Mr. Speaker, I am completely surprised, but I am happy to help.

Electronic Petition Pilot Project Guidelines

The following guidelines were established for the pilot project.

1. The Assembly would maintain the current

process of paper petitions.

2. Electronic petitions could be used on their own

or could be combined with the traditional paper petition.

3. The electronic petitions would resemble the

Assembly website as closely as possible.

4. The Assembly would approve the format of the

electronic petition before it was posted on-line.

5. An acceptable petition must contain a proper

and respectful request of the NWT government or Minister to take or refrain from taking some action in response to an alleged grievance.

6. Aside from the petition format identified above,

Assembly staff would not comment on, verify or amend any information in the body of the petition.

7. As with traditional petitions, electronic petitions

require that a Member present the petition to the House.

These guidelines created as much uniformity as possible between the rules and the procedures already established for written petitions and the use of electronic petitions.

Conditions of Use

The following conditions governing the use of electronic petition websites were prominently displayed on the site:

1. A person may only join a petition once.

2. A petitioner must not use a false name.

3. A petition must be submitted in good faith.

4. A petition must not contain potentially libelous,

false or defamatory statements.

5. A petition must not contain matters protected by

a court order, subject to an appeal process or legal actions.

6. A petition must not contain material which is

commercially sensitive, confidential or which may cause personal distress or loss.

7. A petition must not contain names of individual

officials or public bodies.

8. A petition must not contain the names of

individuals or provide information which will easily identify an individual in relation to a criminal accusation.

Security and Privacy

The following security measures were implemented on the on-line petition site:

1. The petitioner must register on the site by

creating a user name and password.

2. The petitioner must supply an address, e-mail

address, town, postal code and country.

3. The petitioner’s name and community were the

only personal information available to the public when viewing an electronic petition.

4. E-mail confirmation was sent to the principal

petitioner to advise that the petition was posted and ready to accept signatures.

5. A limited number of entries for each Internet

address was permitted.

6. Electronic signatures were reviewed in order to

eliminate obvious faults, names and multiple entries.

7. For the purpose of presentation in the House,

the number of electronic signatures from the Northwest Territories must be clearly identified.

Statistics

The pilot project was implemented in October 2010 and ran until June 30, 2011. Year over year comparisons show that there is some modest demand for the on-line petition format in the Northwest Territories.

• In 2007-08, there were 10 paper petitions.

• In 2008-09, there were nine paper petitions.

• In 2009-10, there were nine paper petitions.

• In 2010-11, when the electronic petition project

was implemented, 10 petitions were submitted, of which half were electronic. Two of these were combined with the traditional paper format.

• In 2010-11, there were a total of 2,869

signatures gathered on petitions, just over one-third of which were electronic.

At this particular time I will be passing the report on to Mr. Bromley, MLA for Weledeh.