World Telecommunication and Information Society Day – WTISD is celebrated annually on May 17, the day of the signing of the first International Telegraph Convention in 1865, in Paris, by twenty European countries. On that day also the International Telegraph Union was established in 1932, in Madrid, later renamed and transformed into the International Telecommunication Union – ITU, which in 1947 became a specialized UN agency for telecommunications. It represents one of the biggest and oldest global international organizations, which defines the manner and conditions of the development of telecommunications worldwide. Serbia was among the first countries to have joined the International Telegraph Union and since then, it has continuously participated in the work of all international telecommunication bodies.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), in November 2005, called upon the UN General Assembly to declare May 17 as World Information Society Day, to focus on the importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the wide range of issues related to the Information Society raised by WSIS. In March 2006, the General Assembly adopted a resolution (A/RES/60/252) stipulating that World Information Society Day shall be celebrated every year on the 17th of May.

The purpose of World Telecommunication and Information Society Day is to raise awareness of the possibilities and advantages the Internet and other ICT tools can bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide. This year, the focus is on the empowerment of the least developed countries through information and communication technologies.