2001 Press Release
Singapore, 20 April 2001 - A delegation of TEDI (Trade Electronic Data Interchange) from Japan met the five members of the Pan-Asian E-Commerce Alliance during the fourth Steering Committee Meeting in Hong Kong.
The Japanese delegates demonstrated to the Pan-Asian Alliance members how the new TEDI system was designed to replace most of the paper documents that are required for the movement of goods e.g. Bills of Lading. Substantial work in key areas such as the legal framework, trusted third parties, encryption and digital signatures have been done. TEDI intends to collaborate with the Pan-Asian Alliance members to bring the project to fruition.
Looking forward to heightened e-commerce activities in the region, Mr V Mathivanan, CEO of SNS, said, "Japan is an important country for the realization of virtual cross-border trading, given the high volume of trading activities within Asia."
During the quarterly Steering Committee Meeting on 18 and 19 April 2001, hosted by Tradelink Electronic Commerce Limited, significant progress was reported by the working groups in the following areas:
- Secure cross-border transaction services: Ready to test for secure document exchanges based on agreed cross-border transaction test plan; commence commercial/operations study for rollout in 2002
- Mutual Recognition of Public Key Infrastructure: Develop Alliance Certificate Policy as the basis for mutual recognition of members' keys upon engaging a consultancy firm, and to confirm a technical and operational solution to support the mutually recognised keys
- Pan-Asian portal: Proposed portal framework with initial focus on trader directory adopted; to further agree on detailed specifications and business model for rollout in latter half of 2001.
The Steering Committee has also resolved to set up two new working groups. The first group will concentrate on the development of services to enable shippers, forwarders, logistics service providers and carriers in the region to conduct end-to-end tracking of cargoes and consignments handled by multi-modal transport. The second group will explore the TEDI initiative on its practicability.
Jointly issued by CIECC, KTNET and SNS, Trade-Van and Tradelink.