The 11th meeting of the ITSO Advisory Committee (IAC) was held last 17-18 November in the US capital Washington, attended by representatives of 13 Parties which are IAC members and two other Parties as observers, among them Portugal. This was the Committee's first meeting since the new ITSO director-general (DG), José Toscano of Portugal, took office in July 2009.
In his opening and welcome speech, the new DG indicated he intended to work more with the IAC and requested its members’ support. He also said he would seek a positive relationship with Intelsat, specifically by allowing its representatives to regularly take part in the organisation's meetings. Given the absence of the committee’s chair and vice-chair, respectively Steven Lett of the USA and Lamoussa Oualbeogo of Burkina Faso, elected at the last meeting, it was agreed that the US representative, Douglas May, would chair this session on an exceptional basis.
This Committee session’s agenda basically focused on management, financial and administrative issues in the wake of decisions made at the organisation’s last ordinary Assembly of Parties (AP), held in Estoril on 6-10 October 2008, and specifically on determining the ITSO strategy plan, drafting an updated personnel regulation and determining criteria for evaluating the DG’s performance, which had also been dealt with at the last Committee session. At the time, and given the lack of member contributions, the Committee asked participants to submit comments and proposals in due time with a view to debating those issues at the current meeting and for subsequent submission of proposals on same to the next ordinary AP (2010). Also at the meeting, no new contributions were put forward on the topics under consideration. José Toscano thus reiterated the call for contributions for the next meeting, where the IAC should validate proposals to submit to the AP. To that end, the Portuguese office-holder will prepare documents based on the contributions eventually received, though also in co-ordination with the IAC chair. Particularly regarding the determination of criteria for evaluating the DG’s performance, the Committee agreed that a specialty firm should be contracted to support that work.
As for financial issues, José Toscano distributed a form model for future budget presentation which was very well received by the Committee, given that it ensures much more transparency in the organisation’s financial management. The DG will include the comments put forward at the meeting, basically on the amount of detail and clarity of some items, as well as others received, and will use this model to present the budget for the coming year. The director-general also said he would contract additional financial control services with his external financial auditor, in order to increase the organisation’s internal control mechanisms and financial transparency, and to forward the respective reports to the IAC. The external financial auditor presented the report on the audit of the last financial period, which raised no comments.
Intelsat also gave a presentation before the IAC on the company’s business and financial situation, healthy since the last IAC, with the projects to launch new services and develop services continuing at a good pace. Especially positive was the fact that the company recently acquired a new satellite, already in orbit and operational, belonging to a company undergoing bankruptcy. This satellite will strongly enhance the services the company can provide, above all for clients in Africa.
The Committee also benefited from a presentation given by the chairman of the ad hoc group set up by the Estoril Assembly of Parties to study the updating of the AP’s rules of procedure, on the progress of the group’s work. This group should submit its report to the next ordinary AP (June/July 2010) and has to date received contributions from Croatia, the USA and Portugal.
The DG also informed the Committee that a programme is being developed together with the ITU on personal capacity-building that will enable training on the satellite communications sector (covering technical, regulatory and market aspects, etc) to be given to bodies in developing countries, thus helping facilitate access by those countries to satellite communications services.
The next IAC meeting will take place in March 2010, possibly on the 25th and 26th of that month. The next ordinary AP session has been planned for the last week of June or first week of July in 2010.
