Geneva hosted last 18-22 May the first WSIS Forum, in practice a new presentation for the previous WSIS Cluster. As with its precursor, the WSIS Forum aims to foster joint debate among the various organisations involved in the process stemming from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), namely the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNESCO and the Universal Postal Union (UPU).
The forum sought to review the progress made on the action lines decided at WSIS, while simultaneously identifying situations that require more attention with a view to ensuring that the goals set at the Summit will be accomplished. In detail, and compared to the WSIS Cluster, instead of having the event extend over two or three weeks, spread among the head offices of the various organisations involved, at the WSIS Forum the work was concentrated in one single week through better co-ordination between the various United Nations agencies involved. In particular, duplications existing in WSIS Cluster programmes were eliminated, which were individually set by each of the agencies involved in the WSIS process.
Even so, and recognising that the current format is close to that followed by the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), when the work was over suggestions were made to improve the format in the future, namely:
- that more interactivity should be allowed;
- that the presentations given should be preferably made available with notes from the author;
- that the Forum should have a final report;
- that each panel should gather a large number of preferably different views about a given issue so that a same panel can compare the various perspectives and reach conclusions with a higher level of consensus.
Note that in the particular case of the ITU, its intervention encompasses action lines C2 (Information and Communication Infrastructures), C4 (Capacity Building) and C6 (Enabling Environment). Thus, and bearing in mind ANACOM’s powers and that there were various parallel sessions, this Authority accompanied the Forum with special focus on the panels devoted to subjects such as:
- High Level Panel on “Accessing Knowledge”;
- High Level Panel on “Financial Mechanisms for Economic Investment”;
- High Level Panel on “Cyber-security” (Action line C5);
- High Level Panel on ICTs for a better life;
- High Level Panel on climate changes and the role of ICTs;
- High Level Panel on e-government;
- Child Online Protection (COP);
- Action Line C2;
- Action Line C4;
- Action Line C6;
- Reducing the standardisation gap;
- Successful examples of public-private partnerships.
