Hello,
I attended a meeting of the Multi-Stakeholder Forum this
afternoon. The meeting was chaired by the Permanent Secretary of the
Ministry of Technology, Communication and Innovation. The people in
attendance were asked to introduced themselves as there were some new
persons attending this meeting. There were officials from the
Ministry, the National Computer Board, the Government Online Centre,
representatives from Mauritius Telecom and Data Communications
Limited, the Vice-President of the local Chapter of the Internet
Society, and Benoit Gentil who is a local .mu registrar. The manager
of the .mu ccTLD registry was at the Ministry. However, he did not
attend the meeting.
Please note that my notes of the discussions may not be entirely
correct. The atmosphere was cordial. An official from the Ministry
mentioned that the Ministry did not have an idea of the
multi-stakeholder forum was supposed to work. Mr Dabeesing from the
Information and Communication Technologies Authority presented a
problem statement. He explained that the current law is in breach of
international best practices for ccTLDs. The Information and
Communication Technologies Authority proposed the following as a way forward:
- Removal of the Internet Management Committee as defined in the ICT Act 2001
- Formalizing the Mauritius Internet Community
A non-profit structure with a neutral status and memeber drive, to
avoid conflict of interest, was proposed. There was a discussion
about how to formalize the Mauritius Internet Community.
This was the third meeting of the Multi-Stakeholder Forum. The first
meeting was helpd in October 2013 and the second one in May
2014. The objective of the forum is to get input and the formal
buy-in of the Local Internet Community. The Information and
Communication Technologies Authority proposed to set up a .mu
council. Mr Dabeesing then presented a proposed framework (
http://www.elandsys.com/~sm/mu-governance-model-020614.doc ).
The Permanent Secretary expressed his concern about .mu. He
commented that the re-delegation concerns all the internet users in
Mauritius, that it is a long journey and that he would like to
consult everyone as this should not be government-driven. The
Permanent Secretary asked whether the stakeholders shared the same
concern as the government and that, if there is a common purpose, we
could move ahead. He mentioned that Mr Yann Kwok asked twenty-five
million rupees for gov.mu. However, Mr Yann Kwok did explain how he
came up with that amount. The Permanent Secretary commented that it
is a problem specific to the government. He explained that the
government was not in a position to use gov.mu and that is why it is
using govmu.org. He then commented that the problem affecting gov.mu
can affect others sectors. The Permanent Secretary commented that
any agreement with Mr Yann Kwok would not be tied to the re-delegation effort.
Mr Radhakisoon, from the local Chapter of the Internet Society,
commented that he was ill at ease to discuss about commercial issues
in the absence of a party. Mr Ramalingum, from Data Communications
Limited, commented that discussion specific to gov.mu was not
relevant to the meeting. I agreed that gov.mu issues should be kept
separate from .mu issues and that the gov.mu issues was not a matter
for the forum to discuss about.
Mr Radhakisoon mentioned that he was a bit scared about going into a
a re-delegation process. He mentioned that a re-delegation should
not be done just to replace the current ccTLD manager. Mr Dabeesing
mentioned that this multistakholder forum will at some point be the
new administrator of the .mu ccTLD.
The Permanent Secretary commented that, in reply to a Parliamentary
Question, the Ministry stated that it will be applying for a
re-delegation. He mentioned that it has initiated the process but it
does not want to be seen as leading the effort. It was not clear how
to move forward.
After some discussions the Permanent Secretary agreed that a small
select committee should be set up to work on the problem and then it
can reach out to a larger group. The name of Mr Radhakisoon was
suggested to lead the committee. As Mr Radhakisoon preferred not to
do it, I volunteered to lead the committee and it was accepted. I
was asked for a deadline for producing work and I mentioned end of
March. The committee will have the following members:
Mr Radhakisoon
Mr Ramalingum representing Internet Service Providers, MITIA and OTAM
Mr Dabeesing representing the ICTA (Secretary)
Mr Gentil presenting the local .mu registrars
Myself representing the Local Internet Community
The Permanent Secretary stated that the Ministry will be providing
secretarial services and that the committee can use the conference
room of the Ministry for its meetings if the room is booked in
advance. He also requested that the committee includes a
representative from universities and a representative from the
private sector (e.g. MCCI).
During the meeting, I suggested holding some information sessions
about the .mu ccTLD as the discussions pointed to a lack of
information about the issues. I suggested that proposals about what
to do could be discussed after that as people will then have a better
understanding of the matter.
There were questions about whether a re-delegation is possible and
whether it requires the agreement of the current ccTLD manager. I
commented that it would have helped if there were such an
agreement. However, that does not mean that a re-delegation is not
possible without the agreement of the current ccTLD manager. I
commented that the objective should be to get the consensus of the
Local Internet Community. I also mentioned that it would be better
to resolve the .mu issues first as gov.mu falls under .mu.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
Received on Thu Feb 26 2015 - 13:58:29 PST