Internet governance issues arise in Pacific

Updated September 6, 2010 09:00:45

An important workshop on Internet governance and communications technology was held in Fiji last week, but at least one invitee refused to attend due to Fiji's strict media censorship.

The information and communication technology outreach coordinator for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community says he is not aware of the rebuff but agrees that governance issues are of prime importance to nations such as Tonga which passed a proposal in June to investigate how it handle its rapid advance.

The massive interest in the Internet right across the region - how the Internet works and how it is governed - prompted organisers to set up the workshop which was attended by representatives from Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Samoa. SPC co-hosted the workshop with DiploFoundation, an international non-governmental organisation.

Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Siaosi Sovaleni, information and communication technology outreach coordinator for the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, SPC

SOVALENI: The workshop is about internet governance and ICT policy, basically looking at some of the issues like privacy, data protection, cyber security, e-commerce and so forth. There are a range of issues and basically to raise the awareness of stakeholders about some of the issues and also looking at the policy implication on how they can actually progress on some of the issues and trying to address them.

COUTTS: What made you hold this kind of workshop? Were you seeing that there were breaches taking place on a regular basis?

SOVALENI: The internet governance thing, like in Tonga back in June the ministers actually endorsed a proposal to actually start looking at internet governance because there is a wide range of issues. It is not about like hacking and so forth, but about other issues as well, like how we can actually use the internet for poverty reduction strategies like using e-commerce and so forth and that is part of the reason. The other reason is that the IGF [Internet Governance Forum] actually want to roll out some of IG awareness watch in the Pacific and they had one in Cook Islands and they were looking for somewhere else in the Pacific and as SPC, I guess we're taking a more proactive coordinating role in ICT development, partner with them to have the one in Fiji.

COUTTS: Well, I understand that participation the global internet governance debate represents a significant challenge for all countries, but especially for small Pacific Island countries and territories. Why more so for Pacific Island countries and territories, the smaller ones?

SOVALENI: It's true, I mean the global one actually look at more global issues but having it on the national and regional level actually kind of localise the issue, like looking at specifically what are the issues in the Pacific countries. I mean some of the issues that we don't have the infrastructure. One of the main discussion is like shifting from IPV4 to IPV6 where they are looking at exhausting all the address by 2011 and hopefully try and get Pacific island countries to actually start looking at moving to IPV6. So there are some issues, not only infrastructure, but also on legislation. We still need to do a lot of work on the legislative framework in actually trying to catch up with all these advances in ICT.

COUTTS: Governance is important as you have said and it is a very important issue, so much so that at least one of the participants invited to the conference or the workshop declined until, as they put it, that democracy was restored to Fiji so they declined to attend this workshop. So is that an issue or are others also of the same mind that they were not going to return because there is a governance issue in Fiji and media freedom is questioned?

SOVALENI: Basically I am not aware of that particular case, but from SPC perspective we were trying to actually have a multi-stakeholder discussion where we have government official, we have NGOs and we also have the operators like all the telcos in Fiji. We also invited participants, we actually got in participants from Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Samoa, so we are looking to actually get a different perspective from the other countries and that is where we're coming from, to actually have a forum where people can actually discuss. I am not aware of that particular issue that you raise.

COUTTS: Some of the aspects that you have already highlighted we'll go on with now and legal requirements of having an internet service of whatever it is that representative countries want to adopt and proceed with. What are some of the implications there?

SOVALENI: A lot of Pacific island countries do not have the legislative framework to actually handle some of the advances in ICT, like cyber crime and having legislation that facilitates the e-commerce and so forth. The main thing is to actually make the stakeholder, especially like government official who actually involved with policymaking and so forth are aware of all these issues and hopefully through that we can actually start looking at policy that will try and address it.

COUTTS: And so what would you like to see as a really good outcome from the workshop?

SOVALENI: The multi-stakeholder project that the IG Forum actually tend to provide actually raised the awareness of all the players. They normally tend to speak their own particular group of people, like private sectors, NGOs and so forth. But actually providing a forum they can actually see the different perspectives from the other stakeholders on any particular issue.