VIGNETTES FROM THE ICANN CONFERENCE IN WELLINGTON, (March 2006)

By Dev Nadkarni

A day for Pacific IT

The New Zealand-based 20/20 Trust organized a Pasifika IT Day to coincide with the ICANN and Forum ICT Ministers events in Wellington. In a daylong series of presentations, IT companies mainly around the Pacific Islands region but mostly from New Zealand (many of them owned/ promoted by NZ-based Pacific Islanders) displayed their wares.

A session in progress at ICANN 2006

The Pasifika IT Day brought a strong Pacific focus to the global event that was the ICANN meet. Pacific exotica met state-of-art high tech to create a huge interest among visiting delegates.

Presenters demonstrated the sheer breadth of work being done in diverse fields using ICTs. From linguistic research and oral histories to telemedicine and wifi access on remote islands and from young Pasifika entrepreneurs who have made their mark in the business of digital multimedia to those providing innovative ICT services –all went to show how much can be done by Pacific communities given the resources, the right conditions and the encouragement.

Cooks take the lead in anti-Spam legislation

Pacific Island Telecommunications Association (PITA) and The Australian Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) are working in partnership in assisting Pacific Island Countries with a project to develop anti-spam legislation.

SPAM, defined as “unsolicited commercial electronic messaging” or “junk mail”, is a major problem worldwide prompting countries to develop strategies to combat its growth.

The ICT division in the Office of the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands is facilitating the visit of DCITA with key stakeholder consultations to promote spam awareness and to draw feedback that can assist with the drafting of the legislation. Such a legislation for the Cook Islands has the potential to become a model for other Pacific Islands countries.

The model will be based on the existing Australian approach to anti-spam legislation, regarded internationally as a good model, with some tweaking to reflect the Cook Islands regulatory environment and local concerns.

The project will consist of three phases: Development of a package of anti-spam policy and legislation; establishment of an enforcement tool that gathers admissible evidence, such as a forensic database for spam and participation in an international network of enforcing agencies.

Harmonised ICT laws have been discussed for some time and the anti-spam legislation for Pacific Islands Countries will provide support for the Pacific Islands Forum’s Digital Strategy.

Making ICT work for the people: stories from around the world

•    Fishermen in Kerala in southern India are using mobile phones to reconfigure distribution chains dynamically while they are at sea, depending on which seafood market offers the best prices for the catch. Some fishing companies report that their profit in the peak fishing season has doubled, since they can contact multiple ports and seafood markets and identify the best sale prices for the catch of the day. Routes, fishing locations and even the composition of the catch itself can be planned and coordinated while the fishing boats are still at sea.
•    People in Pakistan were able to contribute financially to the victims of last year’s devastating earthquake by using their mobile phones. Users could donate a fixed amount of rupees by sending a simple text message to a designated number. The money would be debited from the sender’s account balance and credited directly to the disaster relief account in the service of the affected people.
•    An Internet Protocol (IP) based communication system fitted in a vehicle was instrumental in linking up as many as 17 radio and communications services, making them interoperable in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the United States. The system worked solely on generator power in an area that had no electricity for weeks and helped coordinate relief operations during the entire period. This is an excellent instance of employing IP-based technology successfully in a life-threatening disaster situation and could be replicated throughout the world.