Collaborations are crucial to enhance Asia-Pacific region on Digitalization Commitments
By Monica Phang, Programme Manager, AIBD
There is an urgent need for collective interest to meet more regularly to find strength and commonalities to address the Asia-Pacific regional challenges bought about by the rapid digital revolution.
The Minister of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT), Papua New Guinea, Hon. Timothy Maisu says these collaborations are crucial in enhancing the Asia-Pacific region’s capacity in areas like digital public infrastructure, cybersecurity, and particularly cyber forensics, and many more.
“Through such partnerships, we will gain valuable expertise and resources that will significantly bolster the region’s ability to address many of these challenges, as well as deliver on their digitalization commitments”, reiterated His Excellency.
Hon Timothy Maisu who is also AIBD Special Envoy to the Pacific, made these remarks at the closing of the 19th Asia Media Summit (AMS) in Kuala Lumpur on 4th September 2024.
As the inaugural Minister responsible for the Pacific Island ICT Ministers, I managed to get together the ICT Ministers of the Pacific, including Australia and New Zealand in Port Moresby, PNG, in 2023, to sign the Lagatoi Declaration after the meeting to embody our shared vision for digital transformation across the Pacific.
Through the Prime Minister, Hon. James Marape, PNG had the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders formally recognised and sometimes end of August 2024 in Tonga for ICT to become an integrated part of the PIF architecture.
It now enables the Pacific ICT leaders to collaborate at a higher level on key deliverables of the Implementation Plan of the ‘Lakatoi Declaration’ on areas like cyber security, digital skills, regional data exchanges, cybercrime & online exploitation, disaster management, and generally a digital government and society.
It further provides a more formal platform for the Pacific ICT Ministers to come together to address issues, and to garner support from like-minded regional and international development partners.
Through this, we have now committed to working together to ensure that all Pacific countries and territories embark on this journey of digitalization.
His Excellency also encouraged more proactive regional groupings like pursuing through bilateral collaborations – on a country-to-region or country-to-country arrangement while calling more countries in the Pacific to make the effort to visit and interact with their colleagues in Asia, and vice versa. This is to enable them to navigate this “New Odyssey” and emerge stronger, more resilient, and more connected than ever before.
He also implored AIBD to seriously consider taking one of our Summits to Vanuatu in recognition of Vanuatu Broadcasting & Television Broadcasting (VBTC)’s re-commitment and back into the AIBD fold.
