On the 10th of September 2014, MLI incooperation with the Vice-Prime Minister of Ukraine Oleksandr Sych, The StateCommittee on Television and Radio, National Union of Journalists held the publicdiscussion of the draft Strategy for Developmentof Information Space of Ukraine.
The participants of the discussion included: the Vice-PrimeMinister of Ukraine Oleksandr Sych, Headof The State Committee on Television and Radio Oleh Nalyvaiko, Head of The State Service of Special Communicationand Information Protection of Ukraine VolodymyrZvierev, Head of Relations with Public Authorities Department of The PresidentialAdministration of Ukraine Oleksandr Bukhtatyi,Media Law Institute Director TarasShevchenko, Deputy Director of The Information Policy Department of TheState Committee on Television and Radio HannaKrasnostup, Director of The Information Policy Department of The StateCommittee on Television and Radio BohdanChervak, General Director of The Ukrainian Association of Press Publishers Alexey Pogorelov, acting Head of NationalUnion of Journalists Serhii Tomilenko,Director of The International NGO European Media Platform Oksana Prykhodko, Editor-in-chief of the website “MediaSapiens” (NGO“Telekrytyka”) Diana Dutsyk, Presidentof Suspilnist Foundation Taras Petriv,Director on Legal Affairs of Internews-Ukraine Pavlo Moiseiev, Lawyer and Head of Legal Projects of Institute ofMass Information Roman Golovenko, IndependentAssociation of Broadcasters, Head of Legislative Initiatives Centre Olha Bolshakova and others.
Oleksandr Sych in his greeting speech said that public societyalways gave a feedback to changes in legal sphere, therefore, public experts shouldtake part in discussion of important legislative initiatives.
Taras Shevchenko noted that the draft Strategy for Development of InformationSpace of Ukraine has a lot in common with the Strategy for Development of InformationSociety in Ukraine; so, there is no need to enact the draft in the currentversion. By way of contrast, HannaKrasnostup and Bohdan Chervak underlined the fact that the Strategy for Development of Information Society inUkraine is rather a technical document, and we still do not have any strategyon information safety.
According to DianaDutsyk, it is necessary to distinguish the information society developmentand the information security issues. Experts also proposed to include to thisdraft relevant provisions on journalistic self-management, new media regulation,human rights in Internet, E-governance.
Oleh Nalyvaiko and OksanaPrykhodko focused on the necessity of approximation the strategy to the EuropeanUnion law. As Serhii Tomilenko said,journalists should not become a propaganda instrument.
At the end of the meeting Taras Shevchenko summarized that the information society legalprovisions should be amended, and the strategy for development of information space,devoted to information aggression counteraction, should be immediately enacted.
The public discussion was made possible bythe support of the American people,provided via the United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) and Internews.