Geneva, 5 February 2010 — As a follow up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), an upgraded stocktaking platform has been launched by ITU. Deputy Secretary-General Houlin Zhao announced that "the WSIS Stocktaking platform will now be more interactive, providing a new collaborative database for all WSIS Stakeholders to work on the implementation of the WSIS outcomes". He was speaking at a meeting of the Working Group on WSIS convened by ITU’s governing council which consists of 46 Member States.
The World Summit on the Information Society brought together world leaders in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005 to help build an inclusive and development-oriented information society. ITU has been maintaining the WSIS Stocktaking database as a publicly accessible system, which now consists of more than 4200 entries of ICT-related initiatives and projects aimed at furthering the goals of the Summit. The upgraded WSIS stocktaking platform integrates improved features, such as the application of web 2.0 tools and a searchable database.
Introduction of new components like an events calendar, the ability to create communities of practice and forums for discussion, could serve as effective instruments of information circulation and communication among stakeholders. Future plans include developing evaluation and monitoring tools for WSIS Stocktaking.
