Program :: Veni Markovski /Thematic Session III
NGO Roundtable

Role of the Civil Society in the Creation of
the National ICT Policy and Strategy

Abstract

Role of the Civil Society in the Creation of the National ICT Policy and Strategy

Bulgaria has one of the most liberal legislature in the SEE region, and it was achieved through the work of a number of NGOs during the last 4 years.
It all started with the case of Internet Society - Bulgaria (www.isoc.bg) against the proposed government control over the Internet Service Providers, filed at the Supreme Administrative Court of Bulgaria in January 1999. The case was successfully won by ISOC through an out-of-court agreement, achieved through the recommendation of the prime minister Ivan Kostov.
Further the relations between the NGO and the governemt were quite good and resulted in creation of the National strategy for development of the IS.
There has been some set back in the last year, regardless of the fact that the current government has promised rapid development in the ICT field.
The draft for a new telecommunications act (right now in the Parliament) is a huge step backwords in terms of development of ICT.
The new TA would establish a procedure for licensing Internet service providers (ISPs), which is a huge step backwards from the nation's 1999 decision to allow free market entry of ISPs, a decision previously cited as one of the achievements of Bulgaria, as stated in the Annual Report of Bulgaria on the progress of the accession process to the EU from November 2000.

Along with licensing, the draft law would impose a yearly licensing tax, which may reach 1.2 % of the annual revenues of an ISP. This sanction will have enormous negative effect upon ISPs that are breaking even or are working with small profit. Further, it is counterproductive, since it would raise the cost of Internet access when presumably the government's goal is to increase use of the Internet in order to make businesses more efficient and the economy more productive.

Under the new TA, police will have full power to require service providers to install, at their own expense, equipment demanded by the government to monitor content and traffic data. This kind of approach is closer to the Russian Federal Security Service's SORM plan, which has been criticized by all progressive organizations worldwide. Police should have access to such information only under specially controlled circumstances, and they should not have the power to require service providers to install specific software or hardware.

The new TA provides employees of the regulatory body - the Communications Regulation Commission (CRC) - the power to search private houses and motor vehicles, which is a typical police activity, and therefore should be controlled by judicial process, not an administrative body.

With this draft law, the government through the CRC would control management of the .bg top level domain. Such an act is contrary to the consensus among the Bulgarian Internet community that a non-profit, non-governmental organization should be the top level domain registry, and would, in effect, give the government control over Internet content`through technical policy for running the domain.

All these measures might have the following effects:

-inhibit the introduction of fair competition;
-turn away from Bulgaria's current path of Internet growth achieved through the Internet Society vs the Bulgarian government Supreme Court case in 1999 against the proposed licensing of ISPs,
-introduce censorship - either formal through regulations issued by the minister of telecommunications, or self-censorship by the ISPs, being afraid that their license may be terminated;
-seriously undermine the process of accession to the European Union, as altering of the telecom liberalization may result in re-opening of the negotiations on Chapter 19 "Telecommunications".

The aim of the Civil Society now is to make sure that these amandments in the law are not accepted by the Parliament and ensure open and democratic development of the ICT, as part of the efforts to join the EU.