really keen about it and we work hard in Slovenia because we believe that the digitalizations and all the opportunities that brings can really help to improve the quality of life of citizens and the business opportunities. I've been asked which technologies which has the best potential for the future. Is it 5G, big data, IoT, maybe blockchain, different mobility concepts? These are all technologies that have to interlink between themselves and I strongly believe that the best result or the most impact we will have in the future in the field of cognitiveness because all those technologies can predict and learn what we need and they can support our life, our work and our decision making. Today's challenges that we have, cybersecurity, free flow of data, data protection, big data, digitalizations, can become the opportunities of tomorrow and I think that the biggest opportunity that we have with the digitalization is on very political level. It's the opportunity in the field of trust because trust in government is necessary if we want to have a support and if we want to gain trust again we can react based on digital technologies more reliable, we can respond faster, we can act more open, we can open data, we can open procedures because it's very simple to share it with the digital resources that we have. We can act more with competencies, we can work better, we can do better decision making, we can use big data that can support us that our decision making is really evidence based because the data is something that can really help us that we decide more wisely and we can act also with better integrity, with better transparency which will gain trust of citizens and also businesses. Digital economy of the future is the economy of the future because there is practically no economy which is not digitally or at least totally dependent on digital processes. There is no economic process that is not digital but we have to understand that there are two main opportunities. One is that we can improve the internal processes of our producers, processes, companies that we with the digital technology are more effective, more efficient. We do better what we do and maybe we find new products that did not exist before. The second very important opportunity in the digital economy field is global market which is now accessible basically to everyone. If we use the communication tools we can buy, sell and compose our businesses globally. Today it's completely natural what was maybe 10, 15 years ago just a dream but today we can do our business immediately globally and because of that globalization we are facing also opportunities and challenges of so-called sharing economy. We can share resources, we can share partners, we can share markets and in that field I also strongly believe that blockchain technologies will have to be very serious in place because this is the only technology which can globally solve some problems like measuring added value like taxation, like insurances because this is the only technology which is not dependent on central decision of separate government but can be spread over internet, over sharing economy like it's spread everything what is based on internet. And I'm optimist about the future technology. There is always a question will this ICT have a human face in the future? Of course it will because any technology that we build we build people build technology and we build it for our purposes. We build it to support our businesses, we build it to make our lives more comfortable so definitely it will have a few human face because we will build these technologies for our needs. And if we build trust, if we act more smart using data and database decision making it's very important and this is also the topic today mentioned frequently we have to be synchronized. If we don't synchronize our processes data will not flow. If we don't synchronize our platforms we cannot share software solutions so synchronization is something what is important task of every government and I strongly believe it's important task of every government to synchronize the processes with other governments. So this is why we need platforms like ITU which is wonderful platform for synchronization of our processes that we can share what we build we can trade we can travel we can even protect together by the threats that are common with the digitalization. Slovenia is just a little more than 25 years old country. We decided to be green reference country in digital Europe because we find that single European market is something that's of vital interest also for Slovenia. This is why we are not seeking for new inventions for new things that are not already been thought about. We are seeking for a system solutions based on new technology. This is new added value. If we can measure the blood pressure and blood picture and prevent stroke it's okay we all know that this works but how to put it on the system level. You have to change the law you have to change the financial models you have to educate the doctors you have to promote it to the citizens this is no technology. Technology is just a product that we have to learn to use it and this is then a system change and only then the whole country a citizen and businesses can benefit of what are technological possibilities. We say also that we changed our processes that we digitalized them no paper now it's digital then we made them mobile we can do whatever we do wherever we are today here from Argentina I can do all the work as I would be in the office but smart and synchronized is something that is really in front of us that we can do it more efficient. For any international organization I strongly believe have to be important have to have influence have to be a platform platform of a cooperation and have to be useful for the members and they find the ITU is organization that it's aligned in these attributes and I strongly believe that in next 25 years it will be even more important organization better ground for collaboration and needed solutions from ours members will be better shared between the members so I would like to congratulate for the 25 years of the ITU development sector and wish many good years of common work. Thank you. Thank you very much Mr. Boris Korpivnikar deputy vice deputy prime minister from Slovenia. It is now my turn to call another speaker. This man is Majed Almazied he's deputy governor communications and information technology commission the CITC from Saudi Arabia and of course your country is the platinum sports sponsors of the ITUD 25th anniversary event please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Majed Almazied thank you very much deputy governor communications and information technology commission from Saudi Saudi Arabia. My next speaker is probably I'm sure he's the youngest at least speaker in the room. He is a software and artificial intelligence developer with IBM. His name is Tanmay Bakshi and Tanmay Bakshi is 13 years old definitely the youngest person addressing us today in the room please. Thank you. Good afternoon and hello everyone my name is Tanmay Bakshi I'm 13 years old and I'm from Toronto Canada. I'm an algorithmist AI developer author and honorary IBM cloud advisor before I begin I'd like to say a big thank you to ITUD for inviting me to this amazing event and I'd like to congratulate them on their 25th anniversary they do a lot of hard work and their contributions mean a lot to the entire world. Today I'm here to talk about the next level of the digital economy in fact due to the growth and development of the digital economy itself institutional organizations in fields like education, healthcare, business, security and cyber security are being forced to turn into fully fledged tech companies and I believe that the technology they're using is currently undergoing a massive shift to the next level AI and I believe that this next level can empower them to do things that they never could have dreamt of before. And that's why today I'm here to talk about the next level of the digital economy itself which is I believe most certainly artificial intelligence and to show you an example of how AI is already impacting our digital economy I'd like to take up the example of a project of mine that's very close to my heart and it's called the cognitive story. It's an example of AI being used in healthcare and through the cognitive story we're trying to help a quadriplegic girl named Boo who suffers from Rett syndrome and lives just north of Toronto. What we're trying to do is give her artificial communication ability even though she can't communicate naturally. That's right we're giving artificial communication ability to people who can't communicate naturally through the power of AI. So as you can tell AI is already playing a very critical role in our digital economy and we can only expect it to get much bigger from here because not only can artificial intelligence complete tasks that no other human and no other algorithm can but in fact AI eliminates many of the mundane tasks that today's workers are faced with in order to free them to innovate and work in other areas that require them the most such as AI. But as with all good things in life even AI has a few of its own challenges one of which being privacy. Now privacy is a mostly solved problem within the field of AI itself however users are still very concerned about their privacy of course and that makes it difficult for people like me to work with AI because neural networks which are specialized AI techniques require a lot of data to be effective. And so some of the brightest minds in the field of AI came together and innovated to come up with a lot of different ways to solve this problem. An example of which being differential privacy which tries to mask user identity through artificial mathematical noise in the data and to end encryption to make sure that the data is remain secure and one time use because artificial intelligence is special it doesn't need its training data anymore once it's been trained so you may discard your user data once you're done using it to train your AI systems. But then this brings me to the second challenge that I'd like to share with you which I know is actually the main concern for AI in general and that is of course the misuse of AI. However I'd like everyone here to know that AI is completely incapable of this type of activity. Why do I say this? Well while humans may set the objective function or the intent of AI to do something negative this has been done with every technology that has ever existed and is being done today we're still combating against it and we are not stopping technological progress. Instead what we're doing is we're accelerating it so why would we stop here just because of AI? But AI itself cannot change its own intent it cannot change what it was programmed to do because its objective function the objective for it is completely constant which is why it is completely safe for governments, economies and companies to completely integrate with. And to conclude I'd like to share this with you. I started my journey into the world of coding and programming computers when I was at a very young age at five years old. From there I used books and the internet as learning resources and at the same time created a YouTube channel and authored blogs and books so I could share what I learned with the rest of the world. At this point I realized there is a huge knowledge gap in the world. So what I did is I made a resolve to reach out to at least 100,000 aspiring beginners to help them learn and innovate along their journey of programming. And I'm very glad to say that I've already reached around 5,000 people. However, I don't want to stop at 100,000 and I realized that it's impossible to make the bigger change alone because the digital economy requires systemic change and the support of all stakeholders involved. Which is why I also believe with Mark Anderson's vision, which is that in the future there will only be two types of jobs. Those in which people tell computers what to do. And those in which people are told what to do by computers. And so out of everything that I've said today, I believe there are two things that governments need to do to sustain the growth of the digital economy. Number one, governments need to support the programs that foster digital skills development in the youth. And they need to do this so that they are future-proofed for the era in which AI is the dominant part of the digital economy. And so that we can nurture the computational thinking in our youth. And number two, governments need to invest really heavily in the research and development that we're doing for AI now so that we can build a foundation and a base for the future of the digital economy and start leveraging it and using it to our advantage very, very soon. Thank you very much everyone for your time today. And we, the youth, count on your support. Thank you very much, Tanmay Bakshi, developer and AI activist, 13 years old, the youngest person in the room, at least mathematically. Now we move on to the interactive part of our session today. We'll be hearing interventions by ministers, deputy ministers, and they will be followed by C-level executives. Remember, just a quick reminder, we're looking for as diverse a collection of views as possible. So please, please, please try to keep your intervention to three minutes tops. Again, in case I have to interrupt you, it's just my job. I have to try and make this part of the conversation as profitable as possible. Again, please, please wave your placard so we can see you. Some members of the ITU staff or myself, we can see you and we can continue adding you guys to the list. Remember that we have three guiding questions today. We're going to have, our discussion is going to be just orientated by one. What are the emerging technologies which have the potential to drive digital transformation while fostering sustainable growth of the digital economy? How can the digital economy turn today's challenges into tomorrow's opportunities? And number three, 25 years from now, will we be able to maintain the human face of ICTs and how? We already have a number of requests for speaking. Our first representative in the list is now representative from Azerbaijan, minister representative, please, the floor is yours. Distinguished Chairman, this excellent Secretary General, ladies and gentlemen, I want to join today's very interesting and fruitful discussions on topic sustainable development goals and digital economy and to contribute to this discussion, especially last speaker, the young researcher who's mentioned about artificial intelligence, which were important for the, not only to digital economy, for our future life. I won't mention it, but I think more than a little bit, more 30 years ago when I was student in the university, I work on this research, I had some research on artificial intelligence and during these 30 years, I think for each results, when we spoke about the power of artificial intelligence, who can assist for the, some of our purposes, which are oriented on sustainable development goals. But before that, our meetings is dedicated to 25th anniversary of ITUD, ITUD, taking this opportunity, I congratulate all of us, such tremendous event. Now I want to attract your attention to our activities on achieving sustainable development goals. As a dynamically developing country, Azerbaijan has set key priority for future developments, such as diversification economy, increasing the potential of ICT sector and enhancing the expert-oriented industry. Currently, the digital economy is considered as an integral part of national economic policy and Azerbaijan has made big progress in this direction. Creation of the digital economy has been set forward as one of main goals according to the National Strategy for Development of Information Society, which adopted in 2014. At the end of 2016, the government of Azerbaijan has adopted 12 strategic roadmaps for key sectors of national economy, including strategic road map on the development telecommunication and information technologies. All these roadmaps fully correlated to SDGs and include many tasks for realization of SDGs. The development of ICT and innovative development are priorities of Azerbaijan state policy. Azerbaijan achieved remarkable results on implementation of ICT. Today, around 80% of the population are broadband users. E-Services are widely used for providing power services to citizens and businesses. E-Signature is actively used for these purposes. ICT, mobile apps and E-Services are vital components of daily activity of government, business and citizens. In our activity, with all of global development trends and cooperate with many countries and give high attention to European-based practice. Recently, I am and the Minister from Slovenia, together, we participate in a second ministerial meeting on digital economy, where we discuss tasks for global development of our countries by implementation of ICT. I would like to take this opportunity to greet Mr. Ansif, Vice-President of the European Commission, who chaired this meeting. We are confident about ICT's essential role in achievements of SDGs. We believe that the action aimed at realisation of SDGs will ensure overall development of our countries. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Minister, Representative of Azerbaijan. I would like to move on to Minister, Representative from Poland. Sir, the floor is yours. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Karol Okoynski. I'm a Deputy Minister of Digitalisation. And referring to the first question that was posted here for our discussion, I would like to say that there is actually one common element for all the high-tech technologies, all the innovations, and all those come up to the data. So, I mean, all the new innovations, all the new technologies like Internet of Things, like artificial intelligence that was mentioned here, so vividly a few minutes ago, they all just refer to data, are data-driven. And what I would like to stress is the fact that today, all companies, regardless of the size, depend on data flows. And the data transfer between countries, this is something essential for trade and production, before the global nature of current economy is the fact that they're just the supply chains span across geographies. And the importance of data transmission, of course, will grow even further with the widespread use of the technologies like AI IoT and all others, because it will be just a necessity. And the data flows are expected to become so important that we as Poland are calling for the free movement of data as being the fifth freedom, the fifth human freedom, alongside the free movement of goods, free movement of services, capital and people. And Poland has succeeded so far in making the free movement of data a high political priority in European Union. So we are really happy that we're attracting more and more support from both the European Union Commission and European Union countries, and would like to initiate also the discussion about this at global level, because we think that, as one, that the free flow of data would be actually one of the fundamentals of the long-term development of the emerging technologies. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much, sir. I would like to invite our panel to share with us some thoughts on the two representatives who just spoke to us. Do we have some thoughts on the free flow of data? Do you want to take the floor? It's yours. I agree with the Polish speaker. Trends, not in the European Union, but globally, is quite bad. Number of laws pushing on forceful data localization is increasing. Just in the European Union, we already have 56 different rules in 21 member states dealing with forceful data localizations. And as we all know, if you had to gather those data just from some small territories, then most likely somebody else who will be able to collect data from bigger markets, 300 million healthy customers or 1 billion customers will be able to reach those new and higher levels of efficiency much sooner than those 28 relatively small countries. So in the European Union, we launched a proposal according with this principle allowing free data flows across borders, across the European Union will be set as a rule and it means forceful data localizations will be prohibited. But we had to deal with those issues also when talking about ITU, for example. I'm happy that a year ago, when we had the G7 ICT ministerial meeting in Takamatsu, then in this final declaration, we stated it very clearly, free data flows, it has to be as a rule also when talking about G7 countries. Now, when in Argentina, we have to remember that Argentina will take very soon over this G20 presidency. And once again, in Düsseldorf, G20 countries agreed with a principle to allow free data flows also when talking about G20 countries. So it's easy to say, we have to set this as a principle to allow free data flows, but at the same time, there will be some people who will say that no, no. We have to keep data inside of our beautiful countries, then our people, they will get the jobs. We have to process those data inside of our countries and not to move those data out of our countries. So I would like to say that those free data flows, those are exactly about jobs and about salaries of our people. If we will set restrictions on free data flows, then most likely those who are producing some kind of equipment, they will be not able to compete any more globally. And it means that those people will lose their jobs. So to be more concrete, we don't have time, but Rolls Royce airplanes, they collected practically all those engines and they're getting information directly from engines and on the basis of this information, they are able to provide an advice about maintenance, but also about altitude speeds and so on. We can say it's connected with free data flows and it's a really green solution. It helps to save energy. It's a good solution. Car wash machines produced in one country, in Spain, for example, I know, they did it first. They started to produce automatic car wash machines, but very soon all the other countries, they started also to produce car wash machines. And then those Spanish producers, they put sensors into those car wash machines and they're getting directly information through those sensors and in this way, they don't have to state just that you have to change some parts after every 500 hours, working hours, but they can say that this part, we have to change after 700 working hours. But in some other cases, maybe 490. So, they don't have to stop those car wash machines anymore, just to wait for some kind of spare parts just in time. Service guy will provide those parts and then they'll fix the problems. It means, once again, when talking about free data flows, we have to talk about our competitiveness, we have to talk about our jobs and our salaries of our people. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Anzip. Please go on, take it. This one? Great. All right, so yeah, I've got something to add here, which is that I believe that's actually an amazing idea as a fifth human freedom to have data flowing freely. And the reason I believe so is because you think about it, our naive AI techniques are really algorithm-driven. However, nowadays we've got things like neural networks, which are not just algorithm-driven, of course they're model-driven, but you can have an amazing model, but without data you're not going to go anywhere. They're extremely data-driven, like for example, if we're training a self-driving car, a Tesla autopilot, you're not going to start developing an entire algorithm that checks everything, every single possible condition on the road to try and see, okay, does this condition match? If so, do this. You're going to go for a data-driven approach, meaning that you are going to take hours and hours of human driving, feed it into a neural network and see what it thinks, see if it's able to start driving. And so I think that's an amazing idea because I mean, at this point we are so hungry for data, in fact, it's becoming practically a natural resource at this point, to the point that, for example, startups are actually paying Uber drivers and Lyft drivers to actually put sensors in their cars and collect data for them. And so, again, we are really, really hungry for data to be able to train these AI systems and once we're able to get that data, it's just a matter of actually finding out what types of models work better than others. It's just a matter of the actual algorithms before we're able to see some really, really impactful stuff, especially in fields like healthcare, where we can really save lots of humans' lives. Just by, for example, allowing this data to flow freely, we're able to take older data relating to cancer treatment, cancer diagnosis, and train AI that can, again, save so many people's lives. Thank you very much. It's the turn of Deputy Prime Minister Gopal Ivnikov. Please. Thank you. Just shortly to add to the discussion, but Commissioner Ansup also was talking about free flow. So we have a lot of data. We have fast communications and the internet. We have a lot of possibilities what to do with the data, but do we log the data at home? This is extremely important and I would offer the analogy that you use it often. It's like if we would have, I don't know, million dollars in cash and you put it under the bed. It's logical that you bring it to the bank because it's the safest there. But how we act in the field of data with the data localization, it's like keeping the money under the bed because we want to keep our data in our servers and not to share it in the secure way. But we have, as it was said, we have algorithms. We have all the necessities, but maybe we are lacking trust because you bring the money to the bank which you trust. So this is why we have to cooperate, to share the services, to understand how we transfer the data, how we use it and reuse it, that we start to trust each other because technology is there and it's technologically logical and possible. So I strongly believe that's the question of trust and this is necessary to share the data, especially when it comes to the sharing, secure data or personal data that have to be specially protected. Thank you. We're currently running out of time. We are, of course, Mr. Ansip's intervention echoed the data collected by M8 370 engines, the airplane that was lost and recovered extensively as journalists. And the importance of the stuff we're talking about now as data, the economist qualified a few weeks ago as the oil of the 21st century. In this context, I address our translators. We are running a little bit late. We're talking about really, really, really important things. We're sharing very important ideas and I would like to make sure and confirm that you'd be okay staying with us for a few more minutes, helping us with the translation as we run a little late. Can I see a raise of hands at the back? Yeah? Can we have you? Yeah, call the hands. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you very much. Much appreciated. Much appreciated your effort in these very important deliberations. I will have to move on and I will have to invite the minister, representative of Thailand, to address us. Sir, the floor is yours. Yes, thank you very much. I think the... I'm not trying to answer your question, maybe. I try to add more questions on the display instead. I am... Actually, as I presented from yesterday, the Thai government tried to focus on how we can connect the people who are not connected to the internet for that. That's why the Thai government decided to blow out fiber optic to every village, as I mentioned yesterday. But the question is that fiber optics board ban is just the first step to connect them. But the big question for them is what kind of activity that the people in the village can use or can do with the fiber optic, with the broadband. That's... So our government think that maybe to activity that the most important for the village is the first one, try to show them... This can help them to increase the income. This is the e-commerce. This is the e-commerce. But many people, the guru of e-commerce, tried to ask me that the first step of e-commerce is buying, not selling. So the government tried to think about how we can help the villagers to sell their products to another... I think, not every village, but to another big city, for example. The second activity is very crucial for everyone, is the health care. But the health care, we think about... Appropriate one, like the big screen, high definition, the tele-consulting, not the very complicated thing. This is the... The question is... I think this is the way to transform the village to digital economy. The question is how we can defy the... of a base practice to transform the... We call the bottom of the people in the village to help to gain the momentum of digital transformation. When we try to survey the literature, we can find many literature tell about the digital transformation in the big company, in the big organization, but it's quite few about how we can transform the bottom of the pyramid, as I mentioned. The second one may be... As General Secretary mentioned, in the 25th first period, we have good infrastructure of the telecommunication. Within this infrastructure, we have a program called USO, Universal Service Obligation. I... First of all, I try to discuss with Thai Recurator and try to ask them what kind of the next generation of universal service obligation to support the digital transformation. That's the... I would like to learn from the panelists or the other about how we can transform the village to the next step. Thank you very much, Minister of Representative. We jump on to South Africa, Minister of Representative. Please, the floor is yours. As South Africans, the first thing that we decided to do, realizing that we need to make sure that our people participate effectively in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, was to first identify an age for them. And the first thing that we did was to say, we've got to build a leadership that will be able to drive the digital revolution. And the first step was to make sure that we establish an institution that will help empower them with digital, literal skills. And then we made sure that we partner with the universities. We identified what was missing out in the market to say, yes, we're going for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but what is it that our people can identify? Most countries that are advanced, they've already come up with solutions, but we need to make sure that South Africans are not left behind. The first thing was to say, let's get them connected. And therefore, after that, after they are connected, let them express themselves, let them share their stories of the villages that they come from with the entire South Africa. And by doing that, they were able to derive an economic spin-off because we have exposed them not just to technology, but connectivity and making them to be part of the global world. The second thing that we did was to say we can do it alone as government. We need everybody to come on board. Hence, we adopted the web program of the Internet for All. We invited all the big players, actually both big and small players, in the ICT field. We said, let's come, join hands, let's work together. You have to make profits. And ourselves as government, we've got to get votes. And the only way to do that is to expose my people as the policymaker to the products that you have as a company that is operating, they're looking at profits. And indeed, we have seen lots of great improvement because everybody started deploying at least a maximum number of resources. Therefore, exposing our people not just for them to consume, but to say what role can we play. If I were to make an example with the province where I come from, well, popularly known as the province of Nelson Mandela, the Eastern Cape, it's a very rural province which is very big on agriculture. And the first thing that we did was to ask the communities, what are the challenges that you're experiencing here? The first thing they told us was the fact that they experienced dog theft and we asked the young people to come up with a solution. Let's make sure that we utilize technologies to make sure that we address the challenge that they're facing. And they come up with very great innovations, including the apps that helped to track the cattle that went missing, including being able to come up with drones that must assist the farmers in tracking what are the problems that their seedlings are experiencing. And indeed, we've seen great improvement in this government. We had to make sure that then, let's take them to the upper level of ensuring that they participate at the e-commerce level. We are working with the South African Post Office and we had to say, let's digitize the Post Office, let's make sure that our people bring whatever skills that are there and ours is to make sure that we promote and incentivize them. That has helped us and we believe that working with yourselves here as part of the ITU, most of the strategies that you will employ will help move South Africa forward. Thank you. Thank you very much, South Africa. Thank you very much. We have very, very little time left. We go to Bangladesh for one minute, please. We're very, very tight on time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Moderator. Artificial intelligence, IoT, cloud computing, big data, will in future foster digital economy and digital economy, will ensure economic empowerment, sustainable economy, inclusive economy and also growth in GDP. Bangladesh has actually observed a massive boost in mobile financial services, but we are facing a bit of a challenge there. That is, the regulator in the mobile financial service is the central bank where the network use is of that of operators which is regulated by the Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission. So we are asking for joint regulation as the license that is given is by BTRC and the permission for the MFS is given by the central bank. The network is regulated by BTRC and the transaction is regulated by the central bank. So actually, for me, it does not make any sense, but there is a challenge. We want to have joint regulation in this. And infrastructure is also a challenge. We have laid 70,000 kilometers of optical fiber and we have locally, we produce optical fiber too. We have two undersea cable and four terrestrial cable connectivity. 99% population are covered, 98% geographical area are covered. We have one 60 million population, one 30 million our mobile phone users. But the problem is to ensure speed of broadband connectivity and make it affordable too. And I can, I would agree, like anything with our ITU secretary general, that Bangladesh is not a least developed country, it is not a developed country. So our investment is from the world organizations and the organizations which would provide grant or loan is decreasing. The finance ministry, as I would agree with the ITU secretary general, thinks that as a quick fix and to fill up, to get their target of financial return, it's better to invest in ICT. But without telecommunication network, actually ICT is like a mobile phone without a network coverage. That is something to be taken care of by all the finance ministries. And the operators, they think that it is profitable to go and serve in areas where it is densely populated. So I think in this case, we have to have amongst the operators the sentiment to serve, not always to make profit, but also the mentality, the mindset to serve. Cyber security took a back seek because we wanted digital Bangladesh to go, this concept to go ahead and to implement. So I would ask all the member countries that we should work together to secure the cyberspace. And lastly, I would say that Mr. Tanimi Bakshi, the cloud manager of Toronto, I need your intelligence desperately, which is not artificial but real. Thank you. Thank you very much, Bangladesh. We have one more last speaker for today. Minister, representative from Canada, please join us. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. We have been following the discussion on digital economy with much interest, noting that today is International Day of the Girl. We would like to get the distinguished panelist views on SDG 5 about empowering women and girls as a catalyst for the implementation of all other SDGs because Canada recognizes that supporting gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is the most effective way to reduce extreme poverty, challenge inequity and build a more peaceful, inclusive and prosperous world. Food for thought. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're very short on time, so we have to continue. And now I have to invite to the podium Mr. Oscar Gonzalez, Chair of the WTDC 17. Mr. Gonzalez. Good afternoon. Yes, you can hear me. Good afternoon to all of you. Today we have heard excellent expositions both about the importance of SDG in our daily life and the development of our communities. The publication that has been presented has also been very interesting. And on the second part, we heard some expositions on digital economy. If you allow me, I would like to add a couple of ideas this time in a personal and not as president of the conference. I think there is a first point that even has to do with the last issue that they brought us about gender equality. There is a first point in terms of the importance of STIC and the new economy that has to do with access. And when I mean access, it's not just the access to infrastructure, which in itself is an essential element for citizens to access the benefits of STIC. But I also mean access to education in the use of technologies. It seems to me that there is a central aspect to eliminate inequalities, social and economic inequalities, but also gender inequalities. Access to networks, but also access to education and training in terms of use and the use of technologies. And the second thought that I wanted to make... Sorry, I'll stop a little bit before, because it's something that the Secretary General supported in the inauguration speech regarding access to this, not leaving anyone behind, and we still have many people, many thousands of millions of people in the world who still don't have access to infrastructure and less access to digital education. And the second aspect that I wanted to comment on is simply to express that I understand that we are not about to enter the digital economy, but that we are already in the digital economy and that all our countries, in particular, the developed countries and with less level of development, we have a great opportunity to empower ourselves from technology, to seek opportunities, not to feel only a threat that we often receive, because our economies are obviously more vulnerable in all the orders, but on the contrary, to take advantage of opportunities and challenges that the digital economy presents us, understanding the digital economy as new forms of production and generation of wealth based on knowledge and not so much in raw materials or industrial processes, understanding the digital economy as a great opportunity for our societies. Finally, I want to thank all the panelists, all the expositors who have asked questions, as an Argentine government official, I want to thank you all. Thank you very much. Mr. Oscar Gonzalez, chair of the WTDC 17. I would like to invite now to share with us his conclusions and ideas to Mr. Brahimassanu, director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. Sir, please take the stand. Thank you. I think that you will recognize with me that this is the most difficult task. To try to summarize such inspiring and rich interventions, it's quite difficult. When in front of the difficult situation, you try to take the easiest part of it. I will just share with you my personal takeaway from this discussion. We have the opportunity to listen and to hear about various experiences coming from least developed countries, emerging countries, developed countries, and people and countries in special situations. As we can see, through all those, ICT is an equalizer. Equalizer in a positive manner, because through ICT, we can change the lives of people. In the developing countries, because of developing country issues, and in developed countries, because of developed country issues, at the end of the day, it's just about people. We also discussed about the issue of chicken and egg between technology and people. So I think that we should not be choosing between eggs and chicken. I would like to suggest that if we first have a chicken, let's make sure that we get an egg out of a chicken. And if we first have an egg, let's make sure that it becomes a chicken. What I'm trying to say here is that it is an interactive process between technology and human development. We also heard that synchronization of platforms and processes are key, or is key, for the digital economy, because the digital economy is about sharing, it's about streaming, it's about saving resources for a better life. So synchronization is a key. We were all, I'm sure, I'm talking about myself, I'm sure you agree with me, we were all shaken out of our comfort zone by Tame Bakshi. Do you agree with me? Were you shaken like me? Yes, I think we are. The young man of 13 years is telling us, you guys, you have to change the way you are being looking at the world. He's telling us, don't continue to look at the world of tomorrow with your eyes of yesterday. He's telling us also that the next level of digital economy will be about artificial intelligence and then with the government in this room here and private sector, we need to develop digital skills. We need also to develop research and development and give that to the young people as they will tell us how to do with it for the betterment of humanity. We also learned that data, big data, data is today the raw material of a digital economy or the public good should become a public good. But at the same time, we also learned that these new technologies and the connected ways, for example, free data flow is now questioning our economic system and our economic groupings. We also learned that in everything we do, we need trust. I think that this is one of the foundations of what will happen. We talk about the issue of privacy. After all, when something is private to me, I can share it with someone I trust. So then privacy will be linked with the trust. Trust is one of the pillars of the digital economy. We can all only agree with Canada that no matter, I say no matter what we are doing for gender equality. I would say human empowerment. Let's empower them. Equality is maybe more than demand. What do you stop at equality? Let us empower them no matter what we are doing. We should recognize we are not yet doing enough. We should be doing more. And finally, I take it from the Minister of Slovenia. We have been talking and we will be talking about national strategies, national e-strategies, national whatever. What he is telling us is that a national strategy is a continuous collaboration at national level and international level. These are my takeaways. I hope that you are also your own takeaway. Please, when you leave this conference, bring back with you the maximum of three takeaways and make sure that we use them to change the life of your family, of your community, or your nation. Thank you very much and thank you, all of you, for joining us. We have distinguished panelists here. And you can see that this is the proper setting of such a panel. And finally, let me also say we'll launch this book today. The result of a partnership between ITUD and academia, the book is available on the website. Please feel free to communicate to all the people who are interested, who are not here. Feel free to publish this book so people can use it to make a difference. Again, not easy to summarize. I hope you will excuse me if I forget something important, but it was just not easy. I thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Brahimassanu, director of ITU, to the Communication Development Bureau. Thank you very much for your closing remarks. Before I continue, I remind you, you're all invited to attend tonight's dinner at the Alvier icon hotel. It's walking distance from here. If you need a transport arrangements, if you have specific needs, there will be a bus departing from the entrance of this hotel at 6.45. That is 40 minutes from now. At the end of the gala dinner at 10.30, there will be return shuttles to the official hotels. It is my turn to express my pride, my joy, and my pleasure at being a part of today's exchange deliberations. Extremely enriching. Thank you very much. Thank you every single speaker today and every single panelist. Thank you very much for being a part of this very important deliberations. We should also thank very much our interpreter friends who have actually made possible that we could all talk to each other in our languages. So we should say probably, thank you. Gracias. Ciecie. Spaciva. Thank you. And I believe I've got most languages covered there if I'm not... Oh, merci. I'm so sorry. Always French my weak point. Terribly sorry for that. Terribly sorry for that. Thank you very much. We have to close this event. We'll see you later at the gala. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure and honor, as I said. And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to head to the gala. Enjoy. Have a good time. Thank you.