Collected on the CRIS Campaign site, reports in English and Spanish cover the progress of the first ‘prepcom’ from a civil society perspective of the second phase of the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held June 24-26. There are reports covering each day – from Day 1 to Day 4.

A three-day workshop on information and communication technology (ICT) policy in New Delhi in April brought together thirty participants from Indian non-governmental organisations, academics, government officials, representatives from an internet service provider association. APC was invited to be the principal trainer for the three-day workshop and participants and guests presented their experiences and case studies through the three days.

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in collaboration with regional network, APC-Africa-Women, and the LINK Center, Wits University, Johannesburg, hosted a pan-African workshop to develop a multi-country action study in Africa to measure how people especially women are making use of the ICT sector since the popularisation of cell-phones, telecentres and other communications innovations.

10 APC members have created national portal websites tracking communications and information related policy in a joint initiative. The portals have been set up in Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, Spain, the UK and Uruguay.

APCNews asked some of the site administrators who were still putting last minute touches to their portals which were launched collectively on June 8 2004 to comment briefly on ICT policy in their countries and their hopes for the portals.

Ten APC members have created national ICT policy portal websites in their own countries in a joint initiative. The portals which are all uniquely adapted to address each country’s particular situation all use free software that allows content-sharing in different languages and between multiple information databases hosted in different parts of the world.

Three high school students announced at a press conference that fingerprinting Korean nationals on their seventeenth birthday in order to obtain their national ID cards is unconstitutional. This is the first time teenagers have filed a constitutional petition against the fingerprinting system, says APC member, Jinbonet.

The system which enforces fingerprinting was implemented with the revision of the Resident Registration Act over thirty year ago and civil and social organizations have repeatedly asserted the fingerprinting system exists only in South Korea and should be abolished.

On April 7, 2004, the South Korean police announced the commencement of a project to aid in the search for missing children involving the collection of DNA in a massive database. Samples of the DNA of children presently under government care and the parents of missing children will be collected. Civil organizations have warned the goverment must follow strict protocols to protect the public from possible abuse of such a system, says APC member, JinboNet.

A three-day meeting in Tunis last month sought to prepare the way for the next World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to be held Nov. 16-18 next year. But interest in this development has built up over the past 30 years.

Conference-goers at a major multistakeholder event dedicated to discussing Kenya’s draft ICT policy were outraged to discover that the most recent government draft was ‘confidential’ and only being circulated to a select few. “Efforts to query the government representatives present did not bear fruit and incredulous delegates were advised to contact the relevant ministry and demand a copy as tax-paying citizens who have the right to access public policy documents,” informs APC’s Africa ICT Policy Monitor. Read the latest edition of Chakula, APC’s African ICT policy newsletter, just out!