It's time for St. Lucia Magazine, your monthly wrap-up. And welcome to St. Lucia Magazine, your monthly recap of governmental and public sector developments. I'm Hermadi Mark. In this episode, we highlight the appointment of St. Lucia's first female commissioner of police, and we take a look back at the devastating weather event that underlined St. Lucia's own vulnerability in the midst of the global climate crisis. That, plus updates from various ministries. This is St. Lucia Magazine. As November comes to a close, and we prepare to welcome the month of December, let's take a look back at three major happenings in the months prior. First up, the government of St. Lucia has appointed the island's first female commissioner of police. For the first time in the history of the Royal St. Lucia Police Force, a female police officer is at the helm of the organization. On October 17, 2022, Prime Minister and Minister for National Security Hon. Philip J. Pier announced Ms. Krusita Descartes-Pelius as acting police commissioner. Descartes-Pelius assumed her new role with more than three decades of experience in law enforcement under her belt. Riani Isidore tells us more. Krusita Descartes-Pelius is a decorated police officer with more than 30 years of experience under her belt. Prior to her appointment as police commissioner, Krusita Descartes-Pelius previously served as assistant commissioner of police with responsibility for corporate services and strategic operations. Commissioner Descartes-Pelius was enlisted in the police force in 1988. She attained the rank of sergeant in 2001 and later superintendent of police in 2015. In addition to successfully completing and participating in a multitude of theoretical and practical courses and training exercises, Commissioner Descartes-Pelius also holds a bachelor's degree in management studies from the University of the West Indies. Krusita Descartes-Pelius succeeds Milton Daisy, whose tenure came to an end on October 14th. At the first press conference attended by her as acting commissioner of police, Ms. Rispelius expressed her commitment to always serving at her best. I am grateful for this opportunity to lead the Royal St. Lucia Police Force, which will allow me to continue to focus on good and effective leadership. The impact I want to make is one that will advance the leadership of the organization, not only for those in position, but for those who have been groomed and those who have the capacity to lead. I want to be a good example, and I want to be a good example coming from me. And one of the good, the legacies of a leader is to create good leaders. I want people to lead themselves well. So when called to lead others, they have the capacity to do so. In my position, I want to pass on what I've learned to others. The Royal St. Lucia Police Force is not an island. We need to work together with the multi-agences to deal with all the issues of crime in our country. Crime is a concern not only for the police, but for everyone. I need to encourage officers to be efficient, to continue to be efficient, continue to be committed and professional in delivering service to the people of St. Lucia. I want to encourage good team spirit and to work with all agencies to make St. Lucia a better place. Prime Minister Honourable Philip J. Pier expressed confidence in Mrs. Pelius's ability to successfully fulfill her duty. I mean, they tell it's a historic time for the women of the country, but as Mrs. Pelius said, she's going to be commissioner for all people, men and women. But it's a very proud feeling to have a woman as a commissioner of police. We feel very proud about it. It's our testimony of our faith and belief in the women of St. Lucia. In the month of November, a trough system dumped several inches of rain throughout St. Lucia's northern region. Occurring on November 6, 2022, the unexpected downpour triggered devastating flash flooding and landslides. Modern 300 households each lost 80-90% of their possessions. Their preliminary loss and damage cost estimates associated with the November 6 trough system already exceeds $2.6 million. We go to Candle Eugene for the details of that story. Floodwaters inundated homes and businesses in some parts of the North on Sunday, November 6, with heavy rains dumping some 6.1 inches of rainfall in Rodney Bay, Grosley, where the highest amount of rainfall was recorded. In a little over 4 hours, the heavy rains which caused the flash flooding in areas of Corinth, Glarevier, Bois-de-Wage and Bexon, left residents particularly in the North with little time to respond. Guys, look at this, we had no time to prepare. I tried to save my car, it was floating away, my neighbors, it was, oh my God, look at this. This came out of nowhere, absolutely nowhere. Following the passage of the trough, teams from the Ministry of Infrastructure were dispatched to clear the roads and waterways. The shelters were assessed for their suitability to temporarily house affected individuals. Parliamentary representative for Grosley Honorable Kenson Kaseme was on the ground coordinating assistance to affected residents and areas. So today we covered a number of places in the community of Grosley, particularly Morsi, where we saw some damage to the bridge in Morsi, the roads in Morsi and also we are currently in the community of Riviameter. We also went into Monjirou to do a thorough assessment of some of the damages as we continue to ensure we provide as much support for the people. A number of persons are requesting food, water, of course the furniture has been damaged for a lot of persons and so we are asking persons to continue to be patient as we carry out all the analysis, all the assessments throughout this very large constituency. I must say thank you to the Minister responsible for infrastructure Honorable Stevenson King who came out with members from his ministry including the engineers to continue the assessment and get from his perspective, see in places like Inglewood some of the issues that we face there in terms of the infrastructure and the drains. So I just want to encourage everybody to continue to work towards getting better and better and I'll continue to serve them the best I can. The Corinth Secondary School and the Dimplet-Louise Primary School shut their doors in the days following the November 6th trough. The Dimplet-Louise Primary School was particularly hard hit. The school remained closed one week into the disaster with teachers facing a massive cleanup of mud and mess that invaded the school with the flood waters. The teachers got a hand from parents and the Taiwanese Embassy provided financial support for the cleanup. I know the teachers put a lot into educating our children and I know they couldn't do it alone. I had the free time so I decided to come in and here I am cleaning up chairs to ensure that things are nice and sanitized so when they come back in. So this is what I, my way of helping, my way of giving back. As everybody knows, Taiwan is a solution not only friends of prosperity, we also are partners in the adversity. So that's the nature that I will think of, provide assistance to the school. So I'm really glad that with the help of Honorable Minister Kashmir, we will be able to make it so quick because I think the help need to be in time. So that's why we are doing this afternoon. We try to provide a small fund and I hope that this small fund will bring relief to the school. The ambassador said it's a very trying time for the constituency of Bruce Lee and so we want to invite other persons who are concerned to really show their concern by providing some form of assistance, monetary or in kind. We have a lot of needs in the community including water, clothing, beds, food, even material for certain individuals. Of course a lot of individuals are not at work because they don't have any clothing right now and so it's of huge concern to me and the rest of the community. So thank you so much ambassador for your continued support. We will continue to be friends, brothers and partners in development locally and of course with the international. Thank you so much. This is our third hit. This is the worst of the three and it was really, really hard to wrench in when we came in on Sunday. But today you are seeing something good, you're seeing something real good and I am truly appreciative of all gestures that come our way, all assistance that come our way. Every little bit counts and we just want to get our students back at school at the soonest. Prime Minister Honourable Philip J. Pierre in a joint press briefing with the National Emergency Management Organization NIMO immediately following the trough on November 7th committed to the support of over 300 affected households. When receipt of the damage assessment report from NIMO, the government will determine the nature and extent of the assistance needed and put together a full response programme. In the days following that promise, Press Secretary to the Prime Minister Monty Lewis indicated what relief measures had been given and steps for further assistance to the victims of the trough. The extent of losses experienced not only by households but also by businesses, schools and infrastructure has caused a heightened need for the coordination of emergency relief response. Once the situation has been stabilised and people's basic needs are being met, the planning and rebuilding phase will commence. As of Thursday 10th November 2022, the Prime Minister Honourable Philip J. Pierre activated $200,000 worth of food and sanitising vouchers to be distributed to affected households through the National Emergency Organization NIMO and constituency offices which have had affected residents. The Prime Minister has also been in dialogue with international donor agencies as saying Lucia will require both technical and financial assistance to respond to this crisis. As government officials and the disaster management personnel assesses the impact of the heavy rains, Prime Minister Honourable Philip J. Pierre addressed some of the practices that contributed to the severity of the flooding and the damage in its wake. The Ministry of Infrastructure had maintained the schedule for desilting, especially as prescribed during preparation for the hurricane season. Despite the heavy rainfall, there were many things in the rivers that were not supposed to be there. So stoves, discarded fridges, plastic bottles in the rivers and once more we are begging and urging the public of San Lucia not to dispose these materials in the waterways and the rivers. Deputy Director of the National Disaster Management Organization NIMO Maria Medard echoed the warning for better waste disposal practices as officials contended with the extent of the disaster from the trough. Too many incidences of clogged waterways because of garbage. Persons dispose of the garbage in the waterways or to the back of their homes where it is close to the waterways. So once it has overflowed banks, everything gets washed away. And these things also compromise the roads and the bridges. So again, we're pleading with you to please dispose of garbage. Solid waste has bulk garbage once a month.  NIMO has issued an appeal for assistance to help victims of the trough build back. A lot of the residents lost almost all of their belongings. We are here making a plea with the general public to come together and to see how we can help out those residents to build back some of the items, emergency items like beddings, furniture, school items like uniforms, books, devices. Anyone who is able to spare any items, we've got some extra items. We are pleading with you to bring those items in NIMO where we will be able to lend a hand to those solutions who lost everything in this disaster. Many families and businesses have lost a lifetime of investments and will have to start over. Therefore, we are appealing to the public to assist in the relief efforts by contributing financially via the following. First National Bank 6-0-0-2-7-6-0 Republic Bank 2-0-0-2-8-1-7 Bank of St. Lucia 9-0-1-3-0-0-1-3-6 First Caribbean International Bank 1-0-6-9-6-2-1-7-0 To become a NIMO volunteer, offer assistance with basic relief to affected households. Please contact them at 452-380-2. 452-380-2 It's time for Recap. Recap is a look back at government and public sector developments. The government of St. Lucia has finalized an EC 22.9 million dollar grant agreement with the Japanese government to redevelop the Shousell fishing port. And the repairs to the Shousell complex is well needed because that sedimentation is something that has plagued all parliamentary representatives for Shousell. Every parliamentary representative for Shousell, and Bradley not being different, always complains and needs and speaks about the sedimentation and the fishing complex. It's an age-old problem that's continued for years. Regardless of how you de-sealed it comes back all the time. So I hope you can get a more poor man's solution to this issue in Shousell. Sedimentation at the port entrance continues to be a perennial obstruction for Shousell fishers. I am aware that for many years the facility has been experiencing sedimentation at the entrance of the port and the pond area. This issue has been affecting the ability of the fishing vessels to go in and out of the port effectively. As a result, continuous dredging work at the entrance and inside of the port had to be undertaken. Therefore, the government of St. Lucia is indeed pleased to have received support from the government of Japan to conduct data collection surveys on the current situation in Shousell and to consider technical feasibility of countermeasures to recover and improve the effective functioning of the port. The National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, NCPC, says the passage of the Security Interest in Moveable Property Bill in both the upper and lower houses of parliament will further increase economic activity within the local business community. More from Glenn Simon. I'd like to present for second reading a bill shortly entitled Security Interest in Moveable Property. The passage of the Security Interest in Moveable Property Bill is intended to support micro, small and medium enterprises and is a critical step towards a cohesive and inclusive system to promote access to finance and growth within the small business sector. The same stress that has formed machines, so in machines, can now use those machines as security to get a loan that never existed before but it can now, Mr. Speaker. Shama Mathrain is the economist with the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council spearheading this reform. What I think is important and different about this new bill and this project is that it ensures that the proper, structured and orderly comprehensive legislative framework is established to guide those transactions and so the banks and credit unions and other financial institutions must adhere to the administrative rules and guidelines and regulations contained within the provisions of the new bill. The bill also calls for the establishment of an online moveable property collateral registry. The collateral registry is seen as a win-win mechanism for both debtors and creditors. The Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs says it will work with sister agencies namely the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Ministry of Economic Development to oversee the new St. Jude Reconstruction project. A small ceremony to announce the recommencement of the St. Jude Reconstruction project was held on Tuesday, November 1st at the active construction site. Construction was last halted in 2021, while the committee reviewed the existing structures on the site in order to determine the best way forward. Following their findings, the government of St. Lucia took the decision to recommence infrastructure works under different terms. One of these terms ensures the project is undertaken collaboratively with vital input of the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs in the oversight, planning, design and communications of the project. I want to tell you also the management of this project is going to be different. No one or two men are going to be in charge. And it's going to be a collaboration between the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Ministry of Economic Development. The contractor responsible for the construction activities on the site during this phase is construction company CIE. We have started today with the phase one of the St. Jude Hospital Rehabilitation Project. Phase one includes the cleaning of the entire site including all the buildings. It also includes the fumigation and anti-termite treatment that needs to be carried out because of the time that has elapsed since the buildings were not used. Four buildings were set to be attended to from Tuesday by seven subcontractors with a total of 42 workers. Students of the Uptown Girls Garden Center benefited from the recent purchase of technological devices funded by the Federal Republic of Germany. A donation of equipment valued at over 12,500 euros was presented to the center at a ceremony on October 24, 2022. Students from the Uptown Gardens Girls Center now have increased opportunities to benefit from the sensitization of education and information technology. This is due to the recent purchase of technological devices by a funding assistance from the Federal Republic of Germany. Struggling to keep afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, the center was forced to seek more innovative methods of teaching, resulting in the creation of education for technology program. Initiated and implemented in 2020, the program is tailored to provide effective and strategic training in the use of various online platforms, not only to the girls but to educators as well. The program will ultimately facilitate the delivery of the Uptown Gardens Girls Center regular instructional courses via online means. To buttress the program, a donation of equipment valued at over 12,500 euros was presented to the Uptown Gardens Girls Center officials at a ceremony on October 24, 2022. The equipment consists of laptops, smart screen TVs, printers, and other computer accessories. Caroline Trubiscoe, Honorary Counsel of the Federal Republic of Germany, underscored her passion to assist vulnerable and needy children. I'm really happy that perhaps I can also now contribute, we, the government of Germany can contribute to your education and your development by having donated these smart TVs and some new laptops. And I hope that it will just make the work a little easier, more fun, not just for the teachers but for the students and that it will come out of the school with the right coping mechanisms and the right attitude towards the making the best of your life. Director of the Center, Jacqueline Simian expressed her gratitude while accepting the much needed assistance. We recognize during COVID that going virtual required certain tools and we had some of it. Mostly we discovered a lot of what we need was on YouTube so our smart TVs came into play. So when you ask me I thought our poor laptops are kind of like going decades old and this was an opportunity to have some new equipment for the staff and have this technology available in all of our classrooms. Germany is the second most populous country in Europe, after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. The government of Germany allocates funding to develop small-scale projects initiated by local non-governmental organizations in the field of education and technology. From the Ministry of Equity, Social Justice and Empowerment, Shevroy Marius. The equipment consists of laptops, smart TVs, printers and other computer accessories. Caroline Trebettskoi, Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany, underscored her passion to assist vulnerable and needy children. I'm really happy that perhaps I can also now contribute, we, the government of Germany can contribute to your education and your development by having donated these smart TVs and some new laptops. And I hope that it will just make the work a little easier, more fun, not just for the teachers, but for the students, and that it will come out of a broader school, really with the right coping mechanisms and the right attitude towards making the best of your life. Director of the Center, Jacqueline Simian, expressed her gratitude while accepting the much-needed assistance. The Single Mothers Entrepreneur Assistance Program is an initiative of the St. Lucia Social Development Fund, SSDF and Bell Fund. It targets vulnerable mothers who already benefit from government support under the Public Assistance Program. Finance under the newly initiated Social Investment Fund, the initiative is designed to break dependency on governments established social protection services. The PAP, Bell Fund and the SSDF all fall under the auspices of the Ministry of Equity, Social Justice and Empowerment. Financed under the newly initiated Social Investment Fund, the Single Mothers Initiative is designed to break the dependency on governments established social protection services. You are here because we care about St. Lucia and we concern about our people. We are not granting your favor, it's not a gift we are giving to you. We are investing in our people because we must do that. We believe that our responsibility is to secure a better future for our children. To sharpen their business acumen, females selected for the program underwent basic business management training for a four-week period. They also received business mentorship guidance and will be closely monitored by officials of the Bell Fund as they manage their businesses. Nineteen participants from the north and fifteen from the south received certificates of completion at a closing ceremony at the National Skills Development Center on October 25, 2022. The St. Lucia Electricity Services Limited, Lucilek funded the project to the tune of $300,000. Thank you, Lucilek. Public and private stakeholders have hosted an exhibition on the varied uses of geospatial technology. Shaq Hings and Compton provide such the details. The occasion is the Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, and National Spatial Data Infrastructure, or NSDI exhibition. GIS is a computer system used for storing and displaying geographic information. NSDI is a mechanism using policies, standards and resources to collect, coordinate and share that information. Cadaster International is a government mapping agency and land registry from the Netherlands. So we are now working together with the Department of Physical Development and Urban Renewal on the further development of the spatial data infrastructure in St. Lucia. And in essence it means making sharing of geospatial information possible and improving. Data gathered with the technology has the potential to improve infrastructure planning, housing, disaster preparedness, traffic management, emergency services response time and even agriculture. St Lucia, who set the 30th OECS swimming championship, held from November 11th to 13th at the Rodney Heights Aquatic Centre. The event made a significant contribution to the island's hospitality sector. Well, this is a great example of sports tourism. Almost 400 persons in St Lucia, swimmers and family and relatives. So it means that the rental companies for vehicles are smiling right now. It means the hotels, these individuals are smiling. As a matter of fact, in my conversation with the president of the St Lucia Aquatic Federation, Eddie Hazel, a few nights ago, they were scrambling to find additional Airbnb's for persons who are in St Lucia for the swimming event and so the benefits are there. Team Antigua and Barbuda eventually emerged winners of the 30th OECS Swim Championships and they are set to host the event next year in the Twin Island Nation. Mr. Werngaard assumed the post of Director of Corrections at the Bodily Correctional Facility, BCF, effective October 4th, 2022 to October 3rd, 2024. The newly reappointed BCF chief is a retired police officer of 20 years service who has attained the rank of inspector and headed the Special Branch Unit of the Royal St Lucia Police Force more recently. Mr. Werngaard served in the capacity of Superintendent of Her Majesty's Prison at Balsamka-Tutola, British Vision Islands. He also served as National Security Advisor on Prison Matters. St Lucia attained the world's leading honeymoon destination for the 14th time at the 29th annual World Travel Awards in Oman, Muscat on November 11th, 2022. St Lucia was nominated in five award categories including World's Leading Honeymoon Destination, World's Leading Island Destination, World's Leading Wedding Destination, World's Most Romantic Destination and World's Leading Adventure Tourism Destination. The government of St Lucia in March 2022 tabled the Community Tourism Development Act in order to provide St Lucia's greater access to resources and facilities needed to reap benefits from the tourism sector. More from Riani and Sudol. The Community Tourism Development Act gave rise to the establishment of the St Lucia Community Tourism Agency, CTA, who officially launched its transformative Community Tourism Program in the Ancelare Village on November 3rd. The Community Tourism Program is designed to encourage entrepreneurs and property owners in each community to upgrade their facilities and product offerings. As business owners will be guided by a standard for operation including licensing and will undergo training and certification in general business and hospitality skills development to ensure that the accommodations and services are inviting and world class. At the CTA, we are focused on development of small micro enterprises involved or interested in the tourism business within accommodations up to 10 rooms, restaurants, bars and recreational facilities. Prime Minister Hon. Philip J. Pierre himself, a former Minister of Tourism, has given the CTA his stamp of approval as the Community Tourism Program advances his administration's mandate of putting people first by providing St Lucia's aspiring entrepreneurs and established business leaders and the MSME sector in particular previously unattainable opportunities for wealth creation, income generation and sustainable employment. It's now time for Did You Know where we inform you of governmental policies and incentives that work for you. Did you know that you can enjoy concessions on barrels imported from now until February 28th, 2023? The concessions include 100% waiver of import duty on personal items, food, clothing, toys and other household consumables. Electronic items are not included. The barrels that qualify for concessions are limited to two per household. The items must be for personal use only and not for commercial use. We've come to the end of this edition of St Lucia magazine, Your Monthly Wrap Up. Huge thank you to all who contributed to the production of this program. The national television network and GIS team as well as communication officers in the various ministries and thank you for joining us. Until next time, I'm Humadi Mark.


Okay, ladies and gentlemen, good morning, good afternoon, and to all of you who are following us today at this regional webinar on the towers, the ITU Regional Innovation Forum for Europe, Accelerating Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Digital Transformation in Europe. This webinar is organized within the framework of the ITU Regional Initiative for Europe on the ICT-centric Innovation Ecosystem. My name is Jarosa Ponder and as a head of the ITU Office for Europe, it's my great pleasure and to open and welcome all stakeholders at this ITU event. Before we start our session, I would like to give the floor to Antonella, our technical moderator, who will share with us the housekeeping information. Antonella, the floor is yours. Thank you, dear participants, thank you for joining. My name is Antonella and I'll be the more participation moderator for the event. I would like to give you some instructions on the Zoom platform and the meeting. This meeting is entirely remote. The audience is kindly asked to keep their microphone switched off. The moderator of the session will address the speakers and will give you the floor when your turn comes. You may use the chat for any questions or comments. Please include your name and affiliation for making it easier for the organizers. Moderators will be monitoring and any comment may be read out if time elones. When the floor is open to the audience, please raise your hand to request the floor. The raise hand function is located at the bottom of the participant window. To access the participant window, click the participant button on the bottom bar of the Zoom interface. You can view and activate the captioning by clicking on closed caption in the bottom bar of the Zoom interface. We kindly ask you to display your full name and affiliation if possible. Incomplete or suspicion information may cause you to be removed from the meeting room. The meeting is being recorded and the recording will be used for report writing and communication purposes. Every effort is being made to facilitate the smooth flow of this meeting. Thank you very much and have a pleasant evening. Thank you very much, Antonella, for sharing this information. Ladies and gentlemen, this event today marks an important milestone as it is dedicated to the launch of the ITU Regional Good Practice Report for Europe, which aims at strengthening the engagement of the European innovation community in the implementation of regional initiatives, but also in being done in line with the strategic goal of the ITU, focusing on the innovation, enabling innovation in telecommunication and ICT in support of the digital transformation of society. Member States, in 2018, the Plenipotentiary Conference has agreed that by 2023, all countries should have policies, strategies fostering telecommunication and ICT-centric innovation ecosystems. Therefore, we are working hand in hand with so many stakeholders making sure and that this target is reached by the 2023. Innovation and digitalization has become even more important as the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the ever-changing nature of the world and the need for ongoing transformation of nations in lights of new and expected changes. Even though countries from Europe region are making great effort and to overcome the challenges, some countries are more successful than others mobilizing entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial support organizations, academia, public and private sector stakeholders and financiers to a degree that is sufficient to foster countries' digital transformation. To overcome these divides, countries should not only take the advantage of collaboration and exchange of the best practice with more developed ICT-centric ecosystem, but also design new innovative solutions to accelerate digital transformation. To support this process and equip countries with the right tools and the knowledge for harnessing their ambitions, this report provides an overview of the innovation capacity of Europe region through ICT-centric innovation activity comparison. It also offers an insight into how the good practices can strengthen capacity to integrate ICT innovation into national development agendas. The lessons learned from this exercise, as well as the report itself, will equip stakeholders with the instrumental know-how and offer a starting point and to create a thriving ICT-centric ecosystem. I invite you all to download the report available online on our event website and to learn more about what are we going to discuss today further. I would like to thank very much to 14 countries from the EU, but also non-EU countries of Europe region covering 46 countries of the region and that engage in making these reports happen. We have reach of the experiences shared from Belgium, Sweden, German, and Georgia, Poland, Serbia, Iceland, Austria, Italy, Lithuania, France, Albania, UK, Israel. This is only a kick-off of our preparations towards the ITU Regional Innovation Forum, which we are kindly invite you already and to book in your calendar and also engage in the preparations to ensure that your community is with us at the time of the event. Finally, before giving the floor to our exceptional speakers and our moderator Valentina Stadnitz, I invite you all to turn on your camera and join us in the group photo. And with this I'm handing over to Valentina. Thank you, Jaroslav. Do we have a picture? So yes, if everybody could turn on their cameras and smile, that would be great. I'll count down from three. So three, two, one. And one more, three, two, one. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much, everyone. Hello and welcome, everybody. My name is Valentina Stadnitz and I'm privileged to be your moderator during this session. Just wanted to remind everyone that this event is live-streamed on Twitter and YouTube. Over the next hour, we will discuss the original context on the opportunities inherent in accelerating digital transformation, explore critical enablers and linkages needed to foster ICT-centric innovation in Europe and examine good practices that can serve as a basis for strengthening your digital innovation ecosystems. Today, we have five distinguished panelists that I would like to introduce. Ms. Katarzyna Ekimovich, who is the Digital Innovation Ecosystem Expert at the IT Office for Europe. Ms. Annie Vashak-Madze, Head of Department for International Relations and Relations with Donors, Georgia's Innovation and Technology Agency. Mr. Jens von Axelsson, Program Manager at the Challenge-Driven Innovation Program, Swedish Innovation Agency. Ms. Olga Dathono, IT Director, National Agency for Information Society from Albania. And Ms. Ivana Kostic, Co-Founder of HealthTech Lab, Serbia. Thank you all for joining us today from all over the Europe and for willingness to share your knowledge and expertise. Before we start, I would like to invite the participants to type their questions in the chat as we will have a short Q&A session at the end. So I would like now to give the floor to Ms. Katarzyna Ekimovich to share with us the report findings. Hi. All right. So I'm going to say next to change the site. So good, I guess, good afternoon, everybody. I'm so happy to be able to join you today, especially that I was just traveling from USA and successfully managed to reach Europe. So it's my pleasure to be able to give you a little bit of an overview of the report itself. I have been working on the report last year. And the idea is just to give you the background and a little bit of explanation on how the report was created and share some findings. Next. So I also have already introduced the report, but maybe I can repeat it one more time. The main aim of the report was to provide evidence-based guidance on measuring innovation capacity in the European region and in the countries themselves. And this is the first of the report, of this type of the report for European region as a first, but other regions will follow. And the report as well provides insights on good practices that can be replicated by innovation champions in the countries. But what's more specifically, the report uses international indicators to measure and compare the current state of innovation performance in the European countries and then synchronize the performance on free engines of growth and compare it with the current state of seven enablers of digital transformation. And next. So the report is based on the methodology that has been developed by ITU in 2017, Digital Innovation Framework. And it was updated in 2020 with a toolkit for developing sustainable ICT-centric ecosystem projects. And I'm going to cover it a little bit while discussing the report itself. Next. So the underlying idea. And so let's start from what is ICT-centric innovation ecosystem. So the underlying idea is that ICT-centric innovation ecosystem is actually a combination of free engines of growth, national innovation ecosystem, entrepreneurial ecosystem, and technology ecosystem. And on the coordination and kind of synchronizing of all those free ecosystems can make a successful ICT-centric innovation ecosystem to thrive. Next. So as I mentioned before, the ITU methodology relies on using international indexes as a proxy to measure free engines of growth. And this international indicators are ICT development index to measure ICT infrastructure, the status of ICT infrastructure, global innovation index for innovation, global entrepreneurship index that measures 14 entrepreneurship and 18 pillars, and finally global competitiveness index developed by World Economic Forum. Next. So I'm going to give you a little bit of snapshots of how different countries are performing. I'm not going to go into details, but I thought I'm going to just create the comparison of how of top five and bottom five to give you an idea what's going on in the region. So what I decided to do is to have a look what are the top five performing countries in Europe in each of free engines of growth and then put it all together. And as you can see, within the top performing countries in each of the engines of growth, if we compare all these countries together, we're going to come up to seven because different countries are topping different engines. But all these countries are actually the countries from Western Europe and these are European Union countries, as of course, UK and Iceland. So if we're going to go next and look what's on the other side and if you can see the bottom five countries, again, the different five countries are performing differently for different engines of growth. But more or less the situation is the same. These are the same repeating countries. I came up with the list of seven countries that are bottom five. It doesn't mean that they are performing really bad, but they perform as moderate as compared to what's going on with the top five or the countries that are somewhere in the middle. And as you can see, these are all countries that are non-EU countries. Next. So I'm not going to go into the details of the report, but I just wanted to show you how the comparison of the countries looks in practice. So in reality, to make it easier to stakeholders to understand the situation, the ITU has developed a color coding system and using three different colors. Green indicates strong performance and presence of good practices. Yellow indicates insufficient performance. But some presence of good practices and then red indicates poor performance with absence of very or a very few good practices. And as you can see, we have good or insufficient slash moderate performance. Next. And as I mentioned before, the EU countries plus UK are performing much better than others, but among EU 27 plus UK. On the fork, European countries demonstrate moderate level of performance in all dimensions. Next. But the good news is that non-EU countries are catching up and the situation is not very bad. So I showed you three snapshots of the ranking. And as you could probably notice, nobody is performing poorly. None of the countries is in a red zone, which means that the situation is quite moderate and that the non-EU countries are actually catching up. Some better, some not. Next. So the report also not only compares different measures, different engines of growth through indicators, but it also goes into policies for different countries. And I called it screenshot or maybe a better word would be the snapshot, giving a snapshot of the policies introduced by different countries in all three engines of growth. And here I just wanted to show you the snapshot for UK, one of the countries that it was in our top five or rather top seven. And some of you may ask, yeah, but you may say that policies is not sufficient. Looking at policies is not sufficient to really assess what is the state of ICT-centric innovation ecosystem. And that's true, but it's also needed to understand what is the current level and then give you the basis for further analysis. And this is just one of the examples. And within this example, UK example, I wanted to draw your attention to one of the initiatives, Fintech Regulatory Sunboxes. This initiative was, policy initiative was actually presented in detail in the report as one of the good practices. And it's an example of not only an innovative policy that allowed totally new, that created a safe environment for totally new business models to be tested in a safe environment and actually allow policymakers to learn and draw conclusions for further actions as well. But it also is an example of a good practice that inspired a lot of other countries. And as far as I know, around 57 countries followed the UK's footsteps and introduced the concept of regulatory sandbox one or the other for next. So I mentioned one of the good practices introduced by the UK's, but the report presents 15 different good practices as you also already mentioned. And these practices are described and assessed on three different dimensions. So whether they are guiding innovation dynamics, so whether they support the general innovation environment, whether they build innovation capacity, so provide sufficiently developed infrastructure and talent pool with sufficient amount of resources, and whether they enable integrating ICT or facilitate integrating ICT innovation into key sectors. And next. And in the report, we covered 15 of those, but they are also already mentioned all of the countries. I actually, before this presentation, I made for myself a small comparison of all the good practices. And what's interesting, even when we assess them across the three dimensions of good practices, whether it's the foster innovation dynamics or innovation introducing ICT into key sectors or just enabling environment, most of the best practices cover at least two dimensions of those three dimensions. So it's never one or the other. Usually the initiatives and practices are quite wholesome. And that's also, in a way, connected to the whole idea of ICT-centric innovation ecosystem that requires coordination of different actions and policies. Next. So I know we don't have too much time. So just to finish up, and maybe I'm going to leave it for future discussion during the panelist, the IT also developed the toolkit that I mentioned before for strengthening ICT-centric ecosystem. And it introduces ecosystem canvas that helps stakeholders understand the environment that innovators face when they embark on the innovation journey. And the ecosystem canvas has seven pillars, so called seven enablers of digital transformation, the service and strategy, infrastructure and programs, talents and champions, capital, markets and networks, culture and communities and regulation policy. And the report assesses, compares the state of each of these enablers across the European region. Next. And here, just to give you a little bit of a snapshot of the results that I covered, I'm not going to go much into the details, but in general, when we assess the state of all these seven enablers, the situation is moderate. So there is still a lot of progress to be made. But I guess from what you see here, maybe I want to stretch just one thing. One of the aspects that probably requires the most of the attention is actually markets and networks. So as you can see, on the 25% of countries perform well, very well on this dimension. And the market sophistication, that means collaboration between ecosystems stakeholders, but also international collaboration and connection to other markets still requires quite a lot of work in most of the countries. And I think I want to finish here and give the floor to other stakeholders. I hope that was just a little bit of an overview to her class in a further discussion. I would like to thank you for your attention. Thank you, Kaisa, for this great presentation. Now that we have a clear understanding of the European standard on the ICT-centric innovation ecosystem, as well as a holistic view on how all the ecosystem elements work together, the session will continue with presentation of outstanding national practices that were recognized as a good practice and presented in this report. So now I invite Miss Ani Vashak-Madzeb to tell us more about Georgia's Innovation and Technology Agency and its approach towards supporting the development of an ICT-centric ecosystem. Ani, the floor is yours. Thank you, Valentina. So did you already share my presentation? Thank you. So the government of Georgia has prioritized knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy development and established Georgia's Innovation and Technology Agency in 2014. And since 2014, our agency is a main coordinator and mediator of building innovation ecosystem in the country. Next slide, please. You see that our main mandate is create entrepreneurial ecosystem and coordinate its development, stimulate innovation and modern technologies and R&D commercialization and support innovative startups and their competitiveness grows and facilitate cooperation between the representatives of scientists and businesses and promote digital literacy all over the country. Next slide, please. Here you can see the escalation that what kind of opportunities is given by our agency to the ecosystem. Firstly, the legal support is on place. IP, loan on IP is on place. Loan crowdfunding is under collaboration under the preparation. And you can see that at every stage, any entity can come with an idea at the tech parks of the Georgia's Innovation and Technology Agency and go with the business plan or increased knowledge. At the stage of no idea, they can participate in the hackathons, innovation bootcamps and trainings and the sort of community events. People with idea can apply for the mini grants and also apply for the skills development and university pre-acceleration. When the startup has and the individuals have the prototype, they can apply for matching grants. And the matching grants is quite popular access to finance instrument in Georgia. And I will speak about that more when I characterize the second component, which is at the matching grant but dedicated to the dollar to dollar investment. So when the entities have the MVP, they can apply to our programs and use the benefit with the co-working spaces and international accelerator. So when the startup is already ready for the entering market, they can apply for the 650,000 Lari matching grants, which is, as I already mentioned, dollar to dollar investment. And it encourages private sector to leverage the government funding. And also at the stage of the growth, we provide the mentoring opportunities to the startups and also some facilitation into the global value chains. So all those mini grants, the 100,000 Lari matching grants and the 650,000 Lari matching grants are dedicated for increasing the critical mass of startups in Georgia because the ecosystem is quite young and the stakeholders and the main challenges are increasing awareness about all those opportunities to the stakeholders. Next slide, please. Let me highlight the project, which is technology transfer pilot project, because on the one hand, it's essential to have technology startups. And on the other hand, a handhander is essential to have the opportunity at the universities to commercialize the ideas and apply the research. So European Union dedicated 1 million euro to this particular project. And the all and Georgia's innovation and technology agency facilitates the communication between the international experts and universities. We conducted memorandums of understanding within the 10 universities and examined the industries and the projects according to the technology readiness level and business readiness level. And at the end of the day, we identified nine projects and six industries. And on those industries, now we are working to integrate them into the global value chains. Next. Here you can see the stakeholders which are interested in the commercialization of all those nine projects of technology transfer pilot project. And we look at this as a very promising one in order to be in order to decrease the gap between industry and science in the country. Next, please. Let me speak also regarding the skills development programs. Of course, the academic education is geared under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. But under the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia, we are mostly oriented on the skills development, particularly in the entrepreneurship skills development and also ICT skills development. We announced the program for free to give the trainings to the 3,000 IT specialists with licensing opportunities and with the opportunity of the employment. And in compliance with this incentive, we decreased the employer tax for international ICT companies to 5%. And already we opened the door to the two international ICT company which entered to Georgia. And we created the demand, original demand for the ICT specialists. Next, please. In terms of the infrastructure, except of the capital, we have seven tech parks and innovation centers all over the country. And as I already mentioned, the individuals have the opportunity to come with the idea and go with the business plan in all those rural areas and on the border areas of Georgia. Next, please. Let me highlight that during our programs, the essential parties that we invite experts from Silicon Valley, from Israel, from the famous ecosystem leaders, and they assess the process of the acceleration of these startups. And afterwards, they take decision instead of the government. And all those processes are transparent. And then startups have opportunity to be prepared for the demo days, to pitch in front of those investors. So we built this bridge with Silicon Valley since 2015. And the results in 2020 was that words leading international accelerator 500 startup entered Georgia with the chapter of 500 Georgia. And it entered with the interest to the region. And we received application from the region and even from Australia and Brazil and accelerated our startups. Among the pre-selected candidates, there were nine Georgian startups. And also with this event, the essential part was that the first private fund was created to finance the startup. Because you see, before it was the goodwill of the government and only access to finance was only provided by the government. And with this international accelerator, Bank of Georgia, one of the bank in Georgia, created this one million US fund, which it was like a good match of the skills development and the providing the money. And next, please. So hopefully we will revitalize our practices where we conduct the international events in Georgia to have the country and the words entrepreneurial ecosystem be signed very well. And next, please. And with this slide, I would like to show you the first exit of Georgia startup, which benefited by our programs and also with the international acceleration and has a first exit and raised several million USD from US investors. So it was a really good result for the ecosystem after five years. And now we are working also on the pre-acceleration programs to boost the opportunities of other startups and give them the opportunity to be integrated in the global value chains. Thank you. Next, please. Yes, thank you, Ani. Now I would like to invite Mr. Jens von Axelsson to tell us more about an important and unique component of Swedish growth and the innovation engine of the country. So if that's possible, Mr. Jens, the floor is yours. Thank you and good afternoon. I would like to tell you a little bit about digital transformation and a program called Challenge Driven Innovation. And if this program is fit for the time's new challenges, Vinova is a Swedish innovation agency and organized under the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation. Next, please. Regarding the three engines of growth, you can see that our national innovation ecosystem is every circle there is one actor as a financier. So we have quite a broad actor. There are a lot of different enterprises and different organizations that actually fund innovation in Sweden, which makes it a little bit not difficult, but we need to actually be able to cooperate in a big way. We have also the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We have there is overlap between the national innovation ecosystem and the entrepreneurial innovation system as well. Sweden comes from a long time of innovators and innovations and a lot of companies, which today represents the technological ecosystem with large companies such as Volvo, Ericsson, and Telia is one of the greater ones. So a holistic perspective is very important in our world. So please, next. In Vinova, we have recently addressed 10 different areas of innovation. Five societal challenges areas, sustainable industry, sustainable food systems, sustainable mobility systems, sustainable precision health, and sustainable built environments, but also a lot of five innovative abilities. What we are talking about today, digital transformation, but also ecosystem for innovative companies, emerging innovation, future skill supply, and transformative single sector. So with all these focuses, we are trying to rebuild our portfolio of different initiatives. Next please. So and each of these areas, we have been developing sort of new strategic agendas. And we have a great history of digitalization in Sweden, but we also have a lot of challenges. We have been in a very good position, but we still need to address a lot of weaknesses. And we have this agenda for this. And one, if one can read the different milestones on the different time perspectives that have been in our strategy, one can see that cooperation between different parties in the innovation and the different ecosystems is a statement and objectives for a lot of these milestones. Next please. This is my program, the Challenge Tribune Innovation. And there are a lot of, there are five basic principles that we are striving for. The challenge, the societal challenge must be in focus. It's not, we don't focus on problems that are, with your name that has only one solution or the problem is sort of simple. But we are focusing on problems and challenges that are more of a sort of a fuzzy logic. So we need to have this system perspective in this program where the different consortia that's applying for funds that they need to explain to us how they see, look upon the system and what is broken within it and how they actually will work to try to fix it together. So there is a strong need in this program for cross-collaboration between both companies, the societal, the societal actors and universities and the research institutes. And we provide a series of, when they once entered the program, we, in step one, they give a shot, they will have a shot that for some research around their problem. And then in the third step, they're trying to test and demonstrate the third for others. And well, in all for working against the agenda 2030s, SDGs of course. Next please. So one example of a project that is recently granted is the Rural ICT test pad full cover. Sweden, as you know, we're not that many people, 10 million, but we have a large country. So a lot of our territory is rural. So and having a coverage of having a coverage in this data coverage is vital to us, to be able, not at least for the inhabitants in the rural companies, but also for the tourism and so on. So a typical project on the step three is like 2 million euros in grants. And this total amount of the budget is around 5 million euros. And in this case, there's 24 actors from academia, industry, and public sector. Next please. So earlier this year, we wrote a report to the ministry about how we could design a program to address these issues. And we concluded as a successful, detailed gathering of forces for a sustainable, digitalized, weeded presupposes that we need to have governance, collaboration, and leadership, strategic governance in coordination and collaboration between the key actors. But also we need to prioritize and have the different kinds of investments, long term government investments because innovation is not a quick fix. It takes a long time. And also we need to learn along the way. And also learning together is a huge part for the systemic collaboration for productivity. Next please. So my program, this CDI, this is a bottom-up program. Has it a future in this context? And we can see that not only we need a high level of coordination is needed, not only in the different projects, but also we need to meet this bottom-up with top-down perspectives. So we need to have like a mission-oriented program and as an umbrella for the wholeness and for realistic view. So we need to have these two components, top-down and bottom-up. But we also need to demonstrate. And we need to have system demonstrator or arena that could show ourselves and others what we are doing. And also for giving feedback to the different actors. So we are actually reinventing the program design at the moment for this new environment that we have in the innovation system. So stay tuned. Thank you. Next please. Thank you, Jens. I would like to continue at this point and invite me, so I'll get that done to share Albania's approach towards the facilitating of the development of ecosystems, human capital. So I'll get the floor is yours. Hello, everyone. And thank you for the opportunity to participate in this event. I'm going to represent the Albanian innovation ecosystem and tech space as a good practice. Next please. The National Agency of Information Society has become one of the key institutions in our country in developing and implementing ICP projects, implementing key services, supporting innovation, and adding value through digital transformation. From November 2017, NICE is widened its activity in technical and human capacities. Our main purpose is to offer better services to our citizen businesses, public administration through digital transformation. Next one, please. One of the main achievements in the field of digital transformation, of course, is our governmental portal operating as one stop single access point to citizens 24-7, around 2 million users are registered in the portal, offering at this moment in time 1,207 online services, which makes the 95% of all the public services offered online. In the application form, around 63% of the data are fielding automatically as a result of our interoperability platform, where 55 registers communicate in real time with each other. And we are aiming to eliminate the accompanying documents, which are not requested anymore from the citizen, but the burden is for the public administration. In the graphic, we can see the huge increase of online applications during the year 2013-2020. Of course, it's the result of an increase in the online services offered. Next one, please. Of course, one of our main purposes is to support innovation and create an easy and accessible environment for startups in the field of digitalization. In our innovation ecosystem, the government is supporting innovation through different programs. We have created the Innovation Hub as a possibility to offer innovation enthusiasts on-premises opportunities for developing their ideas. We have collaboration agreements signed with ICT universities with vocational high schools as well. And we are trying to create an easy and accessible environment for startups and small, medium enterprises where they can deliver technological innovation. With a single stop online, the business completes virtually the entire cycle it needs in relation to the government from opening to the new business application for permittal licenses, paying taxes, submitting balance sheets, tax payments, and everything is done online without the need to go to the physical startups. Electronics, the signature for businesses also is a very easy tool that enables B&B to G operations, which makes possible to exchange electronically designed documents with full legal value. Of course, we have also a collaboration with local and international companies with aim to offer professionals and startups the needed help to build their capacities. Next one, please. We are going to present as a good practice to support innovation tech space, which is the largest technological lab in Albania funded in February 2019 with the aim to support startups and students to reinforce and encourage them in delivering innovative projects and ideas in the field of ICT. The aim of the center is to become one of the most frequented environments by technology and innovation enthusiasts who will have the opportunity to use our space as a work area and develop their innovative ideas, of course. Next one, please. Tech space is a modern and fully equipped environment, which is open daily 9am to 9pm, ensuring the counseling and developing and promotion of the new ideas and the building of capacities. Next one, well, of course, here is some of the main activities of the tech space. Until today, it has more than 1,200 registered young people and more than 90 startups business ideas. On average of 80 of them visit the tech space almost daily. Well, of course, before the pandemic, tech space enables the co-design of innovative products, their testing, sharing of ideas, and creation of prototypes. Through incubation programs, it's provided a professional consulting and step-by-step follow-up and support of startup ideas by experts specialized in various fields. We organized job affairs where more than 20 ICT students were hired in 10 different private companies. Tech space has been supporting the Software Development Academy, which is a coding academy by offering these premises and being a serious partner. Next slide, please. One of the projects that tech space have launched is the startup program, a roadmap to Silicon Valley in collaboration with Junior Achievement of Albania. From around 60 applicants, 25 selected startups were trained through an intensive program of workshops related to startup development by a successful international expert. The program was providing supervision and mentoring, training in some different fields, specific consultancy for the needs of startups, and 12 finalists pitched in front of the investors during the day-to-day. The final phase of the program, which is the visit to the Silicon Valley, has been postponed due to the pandemic. Next slide. We have, time by time, in collaboration with Microsoft we organized the numerous information sessions in tech space on digital transformation and discussion with young people with the support of various Microsoft experts focusing on introduction of new technologies. Some of the fields where this training were focused were artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain, et cetera. Next slide, please. Yes, here are some pictures showing gaps some of our events that has been organized in the tech space, Albanian Cyber Academy, informative sessions on quantum computing with international experts, informative sessions in blockchain. Thank you. Thank you, Aljada, for your presentation and for sharing your experience. Now I would like to invite our last speaker, Ivana Kostic, to give us a Serbian perspective and to tell us more about the impact of her practice in bringing the health tech community together. So, Ivana, the floor is yours. Thank you, Valentina. Hello, everyone. I'm very happy to be here to present Health Tech Lab and the Serbian ICT ecosystem. I would like to thank, of course, DITU for the recognition for this case study but also for the Ecosystem Best Practice Award 2020 last year. So, next slide, please. Let's start with the short introduction of the ICT-centric ecosystem of Serbia. I would like to start with Interpneurals and Interpneurial Ecosystem as actually in Serbia, they started gathering spontaneously and actually creating NGO private organizations such as ThartEat and ICT Hub that over time created or pushed the national innovation ecosystem into creating policies, laws, and strategies such as innovation law that actually boosted and potentiated the creation of innovation funds later on the science fund, similar funds that were presented from Georgia or Sweden. And actually, they were in joint efforts of the World Bank, the European Union, and the local ministries that actually are still boosting innovation and science in Serbia. Of course, the national innovation ecosystem is also supported by the strategies, some of them developed, some of them being developed, mainly on entrepreneurship, on digitalization, and on digitalization in health in the recent times. But also, the technology ecosystem is very important and I would like to say that we have a few success stories. They're mainly in the gaming industry, such as Nordos that probably a lot of gaming fans have heard about, but also a few that are appearing in the health sector, the acquisitions, for example, of the first private hospital, Belmedik and so on. But here in the technology part of the ecosystem, I would like to stress that the important part is also having R&D centers of the big international companies. And in this case, in Serbia, Microsoft is the first one that opened R&D representation in Serbia, and so we are looking forward to those R&D sectors in pharmaceutical and health industry as well in the near future. So next slide, please. Now, Health Tech Lab, as I was finishing my PhD, I actually participated in the health hackathon at MIT and wanted to share this knowledge in Serbia. And I was following the whole ecosystem and I've noticed that there is a baseline of gaming and entrepreneurship that was set up at the time and that now is the right time to introduce the sector-specific entrepreneurship such as Health Tech and actually use all the talents and knowledge in technology that was used for gaming, but then just slightly refocus it to health. So we organized the hackathon and we noticed that there were great solutions, but that they would not survive for a long time. So they needed long-term support, they needed systemic ecosystem support and this is how the idea of Health Tech Lab was created. So today, Health Tech Lab is a Serbian Health Tech ecosystem gathering communities of professionals and students from different kind of technologies and health. And of course we create and promote Health Tech Innovations in Serbia and this is just a short diagram representation of all the sectors or all the linkages basically with which the Health Tech Lab is communicating and working. The main goal and the vision is to create the health without borders. So something that Cassia was mentioning at the beginning from the report, you can clearly see that there is a huge innovation gap between the developed and the developing countries and Health Tech Lab would like to decrease this difference in the gap that currently exists through different kind of events and projects that we're doing and that we're planning to do. So next slide please. And here a short description of details of Health Tech Labs activities within this Good Practice Canvas. I can say that Health Tech Lab is an NGO private organization that is supported by founders and international advisory board. And this international advisory board gathers actually representatives from Health Tech ecosystems of the developed countries such as UK, US, Israel, EU and of course representatives from Serbia which is the basis of the model of Health Tech Lab where we want to use the mentoring and funding from those developed Health Tech ecosystems into the developing countries. Then of course the resources or main resources are networks which are in partners which are local and international and through sponsorship and projects we're actually building up everything that we are doing. And some of the key activities that we started with are the ones that are really seenable such as meetups and conferences and acceleration programs, matchmaking events from the investors on one side and startups on the other side. But I would also like to mention here that there are a lot of activities that are not so noticeable and seeable but we're very active in advocacy and then policy adjustments and collaborating with the government. And as I mentioned with all the linkages that are actually important for developing and impacting the successful pathway for Health Tech startups in the country in the developing settings such as Serbia. So the goals for the next period I would split into local and international. For the local one the main goal is definitely to build the physical space that would support development of innovation starting from R&D to prototyping and so on. And further of course supporting the acceleration and mentoring that is already happening and that could be also virtual. But also some of the international goals are actually developing the model that was awarded by the ITU of creating Health Tech Club chapters in the developing countries and interconnecting them. So by now we have gathered around 60 local Health Tech startups and their successes are various and in multiple so I'll just mention them as our own success but of course I would like to also mention the opening of the first international Health Tech Club chapter in Georgia during the conference that will happen from the 1st to 3rd of September. I'm also happy that representative of Georgia is here so hope to see you there on the conference and on the opening of this first chapter. Next slide please. And of course we were presented as the cultural communities good practice and I would like to say that from the first story if you followed my story is that noticing and organizing hackathon we noticed that there are no supporting systems and systemic support actually in the ecosystem and that startups will soon die.  So basically they wouldn't even if they had ideas even if they had solutions they wouldn't risk because the chance of dying was 100% and basically in order to create this situation where someone would take a risk and be in that 10% of successful startups we wanted to actually create this supporting system and community that could enable that. And so of course communities do need to communicate. So this is also very important within the ecosystem and also in between ecosystems. So this is my main conclusion. Next slide. This is just a short representation of the award which we can talk about in more details later. And next slide. Thank you so much for my contacts and this is it. So thank you Ivana for introducing us the HealthTech ecosystem of Serbia and congratulations on opening the first chapter in Georgia. So thank you very much to all the panelists for presenting to wrap up this session but also give more insights to what our panelists has already said. I would like to address them around of questions and I will do it in the same order as we had a pleasure to hear their presentations. So unfortunately Katarzyna had to leave and I'll start with Ani. Ani, hope you don't mind. So I know your country has taken further steps to engage with IT on performing and IT use digital innovation ecosystem assessment. So how do you think Georgia can benefit from such a country tailored assessment in addition to the report we are launching today? Thank you Valentina for this question and let me express the gratitude to the ITU team who worked on this particular report and for their dedication and all those processes which we are conducting in Georgia and especially in virtually, right? Because we conducted several seminars and gathered the stakeholders. This report is external evaluation of the ecosystem and the digital transformation, right? And it's essential to show the stakeholders how they compliment each other, how they can increase the opportunities in the ecosystem and is the main enabler for them to boost the entrepreneurial mindset in the society. But particularly we asked ITU team to have the specific sector, specific evaluation and this sector we identified as an artificial intelligence. So we are looking forward for this results of this assessment and for the recommendation of the artificial intelligence best practices and some specific recommendations for Georgia because as I already mentioned the ecosystem is quite young and we gave the equal opportunities for all the sectors but at this stage we identified two sectors which is Fintech and AI and we have the future plans to develop the Fintech ecosystem and AI ecosystem in Georgia. Thank you. Thank you, Ania for such a great answer. I would actually like to point out that we have also questions coming in our chat so I will get back to you with another one. So for now I will just like to move to our next speaker. Yes, you intrigued us by mentioning the new program design that is currently being developed for the challenge driven innovation. And yet taken into account that Vinova is now focusing on the 10 challenge and ability areas. How does that affect the structure of CDI program? Can you tell us please? Well, thank you for the question. Well, CDI is a general instrument for us to use but I'd like to give you a short it's a little bit long answer to a short question but earlier the first version of CDI then we focused on four different areas. It was ICT, it was cities, health and industry. So we actually had a plan for, we actually focused the different projects towards these areas. Now we have 10 areas that we are focusing on. By the way, the second where we are working today, the second version is we focus on Agenda 2030 in a broad sense where the applicants that they are giving us saying this is the problem we would like to work with this and we actually don't focus them. I think we need to go back to where we actually focus the different applicants addressing more directly specific areas. And that's the connection between these areas and the CDI program as an instrument. So, but how, one question that I'm struggling with how do I find the commitment when we are in the applicants and the consortias that actually putting a lot of effort to write applications and finding projects so we need to balance this. How not, so we're still committed but we can still sort of direct them towards given challenges. I think that is the struggle. And I'm not quite sure yet how, but shortly. So, thank you. Thank you, Jens. That's a lot for the food for thought I guess for everyone who is trying to kind of revolutionize their area of activity. And all of us are asking like the question how when they're trying to do something and the answer doesn't usually come very easily. So, yeah, the good news is that we also have questions in the chat for you as well. So I'll get back to you as well. So now I want to switch to all get that. And so I would like to mention that as we know, Albania ranked first in the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report regarding the use of hiring foreign labor. It means you're offering favorable conditions for companies to hire people from abroad but also from what you've told us today. You're continuously advancing on supporting them. So I'll get to how do you see things evolving in your country and what are the next steps on your agenda to accelerate this digital transformation? Thank you, Valentina. Yes, as you said, we have done progress in this field but we are also want to do more in this perspective. We are working right now with a new digital agenda and we are trying to involve that the joining of the e-residency in our next years of digital transformation because we are aware that this will encourage the business owners and freelancers from all over the world to come to our country and to raise their companies here. The residency project can be important for attraction of digital nomads in our country as well. So this is also another point that we want to have our focus. And we are not working only with digital agendas and strategy in this perspective. We're also working at the same time with a legal framework because we know that we are aware that some changes need to be done in order to make all the environment and infrastructure easy for trainers and companies to come here to Albania. Thank you. Thank you, Aljeta. And I guess the last speaker that I'm gonna approach with the question is Ivana. So as you have mentioned, you participated last year in Innovation Challenge and your practice was recognized as an ecosystem best practice. Can you tell us what was making the Health Tech Lab model so unique and what are the next steps in this development? Thank you, Valentina. I would say that of course, the Health Tech Lab is at the moment in the first phase is ICT based so supporting technologies that are in this sector and supporting innovations in this sector in health as this is the low hanging fruit, the technology that could be developed the fastest with the least investments. And also another advantage of actually spreading to these different chapters is interconnecting other developing countries and so on. So this is the main advantage this is also one of the goals of the ITU of interconnecting and basically crossing the innovation gap and the digitalization gap that exists. And I would say that that is the main advantage but of course also using the mentoring and the experience and the knowledge of the developed ecosystems that already have good practices and just skipping the time and of course getting the funding from those institutions, from those developed health ecosystem that could then benefit everyone. Okay, sounds very interesting. Actually, we have a question to you also in the chat. So without further ado, I will address it to you. So do you think ITU and other organizations can further support your efforts? Would you elaborate on that? Definitely, we would definitely love that. As I mentioned also Georgia will be our first chapter and there is a long way to go. So we also would love to have other or strong partners or partners that we already collaborated with in the projects that are considering interconnecting and of course spreading throughout the developing countries. Okay, well, well noted. I think I would go backwards since we're starting already to return to our speakers and I have a question for Jens. The ICT challenges could be a huge and complex regarding a system perspective. For example, the seven pillars. What could you expect a cooperation project to fix in a few years? Well, it's a thank you for the question by the way. It's a huge question. In Sweden now we have a little bit of a delay in our FARG implementation due to policy questions and maybe culture questions. So it depends really on the problem that the project is trying to solve. If you have the seven pillars or another holistic model that you can use, we use the culture, policy, infrastructure, business model and technology. Projects that are tending to trying to solve like policy and culture problems. They tend not to, they could come up with suggestions but they really not near implementation because it's due to politics and maybe larger questions that need to be addressed and the actors themselves, they couldn't really deal and make the decisions by themselves and implement. So on the other hand, if the problems could be solved by just the business models or technology or something like that, then it's much easier. That's my opinion in a way. So to say in Sweden and in ICT, it's much come down to policy, infrastructure, culture and so on this technology, it's easy. Business models, it's easy, I think. So, well, that's my answer. A little bit fussy, but the word is, thank you. And no simple questions for you today from us. Pretty complex ones. Yeah, thank you, thank you once again. And I guess we will close this Q&A session with addressing questions to Annie and we actually have two of them. So, Annie, would you be able to tell us what are the main challenges in the process of digital transformation in Georgia and in the region? Thank you, Valentina. And thank you for the author of this question. Surely the challenges exist, but Georgia, for instance, follows the path of sustainable development where the innovation plays the crucial role and there are still challenges in digital transformation. First is skills development towards industry for the appropriate entrepreneurial and ICT skills and also brain drain in this context. And the second challenge could be the non-existence of the private funds for startups. Even in the region, there are, this challenge existed that there are no venture funds and angel investors. In some countries, they are created with the networks of diaspora and such connections, but the private funds, and also some other access to finance mechanism which are dependent on the development of the legislation, such as crowdfunding opportunities and the innovation procurement. So more or less, this is the main challenges in the region. There are some positive trends nowadays because all this global connectivity and entrepreneurial networks are increasing and this gives us the expectation to the positive outcomes and developments in the country and in the region. Okay, thank you, Annie. And I understand we are running out of time, but the last question is also coming from our audience. If it comes quickly to your mind to give an answer to it, with the current pandemic, what kind of startups have you seen observed a merge in Georgia since the beginning of the COVID? Anything coming to your mind? Yeah, so I would say again, the artificial intelligence startup which is Pulsare AI, also some MetTechs are existed. We also conducted the hackathon which we called Coronaton. It was in 2020 March and we identified three winners. One was dedicated for that particular reason for the artificial breathing. We all remember how we were like oriented on some urgent issues and such as equipment at the hospitals and so on. Also, the second winner was EduTech because all our schools and universities were closed and that it was crucial to create some EduTechs. And yeah, so I remember those startups, those come from mine. And also first, Georgian internet browser is Tech. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much for your answers and many thanks to all the great panelists for sharing their insights with us today. So we are now heading into our closing and my apologies for taking a little bit longer than we're expected for the session. And I would like to give the floor to my colleague Anna Maria, the program officer at the IT office for Europe. Anna Maria, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Valentina. Thank you very much to all the speakers for this interview that I will keep this closing quite short. Hello, also to everyone that is following us today on Twitter, on YouTube. I just was on Twitter right now myself and I noticed that we have around 70 followers going on viewing this live stream. It is very great to see so much interest today in this very important report that is being launched as well as in the best practices. It is really interesting to see that we dive today further in the methodology of the report that has been launched, as I mentioned, and you can download it from our website. The links were shared already in the chat. It is also great to hear firsthand from all of the speakers that shares their good practices with us, which really allowed us to gain a better understanding of the opportunities as well as challenges that came with building such interesting programs. As Mr. Yaroslav Konder, head of the ITU office for Europe mentioned earlier in his opening remarks, COVID-19 indeed served also as an accelerator for everything digital. Innovation therefore took center stage in all aspects, but it is great to see that many have already taken the innovative road and launched various activities to accelerate further entrepreneurship and digital transformation, as we witnessed here today by the many examples shared. I would like again to thank all the speakers today from our digital innovation ecosystem expert who worked on this report to colleagues from GITA, NICE, the Health Tech Lab and the Swedish Innovation Agency for taking the time to be with us today and share your insights, which only you can really provide to us. Special thanks also to my colleague Valentina for the great moderation. Today we launched the report officially, however, this is just the first step in our innovation journey this year. We invite you all to participate later this year at the upcoming ITU Regional Innovation Forum for Europe, which will be held on the 22nd and 23rd of September, 2021. This forum will touch upon agricultural excellence, accessibility entrepreneurs and look at more best practices and share knowledge and action taken by entrepreneurs. The Regional Innovation Forum for Europe is organized within the framework of the 2021 ITU Global Innovation Forum. This edition of the European Regional Innovation Forum will bring together regional stakeholders to share insights and offer the much needed opportunities for leaders and innovators across sectors to really provide these pioneering approaches and share best practices, as well as the forum will be covering really three main areas, the general digital innovation ecosystem, the agricultural ecosystem and the ICT accessibility ecosystem. The forum for Europe will foster inclusive, constructive and practical dialogue between key stakeholders and the regional ecosystems. It will provide also an opportunity to connect the communities across the region to take bold action and create a more resilient ICT-centric ecosystem, which has been really put to the test throughout the COVID pandemic. This forum targets all stakeholders involved in nurturing digital innovation ecosystems, with of course, particular emphasis in a COVID-19 pandemic, issues that happen such as tourism, commerce, digital inclusion, digital health, online learning, public services, digital agriculture and much more. New thinking is needed to accelerate digital transformation across these key sectors that were affected by the pandemic as well. Thus, this forum's agenda has been customized for the needs of ICT policymakers, regulators, national innovation agencies, development agencies, as well as entrepreneurs and any institution that is willing to work together to develop further the ICT ecosystem. The forum will further nurture cross-community engagement with ideas and actions that will shape the future of digital transformation in the Europe region. I invite you all again to really download the report, to read it and then to join us at this important forum in September. We are really looking to co-create this forum together. So we invite you all to also visit our website of the Innovation Forum and submit various speaker suggestions as well as suggestions of best practices from different innovators. We really want your input in making this forum, co-creating it together. So I will stop here and I would like to thank again all our speakers, our active participants and special thanks also to our technical moderator and captioner for the support throughout this event. And I really look forward to see you at the Regional Innovation Forum in September. Thank you very much.