Ms Cristiana Flutur,
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
It is my great pleasure to join you today on the occasion of the CEPT ComITU.
I am pleased to be here this morning. I thank you for inviting me. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank you for electing me as Director BDT at PP-22. The trust and confidence in me will not be betrayed. Upon taking office, I adopted a 90-day plan. The first month was to meet with each staff member and each team to share my vision and listen. From day one, I also committed to meet with as many Member States delegations as possible. I have so far met more than 150 country delegations and held bilateral meetings.
The exchange with both staff and Member States including industry and private sector has proved valuable. From day one, my vision has always been BDT4Impact. The message behind this is: for everything that we do, we must impact people and planet for prosperity and sustainable development. We should think People in our work, we should connect people everywhere but in a meaningful way. This considers environmental protection, climate change adaptation and mitigation, saving lives through technology including putting in place early warning systems for All.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There have been many positives since January.
But much remains in front of us.
Let me relay a few highlights after nearly five months of operations.
- In January, I launched a new initiative that contributes to digital skills development, i.e., the Academy Training Centers. Worldwide, there are 14 Centers that were selected to provide skills development in various areas including on new and emerging technologies. Four of them are in Europe, i.e., Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Poland.
- On 25 January, I launched a new initiative on Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance for digital development.
- With the aim of being vision- and mission-ready, I organized a BDT Senior Management Retreat with senior BDT staff from headquarters and field offices.
- I was at the GSMA Barcelona annual event with the other Elected Officials where I met with all the Government Ministers and CEOs that were in attendance.
- I attended and made immense contribution to the UN LDC5 Conference held in Doha, Qatar and highlighted the critical role of digital in supporting the LDCs.
- The World Summit on the Information Society Forum provided a unique opportunity for advancing the work of the BDT and meeting country delegations.
- Several tools and publications have been launched facilitating country capacity development, including—amongst others:
- UN Digital Development Toolbox
- ICT infrastructure business planning toolkit – 5G networks,
- Global Digital Regulatory Outlook 2023 – Policy and regulation to spur digital transformation.
- Facts and Figures.
- Handbook on Mainstreaming Gender in Digital Policies.
- We have rolled out GovStack and specifications have been released while new implementation milestones have been achieved at the regional and national levels.
- World celebrations of Girls in ICT Day were organized in April 2023, including a series of over 50 events held across the Europe. We organized this year's main event in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe at Transform Africa with the participation of 1000 girls.
- ITU-D Study Groups have advanced their work. Rapporteur groups have been meeting in Geneva, accompanied by several thematic workshops involving grassroot feedback.
- Partnerships: So far, we have entered into 35 partnership agreements. Some of them are financial and others non-financial as I will explain later.
- PROJECTS: Since January this year, the BDT has signed 7 projects and 5 Voluntary Contribution agreements with a value of 8 million (we have already doubled the value of projects signed last year). Two projects were signed with the European Commission valued at Euros 5 million:
- Global: Universal Meaningful Connectivity (Euros3 million) and
- National: Vamos Digital in Mozambique (signed just last week valued at 2.5 million Euros).
- I wish to express my appreciation to the European Commission for its support.
- As of today, our project envelope consists of 60 projects with the overall value of almost CHF 100 million, with several projects in the pipeline for signature this year, that will hopefully exceed CHF25 million.
- I would like to thank several European project partners that engaged financially in the development projects, including European Commission, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and many others that made in-kind contributions.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Much remains in front of us:
- GSR: Leaders of National Regulatory Authorities from across the world will meet at the Global Symposium for Regulators in June (5-8 in Egypt)
- EGH and EGTI: Statistics experts will report on their work at the World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Symposium in July in Geneva
- All this could not happen without your support and commitment towards digital development both regional and global levels. The RDF 2023 for Europe was a great success thanks to your commitment. Thank you.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
At this juncture, it is my great pleasure to briefly present to you the outcomes of the RDF for Europe.
This Forum is the first in a series of six regional development forums that will be held this year across the world aiming to strengthen the engagement of stakeholders in support of digital development.
Many of you joined us at RDF Europe. I am sure that you welcomed the excellent active participation of everyone physically present or online. I enjoyed it! The outcomes were great.
I must say, this was indeed an exciting event, not only in the policy dialogues that progressed, but also in the integration of the Partner2Connect roundtables aimed at match-making the pledges that have this far been announced and country/regional priorities which will go a long way in making impact on the ground.
Over 100 contributions were submitted for consideration the by the Forum. This demonstrated strong regional commitment and engagement.
As you may know, ITU Office for Europe, services 46 countries and engages all our stakeholders in its work. We design and see concrete action strengthening digital cooperation and advancing digital development in Europe and beyond. Please let me encourage you to continue supporting those efforts and considering JPOs or secondments dedicated to European affairs.
I would like to thank all stakeholders that were part of this exercise. But I want to express gratitude to CEPT ComITU, Cristiana Flutur and the Co-President and Inga Rimkevicine, the PT Chair for ITU-D issues.
It is my sincere hope that other regions emulate this level of commitment as they prepare their own Regional Development forums.
Ladies and gentlemen,
There is an important issue that I would like to bring to your attention before I conclude. Thanks to a special allocation of funds by Council-2018 aimed at supporting the implementation of WTDC-22 Regional Initiatives, we were able to ensure that the investment of CHF5 million served as seed funds for engaging partners and resource mobilization. In return, we mobilized over CHF20 million against the 5 million CHF allocated from Savings. This outcome demonstrates this mechanism is effective and should continue.
As the funds were fully utilized in implementing WTDC-17 Regional Initiatives, I would like to use this opportunity to encourage you to support the allocation of an amount of 8 million CH to finance medium to large scale projects to finance WTDC-22 Regional Initiatives which were adopted without an associated budget. Meanwhile, we will mobilize additional resources using the allocated funds as seed money. We have submitted a document to ITU Council 2023 and seek your support when it comes under discussion.
I would also like to thank all countries for supporting our efforts towards the strengthening our collaboration with European institutions, including but not limited to European Commission, BEREC, ENISA, but also other platforms such as EaPeReg, EMREG.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In conclusion, I would like to invite you all to join the upcoming Telecommunication Development Advisory Group
from 19 to 23 June. It is an opportune time for us to meet and exchange. Your advice and guidance are invaluable. As Director of the BDT, I believe in listening and sharing ideas with the membership. I am committed that the BDT we are building is a BDT4Impact.
I hope to see many of you at TDAG. With regards to TDAG, let me use this opportunity to thank Blanca Gonzalez (Spain) and Inga Rimkevicine (Lithuania), our European Vice-chairs for their active engagement and support.
