BDT Director Doreen Bogdan-Martin joined leaders at the signing ceremony of the joint declaration of intent to establish a high-level framework of cooperation in the area of powering digital transformation and establishing a “Reference implementation of a Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Digital Platform to accelerate digital transformation and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals in low-resource settings.
Leaders included H.E. Mr Raul Siem, Minister of Foreign Trade and Information Technology, Estonia; H.E. Mr Norbert Barthle, Parliamentary State Secretary, BMZ, Germany; and Ms Kate Wilson, CEO, Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL).
The collaboration will start by developing a “Reference Digital Government Platform" as a “Digital Public Good", based on reusable, standards-based, secure and interoperable building blocks available to whole-of-Government agencies to build and deploy their digital services and applications.
For countries with limited resources, having access to an example or a model/reference implementation of an integrated digital government platform, can significantly accelerate the deployment and scaling up of digital services. Furthermore, it enables them to deliver basic and common services relevant to Sustainable Development Goals. Ms Bogdan-Martin highlighted, ''such a shared digital infrastructure will power future innovations that are centred on citizen's needs, without reinventing the wheel or reinvesting in building backend systems.''
Especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to deliver digital technology solutions to facilitate socio-economic activity and accelerate economic recovery has never been greater. To achieve this, governments need to lay out their overall digital government transformation strategies, and build common and reusable digital platforms and systems that can scale and integrate services.
Ms Bogdan-Martin called on other stakeholders to join this strategic effort to assist Government agencies across the world to build and deploy their digital services and applications in a cost-efficient, accelerated and integrated manner. She reiterated ITU's dedication to leverage technology to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and to ''deliver on the promise of the digital economy.''
