Chapter 5 - Starting Down the Information Highway

Summary

APEC had the rare good fortune of being a child of the information age. I was convinced that we should take advantage of the situation by creating the APEC Communications and Database System (ACDS). A user-friendly APEC communications system would tie the APEC countries together and help to give the organization a sense of identity. To do this, the ACDS would need to be flexible, upgradable, cost-effective, and capable of expanding with APEC. I felt strongly that it was time for APEC to start down the information superhighway!

A Swedish friend once said, “You always pay the most for your best ideas.” This was certainly the case in my efforts to bring the Secretariat into the information age. To begin with, 1 was unaware of how stiff the competition was in the telecommunications industry. Clark Norton, a colleague in the State Department and a member of the Telecommunications Working Group, suggested that it would be a good idea to have some of the representatives of U.S. telecommunications and computer companies in Singapore provide free advice on a communications and database system for APEC.

When the word of this got to the telecommunications companies and officials in the other member countries, many additional volunteers came forward. The result was that what had been envisioned as a “small, ad hoc group” became a 22-person APEC Telecommunications and Database Management Task Force with representatives from Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and the United States. The Task Force met in Singapore in February and produced a very useful concept paper on an appropriate communications and database system for APEC. The paper addressed two major tasks: 1) to identify procedures for facilitating electronic messaging capability for use by the APEC Secretariat, member countries, Working Groups and the general public; and 2) to develop procedures for facilitating electronic access to existing and future databases as well as other commercial, international and national databases.