With the global health crisis surrounding COVID-19 and travel restrictions, Catholic Relief Services and the Partner Consortium of the 12th ICT4D Conference have relocated the planned agenda content  as an online series featuring regular virtual events over several months.
While featuring many of the 150+ confirmed speakers and sessions, the Virtual Edition of the ICT4D Conference will particularly focus on:
1. ICT for COVID-19 Preparedness and Response
Detailed and timely data is critical to effectively fight COVID-19, and digital tools are essential in helping countries and health agencies to train community health workers and educate the public. Over the next months, our speakers will share practical insights on disease preparedness and tracking, digital innovations for better health supply chain management, mobile WASH and health tools. And you will hear how emerging technologies, such as AI, biometrics, GIS mapping, Digital ID, can be harnessed in the COVID-19 global response.
The ICT for COVID-19 Preparedness and Response series kicks off on Tuesday April 21 with the webinar Lessons learned from Digital Applications for Disease Monitoring and Preparedness
2. Digitization of Services & Digital Literacy
As organizations are adapting their operations to deal with mobility constraints, the use of digital solutions has skyrocketed over the past weeks. Not only are we planning to introduce innovations to support those digitization efforts, but also focus on the risks and challenges associated, especially around responsible use of data, information security, protection, financial inclusion, information literacy, safeguarding, diversity and disability inclusion, and digital citizenship.
As part of an ongoing Data Protection webinar series our next webinar is scheduled for April 23 featuring a Donor Panel on Data Protection Priorities and Expectations
 CRS and the ICT4D Conference have joined the organizing committee of the Global Digital Development Forum, a virtual event specifically designed to include ICT4D practitioners from low- and middle-income countries. Keynote presentations and breakout sessions at the cutting edge of technology and development in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Americas spanning the globe from 6:00 GMT to 22:00 GMT on May 6th. Registration is free, more information via https://digitaldevforum.com/
For updates on upcoming online learning experiences for the global ICT4D community, including all recordings and summaries, sign up to the ICT4D Conference newsletter
Press Contact: Sonja Ruetzel, ICT4D Partnerships & Conference Manager, Catholic Relief Services, sonja.ruetzel@crs.org