Agenda

Digital transformation depends not only on infrastructure, technology and the growth of the digital economy, but also on the quality of the policy, legal, regulatory and governance frameworks that enable, steer and shape their development. Under WSIS Action Line C6 on enabling environment, this session will examine how policy benchmarking can support better digital governance by helping countries assess where they stand, identify reform priorities, compare progress with peers, and translate evidence into concrete policy action.

The session will showcase the ITU Digital Readiness Framework as a practical tool for assessing the readiness of national policy, legal, regulatory and governance frameworks for digital transformation. The Framework helps countries identify strengths, gaps and reform priorities, and enables comparison across countries and peer groups. The discussion will focus on how regulators, ministries, regional regulatory associations (through platforms like the Digital Regulation Network (DRN)) and other stakeholders can use benchmarking not as an end in itself, but as a basis for institutional learning, reform planning, regional cooperation and more adaptive digital governance.

The session will bring together regional regulatory associations and their members, ICT regulators, policy makers and other stakeholders to address important questions such as:

• What does ‘digital readiness’ mean in the context of Action Line C6, and which aspects of the enabling environment matter most for digital transformation?
• How can benchmarking drive better policy decisions and accelerate the transition to fifth-generation (G5) collaborative regulation?
• How can countries use the Digital Readiness Framework to identify reform priorities?
• How can benchmarking evidence support dialogue between regulators, policy makers, industry and other stakeholders?
• What role can regional cooperation and "networks of networks" like the DRN play in interpreting and acting on benchmarking evidence?

AGENDA

Opening:  Dr Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director BDT, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

Moderator: Ms Carmen Prado Wagner, Senior Programme Officer, Regulatory and Market Environment Division (RME), ITU/BDT 

Keynote presentation: Ms Youlia Lozanova, Senior Programme Officer, Regulatory and Market Environment Division, ITU/BDT
Benchmarking for better governance: Spotlight on the Digital Readiness Framework

Panellists to be confirmed.