Facilitating Government Business On-line: The Electronic Transactions Act 1999

Govemment business on-lime as well & the generic electronic business (ebusmess) and electronic commerce (t-commerce) are major concerns for governments, businesses and citizen; alike. In particular the common objective of all parties is to mak e such elect onic transactions efficient, effective and acceptable. But there are barriers in achieving these objectives. While ecommerce is becoming an essential part of bismess developments nationally and internationally, consumer confidence is laedng. This is because of fears of insecure payments and receipt systems, egal protection and jurisdictional problems when trading in borderless cyber-s)ace, the fear of the loss of personal privacy, the resolution of on-line disputes aid the issue of taxation of electronic transactions. This article presents as assessment of tie Australian government’s response in addressing these issues especially in regad to doing government business online. To build more confidence iin e-business the government’s aim is to lead by example so that all Commonwealth agencies become fully engaged in electronic transactions by 2001. To encour age this development the government has passed relevant legislation that will create an envronment in which confidence in ecommerce can prosper. Howeveer, there are problems confronting this policy and an evaluation is required of whetlher it may achieve a high degree of confidence in e-commerce. A background to tlhe Internet aid e-commerce in Australia is given in the first section before discusssing the government’s major legislation — the Electronic Transaction Act (ETA) — in the next section. The ETA’s raison d'etre is then assessed in the third sectnon in the ligit of its workability, practicality and technicality before a concluding section which gives an overall evaluation of the ETA.