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Contribution :
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1. It appears to me good that the ITU is trying to come up with central values and goals for the entire organization that will drive all aspects of the entity. That is certainly a good thing. Overall the new plan looks good.
2. I like the idea of being more responsive to the membership and its needs. For example, I think that the upcoming theme of ITU World Telecom Day of the "Broadband for Sustainable Development" is an excellent one that has universal appeal to developed and developing countries, "north" and "south." By contrast, I think that the theme of the recent Day as "smart transport" was only relevant to a few million or perhaps tens of millions of people on Earth, and had no current or near term relevance to the vast majority of ITU member states or the billions of people in the world population. Thus I would hope that in a future, re-scoped ITU, such narrow theme-ing would be avoided.
3. I think that while we are of course in the business of bringing the Internet, ICTs, etc to everyone on Earth, which is generally a good thing, we have to officially and explicitly recognize that it is not always good. In other words, there are some negative consequences, unanticipated consequences, and negative externalities of what we are all doing. The ITU is addressing this, partially, by emphasizing cyber-security, which is good, in ameliorating the problems of scamming, identity theft, unauthorized intrusions, hacking, etc. etc. But there is one area of negative externalities which ITU has not tackled at all. That is the important area of cultural destruction. There are a limited number of cultures and languages on Earth, and about half of them are endangered. They are endangered largely due to the spread of English (the de facto language of the Internet), the spread of communications technologies, and globalization writ large. Imagine if you will that all the oil and mining companies of the world were allowed to drill and mine anywhere, as much as possible, with no environmental impact statements, no regulation, no environmental amelioration or remediation. There would be a huge and justified environmental outcry. Or imagine if hunters were suddenly given free rein to hunt and shoot all the endangered species on Earth. But in ICTs we are sort of doing the same thing. We are increasing access to a massively attractive cultural information bank that is English-based and Western-cultural-based, without regard to the "environment" of other cultures and languages in all the ITU member countries. We therefore need an explicit program within the ITU to preserve such languages and cultures, to liaise with UNESCO in a big way on this issue, and to reduce the "environmental" consequences of our actions. This effort needs to be reflected in ITU values, mission statements, grant giving, budgeting, etc. etc. Otherwise 100 years from now our grandchildren will look back and say, "what were they thinking?"
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