Public Policy Blog

Last week, the European Commission (DG for Entreprise & Industry) finalised the selection of three business sectors that will be the focus of a new, year-long project to develop sector-specific guidance on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which forms part of the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The [...]

Coinciding with the United Nations’ celebration of the “International Year of Sustainable Energy for All”  , the ITU and Telefónica are announcing two initiatives for coming up with innovative uses of ICT to help meet the UN’s goal: the first Green ICT Hackathon, i.e. a marathon of green ICT development, that will be held on [...]

Many are the predictions those days in the Net concerning our sector and its perspectives for 2012, from how the telecom sector will evolve, to which services and technological trends will be the winners for next year, or how social networks will be positioned, what will be the IT “super themes” for 2012, etc…
This is a difficult and somersault exercise in a very dynamic and evolving sector such as the ICT & Telecom one. However, it is sure that some trends could be already detected.

Concerning the ICT public policy area, we could see the following issues as relevant as they are present in several international and public institutions agendas for 2012. Here are some of them:

“A patchwork quilt also keeps you warm at night” – this was in a nutshell my statement when I attended the workshop of the Council of Europe on Human Rights and Internet Governance at the IGF in Nairobi. The workshop discussed 10 principles on Internet Governance which have been adopted in September by the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe and asked the obvious questions: How will these principles relate to other Internet policy initiatives around the globe? Is there a need for common global framework – something like a global Internet Constitution?

Today marks the beginning on 2-days discussions and debates and exchange on public policy issues related to Internet Governance (IG) between stakeholders from all over Europe!

Ana Luisa Rotta, Vice-Chairperson of PROTEGELES, welcomes the proposal for a European Directive to combat sexual exploitation and child pornography and comments on it.

Telefónica is one of the 54 multinationals that the United Nations has selected in January 2011 to constitute the Global Compact LEAD, a leadership platform for the promotion of sustainability in the world. These companies have been recognised as sustainable leaders in the global economy.  Three other large Spanish companies have joined the LEAD; these [...]