The ICT Association of Malawi (Ictam) says it is hopeful that the Electronic Transaction Bill will be processed and tabled in the current sitting of Parliament as it is key to the enhancement of the IT industry.<\/p>\n
The bill is currently going through scrutiny by the Communications and Media Committee of Parliament following its first tabling in the august house in November last year.<\/p>\n
Several quarters, including the media, have queried some aspects of the bill over fears that it could bring restrictions to use of the Internet and social media by members of the public, thereby infringing on freedom of expression rights as enshrined in the constitution.<\/p>\n
Ictam president Wisley Phiri, whose association recently met with members of the parliamentary committee over the bill, said apart from the few disputed sections, the bill is important as it looks at many issues that can help the country avoid occurrences such as the cashgate.<\/p>\n
He said the bill, among other things, looks at issues of using electronic signatures and electronic company seals as well as the context within which digital signatures can be accepted in a transaction.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, if I issued you a legal document, it has to be accompanied by a digital certificate to authenticate the authenticity of the electronic transaction. So the bill covers aspects of how digital certificates can be issued and who will be responsible for making sure that we operate according to the law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Phiri also said the bill covers issues of cyber security and introduces the creation of the Malawi Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert) which will operate under the Department of E-Government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis [Cert] is a unit which will respond in cases of digital attacks. This is like the police in the digital world,\u201d said Phiri.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ICT Association of Malawi (Ictam) says it is hopeful that the Electronic Transaction Bill will be processed and tabled in the current sitting of Parliament as it is key to the enhancement of the IT industry. The bill is currently going through scrutiny by the Communications and Media Committee of Parliament following its first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20256,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20250\/revisions\/20256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}