The second e-Asia Week, an annual electronic commerce exhibition and forum for the Asia-Pacific region, took place on Sept. 22-24 at the Taipei headquarters of the state-owned Chinese Petroleum Corp. The event encompassed three core activities: the eAsia Exhibition, eAsia Forum, and an awards presentation.

The event is jointly organized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), Asia-Pacific E-Commerce Preparatory Committee, Institute for Information Industry (III), and Asia Pacific Council for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (AFACT), with support from the United Nations.

The e-Asia Forum attracted 1,500 people from the local and foreign industrial and academic sectors, making it the largest event of its kind in the entire region this year. Most of the participants were from Taiwan's manufacturing, trade and commerce, finance, and logistics industries; other attendees included professionals from AFACT member countries and management-level personnel from industry and academe, information-purchasing managers, and professors and graduate students from e-commerce-related departments of technical colleges.

The organizers are confident that Taiwan businesses will gain new ideas, new inspiration, and bigger "digital opportunities" from the event's activities.

At the forum Chen Chao-yi, director general of the MOEA's Industrial Development Bureau (IDB), commented that strong support from AFACT had enabled Taiwan to successfully hold the first e-Asia Week last year, which drew wide attention and acclaim from all over the world. That first edition gave Taiwan a better understanding of trends in e-commerce application in the international arena, the director general noted, and also won the island the recognition of AFACT member nations for the development of its services and for the opportunities the event offered for partnerships with other countries.

As a result of these achievements, local companies are finding more opportunities available for the development of e-commerce applications, and for the strengthening of the competitive edge of major local industries in the international arena.

More e-Commerce Opportunities

This year's e-Forum was organized around three themes: "Create Digital Opportunities in an Information Society for All," "Explore Digital Opportunities in Global Commerce," and "Explore Digital Opportunities in Global Business."

Topics addressed included shrinking Taiwan's digital divide and creating digital opportunities, Internet security, new B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) business opportunities, planning and management, and trends in the development of information technology for e-commerce applications such as radio-frequency identification (RFID). The forum also featured speeches by leading scholars and industry leaders from such leading-edge companies as Dell Computer, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Accenture, HP, Oracle, Microsoft, and Nimble Microsystems.

The organizers hope that the experience and know-how shared by the forum's speakers can help domestic participants gain new information about technology and trends in the industry, thus facilitating the development of the island's e-commerce-related businesses and bringing them new opportunities for international cooperation and market development.

During a panel discussion held on the first day of eAsia Week, Wang Ting-an, an information-technology specialist with the Executive Yuan, noted that "digital poverty" is still pervasive, especially among the have-nots of the economically underdeveloped world, and that economically developing countries still suffer from a lack of digital knowledge. In Taiwan, he said, there is a digital divide between the ethnic-majority and aboriginal populations.

"Contrary to real poverty," Wang said, "digital poverty is curable with the aid of corporate contributions and government intervention in the form of economic aid."

In his view, the gap in digital knowledge between the poor and rich countries is widening as a result of inequality in digital opportunity. This means that Taiwan and the rest of the world must work to carry out the "Action Plan for Bridging the Digital Divide" strategy, which encompasses three main goals: providing equal opportunity, increasing industrial competitiveness, and gaining the knowledge and capability to participate in the international community.

The Problem of Digital Poverty

One of the prominent foreign participants was Ray Walker, advisor to the chair of UN/CEFACT and founder of the non-profit Information Poverty Organization. He pinpointed the main issue in digital poverty as the lack of digital access, and delineated four major constraints that lead to digital poverty: a deficiency of telecommunication infrastructure (both fixed and mobile), a lack of knowledge in the realm of education, quality for broadband subscribers, and affordability of Internet access. Taiwan currently ranks third in the world in digital penetration with 79%, behind Japan with 82% and Sweden with 85%.

In a roundtable discussion on the afternoon of the second day of the eAsia Forum, some discussants cited trust as a major requirement for the formation of e-commerce operations.

Ken Calhoon, vice president of International Trust and Safety at eBay Inc., spoke about his company's global achievements and how it has managed to succeed. "Ebay is an example of a global platform, with a global database of items and users," he explained. "Users have full visibility of virtually all the items on site. People can find things that are difficult to find in their domestic markets. There is also great value, especially if you think of sellers exporting products from Taiwan or Hong Kong, Singapore to the U.S. or European marketplaces. There is great value to be had in those marketplaces."

Calhoon estimated that 10% of eBay's total merchandise volume is cross-border trade, where the seller is located in a different country from the buyer. That, he went on, "is a very important part of our business, and one that we think is exciting. It points to promise as e-commerce becomes a global activity. Basically, at eBay we manage trust and safety; we have a whole group that is actually focused on managing trust and keeping the site safe.

"We're creating a platform where strangers are trading and so there has got to be a level of trust so the buyers can get the goods and the sellers can get their money. If you don't fundamentally have that trust, it's actually very difficult for someone like eBay to succeed."

Lots of Worries

With all these new ways of doing business, agreed Scott Cooper, manager of Technology Policy for the Hewlett Packard Corp., there are a lot of things to worry about—and trust is the most important of all: "Of all the issues that concern us, perhaps trust and security, and consumer confidence, are the issues that we are all working with in this global marketplace."

On the evening of Sept. 24—the last night of the event—the organizers, with the support of AFACT, presented 12 awards in four categories to firms and government units with outstanding achievement in carrying out electronic-operation projects. The four categories were "Trade Facilitation," "Electronic Business in Public Sector," "Electronic Business in Private Sector," and "Bridging Digital Divide."

In the Trade Facilitation category, the awards went to the "eTrade" project (for facilitating international trade in India) launched by India's Department of Commerce; the "PTP Community Systems" project initiated by Malaysia's Port of Tanjung Pelepas; and the "Cert of Origin" project carried out by Singapore's CrimsonLogic Corp.

The Electronic Business in Public Sector prizes were awarded to the "eBAS-A Successful Government EIP" project of Taiwan's Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics; the "Vitamin C (Cash)-Supply Chain e-Financing" project launched by Taiwan's Department of Industrial Technology, Ministry of Economic Affairs; and the "Electronic Bidding Core System for Public Procurement" Project of the Japan Construction Information Center.

Awards in the Electronic Business and Private sector category went to the "Pioneering Semiconductor Value Chain Integration TSMC-ASE e-Supply Chain" project conducted by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE) of Taiwan; the "Internet EDI Security System based on UN-CEFACT" project of Japan's Meteora-System Co.; and the "Automat@hsbc" project carried out by Malaysia's HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad.

In the Bridging Digital Divide category, the prizes were awarded to the "Bridging the Digital Divide in an e-ERA" project sponsored by Taiwan's government-backed Institute for Information Industry; the "eSuvidha" project carried out by the Indian government's National Informatics Center and Department of Information Technology; and the "eBario-Providing Equal Access to ICTs for Rural Communities" project sponsored by Malaysia's Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.