Clinton Creates Federal E-Commerce Working Group

In a move to facilitate electronic commerce, President Clinton issued a memorandum this week creating the United States Government Working Group on Electronic Commerce. The Working Group will review current laws and regulations governing, impeding or hindering e-commerce, and will recommend revisions that facilitate e-commerce while ensuring consumer and public protection.

Impediments may include regulatory or licensing requirements and technical standards and other policies that may hinder electronic commerce in particular goods or services. While some of these legal restrictions are the subject of pending legislation, other potential barriers are outside the scope of those legislative proposals.

The Working Group will establish a subgroup, led by the U.S. Department of Commerce, to: (1) identify laws and regulations that impose barriers to the growth of electronic commerce, and (2) recommend how these laws and regulations should be revised to facilitate the development of electronic commerce, while ensuring that protection of the public interest (including consumer protection) is equivalent to that provided with respect to offline commerce.

The subgroup shall carry out the responsibilities and tasks identified below on behalf of the Working Group.

Within 60 days, the group will invite the public to identify laws or regulations that may obstruct or hinder electronic commerce, including those laws and regulations that should be modified on a priority basis because they are currently inhibiting electronic commerce that is otherwise ready to take place.

The group also will invite the public to recommend how government should adapt public interest regulations to the electronic environment. These recommendations should discuss ways to ensure that public interest protections for online transactions will be equivalent to that now provided for offline transactions; maintain technology neutrality; minimize legal and regulatory barriers to electronic commerce; and, take into account cross-border transactions that are now likely to occur electronically.

The group will invite representatives of state and local governments to identify laws and regulations at the state and local level that may impose a barrier to electronic transactions or otherwise to the conduct of commerce online or by electronic means, to discuss how state and local governments are revising such laws or regulations to facilitate electronic commerce while protecting the public interest, and to discuss the potential for consistent approaches to these issues.

Each federal agency, including independent regulatory agencies, is requested to identify any provision of law administered by the agency, or any regulation issued by the agency, that may impose a barrier to electronic transactions or otherwise impede the conduct of commerce online or by electronic means, and to recommend how the laws or regulations may be revised to allow electronic commerce to proceed while maintaining protection of the public interest.

The Working Group will review the findings of the subgroup and report to the President sometime next year.