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Regulators adopt best practice guidelines for digital transformation
By ITU News
The recent ITU Global Symposium for Regulators 2018 (GSR-18), held at ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, adopted a new set of best practices to guide policy-makers and regulators in 193 Member States to facilitate digital transformation.
Regulators at the Symposium recognized the need to keep pace with advances in technology, address new regulatory frontiers, and create the foundation upon which digital transformation can achieve its full potential.
“Today more than ever, policy-makers and regulators need to keep pace with digital transformation sweeping across the sectors and impacting all aspects of our daily lives as consumers, businesses and citizens,” says Brahima Sanou, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau.
The GSR-18 Best Practice Guidelines, of which you will find some excerpts below, place particular emphasis on: emerging technologies; business and investment models; and continued innovation and progress – all aimed at supporting digital transformation.
Fostering the potential of emerging technologies
In the guidelines there is a call for implementing an agile framework for an innovative digital ecosystem through flexible light-touch, multi-sectoral, forward-looking, neutral and transparent policy and regulatory approaches.
The guidelines call for encouraging policy and regulatory measures to facilitate the deployment and use of emerging technologies for affordable digital infrastructure and services, including in the area of infrastructure sharing, interconnectivity, quality of service and effective use of spectrum.
Business and investment models supporting digital
An investment-friendly policy and regulatory framework is needed to support digital transformation which permeates all industries and impacts markets in all sectors.
Regulators and policy makers need to work together proactively to promote policies that encourage both innovation and effective competition among sector players in the ecosystem, and that also support the protection of consumers.
Continued innovation and progress
Amidst the technology swirl of the last decade, new technologies, new players and new business models are rapidly coming of age. Proactive measures and exchanges with all players in the value chain in the sector (start-ups, competition hubs, manufacturers, operators, as well as users) are key for boosting the emerging digital ecosystem.
Regulators at GSR-18 agreed that ICT policy and regulatory frameworks need to be up-to-date, flexible, incentive-based and market-driven to support digital transformation across sectors and across geographical regions.
They believe in putting in place innovative, out-of-the box measures such as :
- regulatory sandboxes for enterprises
- “start-up and experiment” interfaces
- 5G pilot projects.
In a video interview GSR-18 Chairman, Sorin Grindeanu, President of Romania’s regulator for communications, ANCOM, gives a brief insight into the Symposium.
See the GSR-18 Best Practice Guidelines on new regulatory frontiers to achieve digital transformation here.
Download the ITU News Magazine edition on GSR-18 for more about the event and its outcomes here:
