Leaders TalkX: When Policy Meets Progress: Shaping a Fit for Future Digital World

When Policy Meets Progress: Navigating the Digital Future at WSIS Leaders Talks

The sixth Leaders Talks session at the WSIS forum, moderated by Ms. Timea Suto, focused on the intersection of policy and technological progress in shaping a digital world ready for the future. The session, titled “When Policy Meets Progress: Shaping a Fit for Future Digital World,” brought together a panel of experts to discuss how policy frameworks can support technological innovations and ensure their scalability and positive impact on society.

Ms. Sophie Maddens of the ITU opened the session by emphasizing the critical role of ICTs in society and the need for regulatory agility to address the rapid changes and opportunities in the digital landscape. She highlighted the convergence of industries and sectors and the importance of collaboration across regulatory bodies to foster an environment conducive to sustainable development.

The panel featured insights from various countries, each sharing their experiences and strategies in ICT development:

– H.E. Mr. Karim Bibi Triki from Algeria outlined the country’s significant progress in ICT infrastructure, attributing it to strong political will and an ambitious plan to connect two-thirds of households with fixed broadband by the year’s end.

– Mr. Philip Marnick from Bahrain discussed the importance of policies that encourage businesses to test and learn, and the need to educate the public on safe and effective internet usage.

– Ms. Ekaterine Imedadze from Georgia spoke about the regulator’s role in facilitating investment and secure networks, highlighting the strategic distribution of spectrum and support for IT industries.

– Mr. Javier Juárez Mojica from Mexico shared the country’s achievements in connectivity, including reduced telecommunication tariffs and increased mobile broadband lines. He emphasized the need to improve digital literacy and support small and medium enterprises.

– Mr. Steve Lang from the United States linked innovation and economic growth with secure and trustworthy ICTs, advocating for open data policies, cybersecurity partnerships, and multi-stakeholder engagement.

– Ms. Bernadette Lewis from the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization warned against one-size-fits-all policies and stressed the importance of evidence-based policy formulation that considers local cultural and societal needs.

The session underscored the importance of policy, regulation, education, and multi-stakeholder collaboration in ensuring that technological solutions are effective and inclusive. Panelists highlighted the varying stages of digital development across regions and the shared challenges in fostering digital literacy and inclusion. The discussion reaffirmed the transformative potential of technology when supported by robust policy frameworks and the critical role of governments and regulatory bodies in shaping the digital future, balancing innovation with consumer protection and equitable access to technology.

Ms. Timea Suto:
here. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to this sixth leaders talks. If you are not sure which session you are in, we are talking about enabling environment today. And the name of the session is when policy meets progress, shaping a fit for future digital world. Those of you who follow the WSIS Actionlines, this is so easy to remember Actionline 6, enabling environment. So what are we going to discuss today, we are going to discuss not only technological solutions, and how we can support them with financial and skilling and education, but also what is necessary in the policy world to make sure that our technological solutions, financial solutions work and can be scaled up and used for good. My name is Tima Ashutu. I will be your moderator today. I am a global digital policy lead at the International Chamber of Commerce. So for us in business, this is a very important Actionline and a very important discussion. I have a great panel of experts here with me today, I won’t introduce them, you see their names also online and with the session. And I also have a great expert from the ITU, Miss Sophie Maddens to kick us off. Sophie is the head of regulatory market environment division at the ITU. And we’ll give a few introductory and scene setting remarks to kick off our discussion. Sophie, over to you.

Ms. Sophie Maddens :
Thank you very much. Let me start by setting the context for this session when policy means progress. We’ve all seen that digital transformation is a journey. It started with technological innovation, digitalization and market liberalization since the dawn of mobile and the internet. And the role ICTs play in our modern society cannot be underestimated. Today, digital impact on all sectors, and we’ve heard it in previous sector in previous sessions as well, and all aspects of our lives. Think of e-health, e-agriculture, e-education, e-government. Think of the innovation opportunities for value creation, the skills needed, as we heard before, for adoption, and the infrastructure for access. So it is creating convergence between industries, between sectors, between the responsibilities of different regulators. So this enabling environment is critical. We’re dealing with a lot of changes and a lot of challenges and opportunities. As you mentioned, the changes in business and investment models, changes in financing, and that requires changes in the regulatory approaches. It requires us to be agile and innovative to be able to respond to those challenges. We see principles such as, of course, consumer protection, but also end-to-end process change, such as blockchain and AI across sectors, as you mentioned, finance and health. So what is essential in this fast changing digital world is that we need to be agile and flexible, but we also need to keep abreast of all the new approaches, the new tools. We need to speed up, stay up to speed, and streamline our regulatory approaches and processes, and of course, collaboration across the sectors. And that’s what we do as facilitator of the C6 action line, the enabling environment. We really look to foster that enabling environment conducive to that sustainable development and encourage the investment in infrastructure, encourage competitive markets. And at the end of the day, we always think about people, the impact on people’s lives. So as a facilitator, I’ll give you three points. We have our convening platforms, such as the Global Symposium for Regulators, which will take place in Kampala from the 1st to the 4th of July, where we bring together to raise awareness and really exchange on those innovative approaches and the key processes and the issues, the core issues. And one of the outcomes is our best practice guidelines, which we’ve had for over 20 years, which really form the basis of the golden rules of digital regulation. And this year, again, we’re looking at transformative technologies. Of course, we also have data, research, analysis and tools, again, to increase the awareness of the importance of making universal and meaningful connectivity a policy imperative. We need to give the necessary resources to get the data, analyze the data. If you don’t know where the problem is, you cannot fix it. So we need that data so that we can better address the new challenges in the digital ecosystem. And also, of course, we strengthen the human and institutional capacity to be able to keep up to date and ahead of the curve. Susan, this morning mentioned our digital transformation centers that are really looking to work with people to increase the basic digital skills. But we also have the ITU Academy training centers and the ITU Academy platform, where digital regulation is a core element of that training. So we have all those elements and happy to give further details. Thank you.

Ms. Timea Suto:
Thank you so much, Sophie, right on time as the bell rang. And also, that’s a reminder to all of us here, we have 30 minutes for this great session. And we have six panelists here with me who are eager to share their examples. So I ask all of you to kindly keep your two or three minutes time so we allow everybody the opportunity. And I will want to kick off our conversation with His Excellency, Mr. Karim Bibi-Trikki from Algeria, who is the minister at the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. And when we look at the indicators of how Algeria has performed over the years, we see that you have made significant progress in the development of ICT infrastructures. So I wonder, Your Excellency, if you could share with us what strategies have accelerated the development of telecoms infrastructures to promote broader digital inclusion, and a more equitable socioeconomic development in your country.

H.E. Mr. Karim Bibi Triki:
Your Excellency, thank you. Good morning, everyone. First of all, let me express my gratitude, again, for having us, inviting us and giving us the opportunity to exchange, to share with colleagues, especially 20 years after the WSIS kickoff. So I think is the right time. And it’s a great milestone step, I would say to evaluate what was done. And most importantly, to look forward on what is coming. I think for the past two decades, telecommunications in particular, and ICT in general, allowed us in many countries allowed us to narrow the distances between our fellow citizens and get them closer, especially in vast and big countries like Algeria, but allowing them also to connect with other people around the world. But we feel today that we are moving to a more connected world, a world where in addition of people and lives, we will need to connect machines and we will need to connect everything in a digital era and most importantly, a world where ICT becomes more than ever before, essential. So our mission also has evolved in the ICT and telecommunications sector. Our mission today is to enable every citizen, every business and every government entity to enable them to play an active role because this is our understanding of the information society, a society where every citizen again, every business, every government administration, entity or administration has an active role, is an actor in this society with the use of ICT. And delivering to this mission, we have set, I would say, an ambitious plan in Algeria. Just to give you back to what you mentioned, Madam, about some indicators, we started deploying fixed broadband in Algeria by 2003. Between 2003 until 2000, or till 2020, we reached connecting 3.5 million households with fixed broadband, which was like 40% penetration rate. But as I just mentioned, we cannot aspire to enable citizens if they’re not connected. So we have set an ambitious plan to connect two thirds of households with fixed broadband by the end of this year. And we are tracking well, we are almost there, 6 million households, which represents a penetration rate for fixed broadband above 66%. And of course, in addition to fixed broadband, we continue developing the coverage for mobile. And we continue leveraging different technologies, fixed broadband, wired, wireless, and mobile broadband, and satellite. Now, in addition to this, and I will take just a few seconds to get back to the question, I think a strong political will is still, from a policy perspective, a starting point that we need to rely on. Of course, from this strong political will, we can develop actionable strategies, we can develop roadmaps with all departments. And then we need just to be again, on top of the execution. But back to what I can share, political will is still needed from key decision makers at the highest level possible. And this is what allowed us, I think, in Algeria, to move forward and realize in four years after COVID, the equivalent of what was done 20 years ago. Thank you.

Ms. Timea Suto:
Thank you so much, Your Excellency. So we’re going to be on a world tour today. We have examples from all over the world. So that makes me to turn to my right here and to Bahrain to ask Mr. Philip Marnik, who is General Director for Telecommunications and Regulatory Authority, on how do you encourage in your country businesses to test ways that enable lessons to be learned and opportunities to be engaged? Because we also know that testing in an enabling environment is important to get the right solutions and successful applications.

Mr. Philip Marnick:
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. And thank you for inviting me to participate. We’re one of the countries where we’re quite lucky. Our coverage of both 5G and fiber is ubiquitous. We have 100% participation in the internet. So we are one of the people where technology has come along, and we’ve got the population to use it. The challenge for us is we’re in a world where people don’t understand. On the previous panel, someone talked about people needing to know how the internet routed traffic. We have to remember that the last invention that the majority of the population actually understood how it worked was the bicycle. Since then, people don’t understand how things work. And to a certain degree, they don’t care. What people want to do is actually use things. So the challenge for us, in most new technologies, is that the talk about what something will do is often far greater than what will actually be achieved. So for us, and also whether it fits to where it goes. So for us, one of the key things is how we use regulatory sandboxes, how we use regulatory policy, how we use a culture of innovation, to enable people not only just to come and test, and sometimes not be afraid of failure, but actually enable them to share the lessons of what went right and what went wrong. So enabling us to figure a way of actually the next things that come along will work even better, people will take them up and use them. Because at the end of the day, most of the applications people need aren’t provided by the network infrastructure, they’re provided over the top. And small businesses come, small businesses trial, governments come, governments trial, government makes things work. The second key challenge for us, then, is also understanding, training, development and knowledge. So for us, as I started, according to our statistics, 100% of all Bahrainis and people who are in Bahrain, use the internet. Now, does that mean that absolutely everyone knows what they’re doing on the internet and can properly engage? And this is the question and challenge that we come to all the time, of making sure that we can provide information to help people, for people to feel that actually using some of these services they may not see, they may not understand, is actually straightforward, easy, more general deliver. We hear about people who get worried, as again, was said in the previous panel, essentially about fraud, whether OTP comes with wrong messages, whether people can do something to our information. So for us, the two keys for this are actually making sure we have policies in place that enable us to protect people as they go online, to enable us to inform people about what things, to go into schools, to go in with elderly people, to talk to them about what things are doing, what things mean, how they can keep themselves safe, how they can understand what’s good, how they can understand what might be a risk, and how they can, once they understand the risk, how they can play around it. So for me, the key challenges for all of these things are having policies in place that encourage people to come, test, trial, not be afraid of failure, but be prepared to share the lessons learned so others can do it. And to make sure that we have policies to help people by developing, by training, by providing security, by understanding what goes on, so that when people participate in the internet, online, with digital, they feel less worried, and they’re willing to engage. Thank you.

Ms. Timea Suto:
Thank you so much. And thank you also for for backing in all those messages in just under three minutes. So on that on that line of building capacity and skills, I’m turning to to Georgia, and to Mr. Katarina Imadadze, who’s Commissioner at the Georgia National Communications Commission and outgoing chairperson of the EAP-REG-EU Eastern Partnership. I’ve heard you today talk about your own training as a physicist. So I want to ask you also about about your country and what are the key areas and activities you support in your country that can be brought up as examples of the enabling and facilitating capacity in the digital development sector? Many thanks. Thank you. Good. I guess already. No, not yet

Ms. Ekaterine Imedadze:
afternoon. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a pleasure to be here and have an opportunity to share the perspective of our tiny country with big ambitions, and also to be able to give you an ambition of from the region, how we see ourselves. And, of course, the term enabling, being enablers, and creating enabling environments is getting more and more actualized motto for all the regulators, especially in such an evolving, rapidly evolving sector as telecommunications. and digital, but when it comes to very specific activities, what the regulators should do, what can we do to make this really work and to be an enabler, but at the same time to make sure that the competition is preserved and balance is also preserved on the market, where the barriers of entry for telecommunication markets, we know that it remains still very high and to entering the digital market in general for the players, it’s quite high because there is an inequal distribution of market shares and also to ensure that the rights of the subscribers are preserved and they are well informed. So this is a really challenging task for the regulators and let me give you a flavor how in my country we see this enablement, how we can support more investment, more secure networks. So one thing we considered and I think that it’s becoming quite shared practice to make the spectrum more available. At WRC last year, we once again saw that one of the key enablers of investment in digital still remains the spectrum, which is a scarce resource. So to be very flexible and very strategically have the strategic vision about how to distribute spectrum, where it is possible to give the unlicensed spectrum, where to give incentives for the spectrum. Another important pillar we see ourselves as facilitators, as digital is really cross-cutting industry to serve as facilitators for other sectors and ask for example IT, how we can support growing industry in Georgia, in IT sector, because for them internet is one of the enablers to grow bigger in the business. So this is another where we try to create platforms. Another important topic is that we try to be also supportive with bigger strategic projects for the country, like becoming some kind of the technology hub. There, free exchange of internet again remains the most important and one last incentive that might be interesting for you to share as our agency is sharing both telecommunications and media capacities. When there is a broadband project in the country, rural broadband country, for example, we are supporting with information and with education about the internet, about the secure usage of online services and this kind of the overarching project that is not only the infrastructure enabler, but the soft skills enabler. This is a bit extended capacity for the regulator, but it might be also some good example how we can do our best to fit into this very demanding

Ms. Timea Suto:
enablers capacity. Thank you. Thank you so much Ekaterine. So now from Georgia we are hopping the ocean and moving over to Mexico and my next panelist is Mr. Javier Juarez Mojica, who is the acting chairman of the Federal Telecommunications Institute and I want to ask you how does Mexico’s IFT conceive the current connectivity challenge and what are you doing to

Mr. Javier Juárez Mojica:
address it in your country? Thank you very much. Good morning one and all. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here this morning. I’d like to thank the ITU for the invitation and it is an honor for me to share the podium with such esteemed colleagues. Now at the outset what I’d like to add is that the IFT, the Federal Telecommunication Institute, is a regulator which has constitutional autonomy and from this what this means is that as it is a public institute from the Mexican state, is that we don’t rely upon executive power and having this set up means that we can take decisions that are based upon strictly technical criteria and which are different from any economical policy interest at play. For example now the institute has to take decisions independent from any electoral decisions. So over the last 10 years what has happened in the IFT? Just to share with you that in 2013 when the IFT was set up we only had 40 out of every 100 homes which are connected to the broadband in Mexico but now we have 71 of every 100 homes that is connected to the broadband internet. Now turning to mobile broadband we have increased by approximately 27 million from 120 million with internet mobile access broadband lines and the tariffs is really important aspect which has been improved thanks to competition. In the last 10 years the reduction of telecommunication tariffs has been about 31 percent decrease whilst the increase by inflation has been at 72 percent. Of course there are challenges ahead we’d like to reach penetration and usage levels as such that our colleague from Bahrain shared with us but until we reach that we are still going to have a lot of work ahead and also I’d like to share that this path ahead what the ITU has defined as universal connectivity and meaningful. The idea behind this is to achieve additional literacy and to increase this 25 million Mexicans above six years of age don’t one and every two 52 percent don’t use the internet because they don’t know how to use it. So for us it’s really important to strengthen digital skills now of course we’d also like to bolster the use of the internet in small and medium enterprises which represents 72 percent of employment in Mexico. What we’re doing to achieve this is is providing a website where we’re going to provide all information to overcome digital illiteracy and of course with this to be based on collaborative regulation which the ITU is well aware of this is our guide in order to achieve these objectives that I mentioned. Thank you.

Ms. Timea Suto:
Muchisimas gracias. Thank you very much and we’re not going to go far from Mexico we’re just over to your neighbors in the in the United States. Thank you so much Sophie. To ask your colleagues if I can call you colleagues Mr. Steve Lang who’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Information and Communications Policy at the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. Ambassador Lang when we talk about enabling environment what is the connection between innovation and economic growth with secure and trustworthy ICTs? Thank you Tamia and thank

Mr. Steve Lang:
you for the opportunity to talk on this really super important topic. Over the last 20 years the Geneva Plan of Action has recognized that with this vision needed to prioritize an enabling environment to help facilitate the growth of ICTs particularly if we’re serious about leveraging ICTs to meet other objectives and since then the United States has supported work at the ITU and with other stakeholders to help make progress on Action Line C6. As leaders and policy makers we play a critical role in fostering and enabling policy environment that encourages innovation investment and competition while also working to close digital divides and promote inclusion accessibility security and trust. We must balance our role in facilitating policies and regulatory approaches that allow innovators to innovate and citizens to use technology freely to advance their livelihoods and to exercise their human rights while also mitigating the challenges and the inequities. The United States is committed to a global marketplace with digital and data policies that allow innovation to flourish and in the data economy this means advocating for open and trusted data flows pushing back against data localization and avoiding overly burdensome regulations. We must also support the security of this data through cyber security partnerships and advocacy that promotes trusted telecommunications suppliers. It’s essential that we create enabling environments that advance secure trustworthy ICT and networks secure and trustworthy providers for digital ecosystems underpin these efforts by ensuring safeguards are in place to protect human rights intellectual property and resiliency for business investments. The United States is working to advance trustworthy ICTs at home and abroad including through our foreign policy and partnerships around the world. For example together with other partners the United States launched the Blue Dot Network in April which is a multilateral initiative aimed at mobilizing private investment for quality infrastructure in low and middle income countries. The Blue Dot Network is a voluntary framework to certify infrastructure projects that meet internationally recognized standards for financial transparency economic environmental and social sustainability climate resilience and inclusiveness. Efforts like these demonstrate the role that governments can play towards facilitating innovation economic development and trustworthy ICTs and I can’t stress enough that fostering multi-stakeholder engagement is a key component of a good enabling environment and is crucial to building the trust that ultimately helps grow the digital economy and the information society and multi-stakeholder venues like the WSIS Forum are key in helping these discussions continue so that’s why I’m very grateful for this opportunity. Thank you. Thank you so much for that and what a

Ms. Timea Suto:
better way to conclude a world tour than to ask somebody who works with so many different regions and countries as our colleague Ms. Barnett-Lewis Secretary General at the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization. In that network you work with so many different countries that have very different local circumstances so I wanted to ask you about what are some of the unintended consequences that might arise if policies are not grounded in those realities of

Ms. Bernadette Lewis:
different local circumstances and policy opportunities. Great thank you for this opportunity to share some thoughts and some of our experiences within the Commonwealth and as you recognize the Commonwealth is a very diverse group and I have to emphasize the importance of evidence-based policy formulation and the importance of considering the local circumstances the culture you know the desires the needs the aspirations of the people because it’s not one size fits all and I want to speak to I give two examples certainly one of them is in we’ve had some excellent programs for girls and ICTs you see the girls moving ahead and the boys are lagging behind now so you really have to be very critical and really articulate the issues properly if we’re going to have solutions that have the desired impact and another one so we have policies and everybody should have access and we yes in many of our countries met the citizens have unfettered access and that’s wonderful and the they have the devices and the means that opens the portal to see what’s happening in the rest of the world in the universe the information of the ages becomes available to them but the policies don’t give them the tools they don’t give them the skills they do not give them the what they need to build their own societies and really take their countries forward and what is the end result a lot of people very very dissatisfied with their local circumstances they don’t have the tools to improve mass migration and we have oceans and rivers becoming graveyards as people try to escape their their situations so building people-centric inclusive and development-oriented societies it doesn’t happen by chance it starts with people who genuinely care for others and the policies for example must facilitate things like reuse of the technology it’s not when it’s done you throw it away or you upgrade and the opportunity to repair so that when it goes bad you’re not stuck with the device no money to buy a new one and also I believe in the design philosophy we should be considering affordability affordability of the devices so the CTO is committed to that vision of the world in which people are connected meaningfully to ICT networks and we understand the power of strategic partnerships and we are prepared to collaborate public awareness and education is an important first step and I am inviting all of our partners here to join us as we go from country to country speaking about what needs to be done how policy needs to be aligned to the local circumstances I thank you. Thank you so much for those last remarks and thank you to the entire

Ms. Timea Suto:
panel for being here with us today for the past 30 minutes I hope we give you a glimpse at least of what is happening in the world and you find some inspiring examples in everything that was shared we will try and provide a quick summary of all of this on Thursday at the final session summing up all the leaders talks so I invite you to join us there and with that thank you everybody we’ve already had our picture taken so we can give the floor to the next panel and we’ll catch you around in the next couple of days thanks everyone.