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Proceedings of the
Meeting of the Technological Working Committee
CHAIRMAN-Thank you for being with us today. The objective of this meeting is to review the draft report, which was circulated to you a few weeks ago, and to see if we can approve it with the amendments that members would like to make. The report will be presented to the General Assembly in the next few days.
I believe everybody is familiar with the work that this committee has done in the past few years. Efforts were started in Thailand three or four years ago, where it was decided that the APPF should have a system whereby information could be easily disseminated to the membership. Two committees were created, and they were merged into one committee in the meeting we had in Korea. The committee, comprising Australia, Japan, Korea, Peru and Thailand, was formed, and the Peruvian parliament was appointed chair of the committee. Since then, this committee has met in every General Assembly that we have had.
I welcome our colleagues from Thailand. We just started two minutes ago, and I will reiterate my comments. I have given a brief report on how this effort was started in Bangkok a few years ago. We were given instructions by the General Assembly to work on a vehicle that would provide dissemination of information, eventual legislative exchange, and procedures for the establishment. of a web page. In Korea, we presented the first version of the APPF web page, which was approved by a unanimous vote.
We had another meeting of the technological working committee in Peru, and we advanced a lot there thanks, in particular, to the efforts and support of the technicians who came along with the different delegations. We appreciate their work very much. In Lima, we approved the APOINT 2001 report - a very large report that is already on the Internet. It is a big book which some of you will carry back home with you. Our objective today is to go briefly through the draft report that we circulated to you a few weeks ago, so that a report can be made to the General Assembly on the progress the committee has made.
I believe you are all aware of the APPF web page, and hopefully you use it. As you may have seen, we have changed the format in order to modernize it a little bit. I will briefly go into some of the work that has been done. To start with, there are new links that we did not have before. The 'Welcome Message' by Mr. Nakasone is the same. 'What is the APPF? 'is the basic information that we all know about, but it is important that it stays there in order for us to be reminded what APPF has been comprised of. Then there is 'Brief History of APPF' and 'Milestone Declarations', which some of us worked on. There is the Tokyo declaration, and then there is the vision paper. The Tokyo declaration is the document by which APPF was founded in 1992, and the Vancouver declaration is the vision paper originally prepared by Japan that was eventually approved by everybody.
'Member Countries' is an important issue, and here we have links to all the web pages of the member countries. I would like to report to you - very proudly for all of us, I think - that when we started the Technological committee there were 10 members that did not have a web page. That number has been reduced to only four, and I just learned today that it may be only three because Papua New Guinea apparently is ready to have its web page shown. Hopefully each country will have a link to the APPF. Unfortunately, only three countries - Japan, Australia and Peru - now have a link in their home page to APPF. So this is an invitation to at least the members of the Technological committee to make sure that their web pages have a link directly to the APPF.
'Areas of Interest' contains the six topics APPF deals with. It gives a brief explanation of how these topics - politics and security, economy, environment, law and order, human rights, and education and cultural exchanges - are related to APPF.
'Rules of Procedure' is very useful, especially for the meetings. It contains all the rules of procedure by which the organization works, including membership, resolutions, the presidency, and the executive committee. We have updated here the amendments we made in the last General Assembly; you will remember that we made amendments in the way APPF is organized. 'Executive Committee' includes information about what the executive committee is comprised of.
Basically, under' Working Groups' the only working group that we have is this one, the Technological Working Committee. Here, there is some other important information. We have updated it. These are the annual meetings since the organization started, since the first annual meeting. As you can see, we have information on the first annual meeting - all the participants, the program, the reports and the photo gallery. We have information from all seven annual meetings on the web page. This is very important because, since this is an organization that does not have a permanent secretariat, all the information would be lost if we did not have this. You can see that we have the different resolutions, joint communiqués and photo galleries from each of the different meetings, even, for instance, from the Lima meeting. You may recall that we had a keynote speech because we were there in the middle of the so-called Asian crisis. There are the joint communiqué, the participants, the resolutions and a photo gallery and, in the prior cases, as many photos as we have been able to obtain. Lastly, of course, as this meeting continues, we will have the information on the Canberra meeting as well. So as soon as the forum is over we will already have the resolutions, the draft communiqué, the photo gallery, the participants and everything on the web page. This, of course, is very handy. We also have here information on the different Executive Committee meetings - the reports, the schedule, the participants and photo galleries for all of the Executive Committee meetings. This has been updated.
Believe it or not, the APPF already has publications. First of all, this is the keynote speech that was made in Lima. We have put it in the form of a publication because we feel that it is important that we keep this information handy. This is the operative plan of the APOINT 2001 report. It is a very large document, and I must tell you that it was originally in a format called PDF - the technicians will understand this better than some of us - but PDF is very slow; you have to use Adobe software. It is now in HTML - I am not a technician so bear with me, please - so it is now much easier to download the operative plan.
We also have a book that we put together entitled The 7th APPF Annual Meeting. You will recall the whole book that was put together; it is already an Internet document - the complete package. The Information Technology Applied to the Integration of the APPF is a book that we put together in Peru in order to train parliaments to prepare their web pages. We used this specifically for Fiji. Fijians came to Peru and we trained them. To do that, we prepared this book. There is a link on the web page to this; I do not know why it is not coming up. Normally, we should be able to open it in the manner of a book. There is a document that we found in some archives. This is information on the third annual meeting, and it is also in the form of a book.
Turning to working groups, basically we have the Technological Working Committee, and here we have all the information related to this. Again, the first information we have is the meeting
that we had in September in Lima. There we have the schedule the participants, the report and, again, the photo gallery. As of this meeting, information that is gathered here, which 1 understand is being recorded, will also be on the Internet so that we do not forget what we said. Then we have public forums for the different aspects. People can register for a public forum to deal with issues related to APPF. And, finally, we have Related Links We are linked to APEC and the web site of the Republic of Fiji. We have placed it there because it is brand new. It is also in connection to the different web pages of the member countries and ASEAN, PECC, PBEC, IPU, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Amazonian parliament and the Andean parliament. All of them are parliamentary organizations and different types of organizations that deal with the work that we do.
On the web page we also have - and this is one of the most important aspects which we will deal with in detail as we go through the program - the legislative exchange. We have a search engine. We have a site map which is very handy when you do not know exactly where things are. You can go through the site map in detail. You can see everything that is in the APPF listed there. Sometimes it is much easier to find things this way. As you can see, it is growing a lot.
Finally, we have the electronic directory which, as you may recall, was one of the instructions that we received from the last general assembly _ that is, to prepare an electronic directory. It is listed by country. The only thing with the electronic directory is that the information must be input, and there we have another problem as well, parliaments are not putting in the information. For instance, 1 am sure that Australia has some. If you look, you can see that there is some information there. 1 am sure that some other countries have some, too. This is important because these are the people who normally attend these conferences. You can see that Japan is there also. Thailand has two member addresses and I believe that Peru also has some. So, this is basically as far as we have advanced with the web page. 1 do not know if, at this point, there are any questions. If not, we can proceed with the document. Does anyone have something to say? 1 do not want to be the only one who speaks. So before we go into the report, are there any questions about the web page?
THAI DELEGATION-The Thai delegation would like to congratulate the Peruvian delegation in earnest on the advances they have made. They have handled this matter in a very fine manner that is very effective. In Thailand we are in the process of setting up something, but unfortunately, we need some money and we need some personnel to handle these problems. 1 think that, in the very near future, we will set up the staff to handle this, in particular. It is confusing; there is so much information that we would love to put into the web page. But who is going to be the editor? We have not found an editor yet. Did you do the editing yourself, or do you have the staff to do it?
CHAIRMAN-For our country's web page, do you mean? For the parliament’s web page?
THAI DELEGATION-Yes.
CHAIRMAN - Basically, it is the staff that do it. As a matter of fact, the Peruvian parliament’s
web page is complete. We are gearing up to being a paperless parliament. We have all the
agendas, all the bills and all the laws. Each committee has a web page with its own agendas
and reports of what is said. Transcripts of the debates are also there, We even have that in
sound and on video - not only the words in writing. it is very advanced. Afterwards, if any of
you are interested, we can go to our web page for you to take a look at it. Our parliament's
library is connected to it.
THAI DELEGATION-That could be a very good example for other countries to look at.
CHAIRMAN-As we have expressed in the past, we would be very happy to collaborate with
any parliament that may require collaboration. We have already done it with Fiji and it has
worked out quite well.
THAI DELEGATION-Peru is very fortunate to have a leader like you who is interested in this
particular thing -
CHAIRMAN-Thank you.
THAI DELEGATION-and you handle it yourself.
CHAIRMAN-I am very pleased to say that I was the chairman of the organization committee of my parliament in 1993. That was when we started this effort. Now Peru's parliament is recognized as the leader in Latin America and probably other regions in the world as well. We receive visitors from other parliaments in Latin America who come to train in the use of technology in the function of our parliament.
THAI DELEGATION-We are fortunate to have as Chairman of the Technological Working
committee someone who understands the whole thing.
CHAIRMAN-Thank you. That is very kind of you.
THAI DELEGATION-1 would like to ask you about the subject index of legislative exchanges. During the last meeting in Peru, I understand you agreed on a subject index of legislative
exchanges. Could you show it to us?
CHAIRMAN-That is part of the report. Now I will work on general ideas with regard to the generality of the web page, and then we will go into the report. One of the points in the report is legislative exchange. We will follow the order of the draft report, if we may.
THAI DELEGATION-Okay.
JAPANESE DELEGATION-Which are the three countries that still do not have a web page?
CHAIRMAN-Laos, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam. There are four.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-We would need to clarify that information about Papua New
Guinea. Could we get confirmation of that?
CHAIRMAN-It would be wonderful if we could get that confirmation. it is interesting that,
when we started this plan, Cambodia did not have a web page and nor did the People's Republic
of China, Indonesia, Fiji, Mongolia or the Philippines. Now they all have one, which is an
advancement, of course.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-The Australian delegation has been quite satisfied and encouraged by the work you have done, and 1 endorse the comments made by delegates from Thailand. I was inspired when I went to Lima last year, and I think I commented on the record how impressed I was by the progress you have made in your country. We have made a big effort in Australia to utilise this technology to our own advantage. We are a geographically large and dispersed country - it takes 4 ½ hours to fly across to Perth on the other side. So we have been trying our best to use the technology and develop a fair amount of expertise, and we would like to make some suggestions later on how you can improve on the excellent work you have done so far.
CHAIRMAN-Thank you very much. It is very encouraging to hear your words and, on behalf of our parliament, I express our appreciation. I will now go to the draft report. Briefly, the first point deals with background. I do not think we have to discuss that, because it only states what has been done in the past. Do you have any comments on the first point, 'Background'? You may have questions, or something may be missing. I will give you a few minutes to review it.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-Mr. Chairman, there are items raised under Background that relate to the contribution we would like to make later. The Australian delegation will be interested to hear the progress that Thailand has made with the legal framework because it has a lot to do with what we would like to suggest to make the whole process easier. Are we going to proceed subject by subject or issue by issue?
CHAIRMAN-My idea, if you agree with me, is that we will go in the order of the draft document. In the draft document there is a point that deals with legislative exchange system and legal framework. On the last page it says, 'Legal framework'. We will deal with that issue. So, on point 1, Background, there is nothing. Point 2 is 'Progress made in 1999'. This is basic information, new web server software. As I was indicating, the Parliament of Peru has bought a new server and server software in order to make this web page more useful. Then there have been changes made in the web page. As you can see, it is a different format. New links have been added on the left. Also we have made a Spanish version in our web page. Why do we mention it here? It is because we want to suggest that maybe we should add here, or at the end in 'Conclusions', that each parliament makes a concise translation to their native language of the most important parts of the APPF web page in order to make it accessible to the people of each country, because we only have it in English here. As I said, we have done it in Peru. We want to make it accessible to the people and to the media, and this is why we have translated into Spanish not everything but concise versions of the most relevant points. I will stop here to get your input. What do you think? We can even change the tittle here, instead of it talking about a Spanish version of the APPF web site. The heading uses the word 'progress'. Maybe we can put in another paragraph here suggesting that the Technological committee proposes to the General Assembly that each Parliament translates a summary of the web page, to their own native language. I would like to hear your comments on this, please.
THAI DELEGATION-I would appreciate that very much, Mr. Chairman, because in Thailand I think about 50 per cent of members of parliament understand English well enough to understand the whole thing. So the language of the country should be used. I do not know whether or not you have this problem in Japan.
JAPANESE DELEGATION-The same problem.
THAI DELEGATION- About half in Korea also, I think.
KOREAN DELEGATION-Yes.
THAI DELEGATION-So we should accept the proposal that each country should translate the web page into their own language in summary. But the translation would not be binding legally. It would translate anything, right or wrong. If we go through the process it would take a long time before it would be approved by the Attorney-General or approved by the office of the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
CHAIRMAN-We should make a non-official translation, in order not to get into any trap or
problem.
THAI DELEGATION-No legal binding.
CHAIRMAN-No legal binding, and each parliament decides what part is translated into the
national language.
THAI DELEGATION-Right.
CHAIRMAN-So is there a consensus there? Everyone agrees with that? Good. We can make
a recommendation to do that.
Perhaps we can go to the next step - Other Important Changes. This is basically a report of the Executive Committee. We have added, as we have said before, information concerning the Executive Committee meetings. Another change is the welcome message. Also we added the link to the Colombian Parliament web site. As you recall, Colombia was admitted as a full member in the last General Assembly, so we have added them. So too the Parliament of Fiji. We have arranged for them to be placed in the Parliamentary Union. There is also the subject of New Icons. I will not go into that.
KOREAN DELEGATION-I would like to talk about the progress of the Korean suggestion in 1999 at Lima. Regrettably, my spoken English is not good, so my interpreter will assist you. Honorable Mr. Chairman and distinguished colleagues, I would first like to express our deepest appreciation to the Peruvian Parliament and to all other parliaments that have been devoting so much time and effort to the successful implementation of APOINT 2001. Today I wish to tell you about the progress that we have made on the Web Hosting Service that the Republic of Korea delegation proposed at the Seventh General Assembly in Lima. The Web Hosting Service that the Korean delegation proposed has largely two goals, the first of which is to provide technical support to those parliaments that do not yet have a parliamentary web site so as to enable these parliaments and their parliamentarians to maintain a presence on the Internet. To this end, since the conclusion of the Lima meeting, the Republic of Korea has been tackling the technical issues of this Web Hosting Service and we have built a system where parliaments may use the computer network and equipment of the National Assembly of ROK to create their own web sites. Therefore, if there are any requests for technical support, the National Assembly of Korea is more than ready to provide such assistance to other parliaments.
The second goal of the Web Hosting Service is to support parliamentarians in North-East Asia, one of the four subregions, in creating and managing their individual home pages. This would further enhance and facilitate the exchange of legislative information through the Internet, which is one of the main objectives of APOINT 2001. The Korean National Assembly is currently working on a system that will include a home page generator, links to our parliamentary web sites, search engines for legislative information and databases for various discussion forums. With the completion of such a system, parliamentarians of North-East Asia will have a web hosting service of their own and will have access to an online forum service that enables cyber discussion and also provides information relevant to the various online forums. We expect that this service will promote parliamentary exchange among those of us in North-East Asia, especially in the six fields prioritized during the fifth APPF in Vancouver: politics, the economy, environment, society, law, human rights, education and cultural exchange.
We will continue to work for the early implementation of this system so that the parliaments
and parliamentarians of North-East Asia can engage in even closer cooperation and exchange
and thus contribute to the full accomplishment of all the APOINT 2001 objectives. For further detailed specifics, 1 have already distributed the materials called APPF net, so please refer to that. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN-Thank you. We appreciate your support. We will continue and then we will come back to some specific points that have been mentioned here, if we may. I have already advised you that we had made a change in the format for the APOINT from PDF to HTML - that is what the document already says. We have created the system for the electronic directory. Here we have a problem. How do we go about making sure that the different parliaments provide the information for the electronic directory? The format is already there. Is there any suggestion as to how we can do it in order to have more information? Maybe during this assembly we could pass on a format whereby people can write their email addresses. At least we would get the email addresses of all the persons who attended this conference. 1 presume that would be one way to advance. 1 do not know whether you have other ideas or
suggestions.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-Mr. Chairman, what is the limitation? Is it that you are not being supplied with the email material?
CHAIRMAN-It is that we are not being supplied with the email addresses to fill in the electronic directory. The format is there but we do not have the electronic addresses. I do not know what you would suggest. How do we do it? Obviously, each parliament would have to provide us with that. We already have the site and everything else.
JAPANESE DELEGATION-DO you mean a contact person at each parliament?
CHAIRMAN-WE have to think of something practical because, to be honest with you, for us
in Peru it is very costly to be trying to get information from everybody to follow through with it.
We have been doing that but with no success. So maybe while we are here we will try at least to get the information about those who are here. Maybe we could ask the secretariat to provide
a form to pass along to the participants. At least for those who are here we will have their addresses and then, little by little, we will make it more useful. Do you agree with that? Maybe
that is something that we will do.
THAI DELEGATION-Mr. Chairman, I agree. 1 would suggest that we invent a kind of form for the information so that they would put in the things that we need. It would be sent to every parliament to fill out - the name, the age and the language of contact, et cetera to complete
the whole thing. It should be the same format for every single member of parliament so that it would be a complete directory.
CHAIRMAN-But at this point for this directory the idea is basically to have only the email address.
THAI DELEGATION-Our email address?
CHAIRMAN-Only the email address. For instance, here you have Australia. You have the
email addresses of this group here. Obviously, it would be ideal to also have a link to the
person's home page, That could be another stage, because not everybody has a home page either; not every parliamentarian has one. One step would be what we have already been directed to do; that is, to create a directory. I cannot think of anything else at this point except to pass along a form here and have people fill it in.
THAI DELEGATION-That is what I am thinking.
CHAIRMAN-Okay, shall we do that then?
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-I think the report needs a strong recommendation to all
member delegates to urge their respective home countries to support the home page.
CHAIRMAN-But that has not happened. There are certain pending matters according to the report. At point 3 we have the report on which countries still do not have a web page. Maybe we can hear a suggestion that we provide assistance to these countries in order, as the Korean delegation has suggested, to help them create their home pages.
KOREAN DELEGATION-If these four countries wish to establish their web pages, we are
more than willing to help them.
CHAIRMAN-Okay, so the record should show that Korea has emphasized its offer to help these four countries to create their web pages, or even to host this. This is in addition to the offer that was made by the Peruvian delegation a long time ago. Obviously, it makes more sense that Korea does it as it is much closer, but we could also do it if it is desirable. Maybe we could ask the delegates from Korea to directly tell the delegates of these countries while we are here about the offer that is being made to them. Hopefully, representatives of Korea, you could make a deal with them that during this next year you will directly help them to get a web page. Hopefully for the next conference these four countries will already have their web pages and you can probably host their web pages for them.
KOREAN DELEGATION-That is an excellent idea.
CHAIRMAN-The next point is the legislative exchange system. I believe our friends from Thailand have something to say, so I yield to the gentlemen from Thailand. Can you see what I have done here? I have put it in Spanish. The whole web page of APPF in the Peruvian congress is in Spanish as well to make it available to the population and to all the congressmen who do not speak English. The ideal situation would be that everybody - every parliament - would have this in their own language. For instance, 'What is APPF?' Here it is in Spanish. The history of APPF is in Spanish. Of course, each parliament must do that. We will host it gladly in our server but we cannot offer to make the translations; we could not offer that possibility. Anyway, I wanted to show you that.
I would like to go back to the English version. We now have a system whereby we can look into a database of comparative legislation - by country and by topic - and also a search engine. Under "by topic" the topics are the six topics that pertain to the organization. Say, for instance, if we were to show Economy: in that section the only legislation we have is what the republic of Peru has placed into the legislative exchange. So we have here general customs law, the approval of the legislative regime for those who want to invest in Peru, customs, crime law, and regulations for the migration investment program intended to facilitate whatever. The format here is not the best in the world and the material should actually be on the other side.
We have something under Economy, and also under Environment. It is both in the native language and in English. The only country that has placed legislation under Environment is Peru. Here we have the protected natural areas law, law on preservation of the sustainable use of the biological and organic law. Let us take a look at one in English. This uses Adobe. As you see, it is translated into English. This is the ideal situation. The idea is we should be able to have, for instance, Environment - Republic of Peru: X laws; Philippines; Australia; et cetera, et cetera. This is the idea. We did it from Peru in order to show that it would work. What we need
now is information from the different countries. It has to be in the native language and also in
English.
THAI DELEGATION-I would like to discuss the legal framework - the next topic.
CHAIRMAN-Yes, it is linked to this.
THAI DELEGATION- I understand that Thailand submitted a subject index for your consideration last year.
CHAIRMAN-No, it has not.
THAI DELEGATION-I attended the Executive Committee meeting but I did not attend the
Annual meeting, but I understand my colleague submitted it.
CHAIRMAN- If I may say: in fact, Thailand offered to submit it, but we do not know where it is. We never saw it.
THAI DELEGATION- I am the one who prepared this list but I did not attend the annual meeting.
CHAIRMAN- I remember you proposed it in the Executive Committee.
THAI DELEGATION- I can get a copy to you tomorrow; no problem, The idea behind our list is that the subject index should be quite detailed, dealing with essential laws such as constitutional laws relating to political parties, election laws and that sort of thing, civil commercial laws, environment investment law, banking laws. That is the index that we would like to propose to you for your consideration. If it is not ready for today, we can submit it to you tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Is that all right?
CHAIRMAN-What do the rest of our colleagues have to say about that?
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-Australia has a suggestion which might make the ensuing next two years, where we want to see a lot more progress on your home page, happen a lot easier.
We originally understood that the list that Thailand were preparing was to be a subject list for legislation, in a structured way. What we would like to suggest - it is quite complex and I will
have to get some assistance from some technical people we have brought here who are expert
in using the Net - is that this list becomes the basis for using any of the Internet tools to search for and direct the user to the sites where legislation is placed. In Australia, we have two sites for legislation already in, if you like, one 'pot'. Enormous effort is required to put it into another slot like you have done in Peru. And we do not have the additional burden that you have in order to get your Spanish documents into English. 1 imagine other countries would have similar difficulty to what we have.
it would be a very simple thing to go to our site and search for specific legislation using the
subjects that Thailand have prepared. We have prepared an options paper to put to this meeting later which relates to what Thailand have just submitted to us. I introduce that to the
discussion to determine what the Thailand delegates believe their list is going to achieve. Is it a subject index for legislation to be headed under, or could we use it as the basis for searching for specific subjects? From Australia's point of view, we think that this will make the implementation of what you have been trying to achieve with that home page happen so much more quickly - by using search engines to link sites that we can much more easily dictate to,
rather than recreating a new database. I am probably confusing the issue, but we are very
interested in making much faster progress with this program.
JAPANESE DELEGATION-I think the two suggestions are not contradictory. Basically, as with Thailand, Japanese legislation is not available in English. So to put a constitution, for example, in English would be quite helpful and valuable. A search engine can be used for a detailed information search, but to make available the basic article of a constitution in English for other countries' use is important to us, as an APPF member. 1 think we can put to the General Assembly the suggestion that each country should consider making available in the future
the translation of their basic legislation.
THAI DELEGATION-Yes, I agree with our friends from Australia and Japan. There could be two systems like in Thailand where, because our legislation is in Thai, we have to translate certain legislation that is essential for the legal framework and APOINT 2000. But in Australia, or in Britain or the United States, you can have access to any legislation you want. A subject index should be a starting point for the legal framework. We will submit to you tomorrow, if we may, my start on the subject index for each essential legislation - for example, public law includes constitutional laws relating to political parties, political donations and election laws. You cannot put every single piece of legislation on the web page because it would be too large a page to search and some laws might not be relevant to other societies or countries, like the concept of property. Property law in Australia is a completely different concept from that in
Thailand.
JAPANESE DELEGATION-The proposal from the Australian delegation relates to an
innovative, multilingual search engine, which we talked about before you arrived. So, as I said, it is not contradictory.
THAI DELEGATION- Starting from the index first.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-Can I ask our friends from Thailand how many subjects they
envisage being on the essential list.
THAI DELEGATION-There should not be more than 100.
CHAIRMAN -That is too much. I am sorry to interrupt you, but this organization deals with
only six issues and they are mentioned here. This is something that has already been decided
by the organization. The organization only deals with those topics. We cannot have more than
that because we would be going beyond the objectives of the organization.
THAI DELEGATION-Mr. Chairman, intellectual property laws, investment law
CHAIRMAN-That would be under 'economy'.
THAI DELEGATION- Yes, no problem.
CHAIRMAN-So it is a different form of categorization?
THAI DELEGATION-Yes, that is right.
CHAIRMAN- Okay, good.
THAI DELEGATION-It could be a subheading under 'economy'.
CHAIRMAN-Sub-subjects; let us put it that way. It sounds good.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION- I think that would fit in with what we are trying to put forward about the keywords - clearly identifying where the searches would fit under the topics.
CHAIRMAN-The system already has a search system. This search system only works for the legislative exchange - not for the whole home page but only for the legislative exchange. So, as the gentleman from Japan states, one thing is not contradictory to the other.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-But that is a search of what is on that site?
CHAIRMAN-On the legislative exchange.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION- Yes.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-We would be suggesting that where you click 'Australia'- we will have a list there - you will come to a search that we have prepared that sends you into our site. Federal legislation is held in one 'corner', if you like - the Attorney-General's Department. It is not like in Peru where your Congress controls it. It is actually the Attorney-General's Department that does it. But state legislation is covered by each of the state parliaments, and then we have local government laws as well which affect property rights, so it is a fairly complex federation we have in Australia. That is part of the reason why we can make it much simpler. So, if you want to see what Australian legislation says under 'environment', you come to our site and search that site-that is what we are suggesting - rather than list the five or six hundred sites there might be for this legislation here in Australia.
Some of the other federated nations like Canada and the United States might also like to do it the way we are suggesting. Countries like yours which have to translate anyway may do it a different way. I suppose Australia is suggesting that we have that flexibility, Otherwise, when the other member countries realize what the Technological Working Committee is suggesting and the amount of work it might mean, then the progress might be much slower. If we could develop what our Thai friends are doing into words that we can suggest can be searched for, then I think we can come up with a solution that is very easily implemented.
CHAIRMAN-Before the meeting started, we were talking informally. Maybe we should bring you up to date with something that we thought might be a good idea. To translate legislation is very costly for those of us who must do it. To translate it and put it on a web page, hoping that somebody might use it, might not be very productive. So one thing we discussed as a possibility is that we use a search engine which uses keywords in the native language. We could probably have something - and the technicians could tell us whether this would work or not - where we link English with the native word. For instance, in Thailand the Thai word would guide us to the legislation in Thai, from its own database. If I have a need for that legislation, then it is my responsibility to translate it, because why should you have the cost of translating a law for my benefit?
THAI DELEGATION- Yes.
CHAIRMAN-So that is the idea: each one that requires it translates it and then places it on
the web page.
THAI DELEGATION-We can also recommend to people who need a detailed translation to
please contact the person doing that particular thing - at cost. Some office could do the
translation, with the responsibility to contact that particular web page so they can get the
translation directly.
CHAIRMAN- Maybe that would be more practical.
THAI DELEGATION-Mr. Chairman, 1 wholeheartedly agree with your idea. It is very practical, very cost effective, and we can start with the idea proposed by the Australian delegation about having a search engine and keywords or key subjects on essential laws. We could start from there.
CHAIRMAN-But we would still require each country to provide the keywords. I do not know how we will work that out. How can we work that out?
THAI DELEGATION-We should start with APPF keywords first. What I am drafting uses customs laws. Every country has customs laws. Almost every country has investment laws, business laws, taxation laws, constitutional laws and intellectual property laws. You have laws to protect your trademarks, copyrights or patents . You have laws relating to finance or banking, but they should be essential laws, not very technical.
CHAIRMAN-So of course we will use the framework that you have prepared, but then how do we do it technically? What about people like me, for instance, who do not understand Thai but want to check the customs laws of Thailand? Let's say that the web page would have the name in English. Under Thailand's general customs law, if I click there, 1 should be able to get
the -
THAI DELEGATION-Customs court or customs act. We start with the main legislation first the act of parliament, not an order notification or ministerial regulations. That is what we call subordinate legislation. We start with an act of parliament first. We start with the major code of
that area of law.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-I think what would happen, though, is that if I keyed in the word 'economy', say, in English, could you provide a translation to that word in Thai? So you
could then insert the Thai search.
THAI DELEGATION-We can, but the term 'economy' is very broad, you see.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION- I know.
THAI DELEGATION-If you key in 'trademark, yes, we can.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-What we should have, therefore, is a whole list of keywords in English, their equivalents in Spanish and their equivalents in Thai, When you key one of them in, it will automatically go to all the others and search the different databases in the different countries. That is how you should do it.
THAI DELEGATION-Yes, sure.
CHAIRMAN-Even that is going to be a difficult task, I think, but it is much more practical than the way we are trying to do it, isn’t it?
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-Therefore, it will happen quicker.
CHAIRMAN-Yes, hopefully. So shall we agree that this would be the method that we would follow? For the record, could you tell us exactly what our agreement is?
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-We have a paper that we have just passed around.
CHAIRMAN-Can I have a copy? I did not get one.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION- Yes. We could make that part of the record of the meeting. What it actually does is suggest a number of options because we have skirted around the issue. Having dealt with it in Australia, we are trying to use the benefit of what we have done to assist everyone else. Of these four or five options, we have gone to one and made a recommendation. Basically, it is centered around using the smartness of the technology to assist us to an end and not to recreate information. I know that you have that problem by the translation process. It is a bigger problem for us because, as a federated nation, we have state law which affects human rights - and all the issues that the APPF is concerned with - and property ownership. The federal law component is much smaller than what is done as such.
So we have six states to incorporate - all of which can have different rules as well. You saw some of them in operation today while you were travelling down here in respect of road rules. We have different weights in different states and all sorts of things like that. So our suggestion overcomes that difficulty we have, which will also be a similar difficulty that some of the other larger countries have. Because this paper goes to the very technical aspects, I would like Mr. Nigel Sharp to provide you with assistance - he is the technical expert who does a lot of work with our own parliamentary database - and speak briefly to our paper. It sounds like we have a general sentiment of agreement to the concept of using searches. I suppose it is just a matter of making sure that the technical aspects are covered, which 1 am not an expert in. Albeit I am a civil engineer, it is very hard to keep up with the technology. If I have your permission, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Sharp will make a contribution.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-What we are proposing is a point that you actually put very well a few minutes ago, when you described the idea of being able to get documents translated after they have come back. What we are really talking about is the current proposal the way it is now. Let's suppose for argument's sake that we found 10,000 documents all around the world. That may be too many, but let's suppose we did. What we would have to do is find 10,000 web addresses and put them on the web site. Clearly, that is going to be very difficult to do. So what we said was that in Australia, for instance, of all those 10,000, maybe 1,000 of them are here. So we would have all of those 1,000 documents in two single web sites. So what we are saying is: give the addresses of those two single web sites to the central administrator and each country does the same with theirs. So we might end up with, instead of 10,000 addresses, only 50 or 60. What we then do is get a piece of software called a web crawler, which is a search engine type device, specifically targeted at those 50 databases. We tell it to index those databases, something like that. You then index just those databases - not the whole web, which is what those ones tend to do - and once you have done that, you can then search specifically on those databases.
So, number one, you do not have to categorize the documents any more. If you have the keywords that the Thai delegation will have provided and they have been translated into the different languages, then automatically I could type in 'trademarks' and it will go in there and it will translate trademarks for you into the various different languages because we know what all the words were. So we could just do a standard translation and then it would search the engines of the specific countries, find the documents and bring back the addresses. You would then check the ones you want and bring them back. If you wanted them translated, as you said yourself, you would have to do it. That is basically how it works.
CHAIRMAN-It sounds good. Would everybody be in agreement with that? 1 think it sounds
very practical.
THAI DELEGATION-Yes, it sounds very practical. We can do it fast, too.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-It will happen quicker.
CHAIRMAN-And you know what, it will happen. Because otherwise we can have a wonderful system that does not work. it is very expensive.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-We cannot even get them to give us their email addresses.
CHAIRMAN-So I guess we can agree to that then. Maybe once you put it in words we can make sure that that is exactly what we decided. The other point is the direct link to the APPF. web site. As I said before only three countries so far - Australia, Japan and Peru - have a direct link to the APPF web site in their own home pages. What do we do in order to have all the countries get a direct link from their web site to the APPF? What should we do? How do we encourage them?
THAI DELEGATION-We think, with the new budget allocation, that maybe beginning next October we may be able to do it.
CHAIRMAN-Maybe I did not make myself very clear: it does not cost anything; it costs nothing. As a matter of fact, any of these gentlemen here could do it this afternoon from here. It does not cost anything to put up a link.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-All that is needed is an interest.
THAI DELEGATION-1 would like to express our commitment to getting a link to the APPF.
CHAIRMAN- Yes. it is very easy.
THAI DELEGATION-In that case we will do it as soon as possible.
CHAIRMAN-The problem is that is has to be done from the server. I say that anybody can do it, but obviously they need access to the server. It costs nothing. All you have to do is to tell your technicians in your parliament that you want an icon that directs you directly to the APPF web page.
THAI DELEGATION- Okay.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION- But your question, Mr. Chairman, was what do we do to encourage the other 100 countries. The presentation you did at Lima was excellent. 1 found it extremely useful and 1 was very impressed with it. There is only one way that you are going to convince these other countries that they must make this a priority, and that is to show them the benefit. That is what I saw in your presentation. 1 do not know whether you will get the same opportunity at this conference to do the same as that.
CHAIRMAN-I will; it is in the program that I will make a similar presentation.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-I think if you could somehow find a way that gives every delegate an impression that they must get back to their home countries to tell them to get on with it because there is an advantage for them. I think that is the only way that you will create an incentive. For me, it was the communication tool that it gave and the opportunity for us to consolidate on the relationships that we establish when we come to conferences like this. That is a suggestion that I make.
CHAIRMAN- Okay; good.
THAI DELEGATION-Can we put in our report that we strongly recommend that each country that has a web page has a link with the APPF?
CHAIRMAN-Yes, we should emphasize that; we will add that. Our next issue is the multilingual environment. This is interesting. Our friends from Japan have been working on that. May we have the report, please.
JAPANESE DELEGATION- I have submitted two documents: the APPF TWG report on
APOINT 2001 and the Y2K transition in Japan. Is that topic for this group to discuss?
CHAIRMAN-No, it is not really, but we can discuss it if you wish afterwards.
JAPANESE DELEGATION-Okay. Let me explain a bit about the APPF TWG report. 1 think it closely adheres to your project, so I think it is worth introducing. It coincides directly with what will be the report of this committee. As background, it is exactly the same thing I did. The other was in relation to the last paragraph of the background draft presented by the Peruvian government. We made a short presentation at the last general assembly. We showed that Netscape, version 3, localized through the Spanish Windows operating system can be readable in the Japanese, Korean, Thai, Russian and Chinese languages. That is a problem of localization. That is a beta version of the multilingual kit. I hope you remember. We made a brief review of whether we should proceed with the beta version or the complete one. As mentioned on the first page, we found that the Internet Explorer, version 5, acquired the function we expected to integrate into our original plan. If the Internet Explorer were the browser, then that automatically detects which font is necessary and retrieves it from the Microsoft home page. I asked the Spanish - Mr. Hermosa - to test it on the Spanish operating system to find out whether the Interactive Explorer, version 5, is operable on the Spanish operating system. I received an affirmative - it works. I think the Japanese now do not need to produce the APPF multilanguage kit because it is available on a commercial basis. We changed the direction a bit and started to focus on another operating system - that is a Linux. The multilingual environment in Linux is still under development. As you know, the Linux as a fully operating system is expanding rapidly. The server system under the LAN environment is a multilingual system for Linux.
We found close cooperation with researchers of foreign languages - this is on page 3 - and we found several sets of fonts have been developed in Japan - that is, Arabic, Traditional Mongol, Thai, Khmer, Devanagari, Bengali, Tibetan, Laotian, Burma-Mhong, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam and Telugu; they are from the southern part of India. Especially for such minor languages as Khmer and Tibetan, commercialization is not expected, even by Microsoft. I think this kind of font availability is desirable. So we proceeded to set up a kind of international registration system of fonts and glyphs. That is on page 4.
If you look at page 5, there is a Khmer font, which has been already developed by a Japanese
researcher at Tokyo Gaikoku Daigaku. We made it an outline font; that is not only for the
minority languages but also for the glyphs like the one which is a sign for recycling. If we can register this and get a certain standardized international code, we can use it.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION -So what you are actually doing is translating Arabic characters, like the English language or the Spanish language, written Arabic characters, into Japanese kanji characters. It does not have to translate the English into Japanese, does it?
JAPANESE DELEGATION- it is not a translation, just the font, it is just an indication on the
screen and the printer.
CHAIRMAN-That would be useful for what we just approved, that we be able to access the
databases from the different parliaments in their own language in order to get the legislation.
JAPANESE DELEGATION-Yes. so 1 think Microsoft development is essential for your project,
and it is now available - this year.
CHAIRMAN-This is the regular browser? is that Microsoft 5?
JAPANESE DELEGATION-Yes, Internet Explorer. That is the name of the Microsoft browser.
Under the Netscape, that function is not available.
CHAIRMAN-And what browser is that - Microsoft 5?
JAPANESE DELEGATION- Internet Explorer.
CHAIRMAN- Internet Explorer 5?
JAPANESE DELEGATION- Version 5.
CHAIRMAN-Which is the last one that has come out.
JAPANESE DELEGATION- Exactly.
CHAIRMAN-1 have that on my computer. With that, you can access it and then you get the fonts of the different languages?
JAPANESE DELEGATION- Yes. The fonts will be downloaded from the Microsoft font center.
CHAIRMAN- Automatically? You do not have to make the changes manually, as you would
otherwise?
JAPANESE DELEGATION- No. That covers a huge area, like Hebrew, Persian and others. Not
Khmer and Tibetan-that is too minor.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-It has got a commercial focus.
JAPANESE DELEGATION- Exactly. That is the development.
CHAIRMAN-It is important information that you have provided us with.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-I may have misunderstood, but at Lima a presentation was made to us. Was it an earlier version of this program, where you showed something in English and then it was translated to Thai and Japanese?
JAPANESE DELEGATION-lt is not a translation, just an indication of fonts.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-That is what it was?
JAPANESE DELEGATION- Yes. The PC is localized usually, so Australian computers do not possess Japanese fonts nor Thai fonts; so every letter is changed into something very strange rectangular or something like that. Fonts and mappings of the coding are indispensable because each country has a localized mapping of the fonts, a mapping table, for the conversion. That is the key to be developed. It works only on the Netscape version 3.
CHAIRMAN-Is there anything else so that we can get to conclusions? I would like to see if we can make some effective recommendations to the General Assembly. 1 would like to list some and then we can add some others. Maybe one recommendation is that it will be highly desirable that countries that still lack a web site make a final effort to join the World Wide Web so that we can say that all the APPF have joined the Internet. One conclusion would be this recommendation, and to use the services offered by Korea, Peru and other parliaments to help them with this effort. That could be one. Would you agree with that?
Another one would be that each parliament defines the technological group or contact person that is responsible for all the efforts dealing with the technological working committee. Sometimes we parliamentarians either do not have the time or do not have the knowledge. We should have one person in each parliament responsible for this work that needs to be done. We should encourage the members of parliament to advise us - maybe we could be the control point in Peru since we are hosting the web page - which persons are responsible for the technical aspects of this work. Would you agree with that? Then maybe each country or each parliament could create a version of APPF in their native language in order to make this accessible to the people and to their parliaments. I do not think anybody would be in disagreement with this. Maybe you guys are going to have a problem translating into Australian.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION- To Australians, yes.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION- We need the cartoon version.
CHAIRMAN-In regard to other recommendations, I refer to the electronic directory: please provide the information of the email addresses of members who are related to APPF work and even to their Presiding Officers. Sometimes it is important for Mr. Nakasone’s office to address the Presiding Officers of the different parliaments. We should encourage them to provide us with electronic addresses.
Another matter is that while we have agreed with the legislative exchange and the legal framework, we should put it in the form of a recommendation at the end.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION- We need just a simple form of words.
CHAIRMAN- Yes.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-We do not want to baffle them with the technical aspects.
CHAIRMAN-Yes, because this is for the whole membership; we do not have to be too technical. I cannot think of any other recommendation. Are there any others?
JAPANESE DELEGATION-I wish to put a reservation. I am here as an adviser and I will
have to talk with a parliamentary person first. I will let you know later.
CHAIRMAN- Okay. I am sure you should have no problem, because I know how much they
trust your criteria and your knowledge. Yes, we accept that. Is there anything more?
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-Mr. Chairman, it just strikes me that this is a representative group of five countries of the APPF. I am a little concerned that we need to have some feedback mechanism for the countries that are not represented. I think your recommendation about countries advising us of a technical person each would be very helpful. For instance, on the suggestion of the translation of the site, perhaps it would be of interest to get some feedback from those countries not represented here in the working group that we would be asking to undertake that. Perhaps the recommendation should have some form of action that those countries report back to the technical committee on whether they are happy to make progress or whether they have some problems. In that way, this committee could then monitor the progress that is made towards some of these outcomes.
Likewise, on the agreement that we had for the legislative search tool, and things like that, perhaps we need to ensure that we come back and have a look at what progress is made and that people provide the information about the sites that are appropriate. In Australia we know that there are two sites that would be accessible in terms of the solution. I assume that in Thailand there is an electronic form of the legislation and laws and codes that we could then use with the search engine. But I am not sure whether we have collated the names of all the countries that have their legislation in such an electronic form that would enable us through this device to get access. I think we need to do some sort of inventory of where each country is at. We have made so much progress on web pages for the parliaments that are represented. We have to have a better idea of some of the other things that we want to do about the advances that have been made.
CHAIRMAN-I think your comments are very important With regard to the legislative exchange that is already a decision made many years back by the organization. What we are discussing here is the way to gear to that. What we are going to do is, in fact, to make a recommendation to the General Assembly, which may or may not be taken on. That could be a time at which we could ask people for their input, just as you suggested now.
With regard to the translation to their native language, there is a recommendation that they may or may not do it. What we have learned or, at least, what I have learned, during this time with APPF is that, as we reported, when we started this effort 25 or 26 countries that are members of APPF did not have a web page. Because we have been pushing this there are apparently now only three. If we start the process of legislative exchange, this could be one way to 'incentivate' Is that a word?
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-'To encourage'.
CHAIRMAN-My Australian is very bad. To encourage members to have a web page and to get into the legislative exchange procedure. However, we want to make sure that each one of us talks to other colleagues about what they think about our efforts.
THAI DELEGATION-As for the contact person in each country that would be in respect of technological matters and not research reports because it would be a huge amount of work if
one person received an inquiry worldwide for all matters in congress. That would be impossible,
except in Australia.
CHAIRMAN-No, it would be on the technology because sometimes you do not know whom to talk to. Sometimes you send an email to a parliamentarian and he does not know, so one cannot act. If he does not have the answer, he knows who in his parliament might have it. That is the idea. It will make it easier for our technical people who are working with the servers to be able to have somebody to contact. I do not know if you have anything else before we adjourn.
JAPANESE DELEGATION-Yes, there is something,
CHAIRMAN-They asked us to prepare a report on the year 2000 but it was not this committee that was entrusted with it. In any case, I will yield the floor to you for a couple of minutes to report on that.
JAPANESE DELEGATION- I need just a couple of minutes. Please look at the page I distributed. This is the example we made about Y2K in Japan. The Y2K launch was calm like other areas in the world. More than two million people in Japan watched at their work places. According to official statistics, 47 Y2K incidents were reported. I summarize from each sector in the report. Neither any electrical outage nor a shortage of energy has been reported yet. Continuous monitoring is desirable at least in this half year because specialists agree that simultaneous computer failures at the turn of the century are just part of the iceberg of the Y2K problems.
The present condition allows us the following observations: first, large-scale mobilization of resources to this issue seems to be effective. The worldwide investment for the Y2K remedies is estimated to be 30 to 60 million US dollars. Secondly, this project indicated a certain robustness in modern industrial infrastructure and capacity in the human mind to control it. Thirdly, international cooperation was helpful. That included the United Nations and World Banks actions through the International Y2K Cooperation Center and Internet based knowledge base. The International Atomic Energy Agency promoted action in world nuclear operators. The International Energy Agency announced a plan for coordinated use in national strategic oil reserves. Bilateral and multilateral cooperation were also noticeable. That included the US-Russian joint observation for safety in strategic missiles and APECs regional Y2K promotion campaign.
Y2K was the first potential large-scale social system disaster that became salient as human society became more dependent on artificial social infrastructure. The lack of experience in human society made appropriate responses difficult. Therefore, continuous information exchanges among APPF member countries are desirable. This is a kind of Japanese example we made. Would you consider it?
CHAIRMAN- To be honest with you, I believe this is something that is in the general agenda of the plenary session. It is not in our agenda. Maybe it will have to be reported to the general assembly.
JAPANESE DELEGATION- I think you have prepared for the plenary session on the Y2K issues.
CHAIRMAN- They asked each country to prepare one.
JAPANESE DELEGATION- Really?
CHAIRMAN- Yes. But that is part of the discussion of the general assembly and not of the
Technological committee.
JAPANESE DELEGATION- I understand.
CHAIRMAN-I would like to ask you the following. A draft report is going to be prepared and turned into an official report of this group. I would like to request that you agree that John Forrest from Australia and I review the document on your behalf in order to distribute it to the membership. Will you be in agreement with that? If anybody else wishes to review it, of course, you are welcome to. But since we are going to be tied up with many issues, you might want to delegate this to two of us. Are you in agreement? Since everybody is in agreement, it is approved then. So sometime tomorrow there will be a copy. The idea is that, if we both approve it, it will be approved. There will also be a full transcript of this meeting available tomorrow.
AUSTRALIAN DELEGATION-Our millennium bug translators are up there, Mr. Chairman -
Hansard.
CHAIRMAN- I thank you very much for your very valuable support. This meeting is adjourned.
Technological Committee adjourned at 4.27 p.m.