Internet Governance Forum Held in Minsk

There were over 300 par­tic­i­pants reg­is­tered from Belarus, Rus­sia, Esto­nia, Ukraine, Geor­gia, Moldo­va and the USA. The orga­niz­ers of the IGF in Min­sk were Hoster.by (tech­ni­cal admin­is­tra­tor of Belaru­sian domain names .BY and .БЕЛ) and the Oper­a­tive Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­ter under the aus­pices of the Pres­i­dent of Belarus.

The speak­ers touched upon a wide range of issues.

For exam­ple, Mikhail Yaku­shev, Vice Pres­i­dent of ICANN, spoke of the lin­guis­tic side of the devel­op­ment of the web. “One of ICAN­N’s tasks is to devel­op mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and cul­tur­al diver­si­ty on the web. In our region, it deals with devel­op­ment of domain zones in nation­al lan­guages which allows reg­is­tra­tion of domains and launch web­sites with­out the use of Roman alpha­bet.” Mikhail Yaku­shev thinks that Cyril­lic domain names and e‑mail names are con­ve­nient for those users who don’t know lan­guages based on Roman alpha­bet. He also empha­sized the impor­tance of invent­ing cor­rect ter­mi­nol­o­gy in Russ­ian, as ini­tial­ly the com­put­er lan­guage devel­ops in Eng­lish. He set an exam­ple when sev­er­al def­i­n­i­tions in Russ­ian were derived from one and the same notion (like IP-address, web address, web iden­ti­fi­ca­tor). The speak­er called for uni­fi­ca­tion of the IT glos­sary in Russ­ian.

Dzmit­ry Shed­ko, the First Deputy Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Informa­ti­za­tion of Belarus, com­ment­ed on the ques­tion of open data and devel­op­ment of an open data por­tal in Belarus. “The main prob­lem is how state bod­ies pro­vide data. Offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives are con­ser­v­a­tive peo­ple. They part with data very hard. We will press on them (to do so). Although, I say hon­est­ly it will be a com­pli­cat­ed process, a lit­tle pro­longed in time.

Maria Penyaz, junior employ­ee of the web-resource man­age­ment of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Legal Infor­ma­tion (NCPI, web­site pravo.by and oth­ers) had to answer why part of infor­ma­tion on the web­site pravo.by (con­tain­ing leg­isla­tive acts, like amend­ments) are pro­vid­ed for users only on paid-for basis. “The por­tal accu­mu­lates all doc­u­ments in their ini­tial form. To access a doc­u­ment which has been amend­ed, you need to load anoth­er resource – etalon.by. This is a legal con­sul­ta­tion sys­tem. All the amend­ments are entered into the sys­tem by employ­ees, their work has to be paid. That is why the infor­ma­tion pub­lished here is paid-for,” she said. The answer sur­prised the lis­ten­ers; there was a sug­ges­tion to autom­a­tize the process and to cut down on expens­es.

Mari Pedak, Senior Con­sul­tant of the Acad­e­my of E‑Governance of Esto­nia, pre­sent­ed a suc­cess­ful project of e‑governance in Esto­nia, a coun­try with 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple. Almost every res­i­dent has got a dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty. The trans­fer had been pre­pared since 1992, and dif­fer­ent typed of elec­tron­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tions were intro­duced in 2007. For instance, dig­i­tal sig­na­ture saves up to 20 min­utes on each trans­ac­tion. Esti­mates show that dig­i­tal sig­na­ture has already saved around 28 mil­lion euro. “For Esto­nia it is a big fig­ure – around 2 per cent of the GDP. This is the sum allo­cat­ed for defense. We can say that by intro­duc­ing the dig­i­tal sig­na­ture, we’ve found mon­ey for defense,” remarked the expert.

It should be not­ed that the event was crit­i­cized for lack of trans­paren­cy and open­ness at the stage of prepa­ra­tion. A group of CSOs sent a peti­tion to the orga­niz­ers express­ing their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with imbal­ance of rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the dis­cus­sion: speak­ers in the sec­tion “State and the Inter­net” rep­re­sent­ed only state orga­ni­za­tions; civ­il soci­ety was not rep­re­sent­ed in the “Busi­ness and the Inter­net” sec­tion; and there few com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tions and no state orga­ni­za­tions in the sec­tion “Soci­ety and the Inter­net”. Such orga­ni­za­tion pre­vents effec­tive exchange of opin­ions between all inter­est­ed par­ties. The peti­tion under­lines that one of the chief tasks of Inter­net gov­er­nance should be ensur­ing online rights as much as they should be ensured offline. The state and oth­er Inter­net-relat­ed actors should encour­age human rights, and in the first place free­dom of speech, the right to pri­va­cy and free­dom of asso­ci­a­tions online. Impor­tance of the top­ic has to be reflect­ed on agen­das of nation­al ini­tia­tives on Inter­net gov­er­nance. Sign­ers of the peti­tion, among them Andrei Bas­tunets and Aleh Aheyeu (BAJ), Vol­ha Smalian­ka (Lawtrend), Ali­ax­ey Kozliuk (expert of Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Online Free­doms), Kanstantsin Tka­chou (Cen­ter of Inter­net Research), Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki (media expert), Andrei Paz­iuk (rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Part­ners of Dig­i­tal Human Rights Defense) and oth­ers.

The orga­niz­ers of the Forum replied that they would take the peti­tion into account when prepar­ing the next forums.

The reply under­lines that the “orga­ni­za­tion­al com­mit­tee ful­ly com­plies with the require­ments of Inter­net Gov­er­nance Forums and includes rep­re­sen­ta­tives of three sides: the state (OAC), busi­ness (lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ties orga­ni­za­tion “Nadzeynyia prahramy” (rough­ly speak­ing tut.by) and civ­il soci­ety (Asso­ci­a­tion Belin­fo­com – asso­ci­a­tion of com­mer­cial actors deal­ing in infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies).”