Harbour, not Hideout

11 April 2009 Dan McGarry

The rationale for Vanuatu acting as a tax-free jurisdiction is simple: Given a lack of sustainable industry, a small economic base and few prospects for international trade, tax haven status is one of the few avenues available to countries like Vanuatu to attract foreign currency. By enticing money and people into the country, the government is able to derive income from import tariffs, license fees and other activities that don’t unduly burden either investors or ni-Vanuatu.

Some degree of visible, verifiable probity is required for such a role, and cooperation will no doubt be expected from neighbouring nations as they pursue individuals playing fast and loose with the rules. But this should not be cause for alarm. We don’t want people investing here who only see the rule of law as an encumbrance.

Nonetheless, we’re facing a strong, even unreasonable backlash, which is directing itself in part at some of the punier members of the international community.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

A prominent US liberal blog recently ran a story, titled “So Go Already” that captured in a nutshell the deep resentment that many, Americans especially, are feeling toward those captains of enterprise who continued to receive massive payouts even as the financial service companies they guided were foundering in bankruptcy.

Reacting to a rather blithe and blinkered editorial on tax havens published by the right wing Washington Times, the article ranted, “If you don’t like paying taxes here on the millions you’ve made or that someone made for you, you’re free to take your shekels and move.”

Both Right and Left utterly miss the point.

Digicel Rolls out Mobile Internet Service

11 April 2009 Dan McGarry

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

Update for online readers: Digicel Vanuatu’s Manager for Commercial Operations did finally contact me, too late, alas, for the publication deadline, which had been pushed forward this week to accommodate the Good Friday holiday. We had a thorough discussion, and he cleared up a few things that were left as question marks in the original column. I’ve updated the text below, and have tried to show what’s changed between the original version and this one. – DM

About 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday this week, an email hit the VIGNET mailing list, announcing that Digicel had rolled out its long-awaited mobile Internet service. Using radio waves to send data over the Internet, Digicel’s GPRS service significantly increases the value and flexibility of their services.

Charging rates cheaper than many in the US and Australia, Digicel have raised the bar in terms of customer expectations once again. Now, Digicel subscribers can send multimedia messages to one another or browse the web from their laptop or mobile phone. You can now take a photo with your camera and send it to a friend, send them a ring tone they like, read your email from your phone, or check out an important web page.

Sending photos from your phone may sound frivolous, but think about it for a second: Hubby is sent to pick up some baby products at the supermarket. Faced with a dizzying array of choices, he take a photo of one, sends it to his wife with the question, ‘Are these what you meant?’ Domestic harmony is well worth the expense.

A caveat before I go on: I’m composing this column less than 24 hours after the initial public roll-out, and Digicel management have yet to reply replied too late to my requests for information, so whatever information you find here is of necessity incomplete and possibly mistaken. Some of the information in the print version of this column is incomplete.

What's in a Name?

9 April 2009 Dan McGarry

Throughout the country, we find that the depiction of the human body, the discussion of certain topics, to be perfectly appropriate in one community, but tabu in the next.

At the core of the problem, therefore, is the question: How can we usefully engage on a discussion of controversial topics – not just pornography, but politics, society, kastom, religion… you name it – if we don’t allow certain words and terms to be used?

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

A colleague recently sent me a link to a story originating from Ireland, in which the national domain administrator refused to allow the registration of certain terms. I’ll let the author of the original article explain:

‘I’ve been trying to register the domains porn.ie and pornography.ie for about four years. Every time I try to register either domain, the Irish Domain Registry (IEDR) refuse my application because “the proposed domain name must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality.”’

(For reference, ‘.ie’ is the two letter domain name (properly called a country code Top Level Domain, or ccTLD) that that signifies Ireland. Vanuatu’s ccTLD is ‘.vu’.)

The writer continues: “I found myself a solicitor who specialises in digital law (e.g. cases involving the Internet) and arranged an appeal against the refusal of registration.”

Eventually, a court found that there was nothing inherently offensive about the domain names, but to the author’s astonishment, it still found against him. The rationale? The court had no mandate to intervene with the actions of the domain administrator. The body managing Ireland’s ccTLD is a purpose-built non-profit organisation, and though the Irish government has reserved the right to take control of the ccTLD, they haven’t exercised it. In all likelihood, they wouldn’t, except in an emergency.

Vanuatu is currently taking a look at how its ccTLD will be managed in the future, so it’s worth taking a few moments to consider what we would do in the same situation.

A Nation of Laws – Ctd.

4 April 2009 Dan McGarry

Time and column inches conspired against me with this week’s Opinion. Writing these pieces is a labour of love for me, a needful service that – I hope – contributes to the public dialogue here in Vanuatu.

This week, I feel I didn’t have nearly enough time to do a completely satisfactory job of mapping a morally, legally and ethically complicated landscape. While I feel I covered most of the main themes in the thousand or so words allowed me, much more needs to be said.

What follows is a somewhat lengthy consideration of what I chose to say – and chose not to say – in this column, and why I did so….

Time and column inches conspired against me with this week’s Opinion column. Writing these weekly pieces is a labour of love for me, a needful service that – I hope – contributes to the public dialogue here in Vanuatu and to understanding abroad. But the need to earn a dollar often obtrudes, and the time I can devote to writing them is always less than I’d like.

What follows is a somewhat lengthy consideration of what I chose to say – and chose not to say – in this column, and why I did so….

Read more “A Nation of Laws – Ctd.”

A Nation of Laws

4 April 2009 Dan McGarry

Shortly before noon on Sunday, March 29, two Toyota pickup trucks arrived at a Malapoa residence occupied by 21 year old escaped convict John Bule, his girlfriend and their daughter, aged less than 2. Several men in plain clothes dismounted and entered the house in search of Bule.

Loud voices were heard from within the house, and 3 shots were fired, apparently as a warning. Nobody was hurt. Shortly afterward, John and his girlfriend were escorted from the house, their hands bound behind their back. They were placed together in the back of one truck and driven to the VMF barracks.

The girlfriend later recalled that she pleaded with those holding her to be allowed to return to her home and her daughter. She told them she’d done nothing wrong.

As she pled with them, she says, she heard her boyfriend John crying out in pain in an adjacent room.
Shortly before 2:00 p.m. that same day, authorities brought John Bule to Vila Central Hospital for treatment of wounds to both legs, both arms, his ribs, back and head, which had multiple lacerations, including a gash above his left eye about 10 cm. long and 3 cm. wide.

Soon after 4:00 p.m. Sunday, John Bule was pronounced dead.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

The girlfriend later recalled that she pleaded with those holding her to be allowed to return to her home and her daughter. She told them she’d done nothing wrong.

Soon after 4:00 p.m. Sunday, John Bule was pronounced dead.

Elephants

28 March 2009 Dan McGarry

In recent years, Vanuatu has been learning to manoeuvre in this demanding and rather tricky role. To further complicate things, there is more than one elephant in this particular bed. Between the EU, the WTO, China and our other regional neighbours, trade and aid negotiators in Vanuatu have had their hands full.

Happily, 3000 years of practice in patient negotiation and peace-making have so far paid off. To mix metaphors, Vanuatu has of late consistently punched well above its weight when it comes to negotiating this sometimes parlous state of affairs.

But our work isn’t finished yet, and if anything, the stakes are higher now than they’ve been in years. Time is not on our side and the elephants are encroaching once again.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

“Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau offered this wry description of relations between Canada and the US at the Washington Press Club back in 1969. Had he been a ni-Vanuatu politician addressing the press in Canberra, he might have used an aquatic simile, but the message would have been the same.

But our work isn’t finished yet, and if anything, the stakes are higher now than they’ve been in years. Time is not on our side and the elephants are encroaching once again.

Appropriate Technology – Take Two

27 March 2009 Dan McGarry

We need to take steps to improve access to information, learning and communications for all ni-Vanuatu. The steps we’ve taken so far are necessary, but not sufficient. We need to do more. And in the absence of a coordinated national strategy, we should take small steps like this simply because we can.

The cost of failure is measurable, and probably low. Maybe there won’t be a huge surge of new employment; maybe it won’t help local small business people as much as we like. If it doesn’t work, though, at least they won’t suffer for the mistake.

Though we can’t really know exactly what the value is on the upside, we can all agree that if it does work, it will benefit people in countless small ways: expediting business, enabling both formal and informal political, social, religious and community networks, encouraging learning and exposing people to a world that many have never encountered before.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

I got some really good feedback from last week’s proposal to create incentives for those kinds of computer equipment that are most suited to creating opportunity and improving access to information for ni-Vanuatu.

Not all of the news was necessarily good, but all of it was useful. Daryl Moon, who runs the local Datec store, responded that he’d done a little math on the issue, and he found that computer vendors would certainly be able to sell computers for less if they were constructed locally from tariff-exempt components.

But he went on to explain that in order to justify hiring extra staff for that purpose, he would have to sell 20 computers per week – a number which, he suspected, exceeds the weekly sales of all local computer retailers combined.

I also had discussion with a few local economists and trade experts. One of the issues raised was the difficulty of actually measuring the outcome of such tariff exemptions. Generally speaking, government is willing to accept a drop in revenues in one area provided that it sees an increase elsewhere (VAT income from increased sales, for example) or that the social benefit is sufficient to merit the cost.

As I reflect on these conversations, I’m beginning to realise that, ultimately, the most compelling argument for Appropriate Technology incentives is not economic in nature. The capstone on this discussion is a moral one.

The Price of Democracy

23 March 2009 Dan McGarry

As I write this, Vanuatu’s members of Parliament are plodding through the Government’s budget bill. It’s an unusual second consecutive week of work for our MPs, and though everyone is intent on seeing the job completed, they’re giving the work the attention it deserves.

Opposition members have kept cabinet ministers on their collective toes. Following a salvo of incisive questions from across the floor, Finance Minister Molisa sent his staff back to the Ministry with instructions for more detailed briefing materials. The lights were burning into the small hours at Finance.

Measured in strictly procedural terms, progress may be slower than Speaker George Wells might want, but the Opposition, looking revitalised and with a newfound sense of purpose, has been… well, doing its job, to be frank. That’s a refreshing – and timely – first.

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]

It may seem silly to outsiders, but I’m not the only one here who’s taken some encouragement from these few weeks of Parliamentary process. After years of listening to the same tiresome tirades against do-nothing politicians, we are at last seeing something genuinely newsworthy in Vanuatu politics: A thorough and detailed investigation of how the nation spends its money.

Appropriate Technology

23 March 2009 Dan McGarry

Technology is complicated, and in relation to other aspects of daily life in Vanuatu, it’s expensive. But its value to society is indisputable.

Without a doubt, the Government needs to develop a clear, comprehensive policy concerning use of technology within its own sphere of operation, and on the national level as well. But that will take time, and there’s much that can be done in the mean time.

The benefits of telecoms market liberalisation are undeniable, but as the Pacific Institute of Public Policy rightly pointed out in its baseline study of social effects of the opening of the mobile market, more needs to be done. Uptake for business purposes is still low. Secondary infrastructure needs work as well, and if we want to see the same growth in Internet as we’ve seen in mobile use, we’re going to have to take steps to make it possible.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

One of the joys of working in IT is the endless tide of change that seems to run through it. The stereotypical geek – and I confess I bear a strong resemblance to him – is constantly, almost pathologically curious. Like mynah birds we flit from one shiny piece of technology to the next, changing our song moment by moment.

Some may find it dizzying. Just as they get used to one set of jargon terms, the lexicon changes and their stuttering education in techno-Babel starts anew.

IT professionals typically work with about a six month window before the bleeding-edge products they’re using slip down the next rung of the ladder of obsolescence. After about two years, they’ve dropped away completely.

Governments and other institutions often find this a constant source of aggravation. It takes so long to develop standards that they’re often outdated even before the testing, analysis and verification is complete.

But their mistake is one of emphasis….

Bit Rot

14 March 2009 Dan McGarry

People want to treat data like a thing. They assume that if you buy some storage, and you put your bits in it, it’s more or less like a safe deposit box – as long as the thing looks okay from the outside, there’s no problem. Just pop the key in when you want to, and – hey presto – the data springs out, pristine and ready.

Would that it were so.

Data is dangerously fragile and ephemeral. It’s a not-entirely-accidental collection of electrical charges that manage to emerge in some useful order… most of the time. But shift just a few of those bits around, or drop a couple on the floor, and the whole construct become no more intelligible than line noise on a telephone wire.

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

It’s happened again.

The life of a technology professional can sometimes feel like that of a doctor. You’re introduced to someone, and the moment you tell them your metier, their eyes take on a particular look and they say, “You know, I’ve been having this problem recently….” Immediately, the conversation becomes a diagnostic session.

I suppose everyone a lawyer meets has a court case pending, too.

So there I am, sitting down at a local cafe with a book and my morning coffee, and someone collars me with a request. “You need to write about CD Rot,” She says with a wry, knowing smile. Immediately, I put the book away. This is going to take some time.

(Before I go on, let me say that I actually enjoy these little conversations. If I didn’t, I would never have lasted as long as I have in IT. Heaven knows I wouldn’t be writing this column.)