Organised by ITU, the UN specialised agency for information and communication technologies (ICT), the event, held in the next week, is hosted by the Government of Botswana and is expected to attract some 400 participants.
WTIS-2016 will bring together ICT ministers, heads of national telecom/ICT regulatory authorities and national statistical offices, heads of international organisations, chief executive officers of private sector companies, lead academics and ICT data producers and analysts from around the world.
The symposium will feature high-level debates, including a Ministerial Roundtable and a Leaders’ Dialogue. The Ministerial Roundtable will examine innovative policies on how to deliver the benefits of ICTs to all citizens and to ensure that no one is left behind. It will further debate the opportunities of ICTs to accelerate progress towards the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development. The Leaders’ Dialogue will discuss the structural impact of ICTs in such areas as economic growth, employment and security, and address data needs and new data sources.
During WTIS-2016, ITU will release its annual flagship statistics publication, the Measuring the Information Society Report which features the ICT Development Index (IDI), the global benchmarking tool that tracks countries’ progress in the development of their information societies. The IDI 2016 will rank around 175 economies globally based on official, internationally comparable statistics. A press conference will take place after the launch of the Measuring the Information Society Report and the IDI, on Tuesday 22 November 2016.
ITU is the leading United Nations agency for information and communication technologies, driving innovation in ICTs together with 193 Member States and a membership of over 700 private sector entities and academic institutions.
