Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General

6th ITU Green Standards Week - Second meeting of "Smart Cities for Inclusion and Sustainability": Opening remarks

5 September 2016, Montevideo, Uruguay

H.E. Ms Carolina Cosse, Minister, Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM), Uruguay
H.E. Ms Daiva Matoniene, Vice-Minister of the Environment, Republic of Lithuania
Daniel Martínez, Mayor of Montevideo
Gladis Genua, Director, Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), Uruguay

Buenos dias a todas y todos.  Bienvenidos a la Semana de las Normas Verdes.Es un gran placer estar aqui en la bella ciudad de Montevideo – mi primera vez aqui.
Voy a seguir en Ingles asi que por favor escuche la interpretacion, gracias.

Ladies and gentlemen
Colleagues and friends

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you to the 6th annual ITU Green Standards Week. We began these events in Rome in 2011 when I was the Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, so I am particularly pleased to participate this week in the absence of my successor Chaesub Lee, and am delighted to see how these events have really flourished.

Last year’s Green Standards Week was a major turning point, when the event was co-organized by ITU with six United Nations agencies and commissions.

This year’s Green Standards Week is no less remarkable having the support of the Municipality of Montevideo, many thanks to the mayor, the Inter-American Association of Telecommunication Enterprises (ASIET), the UN Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Basel Convention Regional Centre for the South American Region (CRBAS) and the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF).

I would like to thank all these organizations and their colleagues for their excellent collaboration and support, in particular Cristina Zubillaga and her team that put a lot of efforts to make these events possible. 

I would like also to thank to the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining (MIEM), URSEC (the Unidad Reguladora de Servicios de Comunicaciones) and Antel (the Administración Nacional de Telecomunicaciones) for their great support in the organization of this Green Standards Week.

This year we will discuss the role that smart sustainable cities can play in the formulation of the New Urban Agenda that will be finalized at the Habitat III Conference in Quito next month.

ITU, as the lead United Nations agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs), has continuously highlighted the potential benefits that ICTs have for the environment, and socio-economic development.  Today, urban development is not just dependent on a city's physical infrastructure, but increasingly on the availability and quality of its social and environmental digital resources.

With the rapid growth of urban areas, our societies are facing many challenges that only the advancement of technological innovation will meet. This event will focus on the new technological trends, including Internet of Things (IoT), that will lead to the creation of a digital society that can address these challenges and will create new and exciting means of living, doing business and sharing knowledge.

It is very appropriate that the first Green Standards Week to be held in Latin America is being held here in Uruguay. There are many indicators, including those of ITU, showing Uruguay as a leader in the region in many aspects of the ICT sector – government services, education, innovation and trade – thanks to a well established enabling environment, political stability and good public and private sector collaboration. These are all crucial elements for the transition to smart sustainable cities which will deploy sophisticated ICT infrastructures to deliver and monitor high quality urban services from utilities, to transportation, to education, energy and health.

The immense potential of the technology will enable stakeholders to build a stronger urban ecosystem - one that the citizens from all levels of society can interact with and benefit from. Smart sustainable cities will provide the knowledge and understanding to empower citizens to make informed decisions that will make a real impact on their quality of life.

This inclusivity of smart sustainable cities fulfills the dream of Jane Jacobs, the famous American-Canadian journalist and author who foresaw that:  “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only if, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

Only if smart sustainable cities are driven by a citizen centric approach, will they focus on the quality of life and well-being of all urban citizens, including persons with disabilities.

The transition to smart sustainable cities will need good coordination and collaboration from a wide range of stakeholders – public and private.

Recognizing this, ITU commenced its smart city activities through the establishment of a Focus Group open to all ITU’s membership: 193 governments, over 700 private sector entities, regulatory bodies, civil society and over 100 universities; as well as non-members, in particular municipalities and utility companies.

The Focus Group completed its mandate in May 2015 with the publication of 21 Technical Reports and Specifications which are now part of an exclusive flipbook on “shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - striving for sustainable development goals” – available free on the ITU website. It serves as a comprehensive research base for all smart city stakeholders wishing to embark on the journey to smartness and sustainability and I recommend it to you.

To further the work of the Focus Group a new study group was  created in June 2015 with the title “Internet of Things and its applications, including smart cities and communities”.

Clearly a crucial issue in the development of smart sustainable cities will be international standards to ensure interoperability, so that equipment and systems  produced by different vendors work together seamlessly. This is has been a major aspect of ITU’s work ever since it was established over 150 years ago. And since much of the technology will be using radio spectrum, ITU will ensure the availability of internationally agreed frequencies to enable the coordinated development of IoT, including machine-to-machine communications and ubiquitous sensor networks. ITU is also promoting the good practices and regulatory conditions to address the urban-development challenges through the introduction of public policies to promote social inclusion in smart cities, and improve access to technologies for all.

I invite you all to contribute to this work. We offer remote participation to our meetings to avoid the need to make long journeys, and we are particularly keen to have increased participation from Latin America. Your participation is important to ensure your specific requirements are included in these standards, and to gain a thorough understanding of their implementation.

As is our custom at Green Standards Week events, we would like to have an output from the discussion this week, and so we offer you all an opportunity to express an opinion on this important issue. We have therefore prepared a draft “Montevideo Declaration” which is available for you all to consider, make suggestions on, and hopefully approve on Friday. This will then be published and brought to the attention of other interested parties, including the participants at the Habitat III conference.

Thank you all for your participation. I wish you a very successful and enjoyable event.
Muchas gracias.