Geneva, 30 November 1998
Mr. Lucio GOELZER
Information Services Department
Dear Lucio,
In your 24 years at ITU, including 15 as Head of the Information Services Department, you have left an indelible impression on the organization. That imprint is not the mark of a dominating personality imposed by force, because you have worked quietly, with the voice of reason and above all with vision. Your vision encompasses the possibilities which today’s - and tomorrow’s - information technology offer, together with a grasp of the real requirements which ITU faces in meeting its objectives and the expectations of our members. Your mark is the superb technical infrastructure which ITU now has, the changes to the organization’s "corporate culture" which have been enabled by universal access to electronic tools and the training to use them effectively, and the dynamic processes of electronic information exchange with and among the Union’s members.
Thanks to your leadership, the Information Services Department has helped the ITU as a whole to modernize its work processes, realize greater productivity, and give better service to our members. Your willingness to innovate and to redirect resources in response to my concern for a more outward looking orientation at ITU has led to greatly appreciated services for the membership and for the telecommunication industry as a whole. I have been greatly impressed by your ability to anticipate technology and to sense how an emerging technology might be employed to ITU’s advantage. ITU’s pioneering use of the Internet, first for email and connectivity, then for Gopher, the Web, and electronic commerce are striking examples of this.
Your contribution in promoting ITU’s role in Internet issues has been prescient, and very helpful to me. The resolutions of the Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis giving ITU a very clear mandate for a role in questions of Internet governance confirms that this was the correct course to take on behalf of our Members’ interests.
I have always been able to count on you for good judgment in a wide variety of ITU management issues; that is why I named you as a founding member of the Senior Level Management Committee, and asked you to lead the Joint Advisory Committee. I recognize that you act in the interests of the Union as a whole, rather than only promoting the special interests of your department. You have cooperated whole-heartedly with the Telecommunication Development Bureau on many development-related informatics matters, notably extension of the Internet and the Electronic Commerce for Developing Countries project. I have also appreciated your enthusiasm for interagency cooperation within the United Nations System, which is in line with my view of ITU’s role as an active player and lead agency for telecommunications in the United Nations System. Finally, I appreciate that you have unfailingly accepted my decisions with good humor.
I wish you success and happiness in your future undertakings.
Pekka TARJANNE, Secretary-General, ITU