" Everybody must have access to a more equitable information society. That was the purpose of the Summit", said the MPs attending the Parliamentary Panel organised by the IPU as part of the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Geneva last December. Very well, but how can you guarantee the right to information for all countries, North and South alike? Some of the participants in the Panel, which was chaired by Mrs. Muriel Siki, a Swiss journalist, shared their thoughts with us.

• It is essential to make the internet available to ensure transparency within the government and in politics. People have that right. We are asking all parliaments and all governments to set up e-parliaments and e-governments so that their citizens have free access to information. The digital gap is causing a lot of problems, and not only in the developing countries. A large part of the population is denied the information which others have. How can we build an information society if they are marginalized?
  Mrs. Isabelle Fila Lémina, MP, Congo Brazaville.

• The problem is the difference between people. The wealthy have equipment and access to Internet. The poor cannot buy computers and get nothing from this information society. We have to see how we solve this problem.
  Mr. Ahmad Daban al-Naana, MP, Jordan.

• The progress we have seen in terminal devices, including cell phones, is incredible. Japan is at the top for the number of mobile phones owned by the people, and for Internet - mobile phone connexions. In terms of cooperation, Japan has offered considerable financial assistance in the form of bilateral ODA. In the Asian region, we have the Asia broadband project, and Japan is instrumental in this initiative. In the case of Africa, there is very little connexion and I think our assistance there is very limited.
  Mr. Tani Hiroyuki, MP, Japan

• As representatives of citizens, parliaments are a key starting point for democracy. As government agencies, political parties and media go on line, that institution has a legitimacy of representation and needs to be in that space. Parliaments need to be very active and aggressive in ensuring that the institution doesn’t fall behind the other sectors of democracy. More information is publicly accessible to lobbies, interest groups and citizens. The question is : how do you educate with all the materials on line ?
  Mr. Steven Clift, US expert on e-democracy.

• In order to ensure that the resolutions passed in Geneva take practical effect, parliaments must make sure that budgets include the resources to develop the Internet and the information society. We must pass laws to have the right legal framework and to monitor the activities of the government. I proposed that at the IPU Assembly in Mexico we should take stock of progress made since the Geneva Summit, and also that we should work with the organisers of the Geneva Summit to make sure that parliaments, through IPU, are associated with all assessments of information society policy carried out in each individual country and internationally.
  Mr. Patrice Martin-Lalande, MP, France

• I was very surprised to see that some of my colleagues are wondering if they should or should not draft legislation, because this is our most important role. The second one is to act as a watchdog in the area of technology and government neutrality; parliaments should set the example of the usage of the new technologies. We have to transform the parliament into a paperless institution. It will save a lot of money and in the same time, it will give the opportunity for the public to see which are the main legislative initiatives on the desk of each MP. In Romania, we have an electronic mail box for parliamentarians in which you can find all the legislation that we have to discuss and all the links to different documents related to a bill, plus all the history of the document, all amendments that were made in the past.
  Mr. Varujan V. Pambuccian, MP, Romania.

• As legislators, we must encourage the investment competition in new technology and keep an overview on the way the technology is used. We should be bold enough not to intervene, we should allow societies to use and gain the benefits. But there may be some areas where we need to intervene on issues like protecting privacy, dealing with criminal use of the Internet, for instance for child pornography, not to mention financial crime, where we will need international cooperation. There are also other issues like spam, which is clearly a major problem. We need to collaborate globally together. It is going to be feasible if we have good exchanges of information between law enforcement authorities. It means that we all have to be more open in allowing the specialist investigators access to information if they are to have proof on a case.
  Mr. Malcom Harbour, Member of the European Parliament.

   

Parliaments in a Knowledge-Based Society
By Senator Carlos Cantero, Republic of Chile

The emergence of a knowledge and information-based society has shaken the legitimacy, purpose and functioning of traditional institutions. Initially sidelined by global networks, these are now adopting new roles and fresh approaches to organisation and knowledge management. New paradigms call for political and socio-cultural adaptation. Whenever fault lines appear in history, alternative avenues beckon, one offering the chance to exploit opportunities, the other to waste them. If we parliamentarians can make the right choice, the coming decades will usher in a better world.

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution has coloured all facets of society, and development has become systemic, organic and multidimensional. The impact of the new technology has spread worldwide, generating disparities between regions and producing different territorial entities, some of which engineer and exploit comparative advantage in order to successfully "connect" to the world (the winners) while others remain on the sidelines of development (the losers). The citizen is left to cope with the uncertainties of the process and its consequences. The challenge for our parliaments is to remodel the lineaments of the institution so as to improve governance, reinforce equity (especially through education), and narrow the digital and health gap for the benefit of greater human welfare, as Amartya Sen's theory of human development would have it.

In both personal and institutional relations, the concept of endogenous territorial development is taking root, defined as the capacity to engineer competitive advantage, increase output, develop human and social capital and capitalise on synergies. Leadership is increasingly seen in terms of empowerment, education and training is becoming a lifelong process, and there are increasing demands for power to be decentralised. Grassroots involvement is growing in confidence, calling for credibility, transparency and honesty, especially in politics.

Societies once centralised are now configuring themselves as networks, closed systems are being prised open, time and space are becoming virtual, and diversity and pluralism enjoy new status. In place of the simple dialogue, communication is becoming multidirectional, transmitted through interactive multimedia support systems. Hierarchies are shifting; verticality is giving way to horizontality. Development is tightly geared to social and territorial synergies; to the availability of knowledge and information; to whether policies are forward-looking and all society's components are involved in strategic planning, pulling in the same direction, regardless of social status or political or religious creeds, thus triggering competition throughout the system and forging productive networks.

Wherever people live, connectivity and access to digital media are indispensable guarantees of equity and equality of opportunity for the citizen, who is clamouring for a new development ethos. Above and beyond digital infrastructure, it is time to change society's culture and mentality, to create a positive organisational environment which instils life into endogenous collegiality. The parliaments and geopolitical blocs that are quick to comprehend and unravel this process, converting passive awareness into active know-how, and which can extrapolate from individual and collective experiences for the good of society, as the philosopher and pedagogue Jean Piaget taught, are the ones that will stand to gain the most from the opportunities offered by the Information and Knowledge Society and its new paradigms.