The OECD Observer: A Borderless World: Realising the Potential of Global Electronic Commerce

The OECD Observer
January 1999, No. 215

A Borderless World: Realising the Potential of Global Electronic Commerce
By John Dryden

The Ottawa conference was the second major international meeting within the overall OECD effort on electronic commerce, building on the first meeting in Turku, Finland, on 19-20 November 1997. At Turku, the job was to identify general principles and issues. At Ottawa the discussion moved on to consider the solutions themselves.

Nearly a thousand participants attended the two-day conference, among them 30 ministers and high-level officials from all 29 OECD member countries, 12 non-member countries, 12 international organisations1 and representatives from business, trade unions, consumer groups and other non-government organisations (NGOs). It was the first time that an OECD ministerial event contained such a cross-section of stakeholders on the matter.

The conference considered the economic and social potential of electronic commerce, the barriers that currently limit this potential and solutions that may be used to dismantle these barriers. Perspectives were offered from all parties. The discussions focused on the issues of building trust for users and consumers and establishing the ground rules for global electronic commerce. The conference also clarified roles, responsibilities and commitments in terms of an action plan.

Ministerial Declarations which establish baseline principles and goals and provide guidance regarding the OECD’s further work were adopted in three critical areas: protecting privacy; looking after consumer interests and rights, just as in conventional markets; and the authentification of electronic commerce, which includes amending any media specific rules impeding the development of electronic commerce.

For the OECD, a seven-point near-term programme of work was proposed to:

extend the analytical work on the economic and social impacts of electronic commerce, its applications in government and particularly in education;
set up specific technical advisory groups with business to address taxation issues, for example, the treatment of royalties,
permanent establishment, consumption taxes and look for ways to use e-commerce technologies to reduce the burden of paying taxes;
develop guidelines for consumer protection in the context of electronic commerce in 1999;
work on the practical implementation on global networks of the 1980 OECD Privacy Guidelines;
initiate work on defining and measuring electronic commerce;
continue examining the policy implications of evolving information and communication networks, including technological convergence, enhancing access to infrastructures and the requirements for open markets;
analyse the technological models for authentication and certification to help formulate policy in this area.

OECD Bibliography

The following ten background reports prepared by the OECD provided the background for he Ottawa conference: The Role of Telecommunications and Information Infrastructures in Advancing Electronic Commerce; The Economic and Social Impacts of Electronic Commerce: Preliminary Findings and Research Agenda; The Year 2000 Problem: Impacts and Actions; Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Electronic Commerce; New Developments in Educational Software and Multimedia; Protection of Privacy on Global Networks; Consumer Protection in the Electronic Marketplace; Inventory of Controls on Cryptography Technologies; Inventory of Approaches to Authentication and Certification; Electronic Commerce: Taxation Framework Conditions John Dryden, ‘Realising the Potential of Electronic Commerce’, The OECD Observer, No. 214, October/November 1998 ‘Six Aspects of Electronic Commerce’, The OECD Observer, No. 208, October/November 1997.
(http://www.oecd.org/subject/e_commerce/)

John Dryden, ‘Realising the Potential of Electronic Commerce’, The OECD Observer, No. 214, October/November 1998
(http://www.oecd.org/publications/observer/214/Article6_eng.htm)

‘Six Aspects of Electronic Commerce’, The OECD Observer, No. 208, October/November 1997.
(http://www.oecd.org/publications/observer/208/obs208e.html)