The 16th meeting of the Telecommunications Development Advisory Group (TDAG) was held from last 29 June to 1 July in Geneva. It was the first since Brahima Sanou was elected Director of the Telecommunications Development Bureau (BDT) at the 2010 Plenipotentiary Conference held in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The new director discussed his reorganisation of the BDT, which basically focuses on the search for personnel with the right skills for some long-vacant positions. In this regard, especially important was information about the end of the selection process for the ITU regional directors in Ethiopia and Brazil. The selection processes for the Barbados and Cairo directors are also well under way.
The BDT director moreover presented several ideas about what he aims to do in the future to make activity of the Telecommunications Development Sector (ITU-D) more useful and visible on the ground. In the scope of this strategy goal, the focus on partnerships with local bodies was one of the aspects most stressed during the TDAG meeting, which gave strong support and incentive to the BDT director.
Lastly, one of the TDAG meeting’s most controversial points concerned the debate around a document from Russia that meant to establish an orientation for future ITU-D work in the search for a definition of “ICT”. Russia’s proposal was for study group’s (SGs) 1 and 2 to work together to define the term “ICT” and submit their proposals to TDAG in 2013 for subsequent presentation to the Council and respective working groups.
This matter was strongly opposed by various CEPT countries that held that this process should not be begun by the SGs. TDAG eventually agreed to ask the Council for instructions on how to implement Resolution 140, which mentions the need to define the term “ICT”.
Note that redefinition of the ITU’s own mandate stands in the background of the controversy around the definition of ICT. Some countries, such as Russia, believe the ITU should be given a mandate that includes ICTs, extending its activity to areas such as internet governance.
