Alkesh Kumar Sharma, who works as India’s Secretary of Electronics and Information Technology, was invited to join a group of renowned internet governance experts by Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
United Nations: On Tuesday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed India’s Electronics & Information Technology Secretary Alkesh Kumar Sharma to serve as one of the leading advisers on internet governance.
Sharma is a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) from the Kerala Cadre. IAS Alkesh Sharma was the regional project leader for Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation with the United Nations Development Programme & previously worked as a secretary in the Cabinet secretariat.
According to Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric, Vint Cerf, a pioneer of the Internet, & Maria Reesa, a journalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize, have also been selected to the Internet Governance Forum’s (IGF) 10-person Leadership Panel.
Cerf is known as “the father of the internet” due to his role in creating the protocols that allow computers and other electronic devices to connect via digital networks.
The Filipino-American journalist Reesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her “efforts to defend freedom of speech after she was detained in her home country of the Philippines.
Amandeep Singh Gill, Guterres’s special ambassador for technological matters, will also be a member of the panel.
Gill, a former diplomat, was the CEO of the International Digital Health & Artificial Intelligence Research Collaborative (I-DAIR). He had been representing India in the UN conference on disarmament.
The panel was established to address “strategic and urgent challenges” related to the Internet and also to deliver the best advice and guidance to the IGF under the mission of Digital Cooperation.
