WASHINGTON: RESTART AGENDA

摘要

Celebrating the cooperative action that occurred around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, the IIC gathered delegates together for a three-day virtual Annual Conference from 8 to 10 December 2020 to share lessons learned and identify opportunities ahead. Participants had the benefit of being able to watch live in a digital conference environment from remote locations, access content in different formats and interact with expert panel speakers through question and answer sessions online. In the first keynote speech of the conference, Ed Gillespie, AT&T, presented statistics that demonstrated the massive increase in data usage during the pandemic, which in some cases rose by over 70 per cent in a few months. COVID-19 had offered a glimpse of what was possible when digital solutions were applied in public services such as education, with wide-ranging flexible learning options, and in health, with telemedicine. It was estimated that one in four Americans had remote visits during the pandemic, and remote patient monitoring devices had also been more widely used. However, the pandemic had also exposed the gap in internet access. Light touch regulation in the US had enabled broad scale investment, and a similar approach would accelerate 5G deployment which, by one estimate, could add $500 billion to US GDP.