World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS +10) – Informal Interactive Stakeholder Consultation

On October 19^th, NABU representatives participated in Informal Interactive Stakeholder Consultation of the World Summit on the Information Society held at the United Nations Headquarters.

The stakeholders discussed the crucial role of bolstering information society in developing counties. The areas of improvement included strengthening information infrastructure, traditional and digital education, the Cloud, Big Data, and Internet of Things.

The participants emphasized the ever-widening digital gap. Only a small fraction of the population in developing countries has access to broadband Internet. UNESCO believes that closing the digital gap in the developing world is a matter of human rights. Lack of access often means a lack to information and resources. Particularly, the women in the developing world are severely affected by the digital gap.

In addition, some attendants accentuated the need to focus on digital employment / entrepreneurship skills which is desperately needed in developing countries where ICT can be a platform for helping people and ICT based education can become an important scaling accelerator.