About the APC Asia ICT Policy Monitor

The APC Asia ICT Policy Monitor's primary goal project is to enable Asian civil society organisations to engage in information and communication technologies (ICT) policy development to promote an Information Society based on social justice and human rights. The ultimate aim being that governments and policy makers recognise that access to and the use of ICTs is a basic human right.

The project, initiated in late 2001, continues to research, collect, interpret, produce and disseminate ICT policy information; build the awareness and capacity of civil society to understand these issues; and assist civil society organisations to formulate their interests in ICT policy and to support their lobbying and advocating for policies that promote a just information society.

The ICT Policy Monitor project goals and objectives are implemented in a similar way to related APC internet rights projects already underway in Latin America and Europe, to build civil society awareness of ICT policy issues in the context of other basic human rights, and to provide a means to monitor and engage ICT policy issues in the interests of social justice and human development.

The objectives of the ICT Policy Monitor in Asia

• To develop an information resource for civil society organisations that wish to be active in ICT policy.
     
  This involves researching and analysing ICT policy from a civil society perspective including running and updating the monitor websites as a clearinghouse for relevant information. The product team also produces a regular newsletter (Newsletter) to disseminate this information.
     
• To raise awareness in civil society organisation of ICT policy issues.
    
  This includes actively seeking out civil society organisations (in non-ICT fields) and creating awareness on ICTs and their work as well as running email lists for discussion on these issues and making interventions in civil society conferences and workshops to promote ICT policy issues.
     
• To empower civil society organisations (CSOs) to develop ICT policy that meets their needs, and to encourage them to lobby for an information society that builds social justice and human rights, at national, regional and global level.
     
  This work continued through publications using a framework for CSO ICT policy and supporting CSOs to use it and linking CSOs active in developing ICT policy. The project team is also building a network of national ICT policy activists to increase the impact at regional level and in the WSIS process.

Collaboration

The project team also works in collaboration with other organizations and partnerships working on related project activities such as running civil society training workshops on internet policy.

The APC is also the lead component implementer for the CATIA project component 1C - Africa-Led Advocacy on ICT Policy Reform - on ICT policy advocacy for a well-informed, lively and inclusive policy debates across Africa, shaping the local policy environment.