I'm Tom Jelton, correspondent for NPR News and welcome to the Wilson Center. I'm not at all surprised to see this full house. This is, we're very fortunate to have President Juan Manuel Santos here with us today. I believe this is President Santos' first public stop on his trip to the United States. Let me begin by thanking the organizations that have made this event possible or are sponsoring this event. We have the Wilson Center, our host today. Also the America Society and Council of the Americas, the Atlantic Council, the Inter-American Dialogue and the U.S. Institute of Peace. A couple of brief announcements, I think you would all appreciate if you and your fellow attendees today silenced your cell phone so we don't get interrupted by that. Also we may have a couple of minutes, probably not much more than that, at the end of this event for questions from the audience. You will have some cards. I think some cards will be passed out and you can write your questions on those cards. In the interest of brevity, because we want to leave as much time as possible for this, I'm going to keep my introduction of President Santos very brief.  The Santos family was responsible for many years for the famous and courageous Bogota newspaper El Tiempo. If I'm not mistaken, Mr. President, you were a reporter there at one time, right? Absolutely. Yes. And then after that, Mr. Santos served as government minister under three Colombian presidents, President Gaviria, President Pastrana, and finally Defense Minister under President Uribe at a time when the Colombian government made major gains combating some of the guerrilla forces that had been fighting in Colombia for more than 50 years. And he is now overseeing the implementation of a process of reconciliation that could bring peace to Colombia for the first time in more than a half century and he will be discussing that with us today. So it's my pleasure to introduce the President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos. Thank you. Thank you. So let's speak from here or from the podium? As you please. Let's make it more informal. Makes it more informal. Exactly. Well, I'll skip the protocol. Thank you all. I salute you, all of you, and thank you for attending this event, which I appreciate very much. I see a lot of old friends from both sides of the aisle, as they say. And I'm very happy to be here and especially happy for the reason why I'm here. I come here to say thank you. Thank you to the American people. Thank you to the American government for what you have done helping us go through a very difficult time in Colombia and to share with you how we see the future. And I think we can start there. Going back 50 years, as was mentioned, we've been at war in Colombia, at war with a guerrilla that has been present in the Colombian reality with their political objectives, their military objectives. And 15 years ago, we didn't know if we were going to win the war or if we were going to lose it. 15 years ago, when Plan Colombia was launched, Colombia was on the verge of being declared a failed state. One third of the territory was in the hands of the guerrillas. Another third was in the hands of the paramilitaries. And the last third was in the hands of the state, and the state was in a defensive situation. We were going through the worst economic recession in the last 18, 90 years. And that's when Colombia was seeking the help of a friend. And that's when the United States gave us this hand. And Plan Colombia was launched. President Clinton went to Cartagena. I was present because at that time I was Minister of Finance. He went with a bipartisan delegation. Speaker was Speaker Hastrick, Republican side. And President Clinton said, we are investing a lot of political capital, both Republicans and Democrats. In Plan Colombia, you must make this work. And the Colombian government said, we will do our best. We need your help, but we know it's our own effort, which is going to be determined. And that was 15 years ago. Today you can see how things have changed for the good. Today we are in economic terms, the leaders in Latin America in economic growth, in creation of employment. We are the leaders in the reduction of poverty, strengthening our middle class. And we're going through a difficult time because of the international situation, the situation in the region economically, which is not good. You've seen how the price of oil has dropped from more than $100 to around $30. This has hit us very hard. We used to depend around 20 percent of our revenue, government revenue, on oil and what oil represented. And today, for this year, we have calculated zero. You can imagine to adjust in a couple of years from 20 percent to zero, only from the oil revenue. We need some very strong and bold measures, but that's what we've done. And we've done that because we think that the economy must be administered with pragmatism but also with intelligence and always knowing where you want to go. And this has been a constant in Colombian history. The macroeconomic management of Colombia has been quite responsible. We are probably the country with the least volatility in the whole of Latin America throughout the last 100 years. We have been prudent and this government has made a big effort in trying to send the correct signals because I have a theory that has been already put in place in our constitution that economic crisis, if the art of government is the art, there are many definitions, the art of protecting the rights of the citizens, the fundamental rights. Economic crises go against the protection of these rights. When you have an economic crisis, you have to restrict your budgets in health, in education, in justice, in security. And so having a good economic situation, a manageable economic situation is also a necessary condition to comply with your obligation to protect the rights of the citizens. And that's why the first amendment that I proposed to Congress when I was elected was reforming the constitution, putting fiscal responsibility as a fundamental right. Right in the same level as education, as health, as the fundamental rights of any constitution. And this has been in a way a principle that has guided our economic management in the last years. And that's why we have been able to adopt to this new situation with relatively good results. We are still leaders in economic growth. We are going to be the country that compared to the rest of Latin America, the IMF has just given their reports on what they think the growth of Latin America is going to be last year or this year, around minus 0.203, Colombia is going to grow above 3% last year, number one. This year we're going to repeat. Why? Because we have adjusted, you know, what we call intelligent austerity way. We want to keep the economy growing, but at the same time try to maintain fiscal discipline. We are even obliged by law because we had Congress approve a law that obliges the government to maintain a fiscal path. You cannot spend more than X% of your revenues, and if you do spend it one year you have to readjust the next. And this has given the international markets great confidence in Colombia. And confidence in economies is fundamental for you to be able to have a long-term future. And so that's the way we have been sort of administering the storm, the economic storm that Latin America is going through, the world is going through, and Colombia. But we, I think, know exactly what you have to do. We have to adjust more. We adjust more, but always take into account the most vulnerable sectors of society. Those are the ones that generally suffer the most in any economic crisis. And trying to do a pragmatic, counter-psychical approach. And fortunately, this has worked very well. We have, we're making the biggest investments in infrastructure in our history. Probably it's the biggest investment in infrastructure that any emerging country is doing today in the world. You're going to see how roads and airports and ports are really modernizing Colombia. Construction, the housing, housing, we have proved that this is a great multiplier of the economic demand in the last, in the first four years of our government. We made a very aggressive policy of housing, especially for the poorest. We're repeating that because still the demand is big. And so we have managed to, in with our fiscal restraints, focus the scarce resources we have in those areas that have the biggest economic and social impact. And so we still are creating employment, 45 months in a row where unemployment is going down. We have created almost four million jobs, more than about 80% formal jobs, which did not happen before. And with a social emphasis, so that's why poverty has gone down more than ever before, and we tried to maintain that. Now, this, in parallel, what we're doing with Peace Plus, 15 years ago, as I said, we were on the verge of being declared a failed state. Plan Colombia helped us tremendously, not in terms of the resources, which are not as big as people think, it's about $10 billion in the whole 15 years. We have financed roughly 90, 394% of what has cost. But the quality of the Plan Colombia has been extremely, extremely useful. Trading our troops, intelligence, and not only the military and security side, also the strengthening of our institutions, the justice system, and the social development, the rural development aspect of Plan Colombia. This comprehensive approach has worked tremendously. And we started to develop a military strategy that would take us to a negotiating table. Why had we failed before? Many attempts of trying to reach peace with the FARC failed. Well, first of all, because they thought they were going to win. The military correlation of forces was in their favor. This we changed by strengthening our military, and their Plan Colombia helped a lot, by strengthening certain type of operations. The air, helicopters, we have the second largest fleet of Black Hawk helicopters in the world. They helped a lot. Special forces, elite forces, I'm sorry to say that we beat the United States in the last competition of special forces back in Guatemala. We became, that demonstrates that the United States are very good teachers. The students become better than the teachers. And intelligence. Intelligence has been absolutely crucial. And I was appointed Minister of Defense. We overhauled and re-engineered the whole intelligence system. We used to have a system very much like the American system where the intelligence agencies compete among themselves. The British told me, in your case, you better do the British way, put all the intelligence together, share information. That made a tremendous, tremendous difference. And we started being very successful in hitting the high value targets during the last years, seven, eight years, and especially during this government. Now, I was thinking about peace a long time ago. No country can last all its life in war. So we started to prepare for a peace process, trying to bring the conditions that would be necessary for a successful peace process, and planning very carefully, studying other processes. The IRA process, the South African process, the Angolan process, the Sri Lanka process. What worked there? What worked in the Salvador, what worked in Guatemala, and what did not work? Learning from those lessons. And we got together a group of advisors. I chose them deliberately that they would be persons who had real experience in these type of negotiations. Somebody from Israel, former minister of foreign affairs, very active in the Come David peace process, the right hand man of Tony Blair, very active in the IRA process, Joaquin Villalobos, commander of the Salvadorian forces, today professor of Oxford, chief negotiator in the Salvadorian process. Persons of that sort. Even a professor of Harvard, William Uri, great professor of negotiations. And they have been helping us plan every step since the very beginning. And when I got elected, and we said now the conditions are necessary, the conditions that were necessary are now present, a correlation of military forces in our favor, the commanders of the guerrillas learned the hard way that it's better to negotiate otherwise they will end up in a jail or in a grave. And we start hitting them one after the other because of the intelligence changes, because of the operational changes. And there was a third factor which is necessary in today's world to solve a asymmetrical war as the one we have had in Colombia, the region. If your neighbors are helping the guerrillas, it's almost impossible to have a successful peace process. And I, in a way, used American pragmatism in diplomacy and reached out to my neighbors with whom we had a very bad relation, Venezuela, Ecuador, even Brazil, that helped me with the peace process. They all complied. And that was another factor, another condition that then became present. So these conditions now were now present, so I started the process. We planned, well analyzed, and we are today on the verge of signing a peace agreement. Five years ago, if you would go to a betting office here in the UK where they're so popular, what were the odds of reaching peace? Very, very small. But we are now, I think, in an irreversible moment. It has been tough, it has been difficult, it has been costly politically. They warned me, listen, you got elected president because you were the most popular minister. Why were you the most popular minister? Because you showed trophies every day. You were very successful as a minister of defense. And making war, especially if you're winning, makes you popular. Peace is much more difficult. So simply by sitting down with your enemy, that will bring you a political cost. But when you start talking about concessions to the enemy, then you will incur in a much higher cost. And that has been what has happened. But at the end, if you reach the goal, the cost becomes an investment, I hope so. And the result will be very positive. Now, I truly believe that this was the way to go, negotiating from a strong position and negotiating a very reasonable agreement. Some people are accusing me, oh, you're giving away the country. And I said, what is it that I'm giving away? These people are laying down their arms. I have some red lines that I have been establishing since the very beginning. I'm not going to negotiate anything that has to do with our political or democratic institutions, our economic policies, our investment policies, our tax policies. Private property is not an issue that can be even addressed, not even our military or police, which is one of the things, the items in any agenda of the resolution of a conflict like the Colombian that is put in the agenda that happened in Salvador, that happened in Guatemala, what is it that you're going to do with your armed forces? I said, this issue is not being discussed. I will not discuss the future of my military or my police or my armed forces with guerrillas. Simply, I will not discuss it. I have not discussed it, and I will not discuss it. So we had very clear what the items of the agenda and the items of the agenda reduced simply to a transition of a guerrilla group, an armed guerrilla group, towards a political party. They lay down their arms, and you go through a transitional justice that guarantees that there will be no impunity. And this is the first time ever that a guerrilla group accepts going through a justice system, never before. And at the beginning of the negotiations, the first thing they said, why should we be the first guerrilla group to give up our arms and go through a justice system and be condemned? What I said, it's a different world. You cannot have the amnesty that other guerrilla groups had. It's a different world, and these are the conditions. And after very hard negotiations, we were able to reach an agreement on a judicial system, special system, whereby the most responsible will be investigated, will be judged, will be condemned, and will pay the sanctions. Never before has this been done. It's the first time that the two parties in a war negotiate the system. Usually it's imposed by the United Nations or by a third party. This time, it's the first time it's negotiated. And that will guarantee that this is peace with no impunity. There has been questions of how much justice are we sacrificing? This is always the most difficult question in any negotiation of this sort. Where do you draw the line between peace and justice? And you will always find people that are not satisfied with whatever decision you take. Some people want more justice, others want more peace. The important thing here is that we put for the first time ever the victims, never before in any conflict resolution, anywhere in the world, have the victims of the conflict were put in the center of the solution. Their rights, their rights to the truth, their rights to reparation, their rights to justice, and the rights of non-repetition. And we put the victims there. I thought in the beginning that the victims were going to be the most troublesome in terms of where you draw the line between peace and justice. It's a logical conclusion. The victims are the ones who suffered. They want more justice. Well, I learned a lesson, a very important lesson. I was wrong. The victims are the most prone to forgive, to reconcile.  For me, it has been a lesson in my life. And the fact of putting the victims in the center of the solution has been an incredibly important, very difficult, but important aspect of this peace process. Because that gives the process a lot of legitimacy, tremendous legitimacy, taking into account the aspirations, the suffering, and the thinking of the victims. We have more than 7.5 million victims, 7.5 million. And they are feeling recognized, which gives the process a lot of legitimacy. We went through the negotiations, rule development. This is the first item. Why did I accept discussing this with the FARC? Because this is a conflict that emerged in the rural areas. That's where poverty is concentrated. And we need, we want to be a sustainable, modern, strong democracy. In the future, we need to address the rural areas. We need to invest in the rural areas. And that's what these people also wanted. It was very easy. The first item that we negotiated was that. It's the only matter of policy that we negotiated. The second item of the agenda is political participation. What are we negotiating? What every democracy discusses every day? You're having this discussion here right now in your elections, and in France, and in Israel, whatever you go. How do you improve your democracy with the new conditions that emerge before you didn't have cell phones, the social networks? How do you incorporate that in your democracy? Your democracy is a process. It's never a perfect process, as Churchill used to say, but you need always to improve it. We're improving our democracy. We're giving people that did not have representation a say in our democracy. The third item is drug trafficking. I put that as a condition. This is a major aspect. The FARC has been labeled as the biggest drug cartel in the world. They recognize that they have financed their operations through drug traffic, but they're not drug traffickers. So I say, OK, then commit yourself to break every link that you have with the drug trafficking and help us get rid of this scourge from the Colombian territory. And they agreed. And this is a major, major step forward in the world on drugs, not only in Colombia, but for the world, because we are still the number one provider of cocaine to the international markets. So this is a major step. Now, instead of our policemen and our military going to eradicate and they find landmines and they were blown up or snipers shooting them like ducks, now we're going to have the FARC helping the state in this alternative crops that we need to plant instead of the coke. So this is a major step. The fourth was the victims, the rights, justice. And the fifth, what we're negotiating right now, is what you call the DDR, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration to society. We hope to finish soon. And then we will have peace. And this is going to open a new opportunity for Colombia. Colombia is a country that got accustomed to war. You ask people, hey, what do you think of peace? And they are afraid. I got peace. It's a major change. Most of the Colombians have never seen one single day of peace. And they're afraid of change. They think the peace might be bad. It's what happens to a prisoner who is in jail for 40 years and saying, you're going to be free. He's terrified. That, in a way, is happening to the Colombian society. And we have to teach them that, no, peace is going to be marvelous. That it's much better to have peace than to have war. And we're in this process. And I think, hopefully, we will sign this peace agreement in the near future. And that this is happening in good part because of the help of the United States. That's why I'm here. To thank the United States, this is a successful story in a world which is full of problems. And to tell the US bipartisan policy that you have a good partner in the south of Rio Grande, the best partner, I think you have in the whole of Latin America and Caribbean. And they are more than willing to continue this partnership. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, President Santos. I think we, in particular, appreciate your candor in acknowledging the difficulties that you face, both political and structural, in proceeding with this peace process. I'm sure a question you said, we're on the verge of signing a peace agreement. You said, in the near future, there actually was, at one point, or is, a particular date that you had in mind, March 23. Can you tell us how close you are to making that deadline, if it's even a deadline? I was advised against establishing a deadline.  And it's not good. However, we found a situation, a particular situation, to force the guerrillas to establish a deadline. Because in a negotiation, especially the guerrilla groups, when they're going to take the decision to lay down their arms, they're afraid. And they try to postpone that date forever until they have every single guarantee.  They're terrified. And you have to push them. How do you push them with a deadline? And that's why we put a deadline. Now, what is it that we need to do to comply with that deadline? Speed things up. That is exactly what we agreed. The negotiators went back yesterday, back to Cuba, with a new procedure to speed things up. And we're hoping that we can sign by the 23rd of March. Now, if it's two days after, one day before, a week after, it doesn't matter. But we are using that deadline to try to comply with it. And we are both committed. And the good part is that we're both enthusiastic about trying to sign by the 23rd of March. Let me personally point out to affirm what the president has said about Columbia's progress. I was in Columbia in 1997. And at that time, I and I think many of us were fearful that Columbia was going to become a narco state. The power of the narco traffickers, even in government, in parliament, was so evident. So there's no question of the progress that your government has made over these last 15 or 20 years. Nevertheless, as you say, there have been what? Four or five attempts to end the Civil War in Columbia over these past 50 years. Obviously, it's very difficult. And one of the obstacles that I think you personally have pointed out, I believe there's still something like 8,000 FARC fighters with arms in the country. I think you have personally pointed out that these guys don't know anything but fighting. How do you reintegrate a fighting force of combatants who know nothing in their whole life experience but war and fighting? Well, fortunately, we have had some experience. We have reintegrated more than 53,000 combatants, paramilitaries and guerrillas. We have set up structures to do that. And we've been learning more and more. They go through a process. And we are also teaching the people who can hire them, businessmen, that it's OK. Many times, they end up being better workers than the average worker because of their enthusiasm or whatever reason. And so we're not starting from zero. And to reincorporate 8,000 already having incorporated 52,000 is not a big challenge. Of course, in this case, there might be some special procedures in terms of if they want to live together in a cooperative in rural areas, then we will have them do. But we have experience there. And I think that's not going to be one of the major problems. Well, talking about your experience with the reintegration of paramilitary forces, for example, I think it's undeniable that a lot of those former paramilitary forces were transformed into drug traffickers. There has been, as you point out, a long historic link between guerrilla groups, whether on the right or the left, and drug trafficking. Do you expect, do you fear, that some of these FARC fighters, when they lay down their arms, will turn to drug trafficking? They say that they have a good command and control over their people. I have been very skeptic in every step of this negotiating process, like St. Thomas, who needs to see the blood in order to believe. And of course, you'll probably see some people maintaining, because they've been in contact with drug trafficking, and they know how profitable it is. One of the big challenges we have, the biggest challenge, and I hope that there we can cooperate with the US more, is precisely that. Avoid the criminal bans, the organized crime, to fill the vacuum that the FARC is going to leave. And that's where the state must be present, with the armed forces, with the police, with the justice system, with the health system, with the education, with investment in the infrastructure. That's one of the big challenges of what they call the post-conflict, which we are also planning very carefully, the areas that they need, what are the needs of the people in order to be effective in that way. This is probably the biggest challenge of the post-conflict, is precisely that. Now, a plan Colombia, when it was introduced, as you very well know, in 2000, was a counter-narcotics initiative. It was a counter-drug initiative. Has it now been morphed? Has it been transformed into a political initiative to end the Civil War? And what has happened to the counter-narcotic objectives? You mentioned that Colombia is back on top, as the number one producer of coca in the United States. I think that's a big concern here in this country. Well, we have never been number two. OK. OK. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. Credit where credit is due. But precisely, after all this effort, for example, last year, we seized, we seized in our interdiction efforts more coca than any other year in the plan Colombia or in the history of Colombia, 250 tons. Police are military. We have one third of the families that were dedicated to coca cultivation in the year 2000. By numbers, about one third. We have 100,000 acres less in the coca cultivation today than when Plan Colombia started. Yes, the coca production went up the last year and year before because these people learned how to protect themselves from spraying, learned how to migrate to areas where it's more difficult to reach them, to do any kind of crop substitution. But that's a big opportunity that we have now. Without the FARC protecting them, protecting the drug business, then it's going to facilitate tremendously the work of the state. And one of the reasons why we are still the number one coca-exported world is because, in a way, it was very difficult to be effective in giving the peasants an alternative crop that would be sufficiently profitable for them to have a good life. Now we have the opportunity. Now for the first time, we can address in a more comprehensive way the roots of the problem and not only the causes, the roots of giving these people an alternative way of life and being much more effective in combating. We have to carrot and stick the chain, the addiction which we are doing. We have learned a lot. We are helping other countries to fight the drug trafficking in those links of the chain where we are being very effective. We have to continue to address that, but be more effective in the roots. So that's where I think we're going to make a breakthrough. You have stopped fumigating, haven't you? Yes. We've started fumigating. We were the only country in the world that was fumigating, and we were experiencing diminishing returns in terms of these people have learned how to protect themselves. They started to plant the coca in between the legal crops. We had a ruling from our Constitutional Court saying, if there is any risk for human life, of the use of this, what do you call it, the fumigate, the spray, the chemical, then the World Health Organization issued a study, a degree, saying there is a risk. And at the same time, we were on the verge of losing in the international courts, the International Court of Justice, a demand suit that we had from Ecuador. So all these factors were less and less effective. We have a ruling from the court, and we're going to lose in the international court. Let's stop it and try to address the issue in a more effective way, because, again, as I would say, spraying was less and less effective. It was effective at the beginning, but it was less effective. They moved. One last question, and then I'm going to turn it over to our sponsors here. You eloquently pointed out that there is, in all processes of peace and reconciliation, there is a question of how much justice and how much peace. And the Colombian people will have an opportunity independently of your government to answer that for themselves when they have a referendum on your peace process. But it's even beyond Colombia. There is, for example, the International Criminal Court.  How can you be sure? Or what steps are you taking to see that the special judicial zones that you are setting up will satisfy the international demands, the legal demands, for justice? Very good question. You're making the difficult questions. But I'm happy, because I think it's a good opportunity. We were very careful in the discussion of this issue, the justice element of the negotiation, to abide by these international standards. We are part of the Treaty of Rome. The fact that we put the victims in the center of the solution and their rights complies directly with the Treaty of Rome's purpose. And what is the purpose of the Treaty of Rome? Facilitate the peaceful resolution of conflicts. That's why the Treaty of Rome was created. And to protect human rights. And we are stopping the factory of the violation of human rights, which is a war. And at the same time, complying with these minimum standards. That's why I say that there is no impunity, the maximum is possible. We'll go to the justice system, we'll be judged, and we'll be condemned and sanctioned. And they will serve a time with what we call effective restriction of liberty. So the impunity part is taken care of. Since this is an unprecedented scheme, some people that are defenders of human rights have said, no, no, this is not enough. This is a relative appreciation. Of course, you can always say it's not enough. Many people feel, no, these people deserve, instead of eight years, they deserve 40 years. But this is precisely those type of situations where you seek the maximum justice that will allow you peace. And I think we struck this deal in the correct way. We have enough justice to comply with all these international standards, and at the same time allow us peace. And there's in this a very big, a very crucial question. What about the rights of the future victims? What about from the human rights perspective? The worst thing you can have in a country is a war. We're stopping this war. So the transition, that's why it's called transitional justice. The transition has a cost. But I think that the cost that the justice is paying is minimal compared to the benefits from the human rights perspective. That's why we think this is a good deal. Well, I have many more questions. I'd love to ask you your thoughts on the situation in Venezuela, but I'm going to surrender my time here now and let our distinguished co-sponsors of this event. Thank God. You're off the hook. Well, maybe one of them will ask you that. So what we're going to do is we have five institutions who are sponsoring this event, and each of the five is represented here this morning by their president or CEO. And we're going to go right down the line, beginning with Jane Harmon from the Woodrow Wilson Center. They're going to ask their questions, and then we're going to wait for all five questions to come. And then President Santos, if you could keep track of what they're asking, because you're going to have to answer all of them together. OK, Jane Harmon from the Woodrow Wilson Center. Welcome back to Washington, Mr. President. As the first of the all-female lineup of sponsors, I'm delighted to greet you. As you know, I served in the United States Congress for nine terms before coming to the Wilson Center, and I just want to make two quick observations. Number one, the only vote I missed making, because I had already come here, was the vote for the Colombian FTA, Free Trade Agreement. And that's the only thing I miss about not being in the United States Congress. But the second comment is that as a politician, you did something extraordinary, which is you put your career on the line in the presidential election on behalf of a great dream. And most politicians are never that brave. And so I just wanted to congratulate you for doing that. Good. So my question is, what keeps you up at night in these weeks before this agreement becomes final? OK. Adrienne Arst. Of the Latin America Center. You referred to the fact your purpose here is to thank us for what we've done for you in the past and that you wanted to stress the partnership that we have. My question is, in these days that you're here packed with meetings, including with our president, what will you ask of us, us your partners, to help you to implement this peace treaty and to move forward? Susan Siegel. Mr. President, I want to thank you for your leadership and your presentation today. You talked about infrastructure. And infrastructure, as you mentioned, is critical to growth. It's critical to connectivity. And it's critical to integration and peace. So what are the two or three projects that you believe has to happen during your administration and can be realized between now and the end of your administration? What's going to happen? Could you repeat the question that I didn't? Sure. On infrastructure. You talk about how important infrastructure is. And what are some of the most important things that you think of in terms of infrastructure that has to be created in your administration to ensure the connectivity in the country? Ambassador Hills. Mr. President, thank you for a wonderful presentation. And thank you for your leadership, not only in Colombia, but throughout the region. You mentioned in your remarks the economic challenges that Colombia faces and the region faces. And I would like your views on how you assess the US-Columbia Free Trade Agreement of 2012. What are the prospects in your view of moving forward with the Pacific Alliance? And if and when, Colombia will consider joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Thank you. And Nancy Lindberg from the US Institute of Peace. Thank you, President Santos. And thank you very much for your comments today and the vision that you've led your country through. I'm intrigued with your comment that you learned from studying other peace agreements. And I think we know already that many will learn a lot from the process that you've gone through. And we want to particularly applaud putting victims at the heart of your agreement. My question is, you talked about the careful process that you've put in place, including the possibility of having to teach people that peace is marvelous, which I love, peace is marvelous. We also know that once the agreement is signed, that there's still a lot of hard work ahead. It takes many years to heal after this kind of a conflict. So my question is both, how do you imagine managing the expectations of people? And how do you imagine managing the potential spoilers? Who might be the spoilers? And how will you manage them to keep the process on track? Thank you. There you go. Thank you. Jane, what nightmares do I have? I'll confess to you that I sleep quite well. Because when you have peace of mind, when you think you're doing the correct thing, you sleep well. And I think I'm doing the correct thing. Of course, there's a lot of difficulties. Now that you were mentioning Venezuela, for example, the neighborhood, Venezuela, if there is any violence there, that will affect us. I worry about that. That's why we're trying to promote dialogue within Venezuela. I sometimes fear, and I want to address the spoilers, that people are very easily misinformed. And that this misinformation sometimes breeds on misinformation. And many times in politics, many times about misinforming the people, that with the peace process, this misinformation could really damage the process. Or some spoiler that commits some kind of terrorist act or atrocious act that would put the process on the spot. These are the type of things that worries me. But of course, these are natural worries that you have in the process of this sort. And I sometimes worry that the price of oil keeps going down. For us, it's a big cost. But in general, I slept quite well. I slept quite well last night. What would I ask the United States right now in my visit, and what would I like the US to do for Colombia? You were extremely helpful in the process of bringing the conditions for peace. And I must say President Obama has been supportive of the peace process since the very, very beginning. He was one of the first persons to know about the peace process. He appointed a special envoy, Bernie Ironson, and has been extremely effective, very constructive. And so you have been a great friend in this process. And if we reach peace, the construction of peace really starts there. What we are going to sign is the end of the conflict. But the real construction of peace has to be done in the regions and in the hearts and minds of the people. And it's going to take a long time. And I would hope that the US was a great partner in bringing the end of the conflict. They can be a great partner in the construction of peace. You have many, many comparative advantages. In terms, for example, I have a dream. I want Colombia to be the most and better educated country in Latin America by the year 2025. The United States has the best universities in the world. How can we work together? We have a big problem with the SICA right now. I'm going to ask President Obama to see if he can help me. We can research together how to combat SICA and the other, the Casa de Sica, Chikungunya, or the other illness called dengue, all these tropical, or not tropical, but diseases that are now sort of flourishing. How can we work together there? We still need to work together against organized crime. Organized crime has tentacles all over the world. The President of Mexico and Central America and Caribbean and Colombia, West Africa, or you, wherever you go. There we have to continue, from the security point of view, to work together. So there's a lot of things that the United States can continue to help us, and I hope they do. And Susan, infrastructure and connectivity, we have made tremendous efforts there because we know that for long term, if we want to be competitive, we need to upgrade the quality of our infrastructure and the quality of our connectivity. Colombia has more than 1,100 municipalities. Many scattered around the country, very far away. And when I was elected, I set a goal. I want to connect every municipality with fiber optic and broadband. Today, every municipality is connected with fiber optic and broadband. And the big challenge now is how to use that infrastructure in terms of technology. There, the United States can help tremendously because you are the most advanced country in the world in that respect. And there's tremendous opportunity there. From the traditional infrastructure, now the technological infrastructure, if you arrive to Bogotá, you will arrive in the most modern airport in the whole of Latin America, Bogotá del Dorado. Number one, in cargo of all of the airports in Latin America. Number three, in passengers after Mexico and Sao Paulo. And we're trying to do that with 58 airports around the country. Rhodes, I lived in London for 10 years. And I used to say, why is it that my country cannot build these highways that you find in Switzerland or because we have a lot of mountains or in Germany or in the US? Is it that we don't have the engineers? Is it that we don't have the, well, we're doing that. We're doing that and the construction of these highways are already in place. The projects have already been structured and allocated and you have people now and today moving cement and to build these huge tunnels and huge highways that will really connect our country, which is one of the reasons we had, and we still have a big problem, to carry a container from Bogotá to report. Buena Ventura or Cartagena costs more than that container going to Hong Kong. That's what we're going to, we're addressing that already. And as I said, we're making the biggest investment in infrastructure of any emerging country in the world today. So I would like to leave that as one of my legacies. And Carla, I remember very well. Carla Hills was a special trade representative negotiator of the NAFTA. That was 25 years ago, you know? That was, no, no, that was 94, right? I was Mr. Trade at that time. First Minister of Trade, I had to open the Colombian economy and my dream was to have a free trade agreement with the United States. It took some time. It took about 15 years later. During my government, finally, the U.S. Congress, and your vote, Jane, was present there in spirit. So I thank you for that. The free trade agreement with the United States has been extremely important, not only because you're the biggest market and even though in the short term the balance of trade went in your favor, but we see this as a great challenge for us and a great opportunity for us. And one of the reasons why, in this very troubles in the international economy, we are not being hit as hard as other countries in Latin America, especially south of Colombia, is because you are still and will be, for many years, our first trading partner and our first source of investment. Many U.S. companies are still invested in Colombia, are present in Colombia, and you have a comparative advantage also in the opportunities that are being opened in the agribusiness. We have half of Colombia still to conquer in a way like you conquered the West here in the United States in the 18th century, we have to conquer half of Colombia. We're one of the few countries that can produce more food, a lot more food in the world. And I think the U.S. can partner with us a lot there. The Pacific Alliance is working very well. It's working because it's very pragmatic. We don't want to create any big bureaucracy. We have no bureaucracy. It's been a very practical approach. We share the same visions with Chile, with Peru, with Mexico, we share the same values. And I think we are, in a way, winning the competition in Latin America. This is the way to go about it. Integrating with some principles like the respect of private property, considering foreign investment as an ally, not as an enemy, giving legal and personal security to investors using foreign investment as a source also of technological transfer. And that's why the four countries of the Alliance are the four countries that are growing today more than any other country in Latin America. And we want to continue that. And whoever wants to join the club, more of the work. And we would like, I think tomorrow the TPP is being signed and we have made an effort to look towards the Pacific. And we are not members of APEC when the reasons why we were not considered as part of the TPP was precisely that, that we were not members of APEC. We are trying to become members of APEC and we would look forward to starting the route to be part of the TPP. That would take some time. But this is part of our overall objectives because we have a big ocean in the Pacific, also in the Atlantic, Caribbean, but the Pacific. And we see there a good source of growth for the future. We negotiated free trade agreement with Korea. We're negotiating free trade agreement with Japan. And we're looking more and more towards the Pacific. And there we can also meet our interest for the future. And managing expectations, what is the big challenge right now? At the beginning of the process, I told the Colombian people, don't worry, whatever I negotiate will be put to a referendum, to some kind of vote by the Colombian people. This is something that many people advised against it. They said, no, no, no, this is dangerous. This is a, and again, they started saying peace processes are very, very costly politically. This is something that people will not, will not really appreciate. The FARC are very unpopular. 95% of people hate the FARC. And the concessions you're gonna give are gonna be unpopular, so why do that? But I thought it's so important that it has to have legitimacy. And I said, no, we will do that. And we included that point as part of the agreement with the FARC. And I said, I will, many people said, don't, you don't have to comply. You have the legal authority. The Congress will work with you. Why do that? I said, no, I have to do it. I have to put this to a vote. The Constitutional Court is studying the constitutionality of the law that Congress passed for this plebiscite to be put to the people. Some people are saying that I was rigging the minimal participation, which is not true. What we did was put a minimum of the number of people who will have to vote yes on 13.5%, which is equivalent to putting a minimum of votes of 25%. It's exactly the same. But in this misinformation, they said, no, no, I was doing an arbitrary change of the constitution and I lowered the minimum requisites. That's not true. I put it in order to promote a discussion between yes and no and not a discussion between yes and abstention. Abstention is not the way that democracy works. So that was the reason. Now, the challenge is to convince, and I'm sure that we will be successful there, of the benefits of peace for the people. And to do away with this misinformation, the spoilers that are saying that this is a peace agreement will give the country to communism.  They say that I was infiltrated by communism when I lived in London. No, really, I'm serious. I'm serious and there's a blog saying that I am a communist and that, well, this is part of the game. I am absolutely sure that when we have the agreement finished and we will put to the Colombian people the whole package that an overwhelming majority will vote yes. Now, what is happening? Of course, you poll the people and you ask the people, would you like the FARC to be in Congress? They say no. Majority say no. Would you like or do you agree that the FARC should have legal, judicial benefit, lower punishment than they should have? People say no, why? So elements of the peace agreement are all unpopular. But when you put the package, this is peace with a cost because there was always going to be a cost. Peace has a cost. But this is the cost of continuing this war for 20 or 30 years. People will vote for peace. I am absolutely sure and the challenge is to convince the majority of Colombians that this is the case and I'm quite sure that we will do that. Thank you. Very good. Well, President Santos, the organizers of this event are very cognizant of your time demands. You have some very important meetings scheduled. I think you're going to Capitol Hill this afternoon and that's obviously an important part of your work here. I do want to give you a minute or two to wrap up any sort of concluding thoughts you may have. Unfortunately don't have time to take questions from the audience as we'd hoped but I do want to give you this and I don't know, I'm personally curious but you said you want to promote dialogue in Venezuela. I don't know if you want to elaborate on that at all. That's a tantalizing comment you made but I'll leave it to you just a minute or two to conclude. No, I start by the dialogue. I do think that the whole exercise of bringing peace after 50 years of war through dialogue, through a negotiated agreement, I mean it's the sensible and only civilized way out. A society cannot live in war forever and this is what Columbia unfortunately, this is the longest armed conflict in the whole of the Western Hemisphere. The only one. And I think that through dialogue we can resolve our differences and keep going in peace. When I said we're trying to promote the dialogue in Venezuela or in any situation where there is such political polarization I say it because I'm convinced that when you try to understand the interest and the way of thinking of somebody who is completely different from you and try to discover common ground that you will always find common ground. I will tell you an anecdote.  You see I was a journalist before being the Minister of Defense I wrote and I wrote the most terrible things about Chavez and he spoke the most terrible things about me. But when I got elected we, I said now I'm gonna be president of every Colombian, 46 million Colombians at that time and we have a border of 2,200 kilometers. We had no relations, no commercial, no diplomatic and the relations were simply insults from one country to another and that was the same with Ecuador and that was the same with the whole region. So I said this is unbearable, this is absurd and so I sort of sent a message. I'm ready to sit down like civilized men and see if we can reach some kind of understanding. The response was positive. We met and I said to him listen, you and I will never agree on many things. You and I are like water and oil, they never mix. But you respect what I think and I respect what you think. I will not intervene in your affairs, you will not intervene in my affairs. And we'll see, we'll see if your model works better or if my model works better. I think six years later the evidence is there. But let's work on whatever interests you and me. And he said, I will help you with a peace agreement. And he helped a lot to convince these people that this is the only way out. And I even had an anecdote, a humorous anecdote, I will share with you very, I think we have a couple of minutes more. When I was going to meet him, I was scared. I don't know, how am I gonna manage this guy? What is he gonna say to me after all these insults back and forth? And he was invited to Colombia, to a place where Simón Bolívar died in Santa Marta, Colombia. I was with my minister of foreign affairs. He was with his minister of foreign affairs, Maduro. And he arrived 10th of August 19th, 2010, my birthday. And he said, that was my 58th birthday. And he arrived and he said, here I come and he always made press conferences and speeches in the airport. He arrived with the white flag. I will come to start a new chapter with Colombia. A new chapter with President Santos, who is the president of the United States. President Santos, who is today in a special day, it's his birthday, it is his 48th birthday.  So I remember that advice and he then arrived to where I was waiting for him and he was going to embrace me. And I said, very seriously, we are in deep trouble, President Chavez. And he was flabbergasted and he was, God, what happened? And I said, you made some statements when you arrived, which creates tremendous troubles to our relationship. He said, what did I say? I only said that I come in peace. No, you said that it was my 48th birthday. It's my 58th birthday and my wife is going to be much more demanding to me. And that broke the ice. That broke the ice. And from then, that moment to the moment he died, we had a cordial, personal relationship being two completely, completely different persons. And I think this is a lesson for life. Thank you. Well, President Santos, I think I speak for everyone here in wishing you the best of luck in this hugely important endeavor. Thank you for coming by this morning. Thanks for everyone.


Good afternoon everyone and welcome. This is Melissa Armo with the Stock Swoosh, and I'm introducing a new subscription service about the market I'm going to be doing a weekly market report and It's a monthly subscription once a week from the close of the market on Friday Sometime between the close of the market Friday and the open of the market on Monday morning You will receive a video which is going to be a market report where I'll review The market what it did last week what I think we go this week target support resistance And also the economic calendar for the call coming week and also the possible effects that that may have on the market It will be in a video format that gets sent to you via your email and So it roughly comes out to about ten bucks a week. It's a monthly subscription service There is a 30-day cancellation for the monthly subscription Just looking at this here, you know, I look at the market on a regular basis Not just because I'm running the room trading on Television because of the fact that I want to be right there with any moves that happen immediately in the market and Thursday night I saw that the market was down. I Saw the market was down at night. The futures were down and then we were down Friday morning So if you are on this list, you will have an advantage Especially if you're in over nights where you will be able to see where the market's going see where the market's going Get my predictions the market is something that is very hard to predict and it's very hard to see what's going to happen I do a great job of it. Actually, I usually see what it's going to do farther ahead than anyone else And this is one of these things where I review the gaps I look at the gaps that happen in the market the bullish gaps the bearish gaps And that's how I'm making the predictions and also like I said I'm looking at the economic calendar for the week and then trying to determine where I think we go So the subscription service is $40 a month. There's no prerequisite for signing up for this If you would like to sign up it begins this week. So it begins on April 8th Email me at Melissa at the stocks whoosh calm It's going to be a great product for people who really want to know where the market's headed and again Once a week you will receive it via email and it will be a specific video where I'll review everything It's private the video will be private for the people that sign up for the service And if you'd like more information, feel free to email me. Thanks everyone. Have a great night


If we now change tax slightly, we have Jeff Hall, who is PSN, so Public Services Network Technical Lead at the Cabinet Office. Jeff is responsible for providing technical leadership to the PSN Program, which is implementing a network of networks. I'm sure Jeff is going to tell us more about that. Really, he's going to talk to us about why the Public Services Network forms the basis of a new kind of marketplace over to Jeff. I was quite struck by Mike's comment that Citizens Advice Bureau is lovely, and I was thinking wonder what people perceive PSN. I don't think we'd ever be described by anybody as lovely. I want to ask you to put your hands up on that one, and probably not trusted, more feared, I would think, in truth. So another anomaly in here is that I'm PSN technical leader, as the introduction said, and I'm talking about marketing, which should be good for a laugh or two, but hell, marketing people never stop talking technical. Sorry. So PSN is a lot of fun, but it's also dogged by quite a lot of myths, so I thought I'd break a few, and that's why this is not going to be a technical discussion. There's plenty of documentation on the web for those who like to read about MPLS and such. So what is it? During the introduction, it's a network of networks. It's a network of services. It's a network of people and organisations who want a network. When people talk about going and doing a bit of networking, I'm sure they don't mean connecting via MPLS. They mean going to a party, getting to know people, exchanging information, and PSN is about that in a funny sort of way. It's not a physical network, it's a network of networks, where it creates an environment that supports a new kind of market. So why? Why? Because I think you've just heard from Mike and Adam. If I heard the word change once, I heard it about 500 times, and that's because that's real and you experienced it as well. I heard words like agile and new services and new kinds of information exchange and new ways of communication. So when you step back and look at the public services and the whole environment, you end up with thousands of networks, all of which are different, most of which are not connected together, five and a half million people, thousands of sites. It's pretty inflexible. They've been bought in a bespoke manner, and I won't go on. But you understand those problems that when you start doing the kind of social networking, the Blackpool and Taunton example was perfect. If those two organisations aren't connected together, how on earth could they ever do social interaction? So the old way of doing things wasn't sustainable. It doesn't scale in this modern world. When you've got a high rate of change, you've got hundreds of organisations that Adam was referring to, Mike was referring to joining and helping him. We heard the word partnership there as well. Organisations that will come into existence, organisations disappear. That's a rate of change that here the two didn't happen. Handling that on the kind of range of networks in the old style was a very difficult, very expensive, unaffordable, not workable proposition. So why do we get away from that? Well the first part of that is we need seamless connectivity. When you connect to your broadband at home, you don't consider where your bank is hosted, where Amazon is hosted, where BBC iPlayer comes from. You just connect and go. You use it. So the idea of PSN is to create an environment of seamless connectivity. Any service, anywhere on PSN, any information transported to where it's needed, provided it's appropriate. There's a small caveat in there because not everything should be everywhere in terms of your personal information, for example. So how do you partner and agile, you use that ability to transport information, exploit the services that could be there. As I said, it's a new kind of market. So it's a market for services, not a market for connectivity except that we create a commodity, the commodity of connectivity is part of that market. So it's an open market and it's underpinning the transformation of ICT. So it's an enabler, it's not the end goal in itself. But we do desire to create that effect of a single network. Now we've heard a lot about change in the last few minutes and an acknowledgement that change is hard. And I can tell you after four years, change is really hard on this scale. And we've had some great times doing it, and we've had some tough times doing it through the ups and downs of doing it, but we are getting there. And there's a logical way to bring change about. We're not building a network, so we can't create a paint by numbers plan and say, right, first you get your core network and then you get your access and then you put your services on. It isn't like that. We're actually taking something that people use today, all of the networks, the former network networks, largely exist in some form or another today. And we merge them together against common standards so that they interconnect properly and operate properly. That sounds fairly straightforward. Anybody who might have had any involvement with things like IETF and ITU will know that standard is not something you undertake lightly, and it never happens quickly because you've got vested interests and negotiations and somewhat like the fisheries negotiations that the government was talking about this morning on the radio. It takes a long time. However, we have heard it, the cats, and we do have our foundation layer. We've established ourselves. We have our first delivered networks. We have some converged procurement. We have industry-led standards in place and published. And as I say, for those of you who like reading about technical standards, they are all on the web. But it is a journey. We have moved forward embracing that technology, getting partners on board, getting users on board, getting the first services on there, standing up the centralized services that glue it together. It doesn't come with no central cost, but it is essentially the networks interconnecting. But you will understand that you need to sort out little things like addressing and certain types of routing and other things in order to make it operate. And then once you've done that, of course people want to put more services on so we go on and enhance and exploit finally that. And hopefully what we've done then is to light the blue touch paper to an environment that supports innovation and new initiatives. Now that in itself is something of a change and why I said it's a new market. If we look at the way we used to do things and maybe we still do, you go through a cycle of understand what the need is, define it, consult with industry, redefine it, consult again, go out to purchase, winner, build, execute, and that whole process takes years. Now, as we've just heard, the rate of which services and applications and the ability of people to communicate is changing is much faster than that. So the consequence of that situation is that what we build by that route is five years out of date on its first day of use. So what we want to do is to create a network of networks that supports a vibrant, innovative environment for people to put services on, not services that PSN dictates, but services that people innovate and bring to a market. So that's a change. It's a change for our suppliers because they're used to responding to, I have a requirement, then there's a bit process, they will then respond to it. What we're asking to do is invest products in a marketplace in an innovative way based on industry best practice. I'm sure you heard that this morning a little bit regarding the ICT strategy that we want to do is to have the way in which large and small enterprises operate today transferred into the public sector. PSN is the environment that enables that to happen, but the other part is this new marketplace. The marketplace that says that suppliers understand that it's a requirement in the marketplace generally, invest in products, bring those products to market for consumption by the public sector rather than waiting until the public sector puts its hand up and says I have a need and then five years later that need gets resolved except as everyone in this room I'm sure knows by that time the need has changed. So it has been a long journey and we have managed to get somewhere with it and the results speak for themselves. We've got a large family. It isn't again imposed from the centre. We have a family of organisations who seeing the opportunity have started to develop their own areas and bring it to the family of PSN. So what we learned was once you do have the right environment in place then genuinely they will come and some are very enthusiastic and we believe it or not rather than us pulling from the centre, we get people beating us up for not having enough in the centre to support what they want to do. So I really bless early adopters without them. We'd be nowhere. So a great deal of enthusiasm and activity and the result of that is that the market exists and it exists because we can show the savings and benefits from it. Now what that does tell us is that you can create a market and not only that when you put the motion, put it in motion to create that market you start to make savings before you've even completed building the thing that creates that market. Why? Because the suppliers believe the market exists therefore they start pricing and bidding into that market in a way that makes them present themselves as aggressive and participants. So savings are there even before you finish which is handy in the current environment. And all of this results in some skepticism of course but particularly like that one. It's a bit of a shock when something starts working especially when it's been a long hard road to get there but work it does. So in terms of market rather than in technology we have large but before I go into the market we do have the network interconnects up and running. We do have traffic flowing over them. We are working our way up the security layers from the basic level that people would have experienced with GCSEX for those who are familiar with it and working our way up the stack so that we can provide a comprehensive set of services. So not everything that people might want to consume is there today but what we see is because we now have the frameworks in place we see and these are the last six months March previous going back six months as you see the new framework for PSN come into being so the take up accelerates rather rapidly. And what you also see is that initially people buy connectivity and then the services start to come on top of that which is not terribly surprising because you build the house after the foundations. But the pipeline actually is quite interesting is that first bar on there is actually the previous chart is just in that first bar. So we go from this modest if reasonably exciting start to some very big numbers indeed where you end up with total sales of around 1.4 billion. So I would contend when we get to that we really have created a market and if that's a competitive market then public sector will benefit from the savings that come out of that being a commodity based industry best practice product rather than bespoke government product market. On the other side of an industry point of view although that attacks some individuals revenues the reality is that if you operate properly in a market you make better profits which shall us tend to like. So it can be a win-win without without so that we gain and their revenues go down but the profits go up everybody gains because we're getting standard product it works and what's more the work the product works in the same way as it does in industry and in some instances the same way as it does at home and going to to Mark's point it means that the generations that come into work in the public services will be using tools that they would have been familiar with elsewhere not having to learn to use the systems that government uses uniquely amongst other benefits and I suppose as I was relating at lunchtime it also means that that people in the public services can benefit from the kind of services that industry's been taking for granted for about 10 years if when I came from industry into public sector the biggest shock for me was dropping down from not being able to do things that I was doing in 2003 not being able to do them into 2013. A simple example is I used to travel a lot in my previous job I could work out a Singapore airport on the wi-fi I could bring my telephone from my desk in the UK to that PC in Singapore airport I could bring all my messaging I could bring all my emails I could bring my entire office to that one environment in Singapore airport I can't do it outside of the building opposite except at home under very strict circumstances and even that doesn't bring the phone it only brings the email so I want to move what the effect of PSN is that the organisations wherever they are Blackpool Taunton can work together effectively because they're all connected together because the market supplies the kinds of services that make people productive in a cost-effective way to put it in that show so what will happen as we yeah so what we will expect to happen then is as the next generation of frameworks happens so that so we will move to a smaller lots and lots of smaller buys rather than vast buys and what that also does is opens out to to the wider public making it easier for the wider public sector to become a dominant part interestingly of the market picture and that really is a response to some of the things that you've seen in policy change in that if you look at the development of things like healthcare out towards the local communities that means that they're buying lots and lots of small things rather than one big thing at the centre and there's a lot of them so they have a very big impact on the behaviour of our market so more buyers placing smaller orders less complexity smaller and more innovative supplies as well and simpler ordering procedures all of those add up to a fast agile market so immediately we've we've had our first central government awards we have a large number as you saw from some of those press cuttings of regional consortia coming into the to connect to us on the wider public sector our authority which provides the governance of the centre is up and running and some of the cyber enhancements are also in place and the thing called the government converts network which sits at the the core of it just connecting things together is starting to be heavily used and I suppose I have one of my smug told you so moments when I look at some of the incumbent suppliers who told me that we would never need more than one gig of interconnectivity because and I quote the government never talks to each other and that in the first instance they've already had to upgrade or planning to upgrade the capacity beyond one gig for some of these interconnects so that was quite an enjoyable moment and finally we're starting the process of migrating for what GSI or GCF away and that's 588 customers in the local customers in the first instance and they will all become PSN customers and consume exactly the same services that they needed before so GSI will shut down and we will end up with that community ultimately the health community will join us the centre of government communities and so everybody who's exchanging information in the public sector will have this underpinning of PSN anything anywhere connectivity there's also as was the case with GSI the concept of non-central sorry non-central government and non-public sector organisations using PSN and that comes about because as you you cease to be able to make the distinction between what is truly public sector and what is a agency supplying a service on behalf of public sector as is the case with local surgeries and so on which are effectively private businesses and the relationships that the MOJ has with with solicitors and so on so all of these things are blurred lines which PSN will cater for by one means in another so finally it's built on a few pillars one of the things that we do get a lot of people complaining about is things like codes but in the end if everyone's going to exchange information freely and confidently there has to be an element of trust if there's trust then there must be some basic standards in which people trust otherwise it's a free for all you might as well chuck everything on the internet and if you do that you'll find very quickly if you're unguarded that it will be consumed in interesting and unwanted ways so trusting systems the ability to monitor the ability to provide resilience after all if your information is being passed and it's a matter of life and death you really don't want to be at the hands of systems that are subject to random failure so the PSN marketplace is open we've delivery started and we're moving up the stack of complexity and security and there's been a huge amount of progress and although I've had a little dig occasionally during this at the suppliers by and large they've come with us and worked very hard we've had some great help from suppliers big and small in defining PSN and making it real but as you saw from the numbers 1.4 billion the big prizes are really ahead of us in terms of the monetary savings and in the terms of people like Mark and Adam and others being able to make use of this facility to do things that we would never have imagined when we started thank you


After my deployment to Afghanistan, my wife got severely depressed and we had to deal with that. My youngest son, when he was eight, came to me and told me he wanted to die, had a plan, and had actually started to do his plan and then stopped and came and talked to me instead. And then I went through a period of time back in 2017 or so where I was just going through a dark phase and wound up, it was actually my daughter who said, you know, there's something going on and you might need to talk to somebody. And it's funny because as much as I tell other people, you need to go talk to somebody, I didn't do it because I'm a chaplain, right? People are supposed to look at me in a certain way. But I did go talk to somebody which led to me getting on some medication for about a year and a half. I just needed a little help getting over this hump and then once I got better, if you will, I was fine. Mental health is no different than your physical health. So if you break an arm, nobody feels guilty about going to the doctor and getting their arm set.  Mental health is the same. It's just we can't see it. All you're doing is getting your emotions reset, your mind reset, your heart reset. And it's no different than going and getting a bone set. We have a very deep undercurrent of, I gotta be tough, you know, and this kind of thing. And I think it takes a lot of toughness to admit, hey, there's something going on and for the sake and good of everybody, I'm gonna go get help.


Hey guys, Realistic Gaming here today. We're back on the scary elevator because they have updated. Oh my god And as you can see we're in the stranger things floor, which is the new floor and there's two of them Oh my god, is that a devil Gorgon? It is a devil Gorgon. Where is he at? He's going crazy. Oh, there he is Okay, that thing is freaky man. Just look at him. Oh my god. He was pretty fast That was crazy man, and we got tweeter here to say hi buddy There you go, man And we got Vy cringely gary lion smelly Marty furious jarfrost oh zombie gaming wedgie pie 5-1 Unicorn rocks can killer jelly santic the hedgehog baby girl Kaylin new hacker and Ivan cool Oh my god, that's a lot of people bad. Yo, Chuck.  The chuck answer chill He's never chill at all. Look at him. Oh my god He's chasing Baldi leave Baldi alone for Baldi man. He's just trying to survive out here Goodful with that little man. You see Chuckie man. Okay. Let's go over here. Oh my god He took all the coins already. Oh my god. He's over here. I can't even see the guy. He's so small Okay, oh nice. Okay, so that guy's a little back. Chuckie man something else. All right, so we're off to granny's house I really like this granny's house model while mr. Nato heroes granny house. Oh God, okay. Now we don't want to play. Oh my god. Thank you, Reggie pie Tony forgot about the the traps and I was about to step on it myself Hey, be careful guys. There's traps everywhere around the house Guys, I want to go. Oh What I didn't even know this granny was there That's like granny. Oh my god. Look, there's a demo gorgon sticking out of the wall right there That is scary man. And then we got over here. We got the whole stranger thing squad. This is pretty cool, man Oh my god, like you're 11. Oh my god.  Oh my god. It's okay. So my camera died. I was recording and I come back to everybody's surrounding me What is up y'all? We got my squad here. Okay, let's go back in the elevator I wonder what I actually missed because as we've seen there was like a whole crab rape going on As you were saying they said it's a crab rape parody.  It's alright man. Don't worry. I'm used to it already. Oh Baldy Hey, but we got Baldy in here already. Oh my god. That's only one thing. He's an imposter Somebody was on the ground outside. Oh my god for them. Oh, there's paper now. Oh cool He said you can collect the paper from there like artifacts and you do um you switch him for points. I guess oh Baldy stop smacking me.  Oh, keep killing jelly. Oh, he's getting smacked boy.  Yo, what are you doing Baldy's beating up Baldy and makes no sense He's your kind man, but here we go. Let's go in this bad boy.  Oh, no And I believe it's Freddy Cooper and Michael Myers. Oh my god, Freddy. Where's Freddy at? I'm scared of him. He's ugly. He scares me man. Give me nightmares.  He's just slicing him away. Oh my god. Leave him alone Freddy Then I hear Michael over here slashing somebody I know it's Jason. Oh my god So it's Freddy and Jason Freddy vs. Jason part two right here. They need some milk. What how do we die? I thought we survived that man. Okay, so we got this map the upside down I want to get down. It's pretty crazy. And then we got to do a lingo one. Oh god Who's Squidward? Oh my god suicide Squidward. Okay, let's go check him out This dude is creepy. Oh, I Like the music the little eerie scary music. Oh god, where is he at? Oh Squidward, okay, move back you guys. I wouldn't say there if I was y'all because he's gonna jump scare you guys.  He got closer again. Oh No, hey, what's up Mario? You got Mario in here.  Oh my god Squidward do that Squidward. Oh My god, okay, still oofy people.  Let's check out the costume.  Bacon flakes right here, and then we got great. That's a nice shirt cringely. I mean king killer jelly Okay, nice. Oh, what was that? I think that was Sonic XC. Oh My god, it is Sonic XC run. Oh, what? Dude, I fell off my head What just happened there? Oh, dude, that was close. Okay. Let's get away from Sonic We definitely don't want to get caught by him because as y'all can see that is not the Sonic I know from my childhood that is a crazy Demonic Sonic look at Duelingo. He's so tiny. Hey, dude That's right. He never gives up.  I love Jason man He's one of my top killers. I think it's granny Jason Well, so I can't think of any right now, but definitely those are my top two for now.  Oh Okay, nothing here. Oh, there's a campfire. Oh, no, oh that thing's about to catch on fire right there Okay, let's go back in the elevator Oh, it's the metro. I think his name is the SCP. I Forgot the name. I always forget the numbers man. Wait, what? Oh, there he is.  I didn't even see the man. He's like kudini, man. You'll be my friend. Yes I'll be your friend favorite pastor, but I'm already your friend. So there's that man. Okay, so where'd this guy go? Oh, he's right here. Yo crusty man. Oh god. No, please get away from me Why is he so crusty man?  I'm out of here That was super close. Okay guys. I don't know how we managed to get through him, man That was so close Okay.  Hey, what's up, dude? How's it going? My boy? He's just gonna spin around in circles like that's all he knows.  Oh god, guess six six six Summon. Summon. Summon. Oh my god. He disappeared when I said it. Oh my god Okay, run everybody. Run to the end of the tunnel. If you want to live, of course Because I mean who doesn't want to live, right? Doesn't want to survive against six six six. Okay, let's go back and get some double points We out here stacking up points, man.  That's a lot of points. Can we get it a third time? No, the music is finishing No, it didn't count. Oh wait, they gave me seven points that time Okay, whatever at least he made it which I thought we worked. Oh my god There's a floating eyeball. My boy. I think your eyeball's floating and it's like the size of your head I don't know.  That's the map I wanted. Let's go Okay, let's see Let's see this map. It should be epic. Oh my god. This thing is very epic It's like I'm watching the tv show right now Oh god, okay. Where's the demogorgon now? Oh, there he is Demogorgon stop chasing me man. Oh my god. He's not giving up Okay, let's take him for us for a spin on the playground. Oh my god. He even follows you up there He is a very determined demogorgon, man Oh no, ow Run. I'm out of here boy. Yeet Going back to the elevator Wait, he had a laugh. He kind of sounded like jigsaw. I don't know if you guys heard that man Do I watch stranger things? Of course I watch stranger things, man. Let me tell him yes Who doesn't watch stranger things? My boy. Come on. Oh my god Okay, look at his face. Nice face there, man.  Oh, you can't touch me. Don't touch him. That's a trap, man These dudes legit went and jumped at him. Oh my god.  Okay, we don't need it anymore. I don't need your badge. Okay. Where's the other he is? Yo, what's up, Ben?  Okay. He's going after the evil douche Okay. Hey, that was quick dude. I felt like that was very fast Whatever man. We got that free w you know, that's all that matters. Duke You were breaking his ankles. My boy. What? Yeah, and then oh, okay, so she got my shirt out. That's just some camp crystal lake. Okay, I guess we're going back with Jason Oh, thank you, man. That is so sweet And look at his shirt. It has dodges. Well, it's like holster dodges instead of like revolvers That's just that's hilarious Never seen anything like that. Oh like right there. That's an egg Oh god, let's thank you. Whatever man. Just pretend like we didn't see a thing Oh my god, Jason's over here Jason, what are you doing? Well, why am I even asking what he's doing? Of course. He's trying to slash and dash But you know, that's just him. Okay. So is there a hatch on this floor? Oh my god This dude is really out here chasing us, man I like Jason man. He's funny. Ooh five nights at Friday's. Okay. I'm ready for some pizza, man I'm about two guys, but I'm always up for some pizza because pizza is just good Overall Unless you put pineapples on it. That's a different story man because I don't do that thing.  I should really try out that round head. It looks a little different than the rest of the heads Granny is a grown woman. Well, she's definitely more than girl. She's super old. Oh the staircase Okay, this one should be awesome. We don't really get this floor, but I know it's gonna out. What it just flung me out of the elevator Oh my god, what was that? He just got us right off the bat.  Can we go back in there? Please let oh man.  Oh my god.  Okay, so so far we're getting some floors that never really pop up, which is pretty cool, man Oh god, what is that happiest celebration? He disappeared Happiest celebration out there. No, it's not. Look at this thing Looks like it's so evil out here. Oh, okay. I'm moving back man because I don't trust mickey mouse. He's getting closer every time Oh god Oh, wait. Oh my god.  Yo, oh my god. He just lit like the elevator on fire That was intense. Okay. Let's let's launch out my little noob right here He can be my decoy for later on. Hey. Oh my god. He fell over No, stop stepping on my doob. Get a card. Oh my god.  Okay. I think he's good now He's roaming around like the usual Okay, let's go over here. He was cool. That should be baldy.  It confuses me man Because sometimes there's just too many of them Okay, and let's go over here. Okay.  There you go Nice. We got it two times That's what I'm talking about buddy. Okay, so let's see what else is do. I'm gonna check out the floor real quick I mean the whole lobby if there's anything new around here. Everything seems the same. Okay down here crazy. Dave. What's up crazy? Dave I believe David goes crazy because he's by himself down here all the time and nobody really comes down here And then what is this click to purchase? Okay, that wasn't here before. I think it was for whatever I guess that's really it. There's really not nothing much outside here upgraded on on that side Hey, what's up?  This guy's screaming over here. Oh He was camping of course he would be all right.  All right you guys Well, thank you guys for watching thank you guys for the amazing support If you guys enjoyed the video make sure to slap the like button for your boy If you're new to the channel make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell on and I will see you guys in the next one. Bye


Hello, my name is Tim Griffin. This is my talk on using Galaxy and a multi-omic workflow for identifying neoantigen peptides for immun oncology. The work you will see here is a team effort at the University of Minnesota. Primarily, David Larkin-Spada is the PI on the funded grant that is supporting most of this. Others who have contributed are part of the Galaxy for Proteomics team or the Galaxy P team at the University of Minnesota. So the work is focused on these malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors, MPNSTs, and these develop through a loss of this NF1 allele, this gene, and it follows this development progress where it goes from benign to pre-malignant and in some percentage of these to a fully malignant tumor phenotype. So the idea of this work is to develop some treatments that can intervene on this development of these types of tumors. The hypothesis is that there are non-normal epigenetic alterations that ultimately produce non-normal mRNAs that will then be translated into peptides that are presented as neoantigens to the immune system. So how does this work? A little bit about behind this is that due to some genetic alterations, we see these epigenetic changes that lead to altered chromatin state and loss of regulation and ultimately the expression of these non-normal, non-normally processed RNA sequences. And this picture sort of shows the overall concept here. So within these patients, due to these alterations, we have an expressed RNA and as a ribosome goes down that RNA, it's making protein. It will hit some of these neojunctions. These are generally splice variants that cause the reading frame to go out of frame. So these frame shifts that start to then make these very unique amino acid sequences in the proteins. So it's also known that within these types of systems, the treatment by this antibiotic, Gentamycin, will cause the ribosome to actually go beyond these premature stops and actually lengthen out the amount of non-normal or variant sequence amino acid sequence within the proteins that are being made. We call these cryptic neoantigens. So the basis of this work is to really leverage that idea and use a multi-omic approach to ultimately come up with a treatment for these types of tumors. So to use RNA-seq in a mouse model to start to identify these non-normal RNA sequences and predict potentially these expressed neoantigens, but also very importantly, confirm these neoantigens peptides are being expressed by using mass spectrometry in the same system and identifying peptides that are bound to the HLA or the MHC class 1 complex that are presented to the immune system. We can identify and verify some of those peptides. We can then take some of those, determine whether they elicit an immune response, and ultimately, potentially come up with a prophylactic vaccine. So a panel of these neoantigens peptides that could be used to intervene as a treatment in these cancers. To do this, we've been working on a protocol and using some protocols in the literature to enrich these MHC, also called HLA-1 complexes of proteins that bind to these neoantigen peptides that are presented to the immune system. So that's what this is showing, that if you enrich using antibodies, the MHC complex, you can then elude off the bound peptides, put those into the mass spectrometer and use tandem mass spectrometry to try to identify those bound peptides. And that's where the bioinformatics comes into play. So we have developed a workflow that's galaxy-based where we take the RNA-seq data, we take the accompanying peptide level mass spectrometry data, these enriched peptides, we run them through two different workflows. One takes the RNA sequencing reads and uses various tools in Galaxy to predict those non-normal peptides that potentially are expressed that would be bound to the MHC complex. We then use a tool called PEP query to take these candidates and test whether or not the MSMS data, the peptide data, shows any evidence for these being present in the samples. So that's a candidate-based identification. We also developed a more open-ended discovery-based identification where non-normal transcripts, all of them are translated out into all the potential non-normal peptide sequences. We then take the mass spectrometry data and try to match these, so we eliminate this prediction step here and keep this a little more open-ended and try to discover what are all the different variant sequences that are bound to that HLA1 complex. We've been applying these bioinformatics tools to some literature, some data that was already published on neoantigens. This is just a really little small representative taste of that data. These are the neoantigens sequences, and as you can see, they differ quite a bit from the predicted reference sequences. So this is what the type of data we hope to get out of our actual tumor data. So with that, we are continuing this work. We're using RNA-seq level data to predict these peptide neoantigens, and in the midst of testing this enrichment step for the peptides in order to do the galaxy-based analysis. Thank you.