Thursday, August 2, 2007

UNGIS: United Nations Group on the Information Society


UNGIS (United Nations Group on the Information Society) is the new inter-agency mechanism created in 2006 to coordinate substantive and policy issues facing the United Nations’ implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). UNGIS is to gather U.N. Executive Board members (UN agencies, programs and funds as well as other specialized agencies such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organization) and is designed to promote policy and program coordination and coherence as well as overall guidance to the UN system. The second UNGIS meeting took place in Paris, at UNESCO Headquarters on Tuesday, 17 July 2007. The Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, opened that meeting, along with Mr Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and chairman of UNGIS.