Connecting the world and beyond

Workshop on accelerating digital transformation projects for sustainable cities and communities

Date and venue: Thursday, 15 October 2026, 14:30 to 17:30 (Room K, ITU)

This workshop on Accelerating digital transformation projects for sustainable cities and communities will take place at ITU Headquarters (ITU Montbrillant building, Room K) in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday, 15 October 2026, from 14:30 to 17:30 hours.

It will be held following the ITU-D Study Group 2 Question 1/2 meeting dedicated to Enabling telecommunications/ICTs for digital transformation and smart sustainable cities and communities.

Background information

Over the years, ITU-D, through its development programmes and projects, has supported a wide range of initiatives that provide valuable insights into the opportunities and challenges associated with digital transformation. Likewise, Member States, cities, international organizations and private sector stakeholders have accumulated practical experience in implementing digital solutions in diverse socioeconomic and geographic contexts.

As Question 1/2 examines the areas of enabling telecommunications/ICTs for digital transformation and smart sustainable cities and communities, there is value in systematically capturing experiences from these initiatives to identify common success factors, implementation challenges, scalable approaches and potential indicators for measuring impact.

Objectives

The workshop aims to:

Exchange experiences from ICT-enabled development projects, smart city initiatives and digital service programmes;

Identify lessons learned from implementation in different national and regional contexts;

Examine factors contributing to successful project design, implementation and sustainability;

Explore common challenges faced by cities and communities during digital transformation efforts;

Discuss approaches for scaling successful projects and services;

Identify possible indicators and benchmarks for assessing outcomes and impact;

Facilitate knowledge sharing among Member States, Sector Members, Academia and development partners. Guiding questions

Guiding questions
Participants may be invited to reflect on the following questions:

What are the most important success factors for digital transformation projects?

Which implementation challenges are common across regions and development contexts?

How can successful projects and services be scaled sustainably?

What indicators should be used to measure success and impact?

How can lessons learned be transferred and adapted across cities and countries?

Return to the main meeting page

[14:30 - 14:35] WELCOME AND SETTING THE SCENE

Mr Hemendra K. Sharma, Co-Rapporteur for Question 1/2, India
Ms Anne Chantal Mvogo, Co-Rapporteur for Question 1/2, SUP’PTIC (Cameroon)

[14:35 - 15:45] SESSION 1: EXPERIENCES FROM TRANSFORMATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN VARIOUS SECTORS AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL

This session will highlight experience learnt from digital projects which transformed various sectors at national level.

Digital transformation initiatives succeed when policy, financing, and institutional coordination come together effectively. This session brings together national experiences from digital projects that have reshaped key sectors, with speakers presenting concrete case studies on what worked, what challenges emerged during implementation, and what lessons can be applied elsewhere.

Rather than general overviews, the session will focus on practical detail: how rural connectivity programs were financed and rolled out, how citizen-facing e-services were deployed at scale, and how community-driven connectivity models were designed and sustained. The aim is to identify the enabling conditions behind these projects and the barriers that limited their impact, with a view toward what is genuinely replicable across national contexts.

Moderator:

Speakers:

Building digital talent at national scale: lessons from Nigeria's 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme
Mr Francis Sani, Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and 3MTT, Nigeria
[Biography] [Presentation]

Five key techniques adopted form diverse digital cities implementation journeys
Mr Hisham Arafat Shehata, Innovay.io and Nile University (Egypt)
[Biography] [Presentation]

Samriddh Gram - the Phygital Village initiative
Mr Atul Sinha, India
[Biography] [Presentation]

Interactive discussion and Q&A:

Open discussion with participants, questions and answers, and exchange of experiences and views.

[15:45–16:00] Break

[16:00 - 17:25] SESSION 2: COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

This session will provide perspectives from governments, municipalities, and regulators implementing projects at community level digital initiatives.

Digital transformation initiatives are ultimately measured by their impact at the community level, where infrastructure, services, and policy converge with the realities of daily life. In line with the workshop's broader aim of exchanging experiences from ICT-enabled development projects and digital service programmes, this session convenes governments, municipalities, and regulators to examine how community-level initiatives are designed, implemented, and sustained beyond their initial rollout.

A central theme will be the role of communities as active participants in the digital transformation process, rather than as recipients of a final product. Speakers will address community consultation, capacity building, and stakeholder coordination, as well as the feedback mechanisms that continue to inform service design after deployment — drawing out lessons learned across different national and regional contexts.

The session will further examine the factors that determine whether digital initiatives achieve lasting adoption and scale, or remain limited to the pilot stage, along with the common challenges cities and communities face in sustaining them. Particular attention will be given to the role regulators and coordination between national policy and local implementation play in scaling successful projects and keeping digital transformation.