– 117 – (4 – General Secretariat) resolves to approve the four-year rolling Operational Plan for the General Secretariat for 2010-2013, as presented in http://www.itu.int/council/C2009/pd/012detailed.pdf, to undertake the activities of the General Secretariat. Ref.: Documents C09/102 and C09/106. D 496 Guidelines for Strategic Planning Workshops (C-2000) The Council, considering a) the need to ensure the continuing relevance and leadership of the Union in a rapidly changing telecommunications environment and in an era of volatile technological change; b) that to respond to the changing telecommunications environment requires that the Union should be able to initiate new activities, and study new issues, in a timely and flexible manner; c) that, in approving the budget for the 2000-2001 biennium (Resolution 1133), Council provided funding for a “New Initiatives Programme”; d) that, on the initiative of the Secretary-General, two initial Strategic Planning Workshops were held in Geneva, on Electronic Signatures and Certification Authorities (9-10 December 1999) and on IP Telephony (14-16 June 2000); e) that the results of these two workshops were discussed by Council and were considered important and useful to the membership, decides, with respect to the first two workshops to instruct the Secretary-General to undertake further studies with a view to identifying the role that ITU can play in e-commerce, authentication and IP Telephony, as well as their legal implications for Member States, and in particular in developing countries, decides, with respect to future workshops 1 to endorse the continuation of the New Initiatives Programme and the holding of additional workshops within the budget levels approved by Council for the 2000-2001 biennium; 2 to apply the following guidelines for the organization of future strategic planning workshops: A Objectives • The main purpose of the workshops is to advise the Secretary-General, in an informal manner on new topics of a regulatory, policy or other nature of high-current interest which cut across the work of the Sectors, with a view to possible inclusion of these topics in the regular work programme of the Union, and for reporting to the Council. B Selection of topics, participants and locations • The topics should be selected by the Secretary-General for their high-current interest to Member States and Sector Members. • The Secretary-General shall select, and issue invitations to, relevant experts, after consultation with Directors of the Bureaux and taking into account proposals from the membership. • In order to stimulate discussion, the target number of experts should be limited, while respecting the need for geographical balance among the Member States of the Union.