The roadmap that will govern how the world measures progress on digital and AI development is being written this year.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is updating its implementation roadmap and indicators ahead of a mandatory report to the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD).
The roadmap will be discussed this July at the WSIS Forum in Geneva and finalised for CSTD in 2027 — but the substance is being set now, in the multistakeholder consultations underway. Once the indicators are settled, they shape reporting and finance for years.

This is the moment to act, not 2027.

The gap is concrete. The current UNGIS Draft Joint Implementation Road Map for WSIS–GDC Coherence, presented to CSTD in April 2026, contains the word “gender” zero times. International frameworks — UN resolutions, CEDAW, the EU Gender Equality Strategy, the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI (CETS 225) — call for gender-responsive digital governance. WSIS, the leading global framework with real implementation, reporting, and accountability machinery and links to development finance, is currently being built without it.

What WSIS measures, and what it misses

WSIS indicators today measure entrance: access, connectivity, and participation. They do not measure destination: who leads, who invents, and who captures value in the digital and AI economy. The scale of that gap is measurable. Women are 18% of inventors across all patent fields, and 16% specifically in digital and AI technologies (WIPO). Connectivity numbers will not surface this; the right indicators will.

Two immediate opportunities

• Indicators. Expand WSIS metrics beyond connectivity to measure women’s leadership, innovation, and value creation,  for example, women named as inventors on digital and AI patents, drawn from data that already exists in WIPO’s public databases. These are mentions turned into measures.

• AI procurement. Use public procurement and human-rights impact assessments to ensure AI systems bought with public money are inclusive and accountable before deployment.

How the work happens: the Action Lines

WSIS implementation runs through 11 thematic Action Lines, each coordinated by UN agencies and shaped through multistakeholder consultation. Gender indicators are not currently built into them systematically. The consultations ahead of and at the July Forum are the point of entry to change that — a detailed mapping of all Action Lines, their coordinators, and proposed gender-responsive indicators is attached.

What you can do

In your delegation’s input to the Action Line consultations — before and at the July WSIS Forum — support the inclusion of gender indicators that measure leadership and value creation, not only access. A single, well-placed intervention in these consultations carries more weight now than any statement after the roadmap is fixed.

This work, including the proposed indicator framework, is convened by Women at the Table.    

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