Dr Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava took office as Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on 1 January 2023.
With more than 30 years in telecommunications, including over 20 years in ITU’s Development Sector, Dr Zavazava has promoted and implemented impactful information and communication technology projects around the world.
Prior to his election as BDT Director, he served as ITU’s Chief of Partnerships for Digital Development, overseeing development-related projects, strategic partnerships, and resource mobilization between 2019 and 2022, while launching new initiatives that have boosted the engagement of industry, private-sector and academia members in ITU’s work.

Ms Apolonija Oblak Flander was appointed Director-General of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia in April 2024.

Ms Apolonija Oblak Flander has been employed at the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia for 25 years. In 2001, she became Head of the Demographic Statistics Section and focused on population censuses and demographic analysis. Between 2014 to 2020, as the Head of the Transport, Tourism and Information Society Statistics Section, she focused on developing tourism, transport and ICT statistics and on introducing new data collection methods and acquiring new (alternative) data sources for official statistics. In 2021 she was appointed Director of Environmental Statistics and in 2023 Acting Director-General.

Ms Apolonija Oblak Flander is an active member of the European Statistical System Committee, She is the Chair of the OECD Working Party on Tourism Statistics and the ITF Transport Statistics Working Group. She is the Vice-Chair of the Bureau of the UN Statistical Commission and the member of the Bureau of the UNECE Conference of European Statisticians.

She is also the member of the Working Group of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for Monitoring South East Europe Strategy 2030, South East Europe Statistical Authorities Network and numerous national committees and working groups related to tourism.

She holds a master’s degree in social and political geography. In her master’s thesis, she studied national and ethnic minorities.

Professor Paul Cheung is the Director of the Asia Competitiveness Institute, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He leads a team of researchers assessing Asia’s socioeconomic development. His latest book ‘Cross-Border Data Flows: Connecting the Digital Economies in ASEAN and Beyond’ was published in 2024 by Routledge.

Professor Cheung was previously the Chief Statistician of Singapore and the Director of the United Nations Statistics Division. In Singapore, he was instrumental in establishing an innovative data architecture built on registers, data exchanges, and integrated information systems. The 2000 census made full use of population and business registers and deployed an internet-based data collection protocol.

At the United Nations, he facilitated the development of the global statistical system. He supervised a programme of work that included the development of international statistical standards, the dissemination of global statistical data, and the development of national statistical systems. He was also responsible for implementing UN mandates on geospatial data and analytics. He established an inter-governmental platform in 2011 on Global Geospatial Information Management (GGIM).

 

Mr Bernard Banda is currently Director for Economic Regulation and Consumer Protection at the Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority, the regulator of Information and Communication Technologies in Zambia. He is also the Chair of the Expert Group of Telecommunication Indicators at the International Telecommunications Union. Bernard has extensive experience in research design and implementation, policy analysis and data analytics. In the last few years, he has led several national demand and supply side surveys in Zambia and is actively involved in a number of regional initiatives in Africa.

Mr Alvaro Diez Soto is Head of Unit at Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, where he oversees the development and publication of statistics on digitalisation, science, and technology. With a background in computer engineering, he previously held various leadership roles in Eurostat’s IT units dedicated to statistical production. Prior to joining the European Commission in 2011, he worked for several years in the private IT sector.

Hasnae Fdhil has been Director of Cooperation and Communication at the High Commission for Planning of Morocco since May 2018. She has extensive experience in designing and managing cooperation projects that support the production, analysis, and dissemination of official statistics in Morocco. Her expertise also includes resource mobilization to advance statistical modernization. She has served as a member of several national strategic statistical committees and, at the international level, was a member of the IAOS Executive Committee (2017–2020) and of the Advisory Board of the Statistical Journal of the IAOS (2020–2021).

Sonia Livingstone OBE FBA is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. She has published 21 books on media audiences, children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment. Since founding the EC-funded “EU Kids Online” research network, and Global Kids Online (with UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti), she has advised the Council of Europe, European Commission, European Parliament, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, OECD, ITU and UNICEF. She is currently leading the Digital Futures for Children centre at LSE with the 5Rights Foundation. See www.sonialivingstone.net

Oliver Lysaght works in UNITAR SCYCLE, having been involved in the drafting of the third edition of the E-waste Statistics Guidelines in 2024. He is leading activities to test the proposed changes in the guidelines, including through the 2025 International Workshop Series on E-waste Statistics being ran in partnership with UNEP as part of the project ‘Enhancing Countries’ Capacities for Measuring Progress on the transition towards a Circular Economy’.

Trevor Monroe is a Senior Program Manager with the Development Data Group at the World Bank. Trevor leads programs that put Data and AI to work for development. Currently, Trevor manages a program under the Global Data Facility to help countries develop capacity to use Mobile Phone Data for Policy and Official statistics.

 

As a trailblazer in the field of ICT statistics, Ms Linah Ngumba spearheads this sector at the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the National Statistics Office (NSO). She handles ICT-related research and analysis in the organization. Ms Ngumba was instrumental in establishing the ICT statistics division, introducing the Economic Survey report, orchestrating ICT enterprise and public institution surveys, and integrating an ICT module in the integrated household budget surveys and the 2019 Population and Household Census. Currently, she chairs the International Telecommunication Union’s Expert Group on ICT Household Indicators. Ms Ngumba hold master’s degrees in the fields of Communications Management and Economics, in addition to her bachelor’s degree in economics and Statistics.

Ms Anu Peltola, Director of UNCTAD Statistics, oversees the statistical work of the UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), releasing official statistics and analytical datasets on trade and development for almost all countries globally at the UNCTADstat Data Centre. UNCTAD Statistics develops new indicators on productive capacities and inclusive growth to measure progress, releases guidance and tools e.g., on measuring gender equality in trade and publishes Data Insights in its SDG Pulse and UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics. UNCTAD is the custodian agency of nine SDG indicators on international trade, investment, illicit finance, south-south cooperation, and enterprise sustainability, and supports countries in measuring them. Ms Peltola co-leads with UNDESA and UNDP a UN Secretary-General’s high-level expert group on Beyond GDP to Value What Counts, and she coordinated a UN effort to cost the achievement of sustainable development. Ms Peltola serves as the co-chair of the Committee of Chief Statisticians of the UN System. Prior to joining UNCTAD, she worked at the UNECE Statistical Division and started her career at Statistics Finland.

 

David Rausis is a member of the Data, Analytics and Statistics Section at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). He is responsible for overseeing the Section’s crime statistics portfolio. In this role, he leads the global data collection on crime and criminal justice statistics, contributes to the development of analytical briefs on crime trends and patterns, and supports the development and implementation of international methodological frameworks and guidelines, including on the measurement of cybercrime.

Natalia Vicente is Vice President of Public Affairs at GSOA, where she works closely with the Director General and the CEOs of GSOA Member companies to drive forward high-level advocacy for the satellite communications sector. Specifically, Natalia focusses on the Development Agenda working with international organisations to ensure nation states benefit from the value of leveraging available satellite communications services to bridge digital, education and health divides.

Natalia is a Co-Chair of the EQUALS Access Coalition. Natalia has over a decade of experience in the digital sector, focusing on public policy, government relations and building international partnerships.

Natalia is a qualified lawyer with an LLM from the University Autonoma of Madrid and holds a Master of Business Administration specialised in Marketing. She is a Spanish national, lives in Brussels and speaks 4 languages.