Message from the Secretary-General

On the occasion of the third meeting of the Third Working Group on ITU Reform (WGR)
Geneva, 6-10 November 2000

Honourable Chairman,

Distinguished Members of the Council Working Group,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great honour and pleasure for me to welcome you to ITU headquarters to the third meeting of the Council Working Group on ITU Reform. With this meeting, we are halfway through the planned cycle of five meetings of this Group. We are also just over halfway through the four-year cycle between the Plenipotentiary in Minneapolis in 1998 and the forthcoming Plenipotentiary in Marrakech. Last month, I had the opportunity to visit that city and I can confirm that Marrakech is well advanced in its preparations for welcoming the ITU in 2002.

Marrakech is ready for the ITU, but is the ITU ready for Marrakech?

As we reach the halfway mark in our work, we should be able to report that the task of reform is half complete. But I fear that is not the case. Let us review first what is available to help you make progress at this meeting:

There are a growing number of excellent contributions to the work of the WRG from Member States and Sector Members.
We also have rapporteur reports and other inputs from the two ad hoc groups that were established at the last meeting.
Thirdly, there is the interim report on the reform process, which I submitted this summer to Council, available as document 39. That document includes reports from each of the Directors of the Bureaux as well as the recommendations of the Reform Advisory Panel.

At your first two meetings, much time was spent in establishing working procedures. Those are now in place and we have everything we need to move forward. It is essential that, at this meeting, we set aside sufficient time for a discussion of substance. Consequently, I have asked Lyndall to be strict with her timekeeping to keep us on track.

Within an inter-governmental organisation like the ITU, reform has to be a constant process. We have to change at a pace that matches the changes taking place in our industry. For that reason, it is important that, even while we are discussing the next phases of the reform process, we continue to implement that which has already been agreed upon, especially the urgent measures which do not require explicit changes in the Constitution and Convention. I would like to highlight some of the successes of the reform programme thus far:

Last month, at the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly in Montreal, a new accelerated approvals process was approved which distinguishes between technical standards and other standards that have regulatory or policy implications.
A further reform has been to introduce, into the ITU, discussion of some of the hot issues that are being debated in the wider telecommunications community. Through the new initiatives programme, which I launched at Council last year, we have now held three workshops: on electronic signatures, IP Telephony and fixed-mobile interconnection. Equally, at WTSA, IMT-2000 and beyond was selected as a topic for a future study group, building on the results of the WRC earlier in the year.
A third reform has been in the area of TELECOM where I have introduced management changes in order to respond to the requirements of exhibitors and participants.
Finally, we have been working to make the ITU more visible, for instance through the website, through the new annual report and through ITU News.

While there is a lot more we can do in terms of incremental improvement, the major reforms ahead need PP approval, as they will involve changes to the Constitution and Convention. You will no doubt have your own views as to which reforms are most urgent, but based on the inputs and discussions to date; I would urge you to act in three areas:

First, I believe we need to provide a better position for Sector Members in the decision making process of the Union. In order to do so, we must make a clearer distinction, throughout the work of the ITU, between activities of a policy or regulatory nature and those of a technical or operational nature. At the Standardization Assembly, for instance, we have instituted separate approval procedures for different types of Recommendations. It is clear that the future of the ITU lies in Member States and Sector Members working together as a partnership, but more work needs to be done on defining the roles that each will play.
Second, I believe that it is urgent that we provide a better service to the regulatory agencies, which now number almost 100 among our Member States. Next week we will be holding our first ever Development Symposium for Regulators. However, the ability of the ITU to provide policy and regulatory analysis and advice to our membership, especially to developing countries, needs to be reinforced. This activity is cross-sectoral in nature.
Thirdly, I believe that we need to reform the Secretariat itself so that it can provide a more efficient and unified service to the membership. The current decentralised structure leads to sectionalism and inefficiency. It means that we cannot easily mobilise resources to respond to new requirements from our membership as they arise. I am not convinced that the current structure, of separate Bureaux each reporting to a separate Director, is the optimal structure.

The tasks ahead are urgent and time is pressing, so at this stage, I will leave you in the capable hands of your chairman. But I would urge you to be bold in your recommendations for reform of the ITU and to be decisive in your commitment to implementing them. Let us now get down to issues of substance.

Thank you.