Case study: ICT-Dec

The ICT sector is one in constant transformation. New technologies replace older ones and their complexity is always increasing. ICT regulatory and other oversight bodies must minimize distortions arising from varied regulatory treatment of different technology as well as from host of new issues brought about by technological and market developments.

The Challenge

Access to ICT precedents and experiences had been previously difficult to obtain, especially in the case of decisions issued in developing countries. Searching was time consuming and inefficient and the search results were rarely comprehensive as it required bringing together information located all over the internet. The International Telecommunications Union together with the World Bank sought to offer an integrated online platform that would bridge this information gap and made regulatory decisions from the ICT sector available, organized in a useful manner and searchable. This platform would be intended to serve all different types of users, but especially ICT regulators, policy makers, industry ombudsmen and specialized dispute resolution tribunals.

“Lexum has developed a platform that delivers on every aspect of our initial ideas. There has been real value to be gained in working with them as their attitude is not to just technically implement our project, but also to come up with new thinking and solutions and ultimately help us improve it. The creative and efficient team and their fresh approach enabled us to enhance ICTdec on an ongoing basis to meet the evolving demand of our target users.”
– ITU

The Solution

Lexum developed the clearinghouse’s interface, search engine and crawler. Decisions are either manually added to the repository by an editor or directly by dispute resolution bodies, or are added by the crawler which automatically identifies ICT decisions that are published on the websites of ICT decision making bodies.

Users can search and browse these decisions by country, decision-making body and theme. A fact sheet for each decision lists basic information such as the date it was issued, its country of origin and language. A PDF link provides access to the decision itself. There is also a page for each country which summarizes all the ICT decisions available in the clearinghouse.