ITU approves more open documents for ‘Access to Information’ policy
The governing council of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has increased general access to more information and documents held, managed, or generated by ITU, by making them be available online.
Head, Corporate Communications, ITU, Mr Paul Conneally, who made this known, stated that the Union started the New Year by launching a new access to information policy, hence committing to make more information and documents openly available online.
He explained that the decision was made by ITU’s governing Council in 2016, which aims at bringing public access to information for ITU’s main conferences and meetings in line with other international organizations like the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
“The decision will enhance transparency to ITU’s decision-making processes,” Conneally added.
Conneally quoted ITU Secretary-General, Houlin Zhao’s remark that the ITU Council decision provides more information and insight into ITU’s working methods and decision-making procedures to the general public and promotes greater transparency and accountability.
“One of the powers of ICTs is their ability to make organizations more trustworthy. ITU aims to lead by example,” he noted.
Zhao also declared that as of 1 January 2017, input documents, summaries of decisions, reports and other output documents would be available to the public through the ITU website.
This process, according to Zhao, will be a standard feature of ITU’s main conferences and meetings in the coming years, including ITU Council Working Groups, ITU Advisory Groups Meetings, the upcoming World Telecommunication Development Conference 2017 and the ITU principle governing body, the quadrennial Plenipotentiary Conference, the next one of which is scheduled for the last quarter in 2018.
