Helani Galpaya was selected as one of the stakeholders invited to speak at the United Nations General Assembly’s Informal interactive stakeholder consultation held at UN Headquarters in New York on the 2nd of July. The selection itself was done by a committee that reviewed applications by over a 100 organizations to speak at this event. Helani’s opening comments that were read out can be found here.
CEO Helani Galpaya was invited as an expert participant at the UN-DESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and ITU (International Telecommunications Union) organised Expert Group Meeting held at UN headquarters in New York, June 8 – 9th. Helani was invited to talk about issues of access and affordability, and how they contribute towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). LIRNEasia and RIA household survey data, LIRNEasia’s broadband quality of service test data, big data research was used in the presentations and interventions during the two day meeting. Slides here. Numerous UN Agencies, members of Permanent Missions to the UN from various countries (e.
LIRNEasia research manager Shazna Zuhyle presented our findings on ‘Gendered use in ICTs at the bottom of the pyramid in emerging Asia’ at the WSIS forum in Geneva on the 14th May 2013. The panel consisted of selected members of the Task Group on Measuring Gender and ICTs. The session addressed the question of what current statistics can tell us about women in the information society and how women use and benefit from ICTs. The session also looked at available data on gender and ICT and proposed a set of priority areas where more data are needed. The outcome of the session will feed into the work of the Partnership Task Group on Measuring Gender and ICT.
The World Summit on the Information Society set several targets to be achieved by 2015 without specifying how they could be measured. The International Telecommunication Union has proposed four specific indicators that could measure progress made by countries toward the foundational Target 10, that of bringing ICTs within the reach of a majority of the world’s inhabitants. Two indicators are for mobile subscriptions and use, and two for Internet use by individuals and by households. Of the four, Indicators 1 and 3 currently exist, albeit with significant shortcomings. This paper proposes a modest improvement to the method of measuring Indicator 3, Internet users, which combines the existing supply-side data with available but incomplete demand-side data.