World Summit On The Information Society
The ITU was the lead organizing agency of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a United Nations summit aiming at bridging the digital divide and turning it into digital opportunity for all. WSIS provided a global forum on the theme of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) for development. WSIS was a pledge for building a people-centered development-oriented Information Society. Other big themes of the Summit were Internet governance and Financial mechanisms for meeting the challenges of ICTs for development.
The idea of holding WSIS came from the Tunisian President Ben Ali on the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis in 1998. The process was launched late in 2002 on the initiative of Kofi Annan. The first phase of the WSIS summit took place in December 2003 in Geneva and the second and final phase took place in Tunis in November 2005.
WSIS Stocktaking Process was initiated in 2004. The WSIS Stocktaking Process is a follow-up to WSIS. Its purpose is to provide a register of activities carried out by governments, international organizations, the business sector, civil society and other entities, in order to highlight the progress made since that landmark event. Following ยง 120 of TAIS, ITU has been maintaining the WSIS Stocktaking database as a publicly accessible system providing information on ICT-related initiatives and projects with reference to the 11 WSIS Action Lines.
Read more about this topic: International Telecommunication Union
Famous quotes containing the words world, summit, information and/or society:
“It has long been acknowledged that the single best restaurant in the world is Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue at Eighteenth and Booklyn in Kansas city.”
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1940)
“The light that shined upon the summit now seems almost to shine at our feet.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action—the ability to pass directly from thought to action.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)