Speech by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-General
Special Interest Group on Development - Introductory Remarks about the digital divide, trends & Statistics in the Asia-Pacific region
17 January 2017, Honolulu, Hawaï
I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to you today about ITU's work related to ICT for development.
The UN General Assembly has highlighted the cross-cutting contribution of ICTs to the Sustainable Development Goals and called for close alignment between the World Summit on Information Society process and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, noting that ICTs can accelerate progress towards all 17 SDGs.
ITU is working closely with ESCAP (the UN Regional Commission for Asia Pacific) to build regional capacity on the WSIS implementation and its alignment with 2030 Agenda, and raise awareness of the enabling role of ICTs in sustainable development.
Last October I participated in the first regional review of the WSIS implementation, as called for by the UN General Assembly, organized by ITU and ESCAP in Bangkok.
We had some of the WSIS Prize winners from the region showcasing their winning projects, which provided real examples of the impact of ICTs in achieving the SDGs. It was particularly gratifying to learn that the award of the WSIS prizes greatly assisted the development and success of these projects.
So, let me encourage you to nominate projects for the WSIS 2017 Prize contest. Closing date is 15 February.
We wish to see many of the new stakeholders in ICTs participate in WSIS, in particular the growing number of different government ministries and industry sectors now dependent on ICTs – health, education, environment, transportation etc.
With ICTs permeating all walks of life and business, the challenge is to work together with many diverse interests and stakeholders that previously worked in isolation. This is true at the national, regional and international level. Only by working together, exchanging best practices and successful innovation, pooling resources and coordinating our progress will we achieve the goals of the 2030 development agenda.
And the challenges are well known: according to the latest ITU estimates more than half the world's population, some 3.9 billion people, are still offline. The digital divide continues and in fact it is widening slightly, and divides are very evident in particular the urban-rural divide and the gender divide.
With 2.2 billion people now owning a smart phone it is tempting to think that the future of broadband is mobile – especially here in Asia – but we must not forget the vital role that backhaul networks play, predominantly using fibre. In this regard ESCAP is doing excellent work in promoting the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway.
This region has two-thirds of the unconnected but it is predicted that most of the next 1.5 billion to come online will be in this region. Clearly there are considerable challenges but also opportunities and ITU is here to assist in meeting these challenges and help to take advantage of the opportunities.
ITU has long called for countries to have a National Broadband Plan, as part of a coordinated approach to policy-making, and this has been successful with the number of countries with broadband plans having increased from 102 in 2010 to 151 today, and ITU has assisted 17 countries in this region in drafting their Plans.
In summary, ITU, building on its key role in radio regulation, its world-class technical standards, its promotion of best practice policies and regulatory frameworks and its human capacity building, strives to facilitate and enable the broadband infrastructure connectivity that is so essential to achieve the SDGs, and we look forward to working with ESCAP to bring the benefits of broadband to all citizens in the region.
The annual WSIS Forum will be held this year from 12-17 June at the ITU Headquarters in Geneva. The overall theme is Information and Knowledge Societies for SDGs. It is the world's largest annual gathering of the ICT for development multi-stakeholder community and is co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD, in close collaboration with many other UN agencies. It provides an opportunity for information exchange, knowledge creation and sharing of best practices, while identifying emerging trends and fostering partnerships, taking into account the evolving Information and Knowledge Societies.
The Agenda and Programme are built through a multi-stakeholder open consultation process which actively engages governments, civil society, the private sector, academia, the technical community and intergovernmental organizations. For 2017 it closes on 20 February.
Some of the innovations planned for this year’s Forum include:
A Hackathon on ICTs for SDGs: hosted by IEEE and ITU to provide an opportunity for teams of young coders to work over the course of two days to develop an application that could help address a specific issue related to the SDGs.
And a Virtual Reality for SDGs event in collaboration with World VR Forum to will bringing together well known personalities and world VR experts to focus on VR for education and development.
WSIS Forum is organized on an extra budgetary basis. We rely on sponsorship and offer various sponsorship packages which can be found on the ITU website.
It is a very enjoyable and productive event and I hope you will be able to join us in June. I look forward to welcoming you to Geneva!