Kuchma himself put his eye on the Ukrainian Internet

President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma signed the Decree ‘On methods of development of the national contribution to the global informational network Internet and the provision of wide access to this network in Ukraine’. The development of the national contribution to the Internet, the provision of the wide access to this network of inhabitants of Ukraine and the proper representation in it of the national information resources, the decree reads, is one of the top priority directions of the state policy in the sphere of information processing and exchange. According to the decree, the proper economic, juridical, technical and other conditions must be created in Ukraine for the wide access of citizens, educational establishments and other organizations of all forms of property to the Internet. Another task, the decree reads, is the development and perfection of the input objective politi-cal, economic, juridical, ecological, scientific, technological, cultural and other kinds of information from Ukraine. The third task of the development of the Internet in Ukraine is ‘provision of the Constitutional rights to the free collection, storing, use and distribution of information, the freedom of thought and speech, the free expression of one’s views and opinions’. Besides, Kuchma orders to those, who are engaged with the works with the Internet in Ukraine, to develop and implement modern computer information technologies to the system of state administration, to financial sphere, to entrepreneurial activities, education, medicine and jurisdiction. The decree also orders the perfection of the juridical regulation of the activities of subjects of informational relations, production, use, distribution and protection of electronic information. The decree orders the protection of rights for intellectual property, increase of the responsibility for the violation of the order of access to electronic information resources of all forms of property, as well as for the spreading computer viruses. In the nearest half-year several ministries and agencies with the help of several invited prominent specialists and, maybe, some providers must prepare a draft of the state program of developing the Ukrainian Internet, as a part of the national program of developing the information system. The Cabinet of Ministers got a commission to begin the work of creating legal, organizational, technical and other conditions for the development of business in the Internet. The Cabinet also got the task of compiling the national register of Ukrainian information resources in the Internet. The government must publish the information on the action of organs of the state power and create web-pages of the central and local organs of the executive power, the leading scientific and educational institutes in the Internet by the end of this year. This information must be expressed ‘in Ukrainian, English and other languages’, as it is said in the decree. To the end of this year the government will have finished and direct to the Parliament drafts of the laws that concern the peculiarities of mass media, as well as the protection of intellectual property and the authors’ copyright with the use of electronic document circulation and electronic digital signature; the documents must be prepared that state the responsibility for the distribution via the Internet of the secret information. President Kuchma ordered all organizations to join the campaign of the creation of the high quality Internet in Ukraine. In particular, the Ministry of communications and the Ministry of economics must encourage the investments from abroad to be used for the development of the Internet in Ukraine. Local admi-nistrations are ordered to assist local organizations in solving the tasks set by the President’s decree. The decree signed by the President of Ukraine about the Ukrainian Internet witnesses that Leonid Kuchma regards this problem as a top priority one, Oleksandr Martinenko, the press secretary of the President, declared. The press secretary also made public that the President signed this decree in the spirit of the negotiations of the ‘Big aid’ about the global information community. ‘Although the decree was prepared parallelly with the preparation of the document of the ‘Big aid’, the main ideas of these two documents have much in common’, the press secretary said. The realization of this decree, as the President’s administration hopes, will enable Ukraine to integrate sooner into the world information community, and in the near future Ukraine will take an active part in the development of such components of the Internet as e-trading and e-business. UP, 31 July 2000