• With WSIS+20 concluded and the Global Digital Compact adopted, digital policy is moving into an implementation phase. • This article traces what changed, what was delivered, and what comes next. • The dust has finally settled on the United Nations General Assembly’s twenty-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20). • On 17 December 2025, member states adopted a consensus outcome document that does more than just look back at the last two decades: it cements the architecture of global digital governance, aligned with 2030 Sustainable Digital Goals, for the next ten years. • For the technical community, the results are a hard-won victory for the multistakeholder model, but they also signal the start of a more complex chapter. • From WSIS to the Global Digital Compact and WSIS+20 UN engagement with digital development - previously known as the Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) - began prior to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that was held in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005.

Article Summaries:

  • With WSIS+20 concluded and the Global Digital Compact adopted, digital policy is moving into an implementation phase. This article traces what changed, what was delivered, and what comes next. The dust has finally settled on the United Nations General Assembly’s twenty-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20). On 17 December 2025, member states adopted a consensus outcome document that does more than just look back at the last two decades: it cements the architecture of global digital governance, aligned with 2030 Sustainable Digital Goals, for the next ten years. F

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