G7 Digital Ministerial Meeting - Session 3 (Trust)

G7 Digital Ministerial Meeting - Session 3: Building trust in data-driven technologies and digital infrastructures together 

15 May 2019 - Paris, France

As we know, vulnerability anywhere is a threat to security everywhere, so ITU strongly advocates capacity building in cybersecurity especially in developing countries.  

As an international standards-making body for ICTs, interoperability, accessibility and security are our requirements from the design stage.

ITU’s core function is harmonising the world-wide use of spectrum and the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference later this year in Egypt will identify and allocate globally harmonized spectrum for a wide variety of services including for 5G above 24GHz and will finalize the 5G radio interface standards amongst many other decisions.

ITU in its role as facilitator for WSIS Action Line C5, “Building Confidence and Security in the Use of ICTs”, works hard to help countries address the risks associated with digital technologies – including adopting national cybersecurity strategies, setting up computer incident response teams, deploying international security standards, protecting children online, and building human capacity.

I would like to particularly highlight the important role of the annual World Summit on Information Society Forum, this is now the world’s largest multi-stakeholder platform addressing ICT for development and facilitates global discussions on concrete solutions for development issues and disseminates best practices on security and trust. The WSIS Forum is hosted by ITU and organized together with UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD, in close collaboration with the entire UN system, and this year it celebrated its 10th anniversary, attracting over 3000 stakeholders from over 150 countries. It was interesting to note that each of the five main stakeholder groups participating (governments (over 60 ministers and vice-ministers this year), the private sector, academia, civil society and a variety of regional and international organisations) were represented and contributed approximately equally – so a truly multi-stakeholder event. The WSIS Forum, focusing on ICTs for development, and the IGF focusing on Internet governance matters, complement each other as outcomes of the 2003 and 2005 Summit.

And so we invite G7 countries to continue to play an active role in these ITU’s activities to build trust and confidence in the use of ICTs.

Thank you.