Minister's Foreword Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have a profound impact upon our lives. They are a fundamental necessity for economic progress. They help us to grow our economies, and create new jobs and businesses and tourism opportunities. They promote our economic and social well-being. They also underpin growth and improvements in other important parts of our lives, such as security, health and education. Our national policies, the Government manifesto and our 20-year vision for our country KV20, assert the priorities and importance of information and communication technologies as enabling infrastructure for our goals and aspirations. The unique geography of Kiribati, with its low-lying coral atolls and widely scattered population, presents substantial technical and financial challenges to our service providers. We are grateful to the financial backers of these companies, and to our development partners, especially the World Bank, the Asia Development Bank and the governments of Australia and New Zealand, who are creating innovative solutions and assisting us with finance and technical support in meeting the challenges of the barriers of distance. They are helping to bring us closer together as a nation with the technologies of the twenty-first century. Our first National ICT Policy in 2011 paved the way for many important changes in the way our communications services are provided. Substantial progress has been made in creating a competitive market, passing enabling legislation, privatising our national telephone company, radically improving the quality of services and initiating innovative financing solutions for extending network coverage to our Outer Islands. However, much work remains to be done if we are to achieve our goal of universal, affordable, equitable and reliable mobile phone and Internet services available to everyone in our country. At the time I write this, over 30% of our population still has no access to mobile phone services. This policy recognises this need and gives priority to filling the gaps in our service coverage. It also maps out our plan to develop a digital economy in line with the broader objectives of the KV20. We recognise and intend to exploit the untapped potential of information technologies to transform our government services, making them more user-friendly, more effective, more efficient, more dependable and more readily accessible to our entire population through an e-Government project. We are also encouraging the use of innovative new technologies such as blockchain, Kiribati National ICT Policy 2019 I