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Meeting the demand for access to Government information through a
structured regime that both creates rights of access and provides
adequate protection for personal and commercial privacy.
Ensuring that legislation and policies remain technology neutral or,
in the alternative, where a technology is favoured, that it is done
after careful analysis of the costs and benefits.
Examining the use of the .bw domain and ensuring that adequate
dispute resolution mechanisms are in place regarding domain
allocations.
8.3
Discussion:
8.3.1 The Legal and Policy Task Force identified selected priorities, which are
outlined above. These priorities were identified taking into account the
objectives and priorities of the other Task Forces. For example, both the
Health and the Economic Development Task Forces stressed the
importance of establishing a regime for secure electronic signatures in
order to move their recommendations forward. The discussion in this
Annex deals with the identified priorities, as well as with some related
items, such as security and cyber-crime. There are a number of other
issues that will have to be dealt with in time, however.
8.3.2 A procedure should be put in place to ensure that these issues remain in
Government Action plans as medium to longer-term matters. This is not
to say that there are necessarily less important in many ways than the
matters initially identified for action, but only that a realistic assessment
of resources and capacities requires that priorities be established.
8.3.3 The Government may wish to consider requiring Ministries that put
forward recommendations for legislation, policies, or procurement to
justify any decisions that can be seen to limit technological innovation
by moving away from, e.g., technological neutrality.
8.4
Recommendations
- The Inter-ministerial Legal Reform Task Force coordinate and
implement the policy and legislation required to fulfil the initial
tasks identified by the Legal and Policy Task Force; in addition, the
Legal Reform Task Force be asked to develop medium-term plans (2
to 6 years) to explore policy and legislative development in other
ICT-related areas.
- The Ministry of Communications, Science and Technology report to
the Inter-Ministerial Legal Reform Task Force for inclusion in their
first six-month report to Cabinet the progress that has been made
regarding telecommunications liberalisation, including providing a
transparent process for spectrum allocation and dealing with issues
of the convergence of telecommunications and broadcasting.