Creating the right national environment

In a plenary and several related focus sessions, the Executive Forum set out to explore five issues to encourage leadership to create the right national environment:

• infrastructure
• legal
• finance
• education
• e-facilitation

Participants identified additional factors to consider, below:

• logistics
• communications/marketing strategy
• people skills
• social capital

Below are key ideas that emerged in the plenary session and the focus session on legal issues. We also briefly restated key points on education, infrastructure and finance (reported to you earlier).

A question from Executive Forum participants, to all of you in this discussion forum: How can private sector innovation be encouraged in the short term, to bypass constraints of the existing environment?

LEADERSHIP IN CREATING THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT

In the short term, the private sector should take the initiative in using IT and building e-commerce capability, to push the public sector to provide the required solutions. The public sector should also lead by example by instituting e-government and e-facilitation to build trust and critical mass.

In the long term, e-competency should be built through partnership   between the public and the private sectors; this partnership should also include universities. Solutions should take into consideration the existing environment, but should also respond to what is coming up in the future. The right environment to be implemented should preserve the interests of civil society. E-awareness, and e-orientation are key to building the right environment. People skills and knowledge should be improved in general. In particular, training should be provided to government officials and business managers to help them take the right strategic decisions Key considerations related to successful environments for e-commerce are partnership, innovation, human capital, business information centres/incubators, 'regulations not control', trust and facilitation.

(Reporting: Lilia Naas, ITC)

INFRASTRUCTURE

Access to the Internet can be an incentive to foreign investment; developing countries have been able to leapfrog telecommunications technology in many cases, by going 'straight to digital' and investing in mobile systems.

(Reporting: Michel Borgeon, ITC)

FINANCE

Obtaining venture capital is a problem for e-entrepreneurs, but businesses, banks and other lenders and governments can be sensitised to the needs of 'knowledge businesses'.

(Reporting: Philip Williams, ITC)

EDUCATION

Current education systems do not prepare people for the changes in technology we are witnessing, or how to handle the explosion of information now available. We need to rethink what we teach (content), how we teach it (methodology) and who should be responsible for teaching (government/private sector, etc.).

(Reporting: Natalie Domeisen, ITC)

LEGAL

An e-commerce law is one of the basic factors in an e-commerce strategy. As a first step, it may be sufficient to provide enabling law for electronic contracting. Other matters (personal data protection, consumer protection in general, cybercrime) will also require government action on varying levels.

Self-regulation by companies (abelling, codes of conduct, etc.) may not suffice in many countries. There is a need for involvement in defining the international environment (e.g. domain names).

• What are urgent, priority areas for e-commerce legislative reform?

Some of the most pressing issues concern:

• legal recognition of electronic documents and signatures
• freedom of establishment of service providers

These and others will be dealt with separately by each country, with the option to use models such as the 1996 UNCITRAL Model Law.

• Should the new e-commerce laws consist solely of 'enabling' legislation or should they also impose restrictions (i.e. personal data protection, liability of service providers, consumer protection, jail sentences for hacking and piracy)?
• A new e-commerce law needs to be passed after consultation with the sectors concerned. Because of the speed of technological change and the international scope of the subject, e-commerce in various ways defies governance by any single national entity.

Therefore, laws will be vulnerable to incoherence and lawmakers will not be able to keep pace.

• Depending on the country, legislators will have to consider market ability/inability vs government ability/inability (for example, who should operate certification authorities?)
• The tendency of governments to tax e-commerce will have to be balanced with their desire to attract investment.
• Consumer protection concerns (privacy of personal data, health concerns (sales of pharmaceuticals, etc.) vary from one constituency to the other.
• Rules relating to taxes, territorial jurisdiction of courts and applicable law, and ongoing reviews of telecom regulation may also be considered.
• Go for simplicity, keep law enabling, technology neutral, and consistent with the few basic international norms.
• Wherever feasible, empower the executive (delegate some of the rule-making to the executive).

(Reporting: Jean-François Bourque, ITC)