International events: “Declaration of Amsterdam” issued at WCIT 2010 in the Netherlands

The 17^th World Congress on Information Technologies 2010 (WCIT) in the Netherlands came to a close on May 28 with a signing of the “Declaration of Amsterdam”.

The document calls governments and industry to stimulate sustainable economic development, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency, and significantly improve the quality of life and confidence of users. The declaration also called on the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) industry to improve its energy efficiency by an average of two per cent per year between now and 2020.

The Congress brought together over 2,500 delegates from 90 countries. During the three-days forum participants were exchanging ideas regarding urgent problems and cutting-edge ICT, discussed the role of IT for dealing successfully with social, political and economic problems of the modern society.

Willem-Alexander, heir apparent to the throne of the Kingdom of the Netherlands stressed that “a person, unlike technology, to greater extent carries main responsibility, when dealing with information". "Technology itself doesn’t distinguish between good and bad information, this is made by consumers. Thus it is up to people to decide whether to make use of IT in order to become stronger and independent or, on the contrary, to disturb, mislead or even worse”, - he added.