The Pacific E-commerce Strategy and Roadmap and Pacific Aid for Trade Strategy 2020-2025 need to be revisited to form part of a holistic digital development strategy that reflects the values espoused in the Framework for Pacific Regionalism. There should be particular focus on measures relating to data, marketplaces, and fintech that balance their economic, social, cultural, commercial and political dimensions.

A revised strategy that delivers the needs of Pacific peoples, communities and governments needs to be informed by principles of cooperation and relationships with other developing countries and, where appropriate, triangular South-South-North relationships, and not reinforce dependencies on foreign technology corporations, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon or AliBaba, or on developed country donors and institutions.

E-commerce must be reconceived outside the narrow lens of trade rules, which are utterly inappropriate for a development and values-based digital strategy. The decisions that Pacific Island Countries make on participating in trade negotiations must be informed by robust analyses of the potential impacts of digital trade rules on their development and their sovereignty, recognising that the more of those rules they adopt, the more constraints will be placed on their options and the more difficult it will be to remedy problems and failures when they occur.

Competing superpowers of the US, and its allies, and China must refrain from pressuring Pacific Islands Countries to adopt the digital regimes of one or the other. Control over the location and use of data, the choice of digital technologies, the nationality of service and technology providers, and the approach to regulation are crucial to maximising the independence of Pacific nations. They must not be fettered by conflicting obligations that are not in their interests, including through trade agreements or arrangements that are designed according to the model of one superpower or the other.

A revised digital development strategy needs to establish control over data as a priority and a means for asserting and implementing regional data sovereignty. Consistent with the South-South cooperation approach, this should draw on experiences from other developing countries, such as India and Rwanda, and could seek donor support from a developed country like Switzerland to examine the merits its model of integrated data spaces in areas like transport or energy.

Regulatory cooperation should draw on experiences from countries and regions in the Global South that have more advanced digital regimes, including the ASEAN and the African Union regions. Although the precautionary objective of the regulatory sandbox is prudent, and its regional basis could be helpful to small island states with limited regulatory capacity, it will not capture the more dangerous financial innovations that actively bypass regulatory oversight. Nor will it assess the risks associated with dependency on existing platforms, marketplaces, and payment systems that are controlled by dominant technology transnationals like Amazon, Apple, Alibaba, Facebook. More may be gained by investing that research capacity and resources into collaborative research on those products, technologies and services underway in other developing countries.

Australia, New Zealand and the EU need to stop pressing their agendas onto Pacific Island Countries through their aid funding, appointment of consultants, training programmes for trade officials, and pressure to adopt trade rules that are designed by and for their economic and commercial interests. If donors genuinely have Pacific Island Countries’ development interests at heart they should provide no-strings funding to support a genuine digital development strategy, including cooperation and partnership arrangements with other developing countries with whom they can collaborate.

Digital-related commitments by Pacific Island Countries in PACER-Plus need to be suspended and revised. Australia and New Zealand need to set aside the sweeping trade in services obligations that Pacific Island Countries adopted in PACER Plus at a time when the implications of digitalisation could not reasonably have been understood. If Pacific Island Countries want to act according to those commitments because they believe it will benefit them, they should be free to do so without the threat of a dispute. Equally, they should be free to choose a different path.

Develop a regional digital governance and implementation mechanism that is independent of the PIFS, starting with a regional digital ministers’ committee. The broader digital development strategy, including the e-commerce element, should be overseen by a new group of Forum Island Country Ministers and officials that operates independently of donors and their influence, and replaces the current structure of Trade Ministers, trade officials in the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, and private sector and donor sub-committees.

Launch a scoping study to examine options for a holistic digital development strategy that is based on Pacific needs, values and aspirations. The study should draw on lessons and experiences from developing countries that are more advanced in addressing these challenges and examine the potential South-South and South-South-North partnerships to share technologies, knowledge, regulatory models, innovations, and training. A relational cooperative model based on Pacific values, in place of a market model supported by coercive trade rules, offers the Pacific region a much sounder foundation for the 21st century than the current Pacific E-commerce Strategy.