The Role of Government in Internet Commerce : Views from the Fields

The Australian Government has introduced, through the National Office of the Information Economy, a number of initiatives to foster Internet commerce nationally and, particularly through its Networking-the-Nation program, to create economic opportunities in the rural and regional areas of the country. It is important to those regions themselves and to the nation as a whole that rural areas return to economic sustainability. This paper reports the findings from a recent study of 46 organisations which use Internet commerce, of which 11 are based in regional Australia. While the perspective of rural-regional enterprises does not significantly differ from that of their metropolitan counterparts, they face some additional problems in access to resources and support. Their experiences of using Internet commerce and their perceptions of the appropriate role of government in stimulating and regulating Internet commerce suggest ways in which Government strategy for regional sustainability via Internet commerce should be refined.