Achieving universal and meaningful digital connectivity —the possibility for everyone to enjoy a safe, satisfying, enriching, productive and affordable online experience— is key for enabling digital transformation and meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.
As part of the implementation of the UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, the International Telecommunication Union, the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology and their partners, have established a set of aspirational targets for 2030 to help prioritize interventions, monitor progress, evaluate policy effectiveness, and galvanize efforts around achieving universal and meaningful connectivity by the end of the decade.
Targets Background document Press release Trello board
Building on this groundwork, ITU and the European Commission have designed the project “Promoting and measuring universal and meaningful digital connectivity”. The project will run run until 2026, with a budget of 3 million euros, funded by the European Union.
The project advocates for and promotes UMC as a policy imperative. It enhances the statistical capacity of countries to measure the multiple aspects of UMC in more timely, accurate and granular level. It identifies good practices and policy recommendations to accelerate progress towards UMC. With the UMC Dashboard and other tools, the project tracks and reports progress towards the UMC targets.
