BrazilGlobal powerbrokers move on to Dubai for World Government Summit
The World Government Summit is once again upon us, with the global elite gathering in Dubai for three days of discussions around innovation and future governance.
Although the dust has barely settled from this year’s annual World Economic Forum at Davos – including for a busy consulting sector contingent – the globe’s leading power-brokers will now descend on Dubai for this year’s World Government Summit, including an expectedly busy consulting sector contingent headed by event knowledge partners Accenture, McKinsey, BCG, Oliver Wyman, A.T. Kearney and the Big Four professional services quartet.
Rolling into town from the 10th to the 12th, and now into its seventh edition, the World Government Summit is a platform dedicated in its own words to shaping the future of governments worldwide, bringing together over 4,000 government representatives, policy-makers, thought leaders and private sector executives from 150 countries – including, this year, Harrison Ford, to address the audience on ocean conservation.
Other speakers and attendees confirmed for this year’s summit include; the Pope, head of the Catholic Church, and the heads of state from among other nations Lebanon, Pakistan, Estonia, Rwanda and the Cook Islands – as well as OECD and IMF chiefs Ángel Gurría and Christine Lagarde, economics Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman and Paul Krugman, and of course the event’s patron Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai.
With the World Government Summit focused on the use of innovation and technology in governance to resolve future and emerging global social challenges, the some 200 sessions at this year’s conference will centre on returning sub-forums such as the Global Dialogue for Happiness and Wellbeing, the Global A.I Governance Forum, and Sustainable Development Goals in Action review in collaboration with the UN, the World Bank and the OECD.
Also on the agenda – as one of the event’s annual centerpieces – will be the announcement of this year’s Best Minister Award, which celebrates exceptional public sector leaders and was last year awarded to Indonesia’s Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati. Administered in 2018 by Ernst & Young, this year’s selection process will be overseen by PwC after the recent signing of a three-year deal to provide advisory and evaluation services on the award.
Ernst & Young has however remained on as an event knowledge partner, serving together with PwC (including strategy arm Strategy&) and fellow Big Four firms KPMG and Deloitte, as well as professional services giant Accenture and the global strategy and management leaders McKinsey & Company, Oliver Wyman, Boston Consulting Group, and A.T. Kearney – most of which have traditionally released special reports in conjunction with the Summit.
Among the high-level speakers from the consulting domain are; Thomas Reichert, Managing Director in BCG’s New York office – also the Global Leader of Digital BCG; Director of the McKinsey Global Institute Jonathan Woetzel, as well as McKinsey Middle East managing partner Gassan Al Kibsi; Athina Kanioura, Global Lead for Personalisation, Sales, and Customer Analytics at Accenture; and EY’s Beatriz Sanz Saiz (Global Advisory Data and Analytics Leader) together with MENA digital leaders Prem Kamath and Kapil Raghuraman.
