Washington, DC - Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Catherine Novelli will travel to New York City, December 15–16, to lead the U.S. delegation to the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on the ten-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+10).
On December 15, she will participate in the plenary session of the High-Level Meeting on WSIS+10 and a panel discussion on “Women's Empowerment in the Digital Age: Implementing WSIS Outcomes and Agenda 2030.” The High-Level Meeting on WSIS+10 is the culmination of a two-year process to review the implementation of WSIS, which includes issues related to the use of information and communication technologies for development and Internet governance.
On December 16, she will host a Global Connect luncheon. The Global Connect initiative was launched by Under Secretary Novelli on September 27. It is a multistakeholder effort to bring an additional 1.5 billion people online by 2020 and to mainstream the idea that the Internet is as important to economic development as roads, electricity, and other more traditional forms of infrastructure.