Okinawa Charter on Global Information Society (G-8 Summit, July 2000)
[The heads of state of the Group of Eight major industrialized countries, meeting in Okinawa, Japan in July 2000 for their annual summit, called for an international effort to eliminate the digital divide. They agreed that the following key principles will promote the development of the Internet and maximize its social and economic benefits:]
Seizing Digital Opportunities
6. The potential benefits of IT in spurring competition, promoting
enhanced productivity, and creating and sustaining economic growth and jobs
hold significant promise. Our task is not only to stimulate and facilitate
the transition to an information society, but also to reap its full
economic, social and cultural benefits. To achieve this, it is important to
build on the
following key foundations:
- Economic and structural reforms to foster an environment of openness,
efficiency, competition and innovation, supported by policies focusing on
adaptable labour markets, human resource development, and social cohesion;
- Sound macroeconomic management to help businesses and consumers plan
confidently for the future and exploit the advantages of new information
technologies;
- Development of information networks offering fast, reliable, secure and
affordable access through competitive market conditions and through related
innovation in network technology, services and applications;
- Development of human resources capable of responding to the demands of
the information age through education and lifelong learning and addressing
the rising demand for IT professionals in many sectors of our economy;
- Active utilisation of IT by the public sector and the promotion of online
delivery of services, which are essential to ensure improved accessibility
to government by all citizens.
7. The private sector plays a leading role in the development of
information and communications networks in the information society. But it
is up to governments to create a predictable, transparent and
non-discriminatory policy and regulatory environment necessary for the
information society. It is important to avoid undue regulatory
interventions that would hinder productive private-sector initiatives in
creating an IT-friendly environment. We should ensure that
IT-related rules and practices are responsive to revolutionary changes in
economic transactions, while taking into account the principles of
effective public-private sector partnership, transparency and technological
neutrality. The rules must be predictable and inspire business and consumer
confidence. In order to maximise the social and economic benefits of the
Information Society, we agree on the following key principles and
approaches and commend them to others:
- Continue to promote competition in and open markets for the provision of
information technology and telecommunications products and services,
including non-discriminatory and cost-oriented interconnection for basic
telecommunications;
- Protection of intellectual property rights for IT-related technology is
vital to promoting IT-related innovations, competition and diffusion of new
technology; we welcome the joint work already underway among intellectual
property authorities and further encourage our experts to discuss future
direction in this area;
- Governments' renewed commitment to using software in full compliance with
intellectual property rights protection is also important;
- A number of services, including telecommunications, transportation, and
package delivery are critical to the information society and economy and
improving their efficiency will maximise benefits; customs and other
trade-related procedures are also important to foster an IT-friendly
environment;
- Facilitate cross-border e-commerce by promoting further liberalisation and
improvement in networks and related services and procedures in the context
of a strong World Trade Organisation (WTO) framework, continued work on
e-commerce in the WTO and other international fora, and application of
existing WTO trade disciplines to e-commerce;
- Consistent approaches to taxation of e-commerce based on the conventional
principles, including neutrality, equity and simplicity, and other key
elements agreed in the work of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development
(OECD);
- Continuing the practice of not imposing customs duties on electronic
transmissions, pending the review at the next WTO Ministerial Conference;
- Promotion of market-driven standards including, for example, interoperable
technical standards;
- Promote consumer trust in the electronic marketplace consistent with OECD
guidelines and provide equivalent consumer protection in the online world
as in the offline world, including through effective self-regulatory
initiatives such as online codes of conduct, trustmarks and other
reliability programmes,and explore options to alleviate the difficulties
faced by consumers in cross-border disputes, including use of alternative
dispute resolution mechanisms;
- Development of effective and meaningful privacy protection for consumers,
as well as protection of privacy in processing personal data, while
safeguarding the free flow of information,and;
- Further development and effective functioning of electronic
authentication, electronic signature, cryptography, and other means to
ensure security and certainty of transactions.
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