Dr Neeraj Mittal, secretary (T), Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has been elected as co-chair of the Digital Innovation Board of International Telecommunication Union (ITU) formed under the aegis of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance for Digital Development.
The Digital Innovation Board comprises ministers and vice ministers of telecom/information and communications technology (ICT) of 23 member countries of ITU spanning Asia, Europe, Africa, North and South America.
ITU has started Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance for Digital Development to respond to significant unmet needs of ITU membership in the areas of innovation, as articulated in the Kigali Action Plan adopted at the World Telecommunication Development Conference 2022 (WTDC-22) and the outcomes of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 (PP-22). The Alliance has three main vehicles, including, digital transformation lab, network of acceleration centres, and Digital Innovation Board.
The Alliance has established the Digital Innovation Board to provide strategic guidance, expertise, and advocacy regarding its mission of building critical local enablers and fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in digital development, to create a more inclusive and equitable digital future for all.
ITU has selected 17 organisations from around the world to host a network of acceleration centres with the Global Innovation Centre at ITU area office and Innovation Centre, New Delhi to coordinate the efforts of network acceleration centres around the globe.
In addition, Dr Mittal chaired a review meeting at Permanent Mission of India in Geneva (PMI). The meeting reviewed progress on critical milestones and efforts to increase participation of India in ITU activities with greater engagement of academia and industry members from India. Further, a bilateral meeting between India and Japan also took place on the sidelines of Digital Innovation Board Meeting at ITU headquarters. The meeting reviewed engagements of India and Japan in telecom and ICT sector and the leaders proposed active collaboration on artificial intelligence (AI), 5G use cases and quantum products certification between both the countries. The collaboration aims to develop a framework on trusted products and agreed to operationalise the sub-working groups on 5G use cases and massive MIMO under India Japan joint working group on ICT.
Furthermore, Dr Mittal co-chaired a bilateral meeting between India and Bahrain. It aims to collaborate actively on ICT sector in areas such as AI, 5G use cases, cybersecurity, development of data embassy. India also proposed to share with Bahrain the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) standard on fairness assessment and rating of AI systems, status note on regulatory sandbox
