Agenda

UNGIS serves as an inter-agency mechanism to coordinate substantive policy issues facing the United Nations system’s implementation of the Geneva Plan of Action and Tunis Agenda for the Information Society adopted by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), thereby contributing to improving policy coherence in the UN system, as requested by the 2005 World Summit. Subsequently, pursuant to Para 46 of the GA Resolution 62/208, UNGIS also ensures coordination within the United Nations development system in order to respond to the international attention being given to science and technology
transfer as reflected by the outcomes of the 2005 World Summit.

UNGIS’ objective is to develop extensive collaboration and partnerships among the CEB members in order to contribute to the achievement of the WSIS objectives, to help to maintain ICT-related issues as well as science and technology at the top of the UN Agenda and finally to mainstream ICT for Development issues in the mandate of CEB members. To this end, UNGIS should complement and add value to existing programmes and projects by facilitating synergies and joint efforts, so as to maximize coordinated action, coherence and effectiveness of the support to countries in their efforts towards achieving the WSIS goals agreed upon by the international community.

Since 2015, the WSIS Process and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are being aligned by stakeholders to integrate information and communication technologies (ICTs) into their approaches in implementing the activities/initiatives to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Towards this, achievements have been made by governments and all stakeholders nearly 20 years since the inception of the WSIS. However, challenges remain, and numerous new technology trends have emerged. 

• UNGIS Leaders are invited to share their strategies highlighting the challenges and success stories in implementing digital transformation and propose ways to accelerate the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines/ Digital Cooperation.
• UNGIS leaders are invited to share their views on the WSIS+20 review (and beyond 2025) and to take stock of the achievements and key trends, challenges and opportunities since the Geneva Plan of Action.
• UNGIS Leaders are invited to exchange ideas, views and proposals and provide a shared commitment and recommendations on what remains to connect the unconnected. The outcome of the discussions will be submitted to the Global Digital Compact online consultations survey.

Recommendation: Recognizing that discussions on Our Common Agenda and especially its Global Digital Compact are complementary to the WSIS Framework, we call upon all stakeholders to leverage the learnings of the implementation of the WSIS Framework and related process in their deliberations of Our Common Agenda.