Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General
Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group: Welcome remarks
18 July 2016, Geneva, Switzerland
Director TSB
Chairman and Vice-Chairmen
Dear colleagues and friends,
On behalf of the Secretary-General I am pleased to welcome you to this special session of TSAG to prepare for WTSA-16.
Mr Zhao is on mission today but hope to be able to address TSAG on Friday at its closing plenary. He also intends to participate throughout WTSA-16. Myself I hope to be there for the Global Standards Symposium and the first day of WTSA.
Clearly a major theme of this year's WTSA will be ITU-T's contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
TSB contributed a comprehensive document to the previous TSAG on how the SDGs map to the work of ITU-T and which showed that most if not all ITU-T work, directly or indirectly, contributes to the implementation of the SDGs.
The ITU Council at its meeting in May 2016 agreed to use the WSIS framework as the foundation through which the ITU helps achieve the 2030 Agenda.
Consequently, the secretariat has been merged its dedicated SDG Project Team with its WSIS Task Force.
The new SDG & WSIS Task Force, chaired by the Deputy Secretary-General, will aim to facilitate coordination of ITU Secretariat's policies, strategies and activities in relation to 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the WSIS Action Lines and the Connect 2020 Agenda approved by the Plenipotentiary Conference in 2014.
The secretariat is developing a mapping tool which will linking ITU's work with both the SDGs, the WSIS Action Lines and the Connect 2020 Agenda.
As was mentioned by Dr. David Nabarro, the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development during Council-16, SDGs are the business of all countries, developed and developing, and called ITU to recognize the new universal and indivisible agenda.
Last week at the first High-Level Political Forum on SDGs in New York, ITU and GeSI held a very well attended side-event together with Accenture, GSMA and the World Economic Forum on the role of ICTs in implementing the SDGs. The GeSI #SystemTranformation report, available of the GeSI website and developed in partnership with ITU, elaborates how digital solutions will drive progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, and explains the business base for industry to contribute.
I am pleased that this year's Kaleidoscope academic conference, to be held from 14 to 16 November in conjunction with ITU Telecom World in Bangkok, will explore the role to be played by ICTs in achieving the SDGs; and that TSB is hosting an "ITU-T Pavilion" at Telecom World to showcase ICT solutions related to ongoing and planned ITU standardization work. If you have not already done so I encourage you to contact TSB to arrange your participation in this exhibition.
We are all very aware of need for good collaboration and coordination of activities across the ITU, which is why TSAG and the other advisory groups established the Inter-Sectoral Coordination Team chaired by Mr. Fabio Bigi.
As requested by Council the secretariat's Inter-Sectoral Coordination Task Force (ISC-TF), chaired by myself, will work closely with Mr Bigi's group and we will be submitting to it today a status report on its work.
I would like to conclude by thanking Chaesub Lee for all he has done in his 18 months as TSB Director to respond to members' needs.
Thanks also to TSAG Chairman Bruce Gracie and his team for all their hard work throughout this Study Period, and I wish them all the best for the next Study Period.
And to the many experts that drive the success of ITU-T: The Rapporteurs and Editors; Study Group Chairmen and Vice-Chairmen; Chairmen of Working Parties; Chairmen of Focus Groups; and all the participants in our meetings; many thanks, your contribution to the work of ITU-T is highly appreciated.
So I wish you all a very successful meeting in preparation for what I am sure will be a very successful and significant WTSA-16.
Thank you.