ITU Regional Development Forum for Europe. Remarks of the UN Resident Coordinator for Moldova Mr. Simon Springett

Digitalization is essential for government to deliver at the scale and pace needed to achieve national and global development ambitions, and to deliver on the SDG's.  

This requires us to unite our efforts - government, industry, academia, civil society and development partners - to develop the frameworks and systems to facilitate and enable innovation in the area of digitalization.  

This may be obvious, but it is important to highlight. We are now at a time where there are no questions about digitalization being a foundational pillar of sustainable development.  

This creates an environment where more and more actors are entering this space - highlighting the importance of high level technical and strategic leadership. 

Within this frame, the benefits of digital technologies must be equally distributed, and their development and use anchored in human rights-based approaches and the principles of inclusivity, fairness, universality, transparency, and accountability.   

In the Republic of Moldova, digitalization it is a priority of the government which is expressed in the National Development Strategy as well as in the current Government Action Plan.  

The ITU has been a partner in Moldova since immediate after independence in 1992 and this partnership has strengthened year on year.  

The UN Country Team is proud to have ITU as an active member and a signatory of the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework. The Digital Development Country Profile for Moldova developed by ITU was an important input into programme strategies of the UN system in support of Government and laid the foundation for the Digitial Transformation Strategy developed with the support of the EU and UNDP. ITU has also supported on many other technical initiatives including regulatory case studies, online child protection standards, and critical incident response.  

Moldova is working hard to accelerate progress towards digitalization of Government services and optimization of internal processes, yet the work in this area is still fragmented, while the capacity to systematically include digitalization solutions in all levels of government is still limited.  

The UN in Moldova has been at the forefront of support in this area and our recently approved Cooperation Framework includes digitalization as one of the key synergy areas and cross cutting to all results. The UN support has covered a wide range of actions, from assessments, capacity development, and policy development to programme and solutions implementations.  

The support of nearly every UN agency, fund, and programme is being brought to bear in support of government digital ambitions. ITU is critical to this.  

Moving forward, the UN Country Team will galvanize its different capacities to support the country on digital health, digital skills, with particular focus on vulnerable groups (Roma, older people, women, ethnolinguistic minorities, among others), digitalization of the education sector, and ensuring digital services are developed including an LNOB approach. 

Once, again, on behalf of the United Nations Country Team, I extend our profound commitment to advocate for and support further digitalization to accelerate SDGs achievement, to which we rely on the technical capacity and outreach of the ITU.   

  Thank you!