candidate info

[Norbert Klein]

Here is my self introduction, combined with some of the concerns which I
have been working on over the years.

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I am in Cambodia since 1990, established in 1994 the first connection to
the Internet from Cambodia (UUCP/store-and-forward, and were for three
years the only providers), registered the country domain .kh in 1996 and
administered it free of charge until 1998, when the Ministry of Post and
Telecommunications took it over and started to charge US$200 for the
first two years...

I work as the only foreigner in a Cambodian NGO – the Open Forum of
Cambodia – which had been created to facilitate and foster communication
with consultations, publications, and electronic communication in a post
war-torn society which had also been internationally isolated for almost
three decades. The technological, economic, and administrative obstacles
against our goals were, and in some ways are still, enormous.

Only after having overcome the initial connectivity problems, we were
faced with the problem of the Cambodian language – and script – in
communication. UNICODE had already coded the Khmer script – but without
any Cambodian participation, and it was only after about three more
years of difficult and expensive negotiations that we came to a
“compromise” – basically the Cambodian side had to accept that whatever
had been published by UNICODE could not be changed, even if it was
considered to be inappropriate by Khmer linguists and programmers.

At present the Open Forum of Cambodia is involved in creating a wide
range of UNICODE based Open Source software localized in the Khmer language.

Non of our developments would have been possible without having others
on the Internet assisting with advice. We do participate also regularly
- where possible - with a number of the Asia-Pacific networks lumped
together as the "AP*" ("AP STAR") groups.

Further involvement in the WSIS process pleased us with the assurance
that the Information Society would be one “where everyone can create,
access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling
individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in
promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of
life.” But the international cooperation, the commitment of competently
trained human resources, and of financial means to move towards these
goals seems to be almost as far in the distance as before.

My participation in ICANN – in the Non-Commercial Domain Name Holders
Constituency since 1999, and then in the Non Commercial Users
Constituency – was probably never focused narrowly on the core concerns
of ICANN only, though the interpretation of what the ICANN mandate
comprises was always contested and changing. But living and continuing
to work for a small ISP with civil society commitments beyond the
technicalities allowed me to share some of our concerns regularly with
others – finding out that some non-commercials in other small countries
are facing similar problems of domain name administration, resource
allocation, and governance problems.

If elected, I will continue to try to reflect the concerns of those at
the lower end of the Non Commercial User Community in the context of the
Internet getting more and more high-speed, high-bandwidth – and (in our
administrative context) high price.

Norbert Klein
Open Forum of Cambodia
Advisor to the Director
Phnom Penh/Cambodia