International Telecommunication Union - World Summit On The Information Society

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:

    If in the world there be more woe
    Than I have in my heart,
    Whereso it is, it doth come fro,
    And in my breast there doth it grow,
    Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)

    The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there. Simple races, as savages, do not climb mountains,—their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never visited by them. Pomola is always angry with those who climb the summit of Ktaadn.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I believe it has been said that one copy of The Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.
    Richard Cobden (1804–1865)

    Well I guess you can’t break out of prison and into society in the same week.
    Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)