Last month, Heather Shaw, USCIB’s director of information policy and telecommunications, led an International Chamber of Commerce
delegation to Danang, Vietnam for the 14th meeting of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) steering group on electronic commerce. Vietnam Is serving as this year’s president of the APEC forum and will host the annual summit of Asia-Pacific leaders next month in Hanoi.
The session was one of several that took place during a meeting of senior officials from member economies, which also featured a session on trans-border privacy issues. Two years ago, APEC leaders adopted a privacy framework, and participants explored ways to move discussions from theory to operation. Business is especially interested in promoting the development of company privacy rules and the mutual recognition of these by governments in the APEC countries.
Ms. Shaw presented a preliminary ICC framework on cross-border privacy rules that illustrates how industry best practices in cross-border transfers of personal information are consistent with relevant APEC principles. This document will be further discussed and considered as the first component of a possible APEC implementation mechanism. Other presentations reviewed the role of “trustmarks” and privacy seals in assuring accountability, dispute resolution mechanisms and other elements of implementation.
Next year, when Australia takes over as APEC president, the privacy subgroup plans to hold three workshops, provide updates on domestic privacy approaches and technical guidance to economies developing privacy systems, and move toward a pilot project on implementation of cross-border rules.
OECD Forecasts ICT Industry Growth in 2006 – The information and communication technology industry is expected to grow by 6 percent in 2006, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s Information Technology Outlook 2006. The highest growth will be driven by Internet-related investments, Linux servers, digital storage, personal digital assistants and new portable consumer products. But a return to the heady days of 20-30 percent growth in many products and market segments, as happened in the 1990s, is unlikely, the report states.
