Opening remarks - Council Working Group on Strategic and Financial Plans for 2020-2023

Good morning, and on behalf of the Secretary-General, myself, my fellow elected officials and the ITU staff Happy New Year and welcome to the third meeting of the Council Working Group on Strategic and Financial Plans, and the start of two weeks of Council working group meetings. The Secretary-General is not able to be with us this week but will join us for the second week.

Clearly this year is going to be a busy and defining year for the ITU, with the PP-18 coming up at the end of October in Dubai.
No doubt there will be many challenges along the way, however, I am sure that with ITU’s tradition of consensus building, based on a willingness of its membership to compromise, it will be a successful year and one that better positions ITU to continue to play its role in bringing the benefits of ICTs to all the world’s peoples.  

This Council working group will be making its own significant contribution, with the development of the draft Strategic and Financial Plans for 2020-2023.

So, on behalf of the Secretariat our thanks to the Chairman and the management team and to all the participants in the group, and to those contributing to the public consultation, for your support to the work, and we promise to do all we can to support your efforts.
I would like to thank the Director of the Radiocommunication Bureau, Mr. Francois Rancy who has led the preparation of the Secretariat’s input documents on the Strategic Plan and we hope these will facilitate your work, and we look forward to your further guidance and proposals for the development of the final draft for your review at your final meeting in April.

Now, as you may have noticed we have started the installation of the new security system at the Tower entrance. Sorry for the disruption. The new system will be operational by end of the month. Work will start on the other entrances early next month and all will be operational before end of March. The Montbrillant Building will then be the Main Entrance where delegate and visitor registration will take place using automated self-registration kiosks. A centralized Security Control Hub will be installed in there to monitor all the new equipment and systems.  The new biometric Smartcards with digital certificates will be introduced by end of March so anyone wishing to try these new cards can do so at the Council in April.

You probably noticed the new display outside the room which shows appreciation to the major financial contributors to ITU. These are voluntary contributions of course and so are particularly appreciated.

With that, let me wish you a very productive and enjoyable meeting.

Thank you very much.