Agenda

Mr. Jaroslaw K. Ponder is Head of the Office for Europe at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (Geneva, Switzerland). He represents ITU in Europe and directs actions, projects, initiatives and experts groups targeting 46 countries of the Europe Region. His portfolio includes set of Regional Initiatives for Europe, designed by the European Member States and focusing on the ICT Infrastructure, Digitization, Digital Inclusion, Accessibility, Innovation and Cybersecurity.

Along the professional career, Mr. Ponder held official positions in the public sector and was a contributor to the legislative projects having the impact on the public policy. Since 2014 Mr. Ponder has been working for ITU holding diverse positions in the General Secretariat, Telecommunication Development Bureau, and Regional Presence, addressing complexity of information society development and digital transformation at national, regional, international level, including United Nations level. For several years he has managed ITU’s work on the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process, leading towards the establishment of the flagship platforms, including WSIS Forum, WSIS Prizes, WSIS Stocktaking, others.

Deputy Director of the Department of Telecommunications at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister. He deals with regulations concerning the investment process for telecommunications infrastructure, electromagnetic field (EMF) issues, and 5G networks. A member of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for Maximum Permissible Concentrations and Intensities of Agents Harmful to Health in the Working Environment.

Senior policymaker who covers the areas of economic development, national strategic programming, and regional cooperation. She currently holds the position of the Director-General of the Development Programs and Cooperation Unit, at the Prime Minister’s Office, and is responsible for drafting a number of National Development Programs in different sectors of the economy which are translated into concrete executable national strategic projects with a direct impact to the country’s economic growth, one of them being the National Program of Innovation and Startups.

She is also in charge of the coordination of the Regional Economic Area and its Action Plan, since its creation in 2017, with the focus of developing and transforming the Western Balkans region into an economic area where goods, services, people, and knowledge move without borders.

Ms. Romina Kostani holds a MSc. Degree in Information Systems, a Master’s degree in EU Business Law, and a Bachelor Degree in Business-Informatics by the University of Tirana. She holds the position of the Director of Innovation and e-Gov IPA Funds at the Albanian National Agency of Information Society and has also experience in university teaching of information systems. During the past couple of years, she has worked on the digitalization of public services, the development, and promotion of the e-Albania e-Government Portal, interoperability of systems and open data, transposition of EU ICT Acquis to the Albanian law, ICT innovation in public administration, start-up incubation programs, among others. 

Katalin Baracsi holds internet security classes and interactive training for more than 10 years inside and outside the country. She brings children, young people, parents, educators, professionals closer to the everyday life of the digital world and makes them confident that they can pass on the information they have acquired in their environment. She coordinates and independently prepares professional materials and programs. Currently, as a freelance expert, she assists governmental, civic, and eclectic organizations in both domestic and international projects.

Nevena Manić is an advisor in the Team for public administration reform at the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia. She is passionate about e-government and digitalization as the optimal way to improve public services and accelerate development.

Nevena has extensive experience in the private and particularly in the public sector, gained while working at the Ministry of Finance on contracting and implementation of EU funds and at the European Commission, in Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR).

Nevena graduated from the Faculty of political science at the University of Belgrade and holds two master degrees – LL.M. from the Faculty of Law and Master of Public Administration at the University of Birmingham, which she attended as a Valedictorian of Chevening, the UK government’s scholarship programme.

Marten Kaevats, is the National Digital Advisor in the Government Office of Estonia or unofficially the Chief Innovation Officer of Estonia. Being responsible for information society and innovation in Estonia, he is working on upgrading the interoperability system architecture of Estonia. The goal of all his work is to build adaptable and future-proof governance architecture while acknowledging that predicting the future in its complexity is impossible. Estonia, being a prime example of distributed governance architecture based on human-scale values where every end-user is in control of their data, is perfect to test new forms of governance suitable for the 21st century.

He legalized the testing of self-driving vehicles on all public roads in Estonia in 2017 and is the initiator of the Estonian AI policy. He has a master's degree in architecture and city planning from the Estonian Academy of Arts. Marten joined the Estonian governmental talent program in 2015. He studies the impact of various scalable technologies on the socio-spatial behavior of individual people and communities and describes his discipline as governance architecture. Before joining the government, he was the chief of Tallinn Architectural Biennale 2015 "Self Driven City" curatorial team. Marten is also an active member of several civil society organizations; he was also one of the founding members of the Uue Maailma Selts (New World Society) in 2007 which triggered reformatory changes in participatory democracy and a revolution in civil society. He also founded and contributed to the creation of the open source community web platform Community Tools, established in 2008.