UNGIS will serve as an interagency coordinating mechanism within the UN system to implement the outcomes of WSIS, said the ITU in a release. The group will aimed to resolve substantive and policy issues, avoiding redundancies and enhancing effectiveness of the system while raising public awareness about the goals and objectives of the global Information Society. UNGIS will also work to highlight the importance of ICTs in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
The group agreed on a work plan in which it would concentrate its collective efforts each year on one or two cross-cutting themes and on a few selected countries.
In the coming period, UNGIS will focus on bringing the efforts of the UN system to bear on expanding access to communications, for instance through multimedia community centers, teleshops, etc. Drawing on the respective competencies of the different members of the Group, UNGIS will also focus on applications related to e-health and e-tourism. At the same time, the group will examine the e-readiness strategies and policies of one or two countries, to be proposed by UNDP, to develop a comprehensive toolkit for bringing the benefits of the Information society to developing countries.
During the first year, UNGIS will be chaired by ITU, with UNESCO, UNDP and WHO acting as vice-chairs.
