Although Pacific Island Countries (PICs) vary considerably in size, population, economic development, cultural and physical resources, they face common challenges, including the lack of economies of scale, limited economic resources, tyranny of distance, lack of personnel capacities and poor connectivity. 

Digitalisation of government systems and harnessing those processes to promote more inclusive e-government and e-participation could go some way to more efficiently and effectively tackling some of these serious challenges. 

In the four target countries of this Project – namely, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, Solomon Islands and Tonga – each country has some form of national digital strategy. However, a review of those strategies has shown that the focus has tended to be overly technocratic, with insufficient attention paid to ensuring inclusive digitalisation is designed and rolled out in ways that does not always respect and protect fundamental human rights and actively progress people-centred, gender-sensitive democracy and development which leaves no one behind. 

In order to ensure that the four target countries can harness digitalisation for the benefit of all of their people, this Project will work with government officials and civil society (including NGOs, academia, the media and the private sector) to build their commitment to and understand of digital rights and digital development principles, in order to support the design of regulatory frameworks which properly respect and protect human rights in the context of digitalisation.