Dear GKD Members, My name is Bogdan Manolea and I work as a Legal Adviser for RITI dot-Gov (Romanian Information Technology Initiative), a 3-year project funded by USAID - part of the dot-Com alliance, and implemented in Romania by Internews. See more about our project at <www.riti-internews.ro>
I will try to answer part of these question, based on our expertise so far. On Monday, September 27, 2004, "Global Knowledge Dev. Moderator" asked: > 1) Who must take what steps to build global e-commerce systems? WTO? > Donors? Transaction companies such as Paypal and Visa? Governments? > Private firms? I would say that the transaction companies have very little interest to expand their business in the developing countries. I know the experience from Paypal that has been more than reluctant to expand in Romania (but also in other SEE countries), even though a lot of businesses have shown their interest in promoting their business model. But let me mention that there are no "global e-commerce systems" yet available. And this raises questions in the developing countries private sector. What system to adopt? A system based on credit-card processing? Can that be a good solution, when the people in these countries do not have the habit of buying with the credit-card and when the credit/debit cards are used by 90% of the population to withdraw cash from ATMs ? A system based on electronic money? Paypal has been a very successful solution in US, but in Europe - even though there is an e-money directive, the market has not been so eager to promote such systems (except probably moneybookers.com) If such global e-commerce systems could be set up by governments, with involvement of the transaction companies and the major private firms - then what a developing country will need is just clear conditions which state what needs to be accomplished in order to access this system. > 3) Within countries, who must take what measures to build cyber-security > and trust among consumers? The government? NGOs? Businesses? Citizens? If you are talking about cyber-security related to e-commerce the answer should be: the businesses together with NGO's - or even e-commerce businesses gathered in an NGO. However, in the developing countries with a young private sector, the consumers trust more the system where the government (the state) is involved. I wouldn't support a government-run trusting system, but it could be an advantage if such a system could be endorsed or supported by the state. > 4) What solutions are working? Are there tools and techniques that have > been effective and would be appropriate for developing countries? I think that the trustmark system has not been developed and tested enough in the developing countries. It could be a good solution to create trust in e-commerce. Some newcomers in the credit card processing system have tried to use the VISA and MasterCard names as a trustworthy mark. > 5) How can organizations in developing countries get certified in order > to build trust among potential e-customers? Do certification agencies > have a responsibility to support cyber-security in developing countries? Usually, the companies are complaining that there are not (enough) local certification agencies and therefore they need to go abroad and pay a lot for a certification. The Romanian Ministry of IT&C (see www.mcti.ro) has tried to back up such a system for Home-banking and Internet-banking applications in order to increase confidence - basically all the banks who have such systems are required to have an independent IT security audit on their product, based on which they receive a confirmation from MCTI. The number of users of these application has increased, but it is still too early to say if such a system is the best solution possible. > 6) When countries are branded as "unsafe" for e-commerce, what can > innocent companies do to rescue their own e-commerce efforts? Unfortunately, Romania is one of countries that is on the black list on some e-companies due to fraud problems. The situation is causing problems for 2 categories: - consumers that are not allowed to buy from international e-shops (e.g. amazon.com, godaddy, etc). - companies that are trying to promote e-commerce applications in Romania face problems of mistrust not only from consumers, but also from the banks who refuse to implement such a system. What can be done? * first - to stop cybercrime and Internet frauds as much as possible. Good legislation is just one step. Implementing that legislation is the most difficult part though. * second - to work on proving that secure solutions can be developed for e-commerce. This a hard and long process, but it can be done. The banks will be convinced sooner or later that e-commerce is a good business for them, too. And the consumers will follow the banks. But that needs a lot of time and effort involved. Regards, Bogdan Manolea Legal Coordinator RITI dot-Gov - Romanian Information Technology Initiative Phone: +40 21 411 32 55 Mobil : +40 721 205 603 www.riti-internews.ro ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
