Perhaps the most important truth about establishing E-business as an economic force in any jurisdiction is that it will take a very broad range of policy reforms to create an environment and infrastructure that is conducive to both foreign investment and local adoption.

In my experience, as an international e-business lawyer who has played a role in creating some of the most successful e-businesses in the world, I think the Bermuda Government's E-business Green Paper does an excellent job of laying out the broad policy topics for E-business success that will require further consideration, albeit it arriving quite late to the international e-business party.

The Green Paper's review of those policy considerations is thorough and provides excellent statistical information about what is actually going on in Bermuda's e-business space, which is an essential part of any economic and social policy reform.

However, knowing the time that such policy proposals will take to formulate and implement, and the inescapable fact that the world of digital business moves at "cyber speed", it is all the more surprising and disappointing that so many of the Green Paper's recommendations were actually made to the Bermuda Government five years ago (next month), and that the Green Paper now, and at the end of an entire term of Government, so tentatively (almost hesitantly) advances many of the proposals that are essential to the development of e-business.

In July of 1998, BIBA showed tremendous leadership and foresight when it sponsored the creation of an e-commerce advisory report that was submitted to the then Minister of Finance, Grant Gibbons.

That report, which was not acted on due to a then immanent election, contained a total of 76 recommendations for policy reform in Bermuda, all directed at facilitating the emergence of e-business as an essential part of the Bermuda economy.

Those 1998 recommendations, many of which are now also advanced in the Green Paper, include: evaluating how customs duties on information technology could be lowered or eliminated to encourage e-business investment; reforming work permit entitlements to accommodate the specific needs of highly specialised e-business managers;

The need to consider consumer protection for online activities; requiring exempt companies or foreign investors to fully train, and transfer jobs to Bermudians, as a part of any entitlement to either operate from Bermuda or receive the benefit of any Government incentives;

And, the need to revise and adapt laws concerning money laundering, intellectual property and data protection to promote the development of e-business (including relevant copyright law reform) - all under the advisory report's proposal that all 76 recommendations be followed with a "work plan... whereby those initiatives are prioritised in terms of time and scope".

Given the intervening five years since the advisory report was submitted to the Bermuda Government to help promote the development of e-business, it is a shame that so many of those very necessary and urgent proposals have only now found their way into the Green Paper, and on such a tentative and still on a "work plan" basis.

Perhaps the best illustration of that tentative approach is the Green Paper's consideration of how customs duties applicable to required technology equipment is related to e-business investment incentives (a fairly well established consideration in other e-business jurisdictions).

Instead of a clear and forthright proposal to quickly evaluate the direct relationship between technology importation costs and Bermuda's e-business investment competitiveness, the Green Paper rather hesitantly proposes that, "...consideration be given, perhaps by the proposed Information Age Forum, ...for discussion... on proposals", concerning that topic. Now, that doesn't sound like e-business at cyber speed to me?

But, does the ultimate delivery of such a thoughtful and comprehensive Green Paper too slowly and perhaps too tentatively mean "too little, too late"? No, not at all.

Despite the crash of e-business capital markets, the amount and value of commercial activities in the E-business sector have continued to increase globally since the 1998 advisory report was submitted, and it is hard to find a knowledgeable analyst who says that will change.

E-business, and the use of electronic gadgets (whether cell phones, computers, or the Internet) to carry on business, is here to stay. While the global value of E-business transactions in 2000 is estimated to have been around $375 billion, 2004 estimates place the global value of e-business transactions as high as $3.5 trillion.

Forrester Research has said that E-business in the US alone in 2003 will grow to $1.3 trillion. I believe that pace of growth will continue, and do so primarily because of the increasing adoption of Business to Business uses of the Internet (including B2B exchanges, e-procurement services, media storage and distribution services, distributive computing over the Internet, contingency services such as disaster recovery, and infrastructure that processes a very high volume of small transactions), as well as due to the related use of the Internet to consolidate global information processing systems.

Prudently, that is exactly where Bermuda should focus its e-business policy initiatives, and that is what (for the most part) the Green Paper recommends.

It will, indeed, be the value-add e-business services which support commercial and administrative efficiencies for international businesses that present the greatest E-business opportunity for Bermuda, and the Green Paper is a very good starting point for that initiative.

As for arriving at the world e-business party rather late, with only a suggested "Action Plan" (rather than "work plan") in hand, and having arrived rather timidly at that... Well, now that it is here, the Green Paper looks very good to me and should be forgiven on those two scores as being none-the-less needed and very welcomed.

@EDITRULE:

Duncan Card is a Bermudian lawyer who practices in both Toronto and Bermuda, and who is recognised by Euromoney Magazine, American Lawyer Magazine, and the International Whose Who of E-commerce Law (UK) as one of the leading E-business and IT lawyers in the world.