NTIA

In response to the election of Doreen Bogdan-Martin as Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) at the 2022 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Bucharest, Romania, the following statement can be attributed to Alan Davidson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator:

August is often described as a quiet time here in Washington. That hasn’t been the case at NTIA.  

In early June, around 500 young people from more 100 countries descended on Kigali, Rwanda for the ITU’s first Generation Connect Global Youth Summit. I was lucky to represent NTIA and the United States as part of a delegation sponsored by USTTI.  

The Summit sought to bring together “digital natives” – those of us who grew up in the age of the Internet – to interact directly with global business leaders, government officials, and policymakers. In his opening remarks, Rwandan Prime Minister Édouard Ngirente recognized young people as a major asset to the global community. At the same time, I—along with my fellow youth delegates—gained a new respect for our digital fluency and how it can bring about change.  

The Summit was made up of intergenerational dialogues and small group sessions on core issues like the future of work, the gender digital divide, and digital solutions for climate action. I learned about other young people’s work to address policy challenges, like a group of young Nigerian entrepreneurs training children in digital literacy, a Ugandan engineer who aspires to become an astronaut, and an ICT analyst for the government of Trinidad and Tobago, among many others.