FORUM: ‘‘Digital Innovation for Sustainable Development.’’ World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2024. Building a sustainable future demands innovative thinking and action, especially in the digital world. The celebration of WTISD 2024 is a chance to explore how digital innovation can help connect everyone and unlock sustainable prosperity for all. Innovative tech can help tackle the world’s most pressing challenges, from fighting climate change to eliminating hunger and poverty. In fact, digital technologies can help achieve 70% of targets under the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Yet glaring digital gaps hinder innovation in many parts of the world. The lack of policies, investment, and digital skills leaves many countries struggling to keep up in the fast-changing digital landscape. What will the future of digital innovation look like and what role do all of us play? Be part and follow the conversations with the hashtags #DigitalInclusion, #EveryoneIncluded, #wtisd, #17May, #InformationSocietyDay, #TelecommunicationDay, #InnovateForProsperity.
Ask an ITU Innovation expert; If you have questions about the challenges hindering global innovation? Curious about actionable solutions to overcome these hurdles? Join the ITU Live Q&A on May 10th to learn from ITU Digital Innovation Ecosystem Expert, Mohamed Ba. RSVP
The international community is now mobilized around the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which recognizes the great potential of Information and communications technology (ICT) to accelerate human progress, bridge the Digital divide and advance knowledge. The Sustainable Development Goals - SDGs specifically call for empl...oying ICTs to realize the overall vision of a life of dignity for all people.
These technologies provide smart solutions to address climate change, hunger, poverty and other global challenges. They are key instruments for providing mobile health care and access to education, empowering women, improving efficiencies in industrial and agricultural production, and safeguarding the environment.
Start-ups and technology hubs in the ITC sector are the drivers of innovative and practical solutions that can contribute to inclusive growth. Small to medium-sized enterprises make up more than 90 per cent of all businesses worldwide, and represent a path out of poverty for many developing countries.
Young people are especially fluent in the use of ICTs. Leaders should invest in young innovators, who are part of the largest generation of youth in history. As entrepreneurs, they can pioneer transformative technology, create jobs and benefit whole economies.
I call upon governments, businesses and civil society leaders to develop new technologies that have a lasting social impact. ICTs can create more inclusive societies for persons with disabilities. They can help children to learn and the elderly to stay active. And ICTs can connect people around the world in common cause.
On this World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, let us resolve to harness the power of technology to create a better future for all.
Excellencies,
Distinguished colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a tremendous pleasure to welcome you to World Telecommunication and Information Society Day 2016, focusing this year on "ICT entrepreneurship for social impact".
Over the past decades, the ICT sector has grown to become one of the world's most successful and inspiring ecosystems.
On this very special day – 17 May – we can proudly celebrate the fact that billions of people are now connected in a smart, networked environment, and are connected to new and previously unimaginable possibilities.
These welcome developments make it even more urgent that we continue to pursue our goal of bringing the rest of the world's people online, so that they too can access and create extraordinary social and economic benefits.
Distinguished colleagues,
Today, the ICT world is increasingly being driven by grassroots entrepreneurship, delivering local solutions to tackle local challenges.
Anyone, anywhere in the world today – with good connectivity and the necessary skills – has the potential to create and innovate with global impact.
Entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, provide up to 70% of global employment, and we need their expertise, innovation and investment to achieve our common goals of sustainable economic and social development.
Governments around the world recognize this, and many are now actively promoting national innovation and entrepreneurial hubs, with the aim of creating a vibrant start-up culture.
It is clear to me that it is the SMEs who extend the power of new ICT technologies and services to reach local communities everywhere in the world. To some extent, there is no possibility for big companies to succeed if they do not have the support of SMEs.
Distinguished colleagues,
Here at ITU, we are well-positioned to promote digital entrepreneurship in collaboration with our global membership of governments, industry, civil society and academia, as well as other international organizations and stakeholders.
We work hard to ensure an enabling policy and regulatory environment – an environment that facilitates and promotes innovation while still delivering effective mechanisms to avoid market dominance and guarantee consumer protection.
We are developing international technical standards that enable anyone anywhere to produce services and equipment for a global market.
And we harmonise the use of the radio spectrum to ensure interoperability and to benefit from economies of scale.
At our major events, such as ITU Telecom, we bring together ministers, regulators, industry leaders, academia, innovation hubs and accelerators, as well as start-ups and SMEs themselves.
Coming from both the developed and the developing world, they come to ITU to share knowledge and best practices, and to build valuable new partnerships.
At ITU, I want to ensure that we use our experience and global network to support the evolving ICT ecosystem, including government-funded tech parks, university incubators, and start-up accelerators, so that SMEs in emerging economies can more easily grow and scale their business and access new market opportunities.
An important part of this effort is to promote greater gender equality in the ICT ecosystem. The technology sector needs more women leaders, creators and entrepreneurs. And to this end, I am delighted to share with you here today, that tomorrow the ITU, and our partner UN Women, will issue the call for nominations for our third annual GEM-tech awards.
This prestigious global prize recognizes outstanding contributions from individuals and organizations in further addressing the issue of the digital gender divide by leveraging and embracing the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for social impact and to promote greater gender equality and to empower women and girls.
Let me therefore take this opportunity to call upon all of our members and partners to actively promote small, smart and innovative ICT businesses, as well as supporting the creation of all-inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems.
ITU will continue to work with our membership in supporting these endeavours to achieve widespread digital social innovation, and to promote ICT entrepreneurship for social impact, to create a better world for all.
Thank you for your attention.
Houlin Zhao ,
ITU Secretary-General
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (on screen), delivers video message to the opening of the annual UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva.
The theme for WTISD-16 is in line with ITU’s work in unlocking the potential of ICTs for young innovators and entrepreneurs, innovative SMEs, start-ups and technology hubs as drivers of innovative and practical solutions for catalysing progress in achieving international sustainable development goals, with a focus on SMEs from developing countries.
They will showcase and leverage relevant national and regional strategies and initiatives to promote ICT-related SMEs and foster and discover new technological solutions to accelerate sustainable development.
For many people, the internet has become such a pervasive, fundamental part of daily life and business that it is hard to fathom that over 4 billion people – more than 55% of the world’s population – are still not online. Many of those simply do not have access: they live in hard-to-reach rural areas or do not have digital or other basic infrastructure. Some simply do not see the benefits of being connected, often because of limited relevant digital content. Others are illiterate; many are poor.
Inequality compounds the problem. Good, fast connectivity (broadband, or 3G or better mobile connections) reaches almost 70% of the world’s population, but less than 30% in rural areas.2 According to the World Wide Web Foundation (WWWF), women are much less likely to access the internet than men in the same communities; the WWWF reported that just 37% of women surveyed used the internet, compared to 59% of men. Once online, women are 30- 50% less likely than men to use the internet to increase their income or participate in public life.
Governments, companies, local and international organizations, and members of civil society are working to extend internet access and use. Plenty of progress has been made since people first started talking about a "digital divide" with respect to the internet over 20 years ago. Establishing the Broadband Commission for Digital Development (now called the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development) has helped to further broadband’s presence on policy agendas and build support for increasing countries’ access to it (text box). But the problem is big, complex and multidimensional. It’s hard to get one’s head around the full nature and extent of the need. From its position as a global, multistakeholder organization that bridges policy, economics, business and civil society considerations, the World Economic Forum is in a unique position to bring together parties that can undertake a comprehensive analysis of internet access and use for all, and recommend solutions. Those should meet several essential criteria, which are:
Address the local underlying environment and barriers of each case
Serve as coordinated efforts and interventions across multiple dimensions
Draw on successful examples of collaboration among stakeholders
Represent proven examples of further expanding the internet and its use
Early Internet-based platforms have been primarily focused on communications between individuals and groups of people, which can be translated into person-to-person communications. IoT adds to these platforms devices enabled to conduct person-to-machine as well as machine-to-machine (M2M) communications without human intervention. As devices are endowed with Communication capability, they can make their own contributions to IoT. Just a...s there is a wide variety of connected device types, these various devices exhibit a range of Connectedness.
The Open, Inclusive challenge for a smart sustainable cities
If total business connectivity is a target, we could state that data indicate steady progress towards that end, albeit at different speeds for different technologies. Business connectivity worldwide has undoubtedly grown in the past few years, with mobile telephony contributing in great part to reducing the basic connectivity gap. However, although data from developing countries are still far from comprehensive, it is clear that within developing countries themselves, there are wide differences in ICT use between large and small companies, between businesses in different industries, and between rural and urban businesses. In addition, there is a growing divide in broadband access between businesses in developed and developing countries, which has an impact on the way that they can benefit from applications and systems. The broadband connectivity gap highlights the need for further improvements in the ICT infrastructure for developing countries, which in turn should have a positive impact on current problems of cost, latency and quality of services.
The divide in ICT use between different-sized businesses seems to point at other critical factors that can be measured through other targets and indicators, such as education and skills development. Despite the recognition that the mobile revolution has made e-business more inclusive, through basic connectivity as well as through innovative mobile applications, the WSIS targets have not tracked progress in this area.
The e-business action line remains highly relevant for the implementation of WSIS-related work beyond 2015. Therefore, appropriate targets related to e-business should be included in any action plans beyond 2015, and relevant indicators should be defined for monitoring.
The WSIS targets have served as global reference for improving global access and use of ICTs and
have provided benchmark indicators for the evaluation of the overall objectives of the information
society. In addition, the WSIS targets were intended to inspire particular targets at national level
based on local characteristics, e-strategies and development policies.
Amended WSIS targets
Target 1. Connect all villages with ICTs and establish community access points;
Target 2. Connect all secondary schools and primary schools with ICTs;
Target 3. Connect all scientific and research centres with ICTs;
Target 4. Connect all public libraries, museums, post offices and national archives with ICTs;
Target 5. Connect all health centres and hospitals with ICTs;
Target 6. Connect all central government departments and establish websites;
Target 7. Adapt all primary and secondary school curricula to meet the challenges of the information society,
taking into account national circumstances;
Target 8. Ensure that all of the world’s population has access to television and radio services;
Target 9. Encourage the development of content and put in place technical conditions in order to facilitate
the presence and use of all world languages on the Internet;
Target 10. Ensure that more than half the world’s inhabitants have access to ICTs within their reach and
United Nations development efforts profoundly affect the lives and well-being of millions of people throughout the world. They are based on the conviction that lasting international peace and security are possible only if the economic prosperity and the well-being of people everywhere is assured.
The General Assembly in 1972 instituted World Development Information Day to draw the attention of world public opinion to
development problems and the need to strengthen international
cooperation to solve them (resolution 3038 (XXVII)). The Assembly
decided that the date for the Day should coincide in principle with
United Nations Day, 24 October, which was also the date of the
adoption, in 1970, of the International Development Strategy for the
Second United Nations Development Decade.
The Assembly felt that improving the dissemination of information
and the mobilization of public opinion, particularly among young
people, would lead to greater awareness of the problems of development,
thus, promoting efforts in the sphere of international cooperation for
development.
The purpose of World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD)
is to help raise awareness of the possibilities that the use of the
Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICT) can
bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the
digital divide.
17 May marks the anniversary of the signing of the first
International Telegraph Convention and the creation of the International Telecommunication Union.
