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UNITED NATIONS E-GOVERNMENT SURVEY 2020 WEBINAR SERIES
Webinar 1: Global and regional e-government development
The 2020 edition of the United Nations E-Government Survey was launched on Friday, 10 July.
Join us for an in-depth look at the results and rankings of the Survey, movements of countries and regions, and trends in online service provision. This analysis will be complemented by the reflections of external subject matter experts who will also present their views on the state of e-government development that the Survey has assessed.
Rowena Bethel is a former member of the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters and the UN Committee of Experts in Public Administration. She is a former senior public servant in the Government of the Bahamas with 30+ years in the field of public administration. During this period she held several capacities including CEO of the state social insurance fund and programme (the National Insurance Board). Rowena also served in the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Finance and as an Anti-money Laundering regulator for non-prudentially regulated institutions and professionals. Rowena also advised on the Bahamas’s eGovernment policy, its implementation and the legal framework to support the national digital agenda. In addition, she led the legal team for the privatization of the state-owned telecommunications incumbent and served as Deputy Chair of the cellular mobile liberalization taskforce which managed the award of the licenses which removed the monopoly once held by the state-owned telecoms incumbent. She has served in several national representative capacities with the OECD Global Forum on Information Exchange and Tax Transparency, Regional Anti-Money Laundering Reviews, IMF FSAP World Bank ROSCs, CARIFORUM and The Caribbean Telecommunications Union. She is presently a Consultant in the areas of Public Governance & Financial Crimes Risk Management, based in Dubai, UAE. She is a member of The Bahamas Bar, MENA FINTECH Association and the International Fiscal Association/UAE Chapter.
Vincenzo Aquaro is currently the Chief of the Digital Government Branch which publishes the UN E-Government Survey, a UNDESA flagship publication that offers a snapshot of trends in the development of e-government in countries across the globe. In the last 23 years, he has been engaged at national and international level in issues related to ICT in public policy and governance. He is also in charge of the Data Assessment and Data Management of the UN E-Government Survey. Before joining the United Nations, he worked for 10 years as President and CEO of Formit Servizi SpA, a leading Italian advisory company in the field of e-governance. He also served as Member of the Scientific Committee of the NGO Formit Foundation and as President and CEO of CARMA Scientific Research Consortium, a Public and Private Partnership spin-off on ICT products and e-services in Agricultural and Agro-industrial fields, co-financed by European Commission for innovative and advanced capacity-building research program in south of Italy. In collaboration with the University of Rome 3 he also established the first Master on eGovernment for PA and served for two editions as Member of the Master Executive Board. Prior to that, he worked at EIS SpA (a ICT system integration company now incorporated into Telecom Italia Group) as software analyst and developer, project manager and senior marketing manager. He holds a Master’s Degree (Laurea Magistrale) in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bari, Italy.
Arpine Korekyan is a Governance and Public Administration Officer at the Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government of UNDESA. Among many topics, her work during the last 5 years focused on blockchain, open government data, digital/electronic government, public participation, and public-sector innovation. She has more than 18 years of overall experience and prior to UNDESA her career progressed in socio-economic development filed in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and select countries is East Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. She holds Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School of Government (2009), Master of Science degree in Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Affairs, (2003) and Master of Arts degree in International Relations and History from Yerevan State University (1996).