2017•06•19     Geneva

UNU-EGOV participated, once more, in the World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS) 2017, which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, between 12-16 June. The WSIS Forum represents the world’s largest annual gathering of the “ICT for development” community and is a global multi-stakeholder platform facilitating the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines for advancing sustainable development. The Forum is co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD, in close collaboration with all WSIS Action Line co-/facilitators and other UN organizations, and provides an opportunity for information exchange, knowledge creation and sharing of best practices, while identifying emerging trends and fostering partnerships, taking into account the evolving Information and Knowledge Societies.

The first event in which the Operating Unit participated was the session regarding Action Line C7 – E-government: Eradicating Poverty and Promoting Prosperity through Digital Government. The Head of UNU-EGOV Luís Soares Barbosa, was one of the session panellists and specifically covered the theme Evaluating EGOV: potential and impact. The facilitation meeting itself focused focused more broadly on how e-Government can help eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a changing world by providing a platform for participants to 1) exchange experiences and lessons on the role of digital government for eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity; 2) identify priority areas for implementation within the Action Lines;  3)  exchange  ideas  in  particular  on  how  to maximize the role and impact of public authorities in putting ICT at the service of poor; 4) how can the governments and global community better measure digital government development; and 5) explore synergies among different stakeholders for more effective knowledge sharing and collaboration in the implementation process.

The second event in which UNU-EGOV participated was the workshop jointly organized with ARCTEL-CPLP (Association of Communications and Telecommunications Regulators of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries), which focused on two main topics: EGOV for Sustainable Development (1) and Social Innovation through ICT: the SMART Experiments (2). The workshop was titled “ICT-driven innovation and its impact on smart governance and finance management systems” and had as panellists, from UNU-EGOV, Ibrahim Rohman and Nuno Lopes, together with Filipe Batista, Executive Secretary of ARCTEL-CPLP.

The recording of both sessions are available here.

Luís Soares Barbosa (top) during the Action Line C7 session, and Ibrahim Rohman and Nuno Lopes (bottom) during the workshop.

Slides – Luís Soares Barbosa