Political factors in E-environment

The political environment is shaped by the interplay of government agencies, public opinion, consumer pressure groups such as CAUCE (the Coalition against Unsolicited E-mail), www.cauce.org, and industry-backed organizations such as TRUSTe (www.truste.org) that pro­mote best practice amongst companies. The political environment is one of the drivers for establishing the laws to ensure privacy and to achieve taxation, as described in previous sections.

Political action enacted through government agencies to control the adoption of the Internet can include:

  • promoting the benefits of adopting the Internet for consumers and business to improve a country’s economic prosperity;
  • enacting legislation to protect privacy or control taxation, as described in previous sections;
  • providing organizations with guidelines and assistance for compliance with legislation
  • setting up international bodies to coordinate the Internet such as ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, icann.com) and other independent organizations controlling Internet technology described in Chapter 3.

Political involvement in many of these activities is intended to improve the economic compet­itiveness of countries or groups of countries. Quayle (2002) summarizes six strands of the UK government strategy for e-commerce which are intended to increase industry competitiveness:

  1. Establish a brand in e-commerce both domestically and internationally.
  2. Transform existing businesses.
  3. Foster e-commerce creation and growth.
  4. Expand the e-commerce talent pool (skills).
  5. Provide leadership in international e-commerce policy development.
  6. Government online should be a priority.

These goals are typical for many countries and specific targets are set for the proportion of people and businesses that have access, including public access points for those who cannot currently afford the technology. Managers who are aware of these initiatives can tap into sources of funding for development or free training to support their online initiatives. Alternatively, there may be incentives such as tax breaks for business or consumer adoption of the Internet and technology companies can also take advantage of these.

Some other examples of the role of government organizations in promoting and regulat­ing e-commerce are given by these examples from the European Commission (EC):

  • The EC Information Society initiative (http://europa.eu.int/information_society/index_htm) was launched in 1998 with the aims of increasing public awareness of the impact of the information society and stimulating people’s motivation and ability to participate (reducing social exclusion); increasing socio-economic benefits and enhancing the role of Europe in influencing the global Information Society. Information Society was defined by the UK INSINC working party on social inclusion in the information society in 1997 as:

A society characterized by a high level of information intensity in the everyday life of most citizens, in most organizations and workplaces; by the use of common or compat­ible technology for a wide range of personal, social, educational and business activities; and by the ability to transmit and receive digital data rapidly between places irrespec­tive of distance.

UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has also been active in advancing the Information Society in less developed countries (http://portal.unesco.org/ci).

  • The European Community has set up ‘i2010’ (European Information Society in 2010) whose aims include providing an integrated approach to information society and audio-visual policies in the EU, covering regulation, research, and deployment and promoting cultural diversity. (eEurope, 2005)
  • In 1998 new data protection guidelines were enacted to help protect consumers and increase the adoption of e-commerce by reducing security fears. In the new millennium cross-Europe laws have been enacted to control online consumer privacy, electronic selling and taxation.

Booz Allen Hamilton (2002) reviews approaches used by governments to encourage use of the Internet. They identify five broad themes in policy:

  1. Increasing the penetration of ‘access devices’. Approaches include either home access through Sweden’s PC Tax Reform, or in public places, as in France’s programme to develop access points by 2003. France also offer a tax incentive scheme, where firms can make tax-free gifts of PCs to staff for personal use.
  2. Increasing skills and confidence of target groups. These may target potentially excluded groups, as with France’s significant €150 million campaign to train the unemployed. Japan’s IT training programmes use existing mentors.
  3. Establishing ‘driving licences’ or ‘passport’ qualifications. France, Italy and the UK have schemes which grant simple IT qualifications, particularly at low-skilled groups such as the long-term unemployed.
  4. Building trust, or allaying fears. An example of this in the US is the 1998 Child Online Protection Act which used schemes to provide ‘kitemark’-type verification, or certification of safe services.
  5. Direct marketing campaigns. According to the report, only the UK, with its UK Online campaign, is marketing directly to citizens on a large scale.

Internet governance

Internet governance describes the control put in place to manage the growth of the Inter­net and its usage. Governance is traditionally undertaken by government, but the global nature of the Internet makes it less practical for a government to control cyberspace. Dyson (1998) says:

Now, with the advent of the Net, we are privatizing government in a new way – not only in the traditional sense of selling things off to the private sector, but by allowing organizations independent of traditional governments to take on certain ‘government’ regulatory roles. These new international regulatory agencies will perform former government functions in counterpoint to increasingly global large companies and also to individuals and smaller private organizations who can operate globally over the Net.

The US approach to governance, formalized in the Framework for Global Electronic Com­merce in 1997, is to avoid any single country taking control.

Dyson (1998) describes different layers of jurisdiction. These are:

  1. Physical space comprising each individual country where its own laws such as those governing taxation, privacy and trading and advertising standards hold.
  2. ISPs – the connection between the physical and virtual worlds.
  3. Domain name control (icann.net) and communities.
  4. Agencies such as TRUSTe (truste.org).

The organizations that manage the infrastructure, which were described in Chapter 3, also have a significant role in governance.

Source: Dave Chaffey (2010), E-Business and E-Commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation and Practice, Prentice Hall (4th Edition).

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