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Chapter 4 E-environment 239

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
7,000 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 Internet governance describes the control put in place to manage the growth of the Inter-
Control of the operation net and its usage. Governance is traditionally undertaken by government, but the global
and use of the Internet.
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 Com-
merce 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 (www.icann.net) and communities.
4 Agencies such as TRUSTe (www.truste.org).

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