Electronic Transactions (Amendment) Bill gazetted

The Electronic Transactions (Amendment) Bill 2003 (in PDF), which seeks to provide an up-to-date legal framework for the conduct of e-business, was published in the Gazette today (June 13).

A spokesman for the Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau said that the Bill adopted a technology-neutral approach in promoting electronic transactions generally and in defining signature requirements specifically.

The Bill proposes to amend the existing Electronic Transactions Ordinance (ETO) to clearly provide for the following:

*for transactions under a rule of law with signature requirement, if Government entities are involved, digital signature will continue to be required;

*for all other cases, the signature requirement under law can be met by any form of electronic signature, subject to certain conditions relating to reliability and appropriateness and consent of the parties concerned; and

*in the case of contract, if the contract contains a signature, the parties may use electronic signature.

"Under the Bill, all types of electronic signature are accepted except in the case of transactions with Government, where only digital signature is accepted for practical reasons.

"The technology-neutral approach will enable the legislative framework and future development of e-business within it to better keep pace with technological advancement," the spokesman said.

To remove legal impediments to electronic transactions and E-government, the Bill also proposes the acceptance of electronic records as satisfying the requirement in law of serving documents by post or in person in specified cases.

This new provision will apply initially to specified provisions of the Landlord and Tenant (Consolidation) Ordinance, the Rating Ordinance and the Government Rent (Assessment and Collection) Ordinance. Its application will be expanded over time through an ongoing process to cover other appropriate legal provisions.

Under the ETO, certification authorities (CA) applying for recognition need to engage an independent and qualified assessor to submit to the Government an assessment report on its compliance with the relevant requirements.

The Bill will simplify this procedure so that the requirement to engage independent assessors will only apply to the assessment of the CA's operation relating to trustworthiness, such as system security, procedural safeguard and financial viability, etc., whereas other operational aspects may be dealt with through a statutory declaration to be made by a responsible officer of the concerned CA.

A recognised CA will also be required to furnish an assessment report and/or a statutory declaration as appropriate if there are major changes to its operation between two annual assessments.

The spokesman said that a public consultation was conducted in March and April 2002 on the review of the ETO. The 40 submissions received were generally supportive, and specific comments have been reflected in the Bill where appropriate.

"The Bill seeks to further advance Government's policy objective of facilitating electronic transactions, and will be conducive to wider adoption of paperless transactions and e-business in the community," the spokesman said.

The Bill will be introduced into the Legislative Council on June 25, 2003.

Friday, June 13, 2003

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