Agenda

•Deniz Susar’s main work areas include e-government, internet governance, smart cities, artificial intelligence, ICT indicators and in general using ICTs for sustainable development in general. 
•He takes active role in preparation of annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meetings and its inter-sessional work. He also leads UN DESA activities on World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). 
•He coordinates the work on smart cities with the Local Online Service Index (LOSI) as part of the United Nations E-Government Survey. 
•He represents UN DESA in the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development and works on ICT indicators to track progress in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
•Deniz Susar holds a Master Degree on International Political Economy and Development from Fordham University, New York, and a Computer Engineering degree from the Bogazici University of Istanbul. 

Mr. Aquaro has more than 25 years of experience on ICT in public affairs, has been working for private sector and for international organizations. He holds a Master Degree (Laurea Magistrale) in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bari, Italy. In 2010 he was appointed as Chief of E-Government Branch DPADM, UN-DESA. Before joining the United Nations, for 10 years he was appointed as CEO of Formit Servizi SpA, an Italian corporate specialized in consulting for PAs, project management, monitoring and evaluation of national and international e-government programmes. As CEO of Formit Servizi, and in partnership with the Department of Informatics and Automation of the Faculty of Engineering of the Roma Tre University, and with IBM Italia SpA, Mr. Aquaro established and co-chaired, the first and the second Edition of the “Second Level Master's Degree in IT Governance: Development, Management and Monitoring”. In that period, he also served as executive officer of the Formit Foundation for Technology Migration and Research, an international NGO in consultative status with ECOSOC. In 2007 Mr. Aquaro founded and chaired for 3 years, CARMA - a multistakeholder Scientific Research Consortium on Basel II Bank Risk Management e-Services, in supporting SMEs in agriculture and agroindustry. The Consortium was co-financed by European Commission and was run in partnership with academia, private sector and local government.

Through her dedicated 20 years of hard work in the information technology (IT) and e-government sectors, Al Hammadi was distinguished with a high level of knowledge of IT strategies, business models, local culture, latest technical trends, and change in the organizational structure. Al Hammadi graduated from Qatar Leadership Centre (QLC) Program in 2015, and HEC-CTO Program in 2019. She has an MA in Executive Business Administration and a BA in Computer Science from the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, and she is currently studying for her PhD on the Impact of the Use of IT in Digital Government (Qatar as a Case). During her career, she held various leadership positions in IT departments across different government agencies, including the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and accomplished several strategic projects in the country. Al Hammadi has also been an active board member of Qatar National Broadband Network (Qnbn), in addition to taking part in several high-profile committees, such as the e-Government Steering Committee. She is also a member of other internal ministry-level committees.

​Robert Lewis-Lettington is Chief of the Land, Housing and Shelter Section at UN-Habitat. He is a lawyer by training and has worked in both public and private international law for more than twenty years. Robert’s principal areas of expertise are international institutions and processes, human rights and humanitarian law, environmental law, science and technology law, digital governance and urban development. Robert is also an experienced programme and project manager having worked in most geographic regions and a large number of countries.  Robert was formerly the Vice Chair of the International Telecommunication Union’s Focus Group on ‘Data Processing and Management to support the Internet of Things and Smart Cities & Communities.’ He is also a Salzburg Global Fellow in Law and Technology, and a member of the International Law Association (and its study group on the Role of Cities in International Law). 

Mythili Menon works as Project Officer at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the domain of standardization for new and emerging technologies. She serves as the Advisor of the ITU/WMO/UNEP Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Natural Disaster Management (FG-AI4NDM) and the ITU/FAO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) for Digital Agriculture (FG-AI4A). Mythili possesses a strong background in environmental science, standardization, and the policy frameworks underlying sustainable development issues. Between 2015-2017, she worked for the ITU-T Study Group 20 on ‘Internet of Things and Smart Cities and Communities’ and ITU-T Study Group 5 on ‘Environment, Climate Change, and Circular Economy’. Previously, she worked as the Standardization Lead at Mandat International for various EU Horizon 2020 projects. Mythili holds a Masters in ‘Standardization, Social Regulation and Sustainable Development’ from the University of Geneva. She completed her Bachelors in ‘Environmental Science and Chemistry’ from University College Utrecht in the Netherlands. The areas relating to the sustainable development goals, artificial intelligence, blockchain, intelligent transport systems, disaster management, data management, smart cities, and IoT are of enduring interest to her and she has co-authored several publications on these subjects.

Juan Carlos Parada Gallardo is a Senior Advisor to the High District ICT Council of Bogotá D.C., he is a consultant with more than 10 years of experience on issues related to ICT and telecommunications regulation, personal data protection, design and implementation of public policy on ICT.

 
Mr. Parada is a co-author of the Colombian Digital Government Manual and currently is responsible for the formulation process of the Smart Territory Policy of Bogotá, Colombia.
 
Juan Carlos Parada Gallardo holds a Law Degree from the Externado University of Colombia, where he also completed a postgraduate study in Public Law, Political and Sociology Science. Mr. Parada holds a Master Degree in Telecommunications and ICT Law from the Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain.

Mr. Martin has worked in private and public sectors (telecommunications, urban traffic control systems, pollution control systems, tax management, e-government, public administrations reform plans, Tourism sector, Digital Transformation, Cibersecurity) to achieve innovative organizations through governance, cooperation, and intensive use of ICT.

Specialties: e-Government, Digital Transformation, information systems, tax management, urban traffic control systems, pollution control systems, telecommunications, information society, innovation, and public administration reform strategy, Tourism Innovation, and technology.

Eng. Abdulrahman Al Mutairi is currently Vice Governor of Strategy and International Cooperation at Digital Government Authority in Saudi Arabia. For the last three years, he held the same position within Yesser – E-Government program. He leads the creation of new authority with a powerful mandate to empower the digital government sector. He is the lead strategist in the newly formed digital government strategy, a five-year plan to empower and establish solid and robust digital government practices nationwide.

Eng. Almutairi is a significant contributor in creating the national transform program and vision 2030, working in different vision2030 priorities agenda with leading government agencies. He held the Deputy Minister of Social development position and helped restructure four main goals for social development goals related to vision2030. His extensive experience in ecosystem design and implementation had help major sector transformation and reformation endeavors.

Eng. Almutairi has a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI). He also holds a Certification of Management Excellence (CME) from Harvard Business School and attended many executive education courses with leading business schools across the globe.

Dr. Siope Vakataki ‘Ofa is an Economic Affairs Officer of the ICT and Development Section, in the ICT and Disaster Risk Reduction Division of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Dr. ‘Ofa leads the implementation of the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway (AP-IS) initiative which coordinates regional cooperation between governments, private sectors, and other stakeholders on identifying digital connectivity challenges and opportunities for bridging the digital divide. He is the author of the book, “Telecommunications Regulatory Reform in Small Island Developing States: The Impact of WTO's Telecommunications Commitment”, several book chapters and peer-reviewed academic journal articles on telecommunications policy and international trade, respectively.

Demetrios Sarantis is Postdoctoral Fellow at UNU-EGOV. Demetrios graduated in Electrical and Computer Engineering by the National Technical University of Athens, holds a MSc in Operational Research and Information Systems from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PhD in e-Government from the National Technical University of Athens. He has been employed in software industry and in the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT), deploying and managing information systems and services and supporting database information infrastructures. He has also worked as researcher in e-Government Unit in Decision Systems Laboratory of School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), participating in national and international research projects, in the areas of Government Transformation, Interoperability Frameworks, e-Participation, e-Government, Process Modelling and Re-engineering in Public Sector. He has worked as researcher in Yale University (USA) in the area of Ontology Data Modelling in Biomedicine. His current research interests are e-Government Assessment, Emerging Technologies in Government, Information Systems Interoperability and Smart Cities.