Lithuania in the News
19th September 2010
Vilnius Hosts the 2010 Internet Governance Forum
President Dalia Grybauskaitė delivers a keynote address to the IGF.
Photo courtesy lrp.lt
The latest meeting of the UN sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF2010) was held in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius 14-17 September 2010. This is the fifth IGF meeting since the first one held in Athens in November 2006. The IGF2010 in Vilnius was a major conference with more than 1,200 delegates from at least 115 countries, including Australia. Facilities were made available for remote participation and many more took part in discussions this way.
After the meeting was opened by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė delivered a keynote address. Among the many high-level experts and officials present at the conference were internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, inventors of the Internet protocol TCP/IP, and Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda.
At the IGF opening. President Grybauskaitė (centre), with Jomo Kwame Sundaram,
the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs (left) and
Eligijus Masiulis, Minister for Transport and Communications in Lithuania.
Photo courtesy lrp.lt
The main theme for this year's meeting was "IGF 2010 - developing the future together". Issues currently of concern to the internet community were explored at various sessions. Included were the management of critical internet resources, security and privacy, cloud computing and many others.
With the focus this week on Lithuania by the internet community, it was a fitting coincidence that Lithuanian government and IBM signed a Joint Research and Development Agreement on September 16 to establish a joint research centre in Lithuania, which will also involve scientists from Lithuanian universities and institutions and will become a focus for advanced technology development.
An interesting video presentation on Lithuania for IGF2010 can be seen on: Learn about Lithuania


Further information: http://www.igf2010.lt   http://www.intgovforum.org   www.lda.lt