IGF 2020 - Day 5 - OF33 WSIS Action Lines achieving the SDGs: WSIS Forum 2021 OCP

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

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>> The world summit on the information society forum, the Wiz's action lines for accessing sustainable development.  The forum was held in a virtual format which started on the 22nd of June onwards culminating in June.  This is transformation in global partnerships.  The access lines for achieving goals.  The forum has had great balance of participation with over 800 panelists.  The final week of the forum was inaugurated with participation from partner UN agencies.  The 18 Wayneers were awarded for achievements on WSIS outcomes.  Interesting high level dialogues brought together a wide array of leaders to discuss pivotal issues with ICTs with a critical driver for achieving goals.  This year is special.  This is since the creation of the world summit.  This period has seen a remark automobile growth on the use of technologies and transforming people's lives.  2020 was also an opportunity for partnerships to be forged and valuable tools and initiatives to be launched.  The full list of official WSIS form reports are available in the WSIS form 2020 website.  There have been 11 high level policy sessions with over 100 panelists including ministers, deputy ministers, seen officials, heads of UN, as well as private and academia heads.  Regional support from the WSIS UN in regional commission, the form was also shown in their activities and implementing the WSIS action lines for the sustainable goals.  It had 80 delegates and ministers who bridged the divide.  The WSIS action line has been successful.  Conducted by the united nags action lines.  Then 10 having the WSIS action lines and strengthen the implementation process.  The open consummation process for the WSIS form 2021 was officially launched.  We look forward to receiving your submissions.  We would like to deeply thank our sponsors and partners who made this possible.  We thank the strong support for the entire WSIS community for their active engagement for the process.  We look forward to your contributions.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you.  It is now time for us to start our first virtual meeting of the WSIS forum 2021 open consultative process.  As you just saw, we launched the process during the WSIS forum 2020 final week in September.  Since then, we have been receiving inputs from all of you.  Basically as you all know, we will be believe name on the program and the format of the WSIS format ever year through this open consolidated process by engaging with all the stakeholders.  And, of course, you know, for the format, we can do so many things in this new virtual way that we have to conduct our meetings.  So please don't participate actively.  Today you will hear from the core organizers.  ITU UNESCO and I would like to invite the chief of SPM.  Yushi, please, if you can welcome all participants.

>> YUSHI:  Good afternoon, good evening and good morning and I would like to thank our co‑host for having this meeting together.

As you know, this forum is multi‑stakeholder approach and we have been organizing this forum a long time since.  Last year, we separated this 15 years since the second face of the WSIS forum.  I thank the team and co‑hosts and this record breaking success.  We wish to continue our efforts.  We have announced a date for 2021.  We are still in a difficult situation, but this WSIS, the information society breaks this situation.  I hope we'll have even better and even farther improve the WSIS forum next year with all efforts.  We still simply welcome our co‑hosts and looking forward to the fast open consultation.  It's integration process for this year.  Thank you.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much, Yushi.  We'll hear more about the plans from Catalin.  Please the floor is yours.

>> CATALIN:  Thank you very much.  It's a great pleasure to welcome all of you to the first virtual meeting of the WSIS forum 2021.  Let me begin by thanking our co‑organizer and more than 30 UN in agencies facilitating this action lines for their support and collaboration.  This sets a good example of fostering digital transformation and global partnership for SDG achievements.  We have successfully organized the form with impactful and productive collaboration.  The WSIS form proves to be a successful platform for discussion and showing of best practices in the use of ICPs as a means their STGs.  The merit will of this form lies in its truly inclusive and multi‑stakeholders with unique open consultation process.  The agenda in the program of the WSIS forum is crowd sourcing with active engagement of all stakeholders.  This process is a tremendous opportunity for everyone to make their voice heard.  The growth and success of the WSIS forum are made possible thanks to the contribution of your valuable inputs to the open consultation process.  This year, this WSIS forum was held in a completely different format and got a lot of interest worldwide with cumulative attendance of over 15,000 attendees from around 150 countries who took part in more than 160 repo segs with 840 different speakers.  The next forum that will be held on 17 to 21st of May 2021 will be continuing to bring more dynamic and interactive session.  We have also taken into consideration all your suggests that were submitted to us during this forum 2020 for the automatic aspects that might be included in this business forum 2021.

We are also inviting you to take up the 5050 challenge to insure gender, neutral participation of the business form 2021.  This year, forum was a great experience as we had a well balance participation in terms of gender, regions and type of stakeholder.  Our discussion today will check the part towards the successful voices forum 2021.  We count on your anticipation in this meeting and looking forward to your contributions.  The success of this forum is also dependent on the contributions to the business funding trust.  So we look forward to your generous contributions that will (inaudible) you of the victory that partnership (inaudible).  Thank you for strengthening the multi‑stakeholder and (inaudible) spirit of the business forum by participating and engaging in this open consultation process.  I wish you all a very productive year.  Thank you.  Over to you.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much, Catalin.  Just to let everybody know this workshop is being broadcasts through YouTube.  There are people following us through YouTube as well and we have over 50 participants with us right now.

It's my great pleasure to invite co‑organizers as well.  So Mr. Joe who is the vocal point of UNESCO.  The floor is yours.

>> JOE:  Good morning and good afternoon.  Thank you for everyone out there.  But it's clear that something interesting is happening.  At times we will tell you we saw a record number of participants.  Next year, you may be exchanging your ideas with us far broader reach than before.  And the impact and opportunities to particularly grade in terms of potential new crab it ‑‑ collaborative and that might not normally be able to do.  For instance, get visas and come to a hosted session.  And the value of a virtual host holds true as well for reaching persons with disabilities indigenous and other minorities.  In a fair and representative and ultimately very enriching way.  We have seen participation this year.  Among them, I believe 7,000 women participants from so many countries in 2020 meaning not just the ones where equality seemed closest and being achieved, the program and agenda was 100% crowd source.  And all we need to point to is equality of the outcomes and the seconds to both see and to demonstrate further for our partners and how enriching this process is.  Of course we would like to see that moment carried first to organizing and carrying next year with or without COVID.  Of course at UNESCO, we welcome your voice in each of our actions.  I won't go through them all.  But they're important and developing for the specific times.  We're very pleased to work with you and your ideas that you raise them with us.  Remember that UNESCO and the UN are a secretariat, we are secretaries to serve.  Of course if you are able to choose as well as new (inaudible) to multi‑stakeholder frameworks and praise this opportunity and make it a reality.  I can adjust to the great value in Geneva and also to the colleague at every working (inaudible) so few, but so committed.  So I joined them.  It's a privilege as co‑organizers thank you for your attendance and your spirit going forward.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much, Joe.  UNESCO is a very crucial process.  Thank you very much to you and all your colleagues who collaborate so well with all the different agencies.  We all work together as a UN family to implement the action line.  So thank you very much.

We will now move to scarlet.  Good morning, scar letter and (inaudible) is also the chair of the group this year.  Please go ahead, scarlet.  The floor is yours.

>> SCARLET:  First of all, welcome to all that have joined us from all over the world.  This type of coldness of this new meetings is planning the opportunity for more team to join us from different geographies which was not possible in the past.  So thank you for taking time of your busy days to join us today.

Again, as always it's very honored to be sharing co‑organizing roles with the other co‑organizers.  So of WSIS forum.  This year has been special for us not only because we have been hit with this completely unprecedented situation of the pandemic, which has actually forced us to go more online than we had in the past, but also because it has highlighted a lot of the urgency in terms of the agenda that we have to ‑‑ we have been tasked with pushing toward in terms of developing the digital economy and leveraging opportunities of digitalization for development and in particular this year to help countries develop resilience to shocks such as what has been experienced with the pandemic.

As you know, it has a mandate to work on trade and economic issues in terms of the WSIS process, we are in particular working with promoting e‑Commerce and digital economy and we are very grateful to be sharing co‑facilitator duties with the universal postal union and with international trace center E‑business of the WSIS process C7.  So I would just like to recognize them now because this year and especially the universal postal union have been very, very active in trying to push forward the increasingly important role of eBusiness in development in this year.  As you know again, not only are we working with process within our own working program.  We have fairly new intergovernmental group of experts on e‑Commerce and the digital economy which has met again this year virtually.  And again, it just ‑‑ it was attended in an unprecedented manner by so many people and so many geographies and from different areas.  It was true multi‑stakeholder participation in the image of this WSIS forum.  Just highlighting that the challenges we've facing in order to bring out the been fits of digitalization for all requires the participation of all.  We also manage to push forward our agenda in other ways despite the physical shut down of facilities in Geneva where we're based.  You might remember, that is also acting as secretariat for the commission of science and technology for development, which is following up on WSIS implementation.  We were able to meet virtually in June and this has science technology and innovation are increasingly important in these times.  We need to make sure that we really harness those efforts in science technology and innovation to address the crisis we're facing with COVID‑19.  And I would invite you.  I will share a link later on the chat to read the policy brief that (inaudible) put out referring to these issues discussed by the commission on science and technology for development.  You might also know that early during the face of the pandemic this year in April, we had e‑Commerce week virtually.  That also highlighted all these issues and followed the multi‑stakeholder model.  And so many rich discussions were held.  I will also share the link to all the online resources that have ‑‑ that are available still now for everyone to look at.  I would also like to say in terms of our ‑‑ of the work on e‑Commerce, despite the slow down and despite the challenges from all countries and stakeholders, we still have managed to publish for E*Trade for all readiness assessments which only highlights how important ‑‑ the importance that especially developing countries are trying to become better ready to harness digitalization and to develop their readiness for e‑Commerce in the digital economy because they realize this has been a lifeline for many sectors, many struggling sectors this past few months.

As mentioned, (inaudible) has been selected as chair of the UN group on the information society starting this April.  We'll be fulfilling those duties at least until April next year when the next WSIS forum takes place.  And during this time and looking at the circumstances, we have tried to animate an online dialogue on how digitalization is not only helping us address the issues raised by the pandemic, but also how it can help us accelerate process towards the achievement of the SDGs.  As you know, this has been a decade of faction and we're far from our stated objectives in development.  And this year has only served to press the need to accelerate progress in this regard.  So the heads of United Nations agencies that form Ungus have provided some thoughts in terms of how we can leverage digitalization to accelerate progress in the decade of action and face the consequences, the impact of COVID‑19.  The dialogue is being hosted right now in the website and I will also share the link to that.  It has benefit from 22 contributions from different parts of the UN system and the pieces have been published from June to October and hopefully stakeholders will find separation on some of the ideas that have been put forward by these thought leaders and bring them to the next WSIS forum for discussion and to continue the dialogue also with stakeholders.

Finally, I would like to say that on tad is a very active member of the partnership on measuring ICT for development which has contributed every year to the WSIS forum in terms of bringing forward the issues of data for measuring ICT for SEGs.  We have presented recently the ICT indicators that could be served to help compliment the measurement of progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.  But also this year, partners have been faced with increasing requests and evident needs of countries that have been ‑‑ have grown because of the impact of COVID and national statistical offices are the usual producers of official statistics on ICT are faced with many, many obstacles in terms of data collection and production.  Yet, this sort of information is now crucial to be able to measure not only progress, but also the effectiveness of whatever policies we put in place now to try and alleviate the impact of COVID‑19.  So I would just like to point out that we would welcome your contributions in terms of advancing the issue of needing better data, better statistics on ICT for development.

And finally, I would just like to close my remarks saying that if something has come out the past few months, it's the evidence that the multi‑lateral and the multi‑stakeholder model is essential to tackle the situation and the challenges we're facing.  So I invite you to help make this multi‑stakeholder and multi‑lateral model alive and even fill it with more purpose and more meaning and give all your contributions because we are all ears here.  Thank you very much.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much, scarlet and thank you for a strong collaboration on the WSIS process.  We are working together on several aspects including the partnership when measuring ICTs for development.  So thank you very much.  Colleagues, UNDP could not join us today because it's very early for our new colleagues.  So but they have expressed their full collaboration and support as organizers to the WSIS process.

So we have a very sharp presentation to update you about a few ‑‑ about a few things that have been planned for the WSIS forum.  And we will take you through this presentation very quickly and then we will open the floor for your commands.  Please raise your hands as if when you have a question and we will take it from there.

So the WSIS forum, is in collaboration with the several UN agencies more than 30 actually who work with us hand in hand to implement the WSIS action lines and align them with the Sustainable Development Goals.  So since 2015, we have been making sure that the WSIS process has an impact on the sustainable development goals and that we are contributing towards their achievement.  As you all know, the dates for the WSIS forum 2021, 17 to 21st of May and basically the dates are decided based on the reservations we have made out here in Geneva for the spaces which are very difficult to get.  But right now, looking at the COVID situation, we are tracking it very closely.  We are exploring different formats on how we would do the WSIS forum.  Definitely you all appreciated the virtual format that we adapted to this year.  So we will be looking forward to more inputs from you on how we could improve, but right now, we will plan ‑‑ we will start with our planning of the WSIS forum through the open consolidated process which is online.  This is we launched it on the 9th of September.  This is our full virtual meeting we do with IGF every year.  Last year we there in Germany and Berlin to inform you about the process.  And the second physical virtual meeting is planned around January.  So the date could change.  We'll have to look at the way things evolve.  And, of course, a very important deadline for you is the deadline for submissions which is 8th of march.

As all of you know, we have a submission form and the agenda and program of the WSIS program is built on the BASIS of this form.  So request to fill out the form as soon as possible because what we may do is probably also have it in phases the WSIS forum.  If we cannot accommodate everything in a week like we did in 2020.  So please do submit your submission forms even today even though you do not know who your speakers are, but submit your forms with the request of workshops and exhibition spaces as soon as possible.  Please do not wait for the 8th of March.  Do submit it as soon as you have an idea of what you want to do at the WSIS forum.  Of course, we will also plan the high level track.  We will wait on the different inputs we receive for the formats.  So we'll have the high level policy sessions.  The ministerial round table which was successful and the high level dialogues.

As you all know the high level track facilitators play a very important role basically moderating and conducting the different high level tracks that we have at the WSIS forum.  And these are nominated by you.  So please do send in the nominations as soon as possible so that we can work closely with them and we can implement this as soon as possible.

So Vladimir, I invite to you please present this topic in prizes.

>> VLADIMIR:  Good morning and good evening to all participants.  For those new to the process, I would like to inform you that the taking process has been coordinated by ITU and it's a very important process of the implementation of the WSIS action lines.  Since 2004, we have been collecting the group ICT practices and initiatives that have further development around the world and so far we have received more than 13,000 entries to this very important international repository.

Another important highlight is that since 2015, we have fully aligned the WSIS talk taking with the United Nations sustainable development agenda and we're following how these examples from the ground using ICTs are also achieving Sustainable Development Goals.  There are more than 350,000 registered stakeholders at the platform and this year only, we have received more than 800 submissions.  In addition to this, I would like to invite all of you to continue following the process, the new call for the WSIS talk report in 2021 is launched.  And I will share in chat the link to it.  In 2020, the WSIS publications that we have launch as you can see on this slide have covered not only the general report of the 2020 submissions, but also included in the success stories which comes as a compilation of the WSIS prizes which is the integral part of the welcome sis talk taking.  Besides the two annual reports this year, we had launched some new reports including the COVID‑19 case repository which compiles and collects the responses to Corona virus and the use of ICTs.  More than 300 were submitted so far.  This is an ongoing call and I do invite all of you to first explore this opportunity and share your good work on addressing this issue.  Every two years, we are also issuing regional reports.  Of course with the aspect of compilation of all these two years submissions on original angle.  In the next slide, you will see an additional effort I was referring to has been as I mentioned quite a success.  It's very timely and we invite a will ‑‑ all of to you share.

Another taking repository that we do is the WSIS forum contest.  This was launched three years ago and we have received photos depicting how ICTs are helping development.  This year we have referred more than 200 submissions some of the finalists and champions for listed this is for a contest website.  The deadline for the 2021 is 8th of march.  Now the prises as I mentioned is an integral part of the want talk taking.  It was launched in 2012.  So far more than close to 4,000 projects were submitted for this global contest and in this year, more than 800 were submitted.  354 were nominated and the 90 champions were celebrated.  18 winners were announced and I do invite all of to you go to the prizes 2020 website to learn who they and are promote their success.  The new call is launched and I will share the link to how you can submit your ICT projects, but also other entities projects that deserve to be globally promoted.  The deadline for submission to the WSIS prizes is 25th of January next year.  Please let us know.  Contact us if you have any additional questions to these mentioned repositories.  Thank you very much.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  We look forward to receiving your submissions.  The photo contest and we have received a lot of suggestions from stakeholders to expand the photo contest also to a video contest.  Videos contest.  So we will be working with all of you on that.  We will be shooting videos maybe say less than 30 seconds.  So we will be soon launching that with your collaboration and hopefully they will all be very useful for everyone.

So just some of the special tracks that were appreciated in 2020 and we've been asked to sort of further explore these.  ICT and youth, ICT and accessibility.  As my colleagues already shared with you, this year we had great success.  We had 50/50 participation of men and women in the beginning in June and July, it went down.  In mid of July and August and then it went up high again in September.  So we had extremely good statistics which are all online.  And in fact, in Latin America from the Latin American region, we had more women than men participating.  Extended reality for CDGs, but this would also look at virtual reality and augmented reality for development.  ICT and older persons, we appreciated that this year.  It was really appreciated.  There were many things highlighted including the lack of standards for ICTs and older persons.  So we will be doing many more things in 2021 and collaboration with our partner.  No recollection on aging and Ramon Morel who will be working closely from CSB and (inaudible) as well.

We will have to explore it has been well appreciated but we definitely need new dimensions into this activity.  And there was also a request to do a track on cybersecurity.

So WSIS forum, (inaudible) and Catalin mentioned, we are in a budget activity.  Please contribute to the packages that soon be available online.  And as we learn in 2020, the visibility can be enhanced in so many ways through the virtual forum.  So we were able to come up with very innovative ideas and videos, good social media messages and very concentrated visibility for our partners through the virtual format.  So please do contribute to our finding and we look forward to traditional partners also joining us in 2021.  So please do join us in our social media channels for all the updates, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and (inaudible) flash, which is a monthly meeting set up.  Remind for open calls, WSIS prizes is 25th of January.  And provide input on the format and themes, deadlines 8 March, but please do not wait till 8 of March.  Send your submission so that we can phase out the planning and with your permission, maybe we could also have two deadlines so that we can have some requests collected by January, the end of January and we could, you know, start implementing those aspects as well.  Looking at this new virtual concept, we cannot concentrate everything in the week so that everybody from different time zones can follow us.  The photo contest 8th of March will know expanded into a video contest and high level facilitators which is 8 of March.  So thank you very much.  This was a briefing from our side.  Colleagues now the floor is open.  So please raise your hand and we'll allow you to speak.  We will unmute you and allow you to speak.  So please do raise your hand.  I do see many of our active stakeholders online.  Maybe ‑‑ maybe I could invite Mr. Peter.  Peter, if you can please raise your hand and I could unmute you.  Okay.  So I'm not sure what happened.  Yes?  I will not being able to unmute.  Would Shelby or Carolina be able to help us?

>> Let me assign you to be host and then you can do that.  So okay.  So now you can unmute.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Okay.  So colleagues, you will be able to unmute.  Shelby, I'm still not able to do that.  Maybe you can post your commands on the chat in the meanwhile.

>> Make me back the host.  If the person speaks, I can just unmute the person.  So we assign the host back to me and I can make ‑‑ I can unmute people who want to speak.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  All right.  So Shelby, I have made you the host.

>> SELBY:  Okay.  So ‑‑

>> GITANJALI SAH:  If you can please unmute Mr. Peter Major.

>> SELBY:  Run that name again, please.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  PETER, Major.

>> SELBY:  I have asked them to unmute.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Colleagues, we have not been able to unmute you, but please do submit your questions in the Q&A.  We do have one.  And so what is the UN ‑‑

>> Mr. Major was moved as a panelist and probably can now be unmuted.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  So.  We will just move on to Peter.  So I'm just reading out Mr. Amir's question.  He's saying what can the UN family and (inaudible) do to address the issue of COVID‑19.  We did speak about this and we also shared the repository and also shared some of their activities.  Please do go on to our home parents where we have dedicated pages for COVID‑19 and what our institutions are doing.

So if you could unmute Peter now, it would be nice to hear from him.

>> Okay.  So I have implemented Peter unless ‑‑ he tries to speak up because I have asked him to unmute, but it's from his end.  He has to check from his side.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  All right.  So there is some problem there, I guess.  Please do type in your questions.  I'm sure there are many questions you will have or inputs and raise your hand if you want to take the floor.  Shelby, please let us know if the raise your hand function is available.

>> Yes, please.  It is available.  So I have allowed everyone to talk.  So if you want to talk, you did unmute your mic and then you speak.  So now everyone can unmute their mic and speak, if you raise your hand and they give you the floor.  You can unmute your mic.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Okay, colleagues.  As you heard from the IGF secretariat, we have the host who would like to speak.  Selby, could you please allow him to speak?

>> Hello.  Good morning.  As some of you know, I'm personally involved in the kind of information management of the voices process.  And I'm looking forward for having another (inaudible) exciting session next year.  And for us, I see a problem that we have to foster having really management principles which go into details to cover the whole processes and not just project oriented or single aspect.  There is a governance of information management.  It's very complicated, of course.  But we have to compare and go back to the text of the United Nations instruments that are collected there.  I myself am mainly involved also in UNDRR.  And I observed that not all the details written in the text of such instrument are clearly addressed nationally and internationally.  This is what I (inaudible) noises.  I think it's a matter of addressing the information society at large by doing information processing in this aspect.  We've supporting active and informed citizenry by that way and we are operationalizing our responsibility for health, safe and security and people and planet not only for current, but also for future generations.  So also the young generation should be interested of having reliable and trustworthy and quality information in all those details.  Yes, it is complicated, but together with the full society gives a very good plenary for addressing these issues.  Thank you for all your effort and let's cooperate income year.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much.  We look forward to your collaboration and we will be in touch with you.  Please do remember to fill up the OCP format as soon as possible.  I can see that there are many prizemen who also want to talk.  Mr. Lee from Singapore, maybe we can unmute you and you can speak.  You have already been upgraded as a panelist.  The floor is yours, Mr. Lee.

>> I think Peter has unmute the mic.  He can speak now.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much.  Mr. Major, the floor is yours.

>> Peter Major:  I am happy to participate in the consummation.  First of all, let me congratulate and you all the partner UN agencies for organizing this meeting.  And the previous ones as well.  I really appreciate it because I know how difficult it is to compete with other events and to maintain the quality with what you have maintained.  Very shortly CSC around the share of the CSC is mandated to review the business process on an annual BASIS and I'm really happy to see the commitment being full fitted.  So I look forward to the next addition of the business forum and I hope to be able to participate eventually physically rather than virtually.  So once again, thank you again for the opportunity to talk.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much, Peter, and thank you also for your constant support.  Also good collaboration with the CSTV.  So colleagues, please note that once you are upgrade as a speaker, you can also switch on your camera and it would be really nice to see you.  Though we are not there face to face, but at least it brings a smile to our face to see you.  Mr. Lee from Singapore, the floor is yours.  You have been upgraded as a panelist and you can speak.  I think Mr. Lee is having some problems.  But Gacomo, the floor is yours.

>> GACOMO:  Thank you.  Yes.  In the WSS process this year, there were two major issues that work for me particularly important.  One is ‑‑ has been already mentioned about disasters and for me the question ‑‑ emergency communication.  So I will like to know what will remain after the panel that we have on this topic and what will be in the road map for the next steps of the WSAs.  And the second, of course, is the one about the formation, the reliability of information we have seen that is crucial in any process.  Disaster relief and communication and all filled.  What remains on these two experiences during the WSAs for the road map.  Thank you.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much, Gacomo.  All the topics you have mentioned have been very important in the process also through the action lines of access environment and so on.  And you have been very active in this area.  We also had a high level dial up this year.  We would encourage you and your paster ins to start planning for 2021 because as you know and you also said you are the secretariat to facilitate your work and insure that there is collaboration. collaboration.  So we look forward to receiving your inputs.  I'm very sorry about this noise.  Sorry about that.

>> GACOMO:  We can include ideas for the next steps.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Submit it through the form, the OCP submission form.  So we officially have a submission from you and your partners and it becomes an integral part in the program.  This is what we would like to request all of you to do to submit through the tomorrow submission form as soon as possible so that we can start planning all the agenda, get an input from you guys on what the ‑‑ what are the important topics, what are the different formats we could use.  For example, we heard from one of you that you attended a Knowledge Café, which was very interesting in our virtual format and we would like to try that for the business forum.  Our partners from the global coalition on aging already submitted to us they would like to have cross generational virtual copies and discuss the issue of ICTs and to have some sort of interaction with young people.  So we are going to plan all of this as well as part of the ICTs and all the persons track.  So basically we are at your hands.  Please submit to us any inputs that you may have.  So colleagues, we still have some time left.  So I can see we have many colleagues who wanted to talk, Brenda Escobar.  Brenda, if you would like to talk, please raise your hand.  We also have Mr. Lee from Malaysia.  Sorry.  My mistake.  So Mr. Lee, if you would like to speak, you need to raise your hand and we unmute you.  We also have Mr. Alfredo Ranchy who has been a part of the process.  Selby, if you can allow him to speak.

>> He's allowed now and high can speak now.

>> Hello, everyone.  Thank you (inaudible).

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Sir, we cannot hear you clearly.  Can you please go closer to your mic.

>> Hello, everyone.  Is this clear now?

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Yes, yes.

>> Hello everyone, especially distinguished panelists.  I would like to thank you for your work for (inaudible) decision.  (inaudible) community.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  We cannot hear you.  We cannot hear you, sir.  Okay.  We will try to bring him back.  In the mean time, do we have any other input?  We also see our colleagues from (inaudible) constant.  Would you like to take the floor?  We can just unmute you.

>> VLADIMIR:  There is a question in chat.  If you want, I can read it now.  It's from Maria (inaudible) excusing herself for using her chat.  She's having issues with the microphone.  So Maria is saying congratulations on holding such a great event which gathered so many participants, experts and high level representatives this year.  Thanks to the organizers of the session to discuss future forum key platform for accessing intermediate results of a complicated process of building and developing global information society.  Is there a representative, I would like to express our sin veer support and underline the critical importance of the work sis forums considering a strong link between the process and the 2030 agenda especially in unprecedented circumstances of COVID‑19 pandemic.  The process should be extended to 2030 and they should know assessed within close relays of the 2030 agenda implementation.  I would also like to know one of the possible ways of holding this forum 2021 is to hold in a mixed format the general segment events in remote participation and high level segment to be holding face to face format.  The colleague that was just joining us from Iran, also asked a question in chat.  He was referring his question related to the digital sanctions and this would also be a shared linked for submissions.  Please go to this forum 2021 website.  Also prizes 2021 website for more information related to the submission online submission forms.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much.  We really appreciate all the input we received from our friend from Russia.  We will be in touch with you.  Please also do submit through the OCP because that on the BASIS of that form, we will (inaudible) the agenda.  It will be important for you to submit your official ‑‑ basically like all of us said, the co‑organizers said we're just secretariat and we implement your ideas and your activities and we make sure that we are able to serve you in the best possible way.  So please do submit through the open consultative process and we will be in touch with you as soon as we receive your submission.

We do not see ‑‑ (Multiple speakers at once) that is from Mr. Lee.  Mr. Lee from Malaysia also a prized winner.  Go ahead, Mr. Lee.

>> Mr. Lee:  Hi (inaudible) and the team.  Anyway, I think the process is great.  Okay?  In think it I'm looking at the dash 1 special (inaudible) for the cybersecurity.  And I do hope that in will year 2021, we will have some methods, some way to get some of this project to be implemented.  So (inaudible) is what we are looking forward again and we would like to work more closely together with the team over here.  Yeah?  Okay.  Thank you.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much, Mr. Lee, and thank you for your collaboration.  We saw you were very active through the WSIS forum 2020.  We will put you in touch with the different inputs we receive on cybersecurity for the cybersecurity crack.  You all can work together also to avoid the overlaps because we would like to avoid any sort of overlaps on topics and encourage collaboration.  So thank you very much for all your input and congratulations for winning the prize.  Colleagues, we have two more minutes.  Anyone else who would like to talk, I was informed that Brenda would like to talk, but I don't see her here any more.  Alfredo, would you like to take the floor?  You need to raise your hands.

>> I think Mr. Hussein is back.  So maybe he can continue.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Sure.  Mr. Hussein, we can hear you now.

>> Mr. HUSSEIN:  Yes.  Can you hear me?

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Yes.  We can hear you, sir.

>> Mr. HUSSEIN:  (inaudible) technical issue (inaudible).

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Excuse me, sir.  Could you please go closer to your mic?

>> Mr. HUSSEIN:  Yes.  It's better right now?

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Yes, yes.

>> Mr. HUSSEIN:  Hello, everyone.  Especially distinguished panelists and dear colleagues, I would like to thank (inaudible) in the (inaudible).  I would like to thank you for convening at this time this session.  I'm (inaudible) community.  I would like to raise a vital issue here.  As you all know, the unilateral digital sanctions on some nations has become intensive and more destructive especially during COVID‑19 pandemic and other (inaudible).  This digital sanctions in (inaudible) the digital resources and (inaudible) are key barriers in achieving national development goals using ICTs and I think consider human life foundations in cyberspace.  My question is:  What's the UN family role and officially WSIS role and what is the WSIS can and should do to address this vital issue?  It would be appreciated if any panelists can elaborate on this description.  Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity.  Thank you very much.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you, sir, for your question.  The objective of this meeting is to basically encourage all stakeholders to contribute to the consolidated process.  So we look at all the suggests and ideas and please encourage to you submit it to the open consultative process.  If you think you would like to discuss a certain issue, if you would like to contribute something to the stop taking process, so please we look forward to receiving your submission as well on the form that has been shared on the chat.  So please submit your contribution there.  We are now about to ‑‑

>> (inaudible) thank you for your guidance.  Thank you.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you, sir.  Thank you very much.  We are now running out of time, but we do see we have many of our colleagues present here, our colleagues from Poland, Czech, and several prize winners like Brenda and our work TO colleague Ms. Lee, (inaudible).  So colleagues thank you very upon for joining us and for your continuous support.  We will make sure that we follow your ideas and inputs and make the WSIS forum 2021 a very successful event as well.  So thank you very much.

>> There is a raised hand from Brenda and also Alfredo if you still have time to allow them.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Um, okay.  Brenda, very quickly if you would like to take the floor.

>> Thank you very much.  Good morning, everybody.  Just first comment.  I am not sure about the criteria that they ‑‑ that you're going to fake for next year, but it is a difficult year for everybody.  Here in Mexico city, the government of Mexico city is very challenged.  We have short time for our projects.  We have less or minimal resources for our projects.  So I'm not sure about the criteria that you will take for the next year, I mean in the kind of project that you will evaluate.  I know about the categories, but maybe they kind of project will be ditch for the next year.  This is just my comment.  Thank you very much for your efforts and for this transition during the year.  Thank you very much.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you, Brenda.  Congratulations on winning your prize.  Basically the prize contest is open and inclusive.  So anything you're doing in the area of action, there is no restriction.  Any activity in the area of ICTs for development, the action line for development, please do submit it and it will be accepted.  So there are no criterias.  The only criteria is to fill up your form correctly and to answer we rest several forms with just blank spaces and then we are called saying why was this not accepted.  So please do submit your information correctly.  It doesn't matter if the English is not perfect.  We will work with you.  Call us if you need any help to submit the form.  We are always there.  But please submit your form correctly and there is no other criteria.  So we look forward to receiving all the different nominations for next year.  So colleagues, I see ‑‑ okay.  If we can very quickly get Alfredo (inaudible) and we will close.  Alfredo, you have never missed any open consultative process meeting.  So the floor is yours.

>> Okay.  Hello, hi, everyone.  Good morning.  Good afternoon, good evening.  I don't know exactly what your time zone is at the moment.  Due to the short time just to remind that I will fill out the form and submit some request for the next open consultation.  We'll keep in touch with (inaudible) since you have some common ideas and interest.  Okay.  Thank you very much.  We will ‑‑ I hope to see all of you in 2021 in a physical meeting if possible for any way you will keep in touch.  Thanks.  Thanks to all the IT staff.  Thanks.  Bye.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much, Alfredo.  Alfredo has never been any more consultative meeting since 2009.  He has been present in every meeting.  Thank you, Alfredo and maybe before we leave, if all of you could switch on your camera, all of you are able to if you can please switch on your camera for a photograph as many as possible, please.  If you could allow that in some way, Selby, if all participants can switch on their cameras.  Vladimir, if you can take the lead and (inaudible) some pictures.

>> VLADIMIR:  If I can ask everyone to look at their camera for next 3 seconds and smile, please.  Thank you very much.  You look beautiful.  Thanks for joining this session.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much.

>> VLADIMIR:  We hope to be working with you soon.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you very much and look forward to hearing from all of you very soon.  Thank you.  Bye‑bye.

>> Bye.

>> Thanks.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> Bye‑bye.

>> GITANJALI SAH:  Thank you to Selby and Carolina as well.  Thank you for your great work.