Summary

  • Europe proposes that the ITU Secretary-General report to Council 2027 on how existing resolutions and decisions are being carried out across the Secretariat and three Sectors, including the people and money allocated.
  • A new annex would spell out the inter-sector group's membership, annual reports, open meetings and Council-appointed chair, while Member States retain approval of new study questions.

“One ITU” sounds splendid until three desks send separate invoices for the same job. The European addendum 36 to contribution 75, posted on 20 October, offers a practical test for the slogan: by Council 2027, the Secretary-General would have to show the implementation status of resolutions and decisions guiding the Secretariat and the three Sectors, together with the financial and human resources allocated to them.

The three desks are radiocommunication, technical standardization and development. The 2022 Resolution 191 already tells them to coordinate, avoid duplicate work, involve regional offices and make the Inter-Sector Coordination Group's activities visible. Europe is not inventing cooperation. Its revision would make a dated resource account part of the job. That is a sharper question than whether another joint meeting took place: which resolution is moving, with which staff, on which budget?

The proposal would also give the Inter-Sector Coordination Group, or ISCG, an annexed set of terms. The group would report annually to Council and the sector advisory groups; its chair and subject coordinators would appear on its website. Meetings would be open to Member States and Sector Members. The first Council after a Plenipotentiary would appoint the chair, considering geographic distribution and gender balance; the proposed term is four years.

There is a useful brake inside the design. Radio, standards and development each have duties under the ITU Constitution and Convention. The three sector advisory groups may examine how work is divided; Member States approve new or revised study questions under existing procedures. The coordination group draws the map of overlapping projects, and the countries decide the work.

The text asks the Secretary-General and Bureau Directors to identify overlapping functions and propose fixes, and to report results by area of common interest. That may be uncomfortable for an organization accustomed to praising “synergy” without putting a cost column next to it. The November conference will decide whether the proposed 2027 ledger and group charter enter Resolution 191.

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