Cyber law and Laos

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ທ່ານຄິດວ່າ Cyber law ມີຄວາມສຳຄັນແນວໃດຕໍ່ກັບການພັດທະນາ
ເສດຖະກິດ ແລະ ສັງຄົມຂອງບ້ານເຮົາ ?


Cyber law must be adopted by 2008
vientiane times.org.la

LAOS must implement cyber laws before it can participate in a free trade area in partnership with other ASEAN member countries in 2008, a government official said on Monday at a tri-partite meeting in Vientiane to discuss IT development.
The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) meeting was chaired by the Minister to the Prime Minister's Office, Prof. Dr Bountiem Phissamay, and supported by UNDP.
Dr Bountiem pointed out that, although it was in the initial stages, Laos had embarked in earnest on the road to e-commerce and local businesses were exploring its use more and more. Furthermore, the Vientiane Action Programme, e-commerce legislation and legal harmonisation featured high on the ASEAN agenda. As an ASEAN member, the Lao PDR has therefore committed itself to ratifying and implementing e-commerce law by 2008.
Dr Bounthiem, who is also the President of the Science, Technology and Environment Agency, said at the opening ceremony that Laos was considered a least developed country, but our Government had social economic development plans in place to change this.
Development is the key to eradicating poverty and enhancing the lives of the people. It will also bring our nation out of least developed country status. We want to meet the Government's goals, such as sustainable development, and move towards industrialisation, he said.
In order to achieve these goals, our Government intends to make use of economic markets and policies to open up cooperation with foreign investors and to gain support for funding and to bring in foreign investment. To support productivity and the use of science and technology in the service sector, cyber laws are essential to developing the country's ICT infrastructure, Dr Bounthiem said.
Therefore, the ICT project for development can serve many functions. The project has a unique goal in terms of policy and planning for the national development of ICT. The development of ICT in the Lao language for computer use will enable it to be used nationwide. This will show Lao people that they can use ICT tools with ease and it will allow many people to utilise ICT, he said.
An ICT project specialist, Mr Anousak Souphavanh, reported on plans to be implemented in the future. They included the development of open source software in the Lao language, training for software developers and content providers, a dictionary of ICT terms, requesting Unicode consortium to update the Lao character set, correcting flaws in displaying Lao language, resolving searching and sorting issues, new Unicode fonts for variety, and establishing a Lao digital information exchange network.
Concerning fonts, whereas other countries have their standard fonts for nationwide use, the Lao Government has yet to unify fonts. Computer users here choose the fonts they like or are most convenient for them.
Consequently, when they change or send document files to one another, typed in Lao, that font must be installed in their computer.
National Project Director, Mr Somlouay Kittignavong, said that most companies were in the initial stages of e-commerce, and at present might only have websites on which they provided information and used e-mail to communicate with customers. Payments were usually made manually.
However, he pointed out that e-commerce was a new concept for both Government officials and Lao people because they knew very little about it.
A cyber law would help Lao and foreign investors to trade easily via electronic systems, using e-commerce.
In addition, Project Director Mr Keonakhone Saysuliane reviewed the e-policy prepared by ICT technical teams in the past. Now a draft policy has been sent to the Government to consider, he said.
UNDP Deputy Resident Representative, Ms Setsuko Yamazaki, said that at first glance ICT might not seem to relate to poverty reduction, but other countries had accepted it as an important tool for the administration of both state and private sectors.
She noted that undeveloped countries such as Bangladesh and Mali had been able to enhance their development and now had electronic network links from centres to remote areas.
Recently, Laos was granted normal trade relations with the United States of America and in this regard the furtherance of ICT would help increase the rate of economic development because traders would have access to customers around the world.


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photo: www.spectrum.co.in