Hi Avinash, Ish, Logan,
At 22:11 20-10-2015, Avinash Meetoo wrote:
>These 3 other persons are Ish, Logan and Fabrice Alladee-Blatch.
>
>Now, the important thing to understand is that Ish, Logan and
>Fabrice represent consumers during our monthly meetings. If you
>would like to "engage" with the ICT Advisory Council as a consumer,
>then you can do it by communicating with Ish, Logan or Fabrice who
>will then bring the matter to the Council.
Thank you for the information. Is there a reason why this
information is not published on the web site of the Ministry of
Technology, Communication and Innovation?
>In other words, there is no provision in the law for you to engage
>with the Council directly. But you can do it through your three
>representatives.
We could look at this from another point of view, e.g. there isn't
any provision in the law for the Advisory Council to engage with
people in Mauritius who are interested in internet-related
matters. If the ICT Advisory Council is to represent the opinions of
people in Mauritius, it is up to the ICT Advisory Council to reach
out to people in Mauritius and not the other way around.
>Naturally, in our Internet era, this might seem old-fashioned but
>this is the way all Councils operate in Mauritius (and other
>countries for the matter). Will that change in the future? Probably.
I agree that it does seem old-fashioned to operate in such a
manner. There was talk [1] about "citizen-centric" services and
government agencies interacting with citizens through social media
[2]. I doubt that government agencies will be able to achieve that
when the Ministry of Technology, Communication and Innovation is
experiencing "communication problems" [3].
I am not as optimistic as you as to whether the old-fashioned ways of
the ICT Advisory Council will change in the near future given that
the ICT Advisory Council has been described as a rubber-stamp. Can
it change in the distant future? That might happen. However, it is
unlikely that the current members of the Advisory Council with whom I
am acquainted with will be able to list that as one of their achievements.
I prefer not to compare Mauritius to other countries when it comes to
the internet as I am aware of the constraints of a tiny island in the
middle of nowhere. At the same time, I'll mention that the internet
would not be the way it is today if nobody tried to tackle the constraints.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARcy_CcD3ZQ
2.
http://mtci.govmu.org/English/Documents/eGovStrategyfinalv201393.pdf
3.
http://lists.elandnews.com/archive/mauritius/internet-users/2015/10/3771.html
Received on Wed Oct 21 2015 - 08:49:16 PST