[governance] Bulgaria intervention during WSIS PrepCom-3, Geneva, Sept. 29th, 2005

[Veni Markovski]

This is the Bulgarian government contribution to the PrepCom:


Bulgaria intervention to PrepCom-3 at the WSIS-II √ Geneva, September 2005


Dear colleagues,

We'd like to inform you that just before the WSIS PrepCom-3, or perhaps in 
honor of it, Bulgaria has elected new Parliament, and a new government. The 
government established for the first time ever in Bulgaria a new Agency, 
dedicated to IT and Communications. This State Agency is directly 
responsible to the Council of Ministers. One of the Agency's' priorities, 
is further involvement in the WSIS, where Bulgaria has been quite active 
since the beginning, and also further involvement in the post-WSIS 
environment.

The Agency will also do substantial work on cybersecurity, so anyone who 
has interest in that area, should contact our delegation either here, or 
later √ via the Bulgarian mission in Geneva.

Given the prime minister's strong support for the mission of the Agency, 
we're seeking results in the near term.


Dear colleagues,

Many people here talk about global issues, that have influence upon the 
whole world.

As we are a small country, in the process of transition towards market 
economy, we decided to be modest and take a more focused approach to 
Internet Governance problems. We tried to find a way for the government to 
partner with the private sector and the civil society. As a result, today 
the BG government has requested re-delegation of the .bg TLD; the 
Government participated as an equal partner in the formation of the new 
registry √ called Public Internet Registry, together with the academic 
network, the Internet Society and the ISP Association.

We have asked leading experts and companies in the field of running 
successful registries to help us with the technical back-end of running 
DNSsec.


The difference in the last few months, since previous PrepCom, is that we 
stopped merely talking about what we want to do, or how we want to find a 
solution, and we moved to actually taking steps to implement solutions.


In the WSIS environment we see two main problems, and we'd like to draw 
your attention to how we're solving them in Bulgaria:


1st problem

There's clash of generations.
The older, analogue, generation, is fighting with the new, digital 
generation. We can't talk about bridging the Digital Divide, overcoming 
poverty by using ITC, etc., if we don't let the digital generation work for 
the good of the Internet users


2nd problem

What is the best WSIS outcome?
This can be described best by the story about the shepherd who requested 
the local artist to draw for him an iconostasis. But unlike usual icons, 
this was a somewhat strange one √ with three icons:

On the first icon there was the trivial case - St. George kills the Dragon. 
On the second icon, the story was a little bit weird - The Dragon kills St. 
George, and on the third one St. George has put the Dragon to the yoke and 
they plough (till) together.

What we may find in this story is, that from each situation there are three 
solutions - two are obvious, the third is an intelligent one.


In the case with Internet Governance, we also have the two obvious 
solutions √ keep the status quo, or try to fully replace the current model.

In Bulgaria, where we faced the same problem, we've searched for, and have 
found the third, the intelligent solution:

Our previous Parliament has put together a group of experts, consisting of 
members of the Parliament, National Regulatory Authority, representatives 
of private business and of civil society to work upon the draft of the 
Telecommunications Act. As a result, today's Internet world in Bulgaria is 
built on the foundation of public-private partnership. The result of this 
approach is visible in the number of Internet users, which has jumped 25 
times in the last 6 years √ from 76,000 in 1999 to 2 million today (or 25 % 
of the whole population). This is the best proof about the importance of 
the way Internet is being governed in Bulgaria.


We urge the WSIS PrepCom to find the intelligent solution, not be lured to 
use any of the obvious ones. That solution also includes allowing civil 
society and businesses to be actively and really involved in the work of 
the WSIS.



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