Industry awaits legal guidelines on e-commerce

New risk management mechanisms will need to be enforced Leonard Neill THE CURRENT legal framework in South Africa governing the processing of export documentation is tailored for paper-based transactions, and must be revised with the advent of e-commerce. But even then there will be a need for the freight industry to apply strict self-regulation to meet all requirements. This was the view put before the Exporters' Club of South Africa's Johannesburg Chapter by Mark Heyink, head of KPMG Legal Risk Management, at a gathering held at the Siemens Auditorium in Midrand last week. New legislation governing e-commerce is currently being drawn up by government, but is at a 'highly confidential' stage, although it is expected to be tabled before the closure of the current parliamentary sessions, he said. As a result there are no guidelines as yet on how the regulations will be enforced. "History tells us, however, that laws often fail when they are proved inadequate in revolutionary times, and these are the times we are living in at present in the e-commerce world. Not all of our commercial activities are prescribed by law, and many of them rely on good business practice designed to manage risk. So, even when the laws are in place, we will need to look at new risk management mechanisms." Heyink believes that the new e-commerce law will provide only a framework covering agreement on industry practices. "Many people take it for granted that a law is there to be followed But in the development of common law in South Africa and taking into account the accelerating pace of change in which e-commerce has been involved, there are few cases relating to IT which can be used as guidelines. As a result laws have taken a time to develop." An example is the area of secrecy in internet transactions, a sector of law that has not developed fully and which will have to be looked at very closely, with more regulations being developed on an international base rather than at domestic level. Legislation, he said, is unlikely to be able to accommodate all the regulatory issues and, in the interim, self-regulation within the industry will be more important than ever.