Eighth Meeting of the Group on
Capacity Building Initiatives (GCBI)
13:30, 1 June 2020
Welcome Remarks
Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Director, Telecommunication Development Bureau
International Telecommunication Union
Good afternoon, evening, and morning.
It is my pleasure to welcome you to this virtual meeting of the Group on Capacity Building Initiatives.
It's great to see you all online, and I hope you and your families are all safe and in good health.
Today's meeting is one of the many BDT meetings taking place amidst the unprecedented global disruption occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
I am greatly encouraged by your determination to continue our important work online. Your efforts are a solid demonstration of your commitment to capacity building, which is an essential component of all our development work.
COVID-19 is transforming the way we live in so many ways, both at an individual and at an institutional level. Working and learning are no longer the same. Collaboration takes place online, not in person. But underlying all these many changes is one constant: digital connectivity has become absolutely imperative.
Throughout the current crisis, digital networks and services have been allowing people to stay in touch with loved ones; helping maintain business continuity; supporting ongoing education; and ensuring our projects stay on track.
Today, no one underestimates the power of digital. Yet almost half of the world's population is still not connected to the internet, we have moved to unlike working, shopping schooling, but what about the 3.6 billion not online.
In a brutal way, COVID-19 has served as a wakeup call to the global community to renew efforts to connect the unconnected as a matter of the utmost urgency.
We need to capitalize on this renewed international focus on the vital importance of ICT networks, and not just "build back better", but "build back better with broadband".
Bringing meaningful connectivity to all is ITU's core mission. Last year, ITU and UNICEF joined forces to spearhead the GIGA Initiative aimed at connecting every school to the internet by 2030.
We're now looking at building on that vision, to ensure that that universal school connectivity can also benefit entire communities by serving as a shared public resource, particularly for remote, isolated and marginalized populations.
In addition to our regular programmed activities, ITU has also been developing a number of other initiatives in response to the COVID-19 crisis, to assist members in ensuring their constituencies remain connected and safe throughout the crisis and beyond.
But as we know, access to technology is only one of the essentials.
Simply having digital tools is not enough. We also need to continually provide people with skills and knowledge resources, to enable them to fully and meaningfully leverage the transformational power of these digital tools.
Our ITU-Cisco Digital Transformation Centres initiative, launched last year, lies at the very heart of our capacity building efforts.
Our Phase 1 rollout is underway with centers running digital skills training at basic and intermediate levels and we are now working with our partners to enable DTCs to deliver digital skills training online.
At ITU, the COVID-19 crisis prompted us to rapidly repurpose our operations to move our activities online. Thanks to the excellent digital collaboration platforms we had already developed to support the work of ITU Study Groups and other multi-stakeholder collaboration efforts, we were able to seamlessly segue to online working, through webinars, web dialogues, and many other activities. As an example, just last week ITU held an open web dialogue on "Cloud for COVID-19 Response" as part of the work of ITU-D Study Group 1, and we also launched our important new Digital Skills Assessment Guidebook.
Tomorrow we kick off TDAG, followed the next week by ITU Council, both take place online, as will other important ITU meetings later in the year, such as the GSR and WSIS.
Most training activities that were planned to be held physically under the ITU Centres of Excellence have also moved quickly online.
Of course the demand for online training has risen significantly since the start of the COVID-19 emergency, with record enrolment levels last month alone.
This is a clear indication that online learning will become at least a part of new ways of learning, just as working online may also become the new way of working.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Many of you are aware that membership has requested us to undertake a study to establish the feasibility of an ITU training institute linked to that is an assessment of our current programmes.
Since the subject matter falls within your area of professional competence and the scope of your mandate, I encourage you to provide your valuable input into this study, so that the training and capacity development support we provide to our membership is always as effective as possible.
I understand that you will be discussing today and tomorrow the challenges to ongoing capacity building efforts raised by the COVID-19 crisis.
We look forward to your thoughts on ways to experiment, innovate and be creative.
I look forward to hearing the experiences from your respective regions, and to your expert advice on how best to leverage new opportunities.
With that I wish you inspiring and fruitful deliberations, and I look forward to the outcomes of your discussions.
Thank you.
