transactions are protected. Secure access enables the creation of local and global digital marketplaces for the safe delivery of digital financial, business, government, and social services (Ibid). Policy access is about writing the rules of the game locally, regionally and globally to ensure good governance of the Internet and other ICT-related mechanisms, whether such governance is concerned with management of telecommunications and other services sectors, liberalisation of financial sectors or design and management of intellectual property rights agreements. There are three aspects to policy access: design of the actual policy frameworks; crafting of appropriate legislation and/or regulations to give policies the force of law; and enforcement or regulation that results in practical application and resultant change (Ibid). The ultimate level of access – enlightened access – allows actors to effectively absorb and apply innovative information, tools, products, processes, applications and services emerging from all sectors of a sophisticated global economy while also amassing value from the development and distribution of their own knowledge creations. Enlightened access might be thought of as the content or innovation layer of the access model (Ibid). Each of these six aspects of access might be seen as strategic parts of an organic whole, a set of components that, when present and working in concert, form a holistic social framework that facilitates the creation and diffusion of knowledge and innovation. Each layer feeds into and supports the other layers to a point where the ultimate goal of knowledge creation and innovation may begin to be met as a society achieves enlightened access to the technological tools and communications frameworks of the information age (Ibid). Depending on a country’s historical experience, stage of development and its international standing, its levels of access, and thus the limitations and opportunities with which it is faced in the contemporary global economy, differs significantly from others in the community of nations (Ibid). When presented with this conceptual framework, key stakeholders in Belize recognised gaps in the national ICT framework at every level of the access model. The CTU consultant team analysed those gaps and, in tandem with other research and benchmark analysis, developed the E-Government Policy framework on the basis of their findings. The resultant policy objectives and accompanying policy statements have been designed to fill the most critical gaps over the course of the next three to five years. 1.3.2. A N ‘U NBROKEN C HAIN OF P ROOF ’ FOR E-G OVERNMENT “Countries are judged by what they do, not by what they say, as they have always been … In order to achieve a better reputation, as Socrates is said to have observed, we must endeavour to be as we desire to appear. … it is necessary to provide people with proof of one’s virtues … Places require new and dedicated structures to coordinate, conceive, develop, maintain, and promote such an unbroken chain of proof. None of the traditional apparatus of trade or government is fit for such a purpose.” Simon Anholt, Beyond the Nation Brand, 2011. 28