10 Strategy are improving communication, empowering citizens, and encouraging democratic participation. Citizens in community visits conducted by the Maitlamo Project Team expressed a desire to learn more about government. ¾ The Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act recognises intellectual property rights in computer software, electronic documents and other forms of data. Concerns were expressed, however, about the adequacy of remedies and enforcement. There is also no legislative protection against cyber-squatting on a website and no dispute resolution system in place to deal with domain name protection. There is also no appropriate legislated limitation on the liability of Internet Service Providers. ¾ Transparency of the legal system and legal decision-making can be improved by making more information, including the legislation of Botswana and judicial and administrative decisions, available on the Internet. These elements of transparency are related to eGovernment. As well, there is considerable scope for the adoption of ICT technologies in the legal system, including case management of the courts and training of legal and judicial officials in the use of new information technologies. 4.5 The Legal and Policy e-Readiness Report and Gap Analysis identified four immediate priorities for legislative and legal policy development. These priorities were developed taking into account reports of other Task Forces and took into consideration that the Legal and Policy Task Force had been charged with identifying changes that are required to enable the development of an ICT Strategy for Botswana. In addition to the policy development that is underway regarding telecommunications liberalisation (which may include spectrum allocation and convergence—information was not available to confirm this) and competition policy, the short-term priorities are: ¾ Media-neutral legislation to deal with electronic documents (ecommerce legislation). ¾ Amendments to specific legislation including the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act, the Authentication of Documents Act, the Foreign Documents Evidence Act and possibly selected other legislation (e.g., the Botswana Stock Exchange Act) to allow for the use and enforcement of electronic documents. ¾ Development of a policy and possibly legislation to deal with electronic signatures.

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