CTO's central role in moving ICT agenda for WSIS, CHOGM

The Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation (CTO) is taking a proactive stance in pursuing its leading role for the World Summit on the Information Society and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled for later this year in...

At the end of last month, the Commonwealth Secretariat, headquartered in Marlborough House, London, organised two main events for which its Co-ordinating Group is responsible to review the Commonwealth Action Programme for the Digital Divide (CAPDD).

This plan had been endorsed by Heads of Government at a previous CHOGM. The Heads of Government had also identified key implementation partners, which included the CTO, the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC) and the Commonwealth Network of IT for Development (COMNET-IT)

The Action Plan aims to provide civil society leadership in promoting the wider use of ICTs in Commonwealth countries, bridging the digital divide and accelerating socio-economic development of member countries, particularly small and developing states.

The Malta meeting

The Co-ordinating Group, of which the CTO is a key player, first met in Malta under the auspices of Malta's Foreign Ministry primarily to decide on the programmes and projects that would reflect broad national needs, such as legal/policy frameworks and ICT strategies that underpin good contemporary governance.

It is at these broader levels that the Commonwealth can muster and exploit its collective wealth of experience and knowledge, which are its unique strengths. Indeed, the various proposals received to date focused on building policy capacity, modernising education and skills development, entrepreneurship for poverty reduction, promoting local access and connectivity, and regional networking.

At the Malta meeting, CTO chairman Anthony De Bono, in one of his interventions, said that the proposed diverse development projects submitted by Commonwealth agencies for appraisal by the co-ordinating group, should be consolidated on logical relations to a few manageable pan-Commonwealth projects.

The individual applicant organisations should be partners in the relevant pan-Commonwealth project with the party having the most amount of expertise and experience as the lead partner.

He confirmed that the CTO would be ready to play a subordinate role in projects proposed by other organisations, just as the CTO would welcome other organisations to partner the CTO in carrying forward the seven projects it proposed.

In reality, of the two projects the CTO submitted, namely the Rural Teleco-op for the Commonwealth and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Service, are already under way. So much so that through the Rural Teleco-op project the CTO is already in the process of executing a detailed mission in Sri Lanka, using Maltese Government Tsunami relief funds.

Consequently, Mr De Bono suggested that these two projects could be expanded from CTO-specific target markets to the entire Commonwealth.

London High-Level Group Forum

The Malta gathering was immediately followed by a High-Level Group Forum, organised at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London to discuss and propose initiatives within specific areas to Heads of Government.

The London meeting was attended by representatives from a number of countries and organisations. Countries represented included Australia, India, Malta, Nigeria, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Representing agencies alongside the CTO were COMNET-IT, the CBC, COL and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The CTO, which took an active part in the High-Level Forum and was represented by Mr De Bono and its CEO, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, emphasised the importance of building a strong national regulatory capacity as part of the efforts to help bridge the digital divide in the Commonwealth.

In arguing for a focused attention in strengthening ICT regulatory institutions in the Commonwealth, the CTO assured that in most Commonwealth countries, regulatory institutions are relatively young. Even in the UK, which has a long history of regulation in the sector, it is only within the past two years that five agencies have been banded together to create Ofcom.

In the Caribbean and in some African and Pacific countries, regulatory institutions are being created for the first time only in this year. According to the CTO, it would be difficult, if not impossible, given the rapid technological changes and the impact of liberalisation and competition, for most developing CTO member countries to attain their Millennium Development Goals and the targets sets in the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) action plans, if special attention was not paid to strengthening the capacity of their regulatory institutions.

The High-Level Group acknowledged that while action was taken since the 2001 CAPDD report, more progress could be made in delivering the benefits of ICTs to Commonwealth citizens.

A number of recommendations were adopted during the London meeting. Recommendations include modernising education and skills development, entrepreneurship for poverty reduction, promoting local access and connectivity, as well as regional networking.

The draft recommendations of the High-Level Forum will be submitted for further discussion and review by Commonwealth ICT Ministers, who are scheduled to meet in Cameroon in early September, alongside the CTO's annual forum.

It is expected that the ministers will make suitable recommendations to their Heads of State and Government, to enable them to adopt the CAPDD when they assemble in Malta in November for the CHOGM.

In a comment to The Sunday Times, Mr De Bono said: "We are confident that the recommendations of this meeting as well as the deliberations of the ICT Ministers' meeting in Cameroon will be compelling enough to secure unconditional support from our Heads of Government.

"Strengthening the ability of member countries to adopt and implement favourable and sustainable policies is critical if we are to overcome the differences in access and use of ICTs."

Maltese media discover CTO's new initiatives

The London High-Level Group Forum coincided with a visit of the Maltese media representatives to the UK. The CTO chairman, aware of the role the media would play in raising awareness of the work of his organisation, took the opportunity to invite the group to CTO headquarters to be briefed on the nature and extent of the CTO's prominent initiatives.

Detailed presentations were made by Mr De Bono and by Dr Spio-Garbrah, a former Minister of Communications and Minister of Education of Ghana.

The new initiatives presented included the Alternative Dispute Resolution Centre, to be operational early next year, which aims to help resolve disputes between operators and other actors in the field of telecommunications and ICTs and Telco-op - a sustainable rural telecom development initiative aimed at long-term ownership of telecom infrastructure by agro-industrial communities in developing countries.

SeaGateway, a new maritime security and monitoring solution being developed by the CTO and its partners, particularly captured the attention of the guests. The project, Dr Spio-Garbrah said, had just secured the partnership of some key institutions, including a major satellite operator, a global mobile equipment manufacturer and a well-known European network operator.

Existing initiatives presented included the Programme for Development and Training (PDT), a 20-year-old programme focused on providing technological, regulatory and business expertise to its members, with the emphasis on the ability for operators from non-Commonwealth countries to join.

Welcoming the journalists on the day, Mr De Bono explained his vision of a world without a digital divide. "We are trying to ensure that whenever and wherever ICTs can be used to leverage economic and social development, we do so," he said, adding:

"By 2015, it will be unacceptable for any community in the world not to be connected, irrespective of the fact that around 800,000 villages - representing about 30 per cent of all villages worldwide (or 20 per cent of the world's population of more than 6.2 billion people) - remain without any connection to ICTs and making a simple telephone call is currently out of reach. For that, we must eradicate the ICT knowledge and capacity gaps, which are at the core of the digital divide."

Questioned on the way the CTO operates, Dr Spio-Garbrah described the organisation as one of the best multi-stakeholder public-private partnerships that exists in ICTs, since the organisation is owned by governments, regulators, telephone operating companies and other private companies.

"I had often heard of the CTO and its activities," one of the journalists present said. "This presentation was extremely useful in clarifying what role it effectively plays. It was particularly interesting to learn of the new maritime monitoring and security project of the CTO. Surely, such work is ultimately in the public interest."

The Maltese media, who were led by Jesmond Bonello from the CHOGM Task Force and Alan Camilleri, communications executive of the Maltese Prime Minister, were hosted to lunch by the CTO chairman and CEO. Foreign Minister Michael Frendo and his personal assistant Christopher Mercieca were special guests for the occasion.

CTO to report to member countries in September

These experiences were referred to in the opening address the CTO chairman gave when he chaired the statutory meeting of the Executive Committee of the CTO, which also met in London for a preliminary review of the organisation's operations over the past 12 months and to prepare for the organisation's next annual council meeting, to be held in Cameroon from September 7-8 this year.

Of particular interest among the documents reviewed was an update on the setting up of the CTO Alternate Dispute Resolution Centre. Member countries will be required in September to endorse this new mechanism for dispute resolution between operators and other players in the ICT field.

And in order to prepare member countries and their delegations for a meaningful discussion of the project, the executive committee recommended that a meeting of legal experts from the CTO's member institutions should be held in Cameroon on from September 2-3 to reassess the detailed background documentation regarding the project.

The legal experts would then make suitable recommendations to the council through CTO's management. The central focus of the Cameroon meeting will be a review and update on progress made by the organisation in the implementation of a number of new initiatives that were approved at the previous council meeting in Colombo.

Most CTO members know that the organisation is consolidating some of its previous work and charting a new course in a number of areas. The members will want to know what the CTO had achieved, how well it is managing, what problems it may be facing, the plans for the future, and how the members can be helpful.

Also presented to the executive committee was the progress made on the SeaGateway project. Executive committee Members noted the progress made with satisfaction, especially given the number of strategic partners the CTO has brought into that and other projects.

Other reviews in Cameroon will include the CTO's Programme for Development and Training, the CTO technical assistance programme; the ICT Road Map and the CTO's WSIS-compliant national ICT strategy planning programme. These activities will be included in the CTO's Annual Report to be published in time for Cameroon meeting.

The Cameroon meeting will be the first review of the various existing and new ICT for development initiatives the CTO has engaged in since the review of its constitution in late 2002.

Some 150 delegates are expected at the CTO Forum which precedes the council meeting. ICTs Ministers or their deputies from some 30 Commonwealth countries are expected at a separate consultation alongside the CTO Forum, on September 5-6 to discuss a draft document on the Commonwealth Action Programme for the Digital Divide (CAPDD), as hitherto mentioned.