IGF 2019 – Day 2 – Convention Hall I-C – OF #46 ITU WSIS Open Forum 2020

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin, Germany, from 25 to 29 November 2019. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

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>> MODERATOR:  Good afternoon, dear ladies and gentlemen.  We'd like to invite all the people to sit around the table, please because, you know, it's empty right now, so it would be great if you could sit with us on the table.  We just wait for two more minutes and ‑‑ because we have many registrations for the session.  People will be coming back from lunch, so we'll two more minutes.  Thank you very much.

(Pause)

>> MODERATOR:  Okay.  Ladies and gentlemen, I see your timer in front of me, so I think we should start.

Thank you very much for joining the session on the 2020 open consolidation process.  Our co‑organizers, UNESCO and UNDP, are also present with us here today, and we'd like to start the session by inviting Mr. Ushe to please make his welcoming remarks on our behalf.

>> Thank you, Ushe.

>> Thank you, distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.  My name is Ushe tori‑Cory, chief of strategy planning and membership department on telecommunication union.

On behalf of ITU, I'm the co‑organizer of UNESCO, ITU, EU Commission, and I welcome all on site and remote participants to the second meeting for the 2020 open consultation process on the thematic aspects informant.

The open consultation process of the U.S. forum 2020 was launched in June 2019 and consist of six phases including four physical meetings.  Through its open and inclusive process, all the stakeholders are invited for the program for the forum, ITU along with the co‑organizers and more than 32 UN agencies are pleased to invite you to the U.S. forum that is scheduled to be held 6‑9, 2020.  It's fostering transformation and global partnership.

This is the action line for achieving STGs.  I would also like to in some you the forum will provide an opportunity to solve as a platform to attract the achievement of the business action line

>> Let us push forward together to align the process with the 2030 we had a reasonable review for the Asia‑Pacific region in Bangkok, Thailand it was encouraging is that successful implementation of the business action lines to achieve the SDGs.  Some the prize winners and champions from the region were present and showcased their projects.  It was particularly remarkable to learn that a lot of the prizes greatly assisted the success of these projects.  The 2020 prize winners and champions will be awarded and recognized during business forum.

The business forum is built on the key principle of inclusivity and businesses embodied of the business forum in collaboration with you.  We are in the midst of preparation for the next year's forum on the special tracks like youth, ICT and old persons.

ICT for persons with disabilities, ICT agenda mainstreaming, space and SDGs.  Business forum relies entirely on the voluntary contribution and, so we are very grateful that the support and would encourage countries and partners to contribute.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank several countries and partners for their confirmation of partnership already for the business 2020.  I wish you a successful meeting and look forward to welcoming you at business 2020.  Thank you very much.

(Applause)

>> Thank you, Ushe, for those encouraging remarks.

I'd like to now invite Sasha, our partner from UNESCO to please make your remarks.

>> Thank you very much for that introduction.  The overall theme for this year's business forum in 2020 is fostering business transaction ‑‑ action lines for achieving the SDGs.  This is at the heart of SDGs and also of the message most recently by the secretary‑general in the opening of the Internet Governance Forum where he called for new and reinforced forums of multilateral and multistakeholder corporations UNESCO is not only happen with our friends and partners not only with the UN but also the stakeholder groups around the table for us which represents for us the heart of the future of participatory public policy development in support of sustainable development specifically.

I'd also like to underline before when we were preparing that several of us were talking about the fact that several years ago, this platform was largely directed by men, and now there are three women that are ‑‑ four women, Scarlett, at a distance that are coordinating this work which also underlines the fact that the future is female, but that the future of tech development is also female, and this is one of our commitments at UNESCO is mainstreaming gender equality in the work that we are doing.

Must have known that UNESCO is a mandate to uphold freedom of expression and promote the free flow of ideas by images and words.  We do not concretely through implementing what we call our knowledge societies guidelines, and these guidelines are built around four main pillars.  The first is freedom of expression, the second is universal access to information and knowledge.  The third is respect for cultural and linguistic diversity and the fourth is quality, education for all.

These four pillars are very much embodied in the work that we are doing as action line facilitator for several of the action lines, and I just very briefly like to highlight especially in light of the fact that we are about to close our general conference some of the major achievements in these action lines that have just been decided by our 193‑member states in Paris over the past 72 hours.

So the first action line that we work on is access to information and knowledge, action line C3, and in this regard ‑‑ and also in the framework of the Internet Governance Forum, we have looked specifically at our work in implementing our internet universality framework which guides our work nor broadly on digital transformation and also artificial intelligence more recently, and this is based on the conviction that digital transformation and partnerships to meet the sustainable development goals should have a Rome approach in that it should be right spaced; it should be open, it should be accessible, and it should be multistakeholder, and I would like again to reiterate our pleasure and commitment in working with the UN family but also with different stakeholder groups to make this decision of digital transformation a reality.

I invite people to look at our internet universality framework, which is a tool to ensure that digital technologies are harnessed to meet the sustainable goals.

I would like to recognize the great work being done by the ITU for which UNESCO is a partner in the framework of their equals partnership which ensures that women are around the table and centralized both in public policies and programs that promote the uptake of ICTs.

As a concerns, action line C7 concerning eLearning I'd like to very briefly underlying during our general conference just in the past couple of days, specifically, on the 25th of November, UNESCO member states officially adopted a recommendation as it concerns open educational resources and in order for us to make the most of digital technology, we need not only infrastructure, but we also need access to this information and open access and open educational resources are at the heart of our work, and this framework as it concerns eScience.  Also in the most recent general conference, we adopted a recommendation related to open science because we need access to education, but we also need access to scientific research that ensures that our public policies are developed based on needs and data on the ground, at the local level.

Our access line concerning cultural diversity and identity linguistic diversity and local content action line C8, I'd like to highlight that this year and still again for another month and a couple of days is the international year of indigenous languages and what UNESCO is looking in the age of artificially intelligence is the impact of technologies like AI on the preservation of local and indigenous languages and the promotion of local content.

We want to make sure in the global south they are not positioned as only consumers but also producers using digital solutions to local challenges to meet the sustainable developmental goals with action 9C9 related to media we continue our work on the safety of journalists with the conviction of rights that exist offline also exist online and most recently we launched a coalition specifically looking at the question of harassment of women journalists online and how to use digital technologies to adjust the challenges that also come about by their propagation.

Lastly, I'd like to close specifically in highlighting a momentous decision in the framework of our general conference as it concerns action Line C to earn, which is the ethical dimensions of the information society, most recently last Thursday our member states decided to begin a standard‑setting process to develop a nonlegally binding standard‑setting instrument in the field of of the ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence specifically related to our mandate, and we look forward with working with other agencies like the OACD, the council of Europe, the European Commission and our dear friends at the IEEE to push forward the great work being done in developing these frameworks into truly international and global standards in this field that will not only ensure public policies on ethical AI involving, of course, the private sector as well from the beginning but also programs on the ground that ensure that ethical AI is used to meet sustainable development.

I'd like to close and recognize two of my great colleagues who are around the table, Alexa Barbosa and Fabio to our upcoming regional forum on artificial intelligence on Latin America and the Caribbean that will occur on December 12th and 13th at the University of San Paulo with many partners including Sadiq, which is a category 2 of UNESCO.  But our category is not only at the high‑level ensure conversations but at the regional, national and local levels ensure that they are participating very actively in the development of public policies and programs that programs, so that digital technologies can be harassed to meet sustainable development.

In closing, I'd like to again thank ITU, UTET and IDAP for the great cooperation and reiterate our commitment to taking the SDG operational framework, so that everybody is Gerald Ford by harnessing all of the promises that our ‑‑ that is digital technology.  Thank you very much.

(Applause)

>> Thank you, Sasha, for your commitment and dedication for working with us hand‑in‑hand.  Like you said not only at the international level but also at the regional levels.  Thank you very much.

We have our colleague Scarlett who couldn't join us today physically from UN – sorry, so she will be making an introduction remotely.  Is she online?  Is she ready?  Please, the floor is yours.

(Inaudible)

>> Excuse me, there is no sound coming from the stream.

(Inaudible)

>> Technician will arrive.

>> While this is being fixed ‑‑

>> Now I have sound.

>> Okay.

(Inaudible)

>> Okay.  We will switch to the scream.

>> Thank you very much.  We'd like to invite Manera, our focal point from UNDP who has been a great partner in the process.  They are cultures of the United Nations group this year as well as the ITU and the floor is yours, please.

>> Thank you, Katangaloy.

>> It's been a pleasure to be working closely with ITU.  UNESCO and all the other agencies among us and all the stakeholders.  This past year it has been very instructive as UNDP.  It's the first time we took on chairmanship of Angus.  I'll go on, and we saw just the potential of this body of experts for assisting the achievements of the SDGs.  We have supported the development of SDG roadmaps, at least about 60 countries now and increasing.  And everywhere we go and in every agency roadmap the roles of technologies couldn't be underlined enough.  There has been a need that has been underlined in every process for the development of digital transformation roadmap.  It is increasingly clear that countries look to digital transformation as their way towards building their competitiveness, so the ‑‑ this process here ‑‑ wherever we go we always refer to this as ready pool of experts.  It will be greatly needed in the next 10 years.

As you know we refer to the next decade as the acceleration decade.  10 years for achieving the SDGs.  It's not a long time.  It's going to fly past so there is indeed a call for action in this sphere.  I will stand ready to work more closely when you

There is also one trend that we're seeing from where we sit as the countries and as the world has become more digital, it has also become more urban, and this country is built in cities in their the efforts in making sure that they connect with all the other cities around the world in making the cities competitive and making sure that the cities, in fact, also assist the national trajectories.

There is a push for building smart cities, and we also obviously understand smart cities in various ways.

At the UNDP we obviously refer to the need for smart gloves Nance for building the cities of the future.  Building the world, we want and the cities we want.  There is a greater need for engaging local stakeholders.  And, obviously, with businesses among us being a multistakeholder platform, I believe this is a model that has been greatly understood and has been welcomed warmly all over the world, and there's much that can be learned here and leveraged also for engaging stakeholders from the local to regional to the global.

The multilevel, the horizontal, vertical cooperation that we need to have in place to achieve 2020 agenda, so I won't take much time, and I'm sure our colleague, Scarlett, is on hold to take the floor.  I would just like to reiterate our readiness to work more closely with you.  And, obviously, to enhance our cooperation in support of the countries and the cities all over the world and with that, that we would like to hear more from the participants in the room, and we look forward to a engaging discussion for one year, but we also look forward to continuing the discussions there is some and hopefully not just discussing but really planning and acting together, thank you.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Minerva, we look forward to working with you in DP and striving with our collaboration every year.

We now have a short presentation updating you on the preparations of the IGF forum 2020 we'll when the mic is fixed in the meanwhile we will start with our preparation, and then we will open the floor for all your comments which we will take into the preparations of the governance forum 2020.

Could we please have our presentation online, please.

>> Hello.  As Ushe and Sasha have mentioned our business forum is, basically, a multisecondary holder platform.  It's co‑hosted by ITU, accordance and the UNDP.

I would like to acknowledge the presence of Dennis who works with us very closely Dennis, welcome.  The dates, if you noticed they changed from the previous week to the 6 to 9th of April, so please note on your calendars that we don't have Friday this year because Friday is good Friday, and we'd like to respect it as a holiday, and we finish our work on Thursday, so please note this on your calendars and please book your flights and accommodations as far as possible because Geneva tends to get pretty crowded, and they don't have much accommodation there, so we look forward for you at the WSIS forum.

As ‑‑ so how does this move?  Okay.

So I think my colleagues also mentioned that since it's 15 years since the implementation of WSIS, we will be ‑‑ you're now looking at the WSIS action lines to track the achievements and that we do every year the WSIS business leaders come in and talk about the achievements follow the year and also the future plans, so we will look forward to the WSIS action line facilitators briefing us about the implementation of the respective action lines.

We have several phases of the open consultation process and since the past five years we have been integrating with the IGF secretariat to hold one of the physical meetings at the IGF, and we will have another physical meeting on the 3rd of February in Geneva.  This will be along with the council working group on WSIS SDGs in the ITU, and you're most welcome to be there, those of you who are in Geneva.  We always have remote participation, so you can please join us remotely as well.

The deadlines for submissions of all the calls for action is 3rd of February so please do keep that in mind and 28th of February we will have the final briefing.  This too in Geneva, so this is mostly to brief you about all the practical aspects like registration, how to get your ministers, you know, speaking slots and things like that so please do follow the open consultation process closely.  The WSIS forum is crowd sourced, and we get inputs from you and usually we get more than 515 inputs and since we are an inclusive multistakeholder platform, we include all the inputs.  That's not a single input that is not included in the agenda in the WSIS forum.

So please note the high‑level track will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday on the 7th and the 8th of April, so you ‑‑ the letters will be issued very soon.  Please register your high‑level person or delegate at the website, identifying the particular topic the person would like to speak on.  We were asked in 2014 to stop policy statements and to make the high‑level sessions more interactive, so we have a high‑level track facilitator for all the sessions and all the high‑level track sessions are facilitated.  They're moderated, so that they are interesting, and they're not just policy statements.

So our key indicators that we are looking forward to are 3,000‑plus physical participants at the WSIS forum, 150‑plus countries represented, 100‑plus ministers and deputies, and we want the WSIS forum to display the cross‑sectorial nature of the SDGs and ‑‑ since many of us have been brainstorming how we can bring ministers other than the ICT ministers as well to participate in the WSIS forum, so we are hoping that we will get at least, you know, 20 ministers from the other ministries, so that we can display the cross‑sectoral Natchez of ICTs.

3,000 plus forums, 150 workshops, and 70 WSIS champions.  We'd like to acknowledge the presence of some prize winners in this room from China, Miss Lu from Bangladesh, Bazille, and I'm sure many Poland to ‑‑ so there's a lot of prides winners in this room.  Thank you for being here.

We'll have a very modest exhibition space, and we do not have a lot of money to present, but it's about what you're doing, and we really value the work that is going on all around the work and please go to the exhibition space in the WSIS forum, and we will definitely give you a stand.  It's free of cost so please do not hesitate to responsible.

Balanced stakeholder participation.  We have nearly equal stakeholders of the WSIS forum.  Our 50‑50 challenge ‑‑ Sasha and others spoke about this.  We had 60‑40 this year, but we would like to have 50‑50 male and female participants at the WSIS forum, so please make an extra efforts colleagues to make sure your delegations are gender‑balanced, and we have a Geneva gender champion in each letter he sends out he does emphasize a that the agenda should be gender balanced, so we do look forward to equal participation.  As you know, the WSIS forum has workshops we have

The forum track we have country and thematic workshops, which is organized by the UN action line promotes.  We have special talks that we integrated this year based on the lines of Ted Talks.

And if you know of real people who have had a huge influence in their respective communities, their villages, their country or internationally, we'd really like to have them talk at the WSIS talks.  Please nominate them, so they can share their story with everybody at the WSIS Forum.

The Hackathon this next year will be on smart cities.  We are collaborating with University of Geneva, and we are talking to several other UN agencies, who will be interested in working with us.  Exhibition, I spoke about it.  We have several knowledge cafes and youth cafes, and we have United States United States group on society meeting.

So some of the special tracks which some stakeholders have already asked us to start working on is ICT youth, so we had it in 2019 as well.  Next year we plan to collaborate with several youth associations to have an actual agenda for the implementation of a groups and engage with the groups and youth, and we do plan to have a lounge, which is for young people, and it would be an informal way of interacting with everybody, so feel free to go to the youth lounge and speak to the young people who will be at the WSIS Forum.

We have been asked for ICTs and older persons as a topic.  As we explored it we realized it's a very, very important topic which has various streams like employment, like, healthcare, and there's financial issues, digital, finance, so you will see a lot of sessions ‑‑ we are partnering with the global coalition on aging and several UN agencies who are already working on this topic; especially, UN SCAP at the regional level, they are working on this topic, and they will be collaborating with us on this track.

ICTs on accessibility for persons with disabilities and special needs.  We had it at this track this year, and we were asked to continue it, so if you know any organizations working in this area, please do put them in touch with us, so that we can make sure that they get a voice in this track.

We initiated the ICT and sport as enabler of peace track this year, and it was really appreciated, and we were asked by several stakeholders to also about it gaming component and the ethics of gaming into the ICT and sports so not only physical sports but the gaming aspect of it also, so if you all know of any associations or companies, please let us know because this is a new topic for the WSIS Forum, but we are also already in touch with several associations including the China, Europe association of gaming.

It will be very interesting because there are a lot of virtual reality games and the ethics of gaming UNESCO will be interested in that.  The Olympics committee ‑‑ they worked with us this year, and we are ‑‑ in trying to get some collaboration for them for 2020 as well.

I spoke about gender mainstreaming, which is really important for all of us.  Space and SDGs, we'll be exploring this topic as well.  There's some topics where space diplomacy is getting very important.  Space and SDGs should be explored further, so we will be looking at this topic as well.

Extended reality for development, there will be many, many showcases of how virtual reality and extended reality is used in the field of education, health and to achieve various other SDGs.

Some new tools and services, you know, we had sign language interpretation for the accessibility tracks, however, sign language for ‑‑ for physical sign language interpreter to be present is really expensive, so we do look forward to receiving some funding for this specific activity.

Our WSIS Forum is now in six official languages.  Thank you, colleagues, for encouraging us for doing this.  This is being done in‑house in collaboration with the standardization sector at the ITU.

Machine captioning, we did a test this year, so we do hope eventually we could have machine captioning at the WSIS Forum but right now we don't.

We do caption our accessibility sessions, but we are ‑‑ we don't have machine captioning at the present.

So this is for all of you there's a great repository of photos from all over the world on the WSIS Forum websites.  Every year we receive photographs more than 140 photographs, and it's free for all of you to use for your publications and presentations, and there are lovely photographs from all over the world so, please, I'd like you to encourage you to use these photographs and the deadline for this year's competition is 3rd of February, so please submit any good photographs from the ground that you have.

We created this repository because even UN agencies ‑‑ whenever we had a publication, we could never find any good high‑resolution photographers, so this is a great repository.  Please use it.

Next slide.

So I'll pass on to my colleague, Vladimir to talk about the prizes.

>> Hello and good afternoon, everyone for those who don't know me yet.  I've been present at the exhibition booth, and I ask you to join us after this presentation.  The WSIS prizes deadline it's the most urgent if you have not noticed it so far.  This Friday is for you to submit any of the ICT prizes that you have or things that should be promoted globally.

I invite you to visit the website dedicated for the prizes.  It's at WSIS.org/prizes or you can come and talk to me about it.  So far we are reaching the number of the last year's record of 1,000 submissions.  Innovation this year will be that we not unemployment more than 360 projects in order to facilitate online voting in the best manner, so those online participants can digest and read through the 360 projects instead of 1,000 as it was the case this year.

In addition to that, those who will be nominated should also be perceived as awardees so not only the champions and winners, but this time nominees will also be appreciated.

Following this phase on Friday we will go into the nomination phase and on 21st of December we will be launching our online voting phase.  It will end on 24th of January.  I invite all of you who are running for the prizes this year or not to create your online campaigns in this regard.  We're also preparing innovations during the ‑‑

(Garbled)

>> To strengthen the protection of next year's WSIS champions, nominees and winners, but we are also looking into working together with the former WSIS prizees.  We see them as awards and the overall WSIS process and for SDGs, and we like to invite all of you who have not joined the network to consider joining it.  Thank you.

(Applause)

>> MODERATOR:  I think Vladimir spoke about this.  We have a global repository of stock taking database more than 12,000 entries.  We have a call for action every year.  We also do these regional reports so please do submit to them.  The stock taking platform, Vladimir has been working on making it as accessible as possible, so it looks as simple as this.  It helps you to search and explore so please do use it to use the projects and learn more information.  It's based on WSIS action lines and SDGs for you, you know, look for projects very easily.

Vladimir, I think this is important.  You should share, you know, the beneficiaries.

>> So we're following and seeing who are the target groups this time.  Also, in the online submission forum for the prizes we are asking particular questions, and those who are submitting to better reflect how their projects making social impact but not only social but economic and financial it will benefit those who are winners and champions.

In addition to this you can find all these data on the WSIS stock taking website.  We're going into our third phase of the update of this very important online repository where we are also looking into strengthening the reporting part and contest of ‑‑ context of this WSIS stock taking platform.  This should be launched by the next year's forum.  Thank you.

>> Thank you, Vladimir.

Also we've been trying to ‑‑ you know, we receive a lot of calls and good emails sharing with us the impact of the WSIS Forum somehow we've never gotten around or record this impact, however, from last year we just put together some of the good news that was shared with us.  You know, the WSIS agenda group, they have several sessions at the WSIS Forum, and they were recently invited by the minister to do a training in Benine of the Amazons digital.  It was the topic.  The first photo is about the meeting

Then the world XR forum, which is a impact of WSIS Forum for all activity activities was invited by the minister of Rwanda to actually work in the area of ‑‑ actually explore actually ‑‑ explore the area of technology and education.  They are a startup.  They get a direct opportunity to present their startup, you know, and the sentiment behind the startup.

Very recently Mr. Malcolm Johnson the deputy secretary generally of ITU, and I had visited a village in Bangkok their profits have increased by 300 point by getting rural connectivity, and there's also a WSIS prize winner, and they shared with us after winning the WSIS prize they've been able to get more credibility and the profit it has had an impact on the economic development of the village.

We also attended the WSIS regional review, we organized it in collaboration with UNESCO, UNDPN, UNSCAP at the regional level.  It's great that many collaborations that were shared out there were forged at the WSIS Forum because that's the whole purpose of global events like the WSIS Forum are carried on at the regional and local level.

A women's impairment an NGO in Pakistan had accepted funding from the German institute actually after the session at the WSIS Forum and the whole idea that you come, you present and people are impressed by what you're doing, and you forge partnerships.

And then there's the startup called we robotics they were also invited by the minister of Benin, and these are just some experiences we are sharing but there are many more, and we'll try to capture all the impact from now on because it's really great to share these stories where you can see the real impact.

Just a reminder of all the open calls, the WSIS prizes' deadline is 29th ‑‑ it actually 129th of ‑‑ 29th of November.  Be aware because it's a very tight timing for us and all the groups so please respect the deadline.

The open consultation process is 3 of February and if you have request workshops, exhibition, space, speakers, provide inputs everything is in the open consultation process form and like I said, every request is included so please do fill it out before the 3rd of February.

Photo contest is the 3rd of February high‑level track facilitators, like I said, we have 16 high‑level sessions where ministers, CEOs and others speak and heads of civil society organizations.  We are ‑‑ we, basically, get nominations for ‑‑ from the civil society academia from the technical community and the private sector so governments are not high‑level track facilitators and UN agencies are not high‑level track facilitators.  If you have some great nominations, do send them to us.

I'll mention the WSIS Forum is completely extra‑budgetary.  We do not have any funds for organizing the WSIS Forum and due to the commitment of partners like Napoli, Switzerland ‑‑ I see must have around, we are able to, basically, defray the operational costs of the WSIS Forum and Geneva is very expensive so even small services, they cost a lot, even chairs and tables, they cost a lot, renting chairs and tables, so we basically really are very grateful to all our sponsors who are helping us to make this event possible.

We have social media channels.  Please follow us there.  We have ‑‑ we have we are very popular on Twitter and Facebook, and we realize that the young people don't use these Facebook and Twitter anymore.  They've moved on to Instagram and TikTok and other stuff, so we opened an Instagram ‑‑ our interns said that we are too old in our outlook, so we've started the Instagram page as well.  Please post some good pictures there, and we went have a WSIS flash.  It's a monthly newsletter which contains only updates so please subscribe to the WSIS flash, so you are updated of all the happenings around the WSIS process, so thank you very much.

If you have any questions, you can write there at on our website, but we'd now like to open the floor ‑‑ we do have our partners who would like to speak.  Maybe we start with IEEE, Justin?

>> Thank you, Cotangli.  It's great to be here in person finally again.

Resent IEEE, we're the largest population for engineers, and this is our fifth engineer as a partner, and we've loved the collaboration we've had throughout the process, and cost of things that we did strive to do ‑‑

(Clears Throat)

>> Excuse me, to achieve gender balance with all of our panels.

(Clears Throat)

>> Nigel, do you want to take over.  I lost my voice.

>> Speaking for the IEEE.

>> I'll come back.  It was after last night.

>> That's a big collaboration.  Nigel from ICANN, we were just opening the floor.

>> Thank you very much.  I do apologize for coming in so late.  For ICANN, I think most of you probably know what ICANN is.  We're an organization that has a responsibility in relation to the domain name system.  As such, we touch on the small part, if you'd like, of the internet ecosystem.  We don't run the internet.  We're not responsible for content.  We're not responsible for controls on the internet, but we do have a relationship to the domain‑name system.  We have contracts in place with holders of generic Tableau names.

As such, we have a mission that relates to the security and the stability and the singularity and the openness of the internet, and we engage in the ecosystem and the WSIS Forum for us is a have you seen where we can meet people, we can contribute with other partners in the technical community in presenting issues that might be of interest to the general ‑‑ to the general internet community in general.

We've been partners with the WSIS Forum for a number of years now and had the ability to present ‑‑ to present workshops and present ideas and also feedback to the community what's going on at the ICANN space, so very, very pleased to be involved and look forward ‑‑ and look forward to next year indeed.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Nigel.

>> I think I'm better now.

(Laugh)

>> One of the things that I just wanted to mention unemployment people to be a high‑level track facilitator.  I had the experience of doing it, and I loved it, so please do that and submit prizes because we saw the benefit of a winner of ours, so ‑‑

(Clears Throat)

>> I'm going to stop there now so thank you.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Justin.

Lydia from Poland?

>> The office of electronic communications I have the pleasure to represent here as a part of public administration of Poland, and we are traditionally a contributing partner to WSIS Forum.

Next year as in previous years, we also have a plan to contribute to the WSIS Forum because it's the event of great partners for us, and we appreciate multistakeholder and approach, and we try to invite our experts from Poland representing academia and private sector.

Last year we facilitated the workshop on emerging technologies discussing emerging technologies in different aspects.  We also had a chance to present our experience on area of strategic planning of broadband deployment and mapping infrastructure, which is our core competence at UKE, our office, and I would like to invite all of you to collaborate with us.

We are ready to share with all stakeholders our experience, our best practices.  We will be there, and it will be a pleasure to discuss with you.  Moreover, every year we organize our permanent mission of the pub of Poland in Geneva, a high‑level meeting where we present our SMEs.  This year we will, technically in 2020, we also have such a plan, so it will be a fantastic opportunity to discuss innovations appearing in academia and in the private sector.

Thank you very much.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Lydia and Poland for hosting the donors dinner every year as well.  Those who have attended done the donors dinner the barbecue is famous.

The prize winner of Bangladesh would like to say something.

>> Good afternoon with you.  I'm the secretary of the news network for radio and communication and member of the Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum.  I have the responsibilities for giving the process ‑‑ we are the winner of WSIR 2017 ‑‑ '16, 2017 and 2019, and we fight for ‑‑

(Inaudible)

>> The forum of the WSIS size this is very much for WSIS Forum.  A very active participatory WSIS Forum face for face meeting.

First of all, I would like to introduce our MP honorable parliamentary standing committee for information and bang dish and my by my the secretary‑general Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum.  We have some country‑level commitment so as you know, Bangladesh is currently the chair of the WSIS Forum, and we will participate 22 meeting at when WSIS begins, so we have some country‑level commitment.  We would like to organize a country‑level forum called WSIS Forum Bangladesh, and we would like to review the C1 to C11 at WSIS expo live in our country context in collaboration with the multistakeholder format, and we would like to organize all and the champions who won from the WSIS site.

I have some observation regarding the forum.  I would like to talk about the secretary‑general high‑level panel cooperation report, and I would be very happy if you organized something regarding the report because while we are realistic in the honorable secretary‑general's report, so you like to provide ‑‑

(Inaudible)

>> To this report, and we like to connect with this report and secretary report to Bangladesh and our recommendation and the recommendation is I would be very happy if WSIS Forum and continue the discussion about ‑‑

(Inaudible)

>> Because Bangladesh is one of the countries, impacted country for the whole site and especially the media, entertainment and culture.  I would like to do that in the UNESCO and the news around media, entertainment and culture because UNESCO is our guardian in this culture, but we would be interested in organizing something like this.

And finally a apartment ‑‑

(Inaudible)

>> So my ‑‑ one of the honorary parliamentarians is here and if you consider some ‑‑ give some ‑‑

>> Thank you, Balzar, and thank you for coming to our organization.  We are very honored by your presence, and we look forward to the WSIS Forum as well.

Bangladesh for one of the prizes that they won, they had more than 1 million votes.  It's amazing.  1 million votes, so congratulations.  That was really excellent.

(Speaker Not Mic'd)

>> MODERATOR:  Sure, sir.

>> Thank you very much for welcoming me.  Bangladesh has been a partner of WSIS Forum for many years.  I was a partner in Geneva on the financial mechanism for ICTs organized by WSIS, but my colleagues do participate in the WSIS process regularly, and Bangladesh is a developing country.  It's a role model for the application of ICTs in various sectors.  I do not want to go into details, but we appreciate the organizations of WSIS, IGF and Bangladesh's a continuously advocating open multistakeholder democratic governance of internet, but the challenge at the time is terrorism, and that is the ethos that we think it's the best tool to provide parity, and it's our best way to check terrorism and check on the cyberspace.  Thank you very much.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you, sir, yes, we had the ‑‑ in collaboration with the IPU, the interparliamentary unit and UNESCO we had organized a parliamentary union presence, and I think you were there.  Thus,

We would look to acknowledge our colleague from UN ECI, UN ECI, United Nations economic commissions for Africa, they organized the WSIS regional‑level meetings and Mack tar is a forum.  Would you like to say something?

>> Good afternoon to everybody.  And thank you ‑‑ yes, we are partner for this forum for a long time, since the beginning and United Nations as one of the group of the secretariat as they are in charge to support African country to implement the WSIS Forum.  We aligned this implementation in 20 third as well as Africa is under 2016, and we organized every year ‑‑ Africa WSIS Forum to review the implementation of the outcome of ‑‑ as African country level to look at the challenge and the perspective.

This year ‑‑ next week we organized the forum in Uganda from 3 to 6 December.  We are going to organize the African regional forum for Africa.  It will give an opportunity for African country to make their preparations for the global WSIS Forum and the output ‑‑ the outcome of this meeting will be in the WSIS Forum.

In parallel also in our mission to support African countries for digitization, the WSIS has already put a center of election on the IGF and the digital economy to freely support African country to benefit from the four industrial revolutions.  We have a lot of activity around the digital center for some preparation on the digital ID.  The capacity‑building for African countries and private sector organization and several around those around Africa to align with the world orientation.  We also are challenged for Africa.  We are developing a digital transformation strategy for Africa.  We already done the first draft the first draft has been adopted by the minister of ICT.  We are going to send this draft to the minister and probably we think we'll submit the draft for the summit at the end of January to be ‑‑ it will be the framework for African framework digitization economy.  It's something, and I thank you as a colleague UNESCO, UNTP for many years, and it will continue.  Thank you.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Mukhtar.  We would also like to acknowledge the presence of Rwanda.  They are very close partners of the WSIS Forum, and they ‑‑ they are all sponsors of the WSIS Forum every year.  Thank you Rwanda for being here.

Our co‑organizer is ready to make an intervention, so scarlet, the floor is yours.

>> Hi, thank you very much.  Can you hear me?  Can you hear me okay?

>> MODERATOR:  Yes, we can hear you.

>> Could you please let me know that you can hear me?

>> MODERATOR:  Yes, we can hear you, Scarlett.

>> Thank you very much.

First of all, I would like to apologize for not being able to appear.  Thank God you are paying more attention to the youth in the WSIS Forum because we are getting old.

(Laugh)

>> And I don't know how to connect properly now on these things and the application spot, but we're always honored to be showing the organization of the WSIS Forum with UN BP, UNESCO and ITU and that we are looking forward to the discussions, which are always very rich and informative during the firm itself.

We are here because this is an open consultation meeting and open consultation means just that.  We are eager to hear from stakeholders on your inputs not only on the subjects ‑‑ the subjects that we are going to be discussing on the sessions that you would like to see at the WSIS Forum but also on the structure, the manner of feedback on how you think we can best include everyone's voices in the discussions of building better information society.

I'd like to note that we are ‑‑ it's also a milestone year.  It's an awesome year for the WSIS Forum for 15 years, but it's an awesome year for us because we have our 15th minister conference later in the year, so we want to take the opportunity of the WSIS Forum to also with us the concerns especially in developing countries, which is our main constituency with regards to the digital economy and eCommerce.

As you will see, might not -- we are not only the co-forums but cofacilitators of the action line C7 on eBusiness on the international trades center and ITC and ‑‑

(Inaudible)

>> And in this ‑‑ in this time since those 15 years one of the things that has changed has been the focus from eBusiness to of the digital economy and a very keen and renewed interest in leveraging eCommerce for development, so we would like to encourage you to give us your feedback, your input to participate as stakeholders in the discussions related to digital economy and eCommerce in the WSIS Forum and also on top of that is hoping to bring a high‑level discussion to the WSIS Forum precisely on this topic.

That said, we are hoping to see you in person.  I won't be connecting remotely.  I will be at the WSIS Forum in Geneva and just encourage you to participate as actively to remember the deadlines because we have limits of time and capacity, so it's important to intervene and to give your inputs at the right time, in a timely manner to make sure that you are counted.

Thank you very much for listening to me, even it's at the very end and have a good day in Berlin.  Thank you.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Scarlett.  Thank you.

(Applause)

>> MODERATOR:  Since we run out of this time, this gentleman ‑‑ you have raised your hand, sir, could you please and introduce you and that will be the last time.

>> Germany.  Just a short question.  Where would I find ‑‑ if I talked to people from media, where would I find the slot where people from media that is newspaper, TV stations ‑‑ it's not only the traditional one, but the alternative ones, and so, which are not just in the exhibition, but they are central to information societies?  This is our main moderators and opinion makers so where is the media domain being active in WSIS?

>> MODERATOR:  Yes, we have a briefing in the media for the UN and Geneva, and we have a press conference, however, if you send us your form through the open consultation forum we will make sure to connect you whatever media sessions will take place at the WSIS Forum, so please fill in the OCP, and we will connect you.

I think miss Lu you had one last word and final word?

>> Yes, I think this is ‑‑ it's an excellent opportunity for us to work together so last year we got the WSIS prize for eScience champion and the China pay more attention about this, so they're so proud and for our support, so I think next year we organize a team to participate in the WSIS, and we work together with other teams.  Thank you very much.

>> Thank you very much and congratulations for winning the prize.

Sasha also brought to my attention, sir, there is an action line on media which UNESCO facilitates.  So if you have further questions, you can even speak to Sasha on access line on media.

Thank you very much.  I would like to hand the floor over to Ushe, our chief, to please close the meeting.

>> Thank you very much for your very active contribution.  Our secretariat will take note of contribution.  Thank you very much.

2020 is, in fact, the UN 75 year, and we will certainly consider some session on this subject.

Now, emerging technologies like AI, big data, 5G, IoT, Blockchain, cloud computing ‑‑

(Garbled)

>> On the table for discussion and discussion with WSIS is far beyond our information society, and I'd like to highlight our strengths that is fully inclusive with government, private, academia, so I wish to highlight, and we wish to collaborate and let's work together for the success of WSIS 2020.  Thank you very much.

(Applause)