Saturday, April 21, 2007

Push for one cyberlegislation at a time

In sharing my lessons learned in cyberlegislation, one item that I often get into an argument with is the number of legislation that must be lobbied to in Congress and have them enacted as laws.

Having several legislation pushed only confuses or overwhelms the people you talk to, especially the lawmakers. Let it be that when a person sees you, the only thing that comes to their mind is the one legislation you are pushing for.

This is important in countries where the number of IT-knowledgeable lawmakers are very few. They often encounter the scenario when they meet several groups pushing for different legislation such as:
  • Open Source in Government
  • E-Government
  • Creation of a Department or Ministry of ICT
  • Cybercrime
  • Online Pornography
  • E-Copyright
  • Digital Signatures
  • Anti-Spam
  • Data Privacy
  • VOIP Law
  • Converge Bill
  • and many more....

When a lawmaker encounters this and realizes that there's no consensus within a community on the most urgent priority, it only delays things further. This is the reason why the stakeholders should get its act together and line up the necessary legislations and work together in pushing them, one at a time.