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WORKING GROUPS

As stated in the Tokyo Declaration, the Annual Meeting, on the advice of the Executive Committee, may establish working groups to perform specific tasks such as preparing a draft joint communiqué for consideration, adoption and release at the conclusion of the Annual Meeting, or to examine specific issues or carry out certain duties charged by the Meeting. One such group is the Technological Working Committee entrusted by the Annual Meeting with the creation and development of a Legislative Exchange System.


The Technological Working Committee

The Technological Working Committee is a working group comprised of Australia, Japan, Korea, Peru, and Thailand, with Peru as inaugural committee chairman. This group has produced a working document used as the basis of its course of action called the APOINT 2001 Operative Plan. This is an ambitious plan on the development of a Legislative Exchange System, whose origins may be traced back to the very Tokyo Declaration, which sets out as one of its objectives the exchange of information with the purpose of reinforcing communication among its members. Then we had the resolution APPF4/RES/COOP/2 adopted in the Fourth Annual Meeting in Thailand, which recommended that the APPF member countries establish an effective inter-parliamentary mechanism by which legislative exchanges can take place as a normal APPF activity. However, it is in the Vancouver Declaration adopted in the Fifth Annual Meeting that the name of APOINT 2001 was expressly established in the following terms:

"To promote mutual understanding and friendship between countries within the Asia Pacific region, it is important to create an information infrastructure as a basis for exchanges. We propose that the Asia Pacific Open Information Network be established as in information structure where diversity and openness, the characteristics of our region, will be respected. This network will include a legislative information exchange so that the legislative experience and knowledge gained by each individual country of the region can be shared by all APPF member countries"

It was in this Fifth Annual Meeting that two important resolutions concerning legislative exchanges were adopted. Through one of these resolutions the Technological Working Committee was established with the mandate to study the implementation of an effective inter-parliamentary mechanism to fulfill the objective of Resolution APPF4/RES/Coop/2 and submit a report at the next Executive Committee Meeting in Seoul. The other resolution charged one of the member parliaments with the task of developing and maintaining an APPF web site. The Peruvian delegation volunteered to carry out this task.

The Technological Working Committee had its inaugural meeting on August 14-17, 1997, in Thailand, where important points were debated and incorporated in the Plan. In January 1998, during the VI Annual Meeting in Seoul, a resolution on the APOINT was passed, where there was approved the establishment and operation of the APPF web site by the Peruvian Parliament, anticipating the further development of such activities in the wider area of the Asia Pacific Open Information Network with the hope that it will be in operation soon.

Below there is information on the committee meetings held on different occasions.