WIREDGOV

techUK's Giles Derrington talks about his experience at UNCTAD's E-Commerce week and what it means for post-Brexit trade.

With Brexit on the horizon, international forums such as the WTO, UN and OECD may come to have greater importance for the UK in our near future.  Agreements such as the WTO’s Information Technology Agreement, or UNESCO’s work towards an Academic Mobility Convention will be vital in underpinning UK work at a global level.

With this in mind, last week I headed to the United Nations Convention on Trade and Development’s E-Commerce week, to take part in discussions around a range of issues facing new and emerging parts of the tech sector. 

The primary reason for my attendance was to participate in a panel on the future of platforms offering Business to Business (B2B) services.  While e-commerce in goods is well established and well understood, services offers a whole new set of challenges, from how qualifications are recognised to the different service level expectations that individual buyers may have.

This is something techUK has a role in helping develop, for example through the Cyber Exchange project run with the Cyber Growth Partnership, which helps both businesses and Government identify suppliers in cutting edge cyber security services.

The panel included perspectives from two platforms offering services in the B2B market, IndiaMart and Global Rus Trade, who are a growing platform in Russia.  What was clear from both is just how much time and effort it takes to create a directory of sellers who are willing to engage through platforms.  It is striking how much of this work will continue to rely on building personal relationships and offering high quality traditional customer service support, be that through call centres or face to face networks.  What that means for global scalability is that building the domestic market before seeking to go global is seen as far more important when seeking to facilitate the sale of services than it is in trade for goods. This is an important lesson for the UK as it seeks to develop its Global Britain agenda.

The panel also echoed the view apparent throughout the conference, that international agreement and cooperation can be key to opening up markets.  Engaging in developing these agreements will be an important part of the UK’s trade work post-Brexit.  However, doing so will require learning a whole new language of trade diplomacy that goes far beyond what has been needed while we have been part of EU institutions.  The UK will have to recognise that consensus building at international level requires give and take and, most importantly, time.  Even where rules may determine that the UK can make its own decisions (such as in placing our schedule of tariffs at WTO), the reality is that acting in a unilateral way can quickly burn important bridges.  It is clear that our presence and participation in international forums will have to significantly increase post-Brexit if we are to continue to be seen as a thought leader, particularly in developing areas such as tech.

The conference also showed what many in the tech sector already know, that the UK cannot and should not assume that our position as a leader in tech will remain in perpetuity unless we continue to evolve and adapt.  There is a huge amount of competition, including from emerging economies, where mobile connectivity has transformed internet usage, who are actively thinking about the role they can play in developing e-commerce.  More established non-western economies, such as India, are outpacing the UK in key areas due to a large domestic market and significant in-country skills and expertise that allows for development at-scale.

For the UK this means we need to be much more willing to focus on what we are truly good at and where we can have a competitive edge.  One area where Government can help this development is in regulation.  The UK is still seen as an exporter of sensible regulation, and in areas like FinTech other countries have looked to us for how to create high-quality frameworks that protect consumers while encouraging innovation.  New Government initiatives, such as the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation and the Regulators’ Pioneers Fund have the capacity to develop gold-standard regulation in areas such as AI.

Doing what we are good at also means Government being clearer about our national priorities for trade.  When seeking a competitive edge, particularly in the negotiation of future trade deals, a broad-brush approach will not work.  That is why techUK has pushed for Government to develop a clear, concrete trade policy, that seeks to identify what Government will prioritise in future negotiations and the domestic sectors it believes may need defending.  This goes beyond simply identifying key markets. It requires developing a better understanding of what kind of economy the UK intends to be post-Brexit.

These conversations are in their early stages, but are critical to ensuring that the UK emerges from Brexit ready and able to play a substantive role in global policy development.