Members of the media,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to thank you for coming here this afternoon. It is a tremendous honour to have been elected as the 19th Secretary-General of the ITU this morning, and I look forward to taking office on 1 January 2015. I believe that my election demonstrates that the ITU membership is generally satisfied with the direction ITU has been taking over the past years, as well as with the competency and professionalism of the management team – which I have already been a part of for 16 years now. With my previous experience as Director of the Standardization Bureau, and then as Deputy Secretary-General, I am looking forward to fulfilling the trust and responsibility that membership has placed in me. Here at PP-14 in Busan, once the rest of the elections are completed, early next week, the main task facing membership is to approve Strategic and Financial Plans for the Union for the period from 2016 to 2019 – these are the main outcomes of the Conference. It will then be our job over the next four years – as the management and staff of the ITU – to implement the plans that membership has approved here in Korea. I will be honoured to play my part in helping to achieve the Connect 2020 ICT targets which are set out in the Strategic Plan, and which highlight the many ways that ICTs can make the world a better place – particularly for developing countries, which can use technology to achieve better results in education, health care, environmental sustainability, agricultural management, and many other areas. The Connect 2020 targets have been elucidated because the ICT community still faces many major challenges, in spite of the succeses that have already been achieved. These include: The need to reach marginalized communities, including the poor, the disabled, women and children, and physically remote settlements; The need for new infrastructure investment in areas like fixed and mobile broadband; The need to have confidence in using new ICT services; and Evolving market models such as over-the-top (OTT) players.
It will be my job to help the community that ITU serves to best meet these challenges. When we get back to work after the end-of-year holidays, my first task will be to convene the new management team, which will include two new and two re-elected officials, as well as myself. We need to quickly establish a good working relationship between the five of us for the coming four years – and we need to establish a common vision and a common action plan to lead the Union, based on the Strategic and Financial Plans approved by PP-14. Over the coming weeks, as Secretary-General Elect, I will continue to support the Secretary-General, Dr Hamadoun Touré, as he completes his mandate ahead of the transition to the new team at the end of the year, and I will be listening closely to membership as they chart the future course of the Union for the next four years and beyond. I will also be looking at other ways of engaging with membership and potential new members – and I am particularly interested in seeing what we can do for small and medium enterprises, as well as looking at ways we can broaden our existing membership, and in particular academia. Membership has a lot to offer us, and we have a lot to offer membership. Let me therefore end these brief remarks here, and open up the floor to questions.
Thank you for your attention.
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