originally be envisaged to meet rather narrow needs. Cost-related challenges in Vanuatu make it unaffordable and wasteful to satisfy such needs separately without maximising cross-utilisation of ICT facilities. For example, appropriate Government procurement policies, primary purpose of which may be to satisfy Government’s ICT needs, can be an effective tool to encourage the private sector to deploy ICT infrastructure in areas, which the private sector would otherwise consider commercially unviable, but which could be attractive as part of a larger commercial opportunity. Furthermore, projects, aimed at expanding ICTs to specific facilities in specific localities, should take into account a potential to serve broader needs of respective communities. In this context, the Government has specifically identified a potential for schools to also serve as Community Information, Learning and Communication Centres. The Government acknowledges, however, that an approach outlined above may appear to increase costs of individual ICT deployment projects, if such projects are evaluated separately. Therefore it will strongly promote inclusion of considerations of “greater good”, including a potential for ICT-related positive externalities, into evaluation of costs and benefits of different procurement approaches as well as specific programmes, projects and initiatives. The Government will employ a multi-stakeholder and multi-sector framework to promote the above. It will specifically encourage development partners to support this approach. Kick-Starting Sustainable Development The Government, wherever possible, will aim for its policy interventions to be limited in time, and ICT-policy-specific resources to be primarily used for interventions that provide an impetus for development that could be taken over and continued by other stakeholders, particularly the private sector. It believes that such an approach is important in the context of constrained financial and human resources and a multitude of priorities. Generally, the Government will aim for its policy (especially ICT-policy-specific) interventions to be time-limited and with a clear exit-strategy. The Government notes that such an approach is specifically fitting the ICT sector. Interdependent elements of the ICT ecosystem, specifically infrastructure, applications (content) and services, devices and users, make natural development extremely difficult initially, but, once kick-started, supports a self-generating growth and development. This is demonstrated by simplified negative and positive feedback loops below. Subsidiarity and Stakeholder Ownership and Drive The Government believes that, while a comprehensive national policy is needed to provide a direction to all stakeholders and coordinate their actions, it is the stakeholders who: (a) have direct expertise in specific subject-matter areas that ICTs would be enabling (line-stakeholders), and/or (b) are close (including geographically) to the matters addressed and people affected or will likely be the ones to feel the effect of specific actions (local-stakeholders),—that are best placed to identify the most appropriate actions, modalities and ways necessary to achieve policy 46 National Information and Communication Technology Policy