Event
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)+20 Forum High-Level Event
About the WSIS+20 High-level event
The WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event will mark a significant milestone of twenty years of progress made in the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society, which took place in two phases — Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005. Twenty years ago WSIS set the framework for global digital cooperation with a vision to build people-centric, inclusive, and development-oriented information and knowledge societies.
The WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event will serve as a platform for multistakeholder discussions with the objective to take stock of the achievements and key trends, challenges and opportunities since the Geneva Plan of Action in 2003.
The WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event is scheduled to be held from 27 to 31 May 2024, co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD and co-hosted by ITU and the Swiss Confederation, with the support of remote participation.
UNESCO, the custodian agency for WSIS Action Line C7 on eLearning is convening a high-level event during the WSIS+20 Forum in Geneva to discuss monitoring and governance of technology in education. Building on the recommendations of the 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report on technology in education, the Futures of Education Report, UNESCO’s Guidance for generative AI in education, the publication An ed-tech tragedy? which provided a detailed analysis of experiences with educational technologies during the pandemic and the implications for the future of education and research and the monitoring work carried by the Global Education Monitoring Report and the UNESCO Institute of Statistics with the SDG 4 Benchmarks, the event aims to promote collaboration across sectors and different stakeholders to ensure that the use of technology in education is properly defined, measured and governed, and places learner’s interests at the center.
The event will bring together governments, private sector, civil society, academia, and international organizations to discuss how can technology be better leveraged for learning and how countries and different stakeholders can work together to establish normative standards, agree on common definitions and effectively measure progress on digital learning.
Within the context of the WSIS+20 Review and the upcoming Summit for the Future, the discussions will focus on:
Content:
- Regulation of generative AI, including mandating the protection of data and privacy
- Actions taken to support countries to develop long-term policies and develop a human-centered vision of new technologies.
- Actions to ensure that public education is supported online as well as offline; public and free education should not end where the digital begins
Capacity
- Definition and measurement of digital skills
Connectivity
- SDG 4benchmark on school internet connectivity
The event will provide an opportunity to gather the views from WSIS stakeholders working on issues related to the development of content and capacity of digital learning and strengthening infrastructure and accountability, and to collect their inputs to inform the review of the WSIS+20 action line on e-learning.
