Government's Electronic Commerce Programme

[ Last Updated 17 February 2006 ]

Status:Archived

Reg Hammond
Manager
Information Technology Policy Group
Competition and Enterprise Branch

11 February 2000

To: The Minister for Information Technology

The Labour On-line document outlined a number of initiatives it intended to progress in the Electronic Commerce area. This paper is concerned with four:

The Electronic Transactions Bill;
The E-Commerce Summit;
The electronic commerce strategy; and
The E-Commerce Guide for small business.

The paper is seeking your agreement that the Ministry of Commerce will take initial responsibility for these items. It also seeks agreement on a suggested process and draft time frame for delivery of the four initiatives and your preferred option for production of the SME Guidelines.

Electronic Transactions Bill

The process for this Bill is dependent upon agreement of the Government's legislative programme but as it is already part of the existing work programme a bid for the Bill on the programme has been made with a view to introducing it into the House by 31 March 2000 and enactment by December 2000. As indicated in earlier briefing papers it is expected that the process of updating the law to accommodate electronic commerce will continue beyond the enactment of this initial Bill which concentrates largely on trade legislation.

E-Commerce Strategy

Development of options for an E-Commerce strategy has commenced. Briefing papers already provided give some indication of the Ministry of Commerce view as to the breadth of the issue and the need for a broad base of portfolio and departmental involvement. The unknown element of the strategy is the degree to which Government intends to involve itself in the subsequent implementation of the strategy and the extent to which that involvement will require funding and from which votes. Clearly this constraint will determine where the emphasis of the strategy is directed - economic development, social inclusion or creating the legislative environment for the market to lead development. With this in mind, it is proposed to prepare an outline of a strategy by 31 March 2000 for initial consideration by Ministers and directed towards identifying and obtaining commitment to addressing the longer-term implications.

With broad Government agreement on the desired outcomes the preparation of a draft strategy, formulated as a discussion document, could be prepared by July 2000 to coincide with the proposed E-Commerce Summit and could serve as a central focus of the Summit. The draft could then be finalised and the completed strategy published by December 2000.

E-Commerce Summit

The accompanying paper provides comment and options on the proposal for an E-Commerce Summit. Clearly the different options have different cost and time constraints that are discussed in the paper. In our view the preferred option would be to have the Summit some time after July 2000, when it could be used by Ministers to launch the guidelines document and to seek comment on the draft strategy/discussion document before finalising it as an E-Commerce strategy.

Guidelines for SMEs

The guideline for small and medium businesses could be developed relatively quickly following decisions upon the funding of the report and your authorship, publishing and distribution requirements for the document. The proposed E-Commerce Summit around July 2000 may be an ideal opportunity to launch the guidelines.

The options for the report's production run from a Ministry produced report with a low cost document and production run of say 5,000 copies; to a contracted report from a major consultancy firm with high quality printing and say 50,000 copies. The relative costs would be from approximately $10,000 to approximately $100,000.

The IT Policy Group is able to write an in-house report and the lower end production costs could be funded through deferring lower order priorities within Vote: Commerce. Otherwise, the options include:

Deferring production until the next financial year and seeking additional appropriation through the Budget Round. This will delay the Summit and Strategy if they are to be simultaneous.
Seeking private sector sponsorship.
Seeking funding from within other Votes.

The third bullet raises a further issue, clearly an E-Commerce guide for SMEs has implications for electronic commerce (IT Policy, Vote Communications); for small business policy (Business Policy, Vote Commerce) and for economic development (proposed Industry New Zealand).

The process for production of the guidelines will include consultation with officials in these areas. It is recommended that future papers concerning the guidelines are copied to the Minister of Economic Development and the Minister for Small Business for their information. This would also comply with the recently issued Cabinet Office circular on consultation with coalition partners.

If however funding is required from another vote, it might be more appropriate to position the document as a "joint venture" and seek the prior approval of the Minister(s) concerned.

Recommendations

I recommend that you:

Note the outline proposals and time lines for the four proposed Government E-Commerce initiatives.
Agree that the Ministry of Commerce takes responsibility for developing the government's initial proposals for an E-Commerce Summit; SME guidelines, E-Commerce Strategy and the Electronic Transactions Bill.
Note that the Electronic Transactions Bill is part of the current work programme and is included in the legislative programme bids for 2000.
Agree that an outline E-Commerce strategy be developed by 31 March 2000 for discussion by Ministers in order to determine the extent to which the Government wishes to be involved in the eventual implementation of the strategy and the funding implications of that involvement.
Note that a separate paper has been prepared providing options for an E-Commerce Summit.
Agree that the preferred order of events will be: 1 - draft strategy, 2 - SME guidelines, and Summit together, 3 - final strategy.
Note that publication of the SME guidelines is dependent upon the costs and funding options.
Agree that production of the SME guidelines should be:

a Ministry of Commerce produced report by July 2000 estimated at $10,000 - $30,000.
deferred until the next financial year so that additional appropriation may be sought to fund a more expensive report.
deferred pending a short paper to you and other Ministers proposing a "joint venture" with shared funding.

Agree that partial private sector sponsorship of the SME guidelines is desirable and should be sought.