Chapter 3. Country case studies
3.5 Focus Southeast Asia: The ASEAN region
3.5.2.2 Role of Singapore in e-ASEAN
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Surprisingly, none of the documents and ICT-related policy frameworks and guidelines touches upon artificial intelligence technologies specifically. However, to jointly create a digital-friendly intra-ASEAN policy environment, the ASEAN
Economic Ministers (AEM) Meeting in September 2019 concluded with the adoption of the ASEAN Digital Integration Framework Action Plan 2019-2025 (AEM, 2019) to propel policy streamlining and transparency of domestic laws with particular regard to intellectual property rights and “conducive environment[s] to foster the growth of e-Marketplace and eCommerce platforms” (p. 5). TELSOM is in charge of monitoring and updating the timelines for this ongoing endeavor. For instance, the action plan aims to come up with an ASEAN data classification scheme to categorize cross-border flowing data depending on their sensitivity so that ASEAN member states are provided with clear classifications to adapt and model their legal system. So far, the designated workgroups conduct “voluntary internal and peer reviews of national laws/regulations on e-commerce” (AEM, 2019, p. 7) in order to effectively
implement, for instance, the ASEAN Payments Policy Framework for Cross-Border Real-Time Retail Payments by 2020, upon which interoperable electronic payment systems and corresponding legal conditions are to be realized by 2021 (AEM, 2019, p.
16). To facilitate emerging platform systems as well as foster existing booming ones such as aforementioned online retail platform Lazada or multi-service application Gojek, improved regulations and coordination mechanisms are planned to be
implemented by 2021 for the sake of digital accountability and liability in the ASEAN area. According to the ASEAN Digital Integration Framework Action Plan 2019-2025 (AEM, 2019), this is key for inclusive and competitive physical as well as digital supply chains, particularly for integrating small and medium-sized ASEAN
enterprises in order to participate at a low-cost. Thus, ICT infrastructure enhancement is to be improved for overall ASEAN peoples’ socioeconomic participation, as well as enhancing and fostering existing platforms for peoples’ integration to form an
ASEAN “Digital Service Hub” by 2025 (AEM, 2019, p. 25). Moreover, this emphasizes the people-centered (ICT) development approach for the action plan intersects with the ASEAN Strategic Action Plan for SME Development 2016-2025.
3.5.2.2 Role of Singapore in e-ASEAN
As the leading economy among ASEAN countries in terms of GDP per capita and general wealth of the society, Singapore is actively offering to share its best practices
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with its neighbors. For instance, the Singapore Cooperation Program (SCP) is a governmental series of technical assistance and skill development projects to bring together mid- to senior-level government representatives to provide a platform for knowledge-sharing on Singapore’s best practices in policymaking (SCP, 2019).
Through workshops, lectures, and discussion rounds, participants are gaining input to develop skills and the ability to address challenges posed by current global
economics, and formulate and implement adequate reforms fit for their home countries to efficiently leverage and integrate available technologies in their native institutions. According to the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI) launched in 2000, the beneficiaries of these particular assistance programs are the new CLMV member countries for the sake of their development and integration into ASEAN (ASEAN, 2016). In the face of the digital economy, the SCP offers recurring courses within the scope of its ‘enabling actions’ track such as “Developing Digital
Government Strategies” or “Industrial Revolution 4.0 and Its Impact on Policy Formulation” (ASEAN, 2017; SCP, 2019). The latter, for example, emphasizes:
“… the impact of technology developments and the digital economy on work, manufacturing, the labour market and security … to equip participants with the knowledge, skills and ability to plan, formulate and implement appropriate and good institutional and policy reforms and strategies to meet the challenges brought about by developments in technology.” (ASEAN, 2017)
Thus, the strength of SCP projects may lie in the fact that human resources are Singapore’s most valuable driver of growth and value-added, which provides the smaller CLMV nations with extraordinarily well-developed knowledge and skills in managing people-centered approaches to wealth and labor allocation.
3.5.3 Regulation and commercialization
There are no unifying regulations regarding data protection across ASEAN countries and provisions differ territorially with Vietnam and Malaysia exempting public sectors and the Philippines setting out different data-treatment regulations depending on citizenship (Rooney, 2018). However, rather than through a sociopolitical impetus, economic cooperation is the main driving force to put forward assimilation of data privacy frameworks, for instance, through the Cross-Border Rules System set in place by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), requiring business activities to comply with the APEC Privacy Framework (2017). The framework provides member
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states with basic guiding principles of privacy protection to ensure a certain extent of synchronized information laws to avoid trade disruption through cross-border
information flows. These principles have been incorporated in most jurisdictions in the region, namely Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and China, as discussed in the respective chapters. ASEAN states, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia have also implemented information protection regulations pertaining to the APEC guiding principles; however, these principles are vaguely formulated and mainly highlight the importance of business facilitating mechanisms to maintain the cross-border flow of information while protecting individual’s rights. This points toward the negative regional economic integration model regarding business-driven data policy formulation to remove trade barriers. This is reinforced by the fact that the APEC Privacy guidelines consist of principles rather than stipulations, giving enough leeway to APEC members for adequate policymaking according to their needs and economic stage of development. This leeway can be deemed conducive to creating a data-sensitive but also a bigtech-embracing environment of digital ecosystems in ASEAN, APEC, and the Asia-Pacific, considering that members include advanced economies such as the U.S., Canada, and Australia, and other less developed and emerging economies in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam or Indonesia:
“The Framework specifically addresses the importance of protecting privacy while maintaining information flows, as well as issues of particular relevance to APEC member economies. Its practical and distinctive approach is to focus attention on consistent rather than identical privacy protection. In so doing, it seeks to reconcile privacy with business and societal needs and commercial interests, and at the same time, accords due recognition to cultural and other diversities that exist within member economies.” (APEC, 2017, pp. 3-4) Streamlining individual member states’ privacy laws towards consistency aims at establishing consumer and corporate trust in cross-border flows of personal
information (Rooney, 2018). As for ASEAN states Cambodia, Lao, and Myanmar, who are not members of APEC, it can be conjectured that their commitment to formulating information privacy policies in the future will be largely influenced and provided by those partners whose preferential treatment they enjoy and regional production networks they are involved in, as well as establishing trustworthy policy frameworks to attract investors and guarantee compliance and stability. Considering the expansion of intraregional trade benefiting from the fact that larger and more mature Asian economies such as China, Japan, and Korea, are upgrading within the
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value chain while offshoring some of the labor-intensive phases of production to ASEAN APEC- and non-APEC member countries (Asian Development Bank
Institute, 2014), emerging ASEAN economies in particular are prone to aligning with internationally data protection norms. Against the background of the trade and
business-driven approach, the political perspective and conjecture that ideological particularities of countries in the region, such as a hypothetic communist block within APEC made of China and Vietnam with adverse positions towards the rest, can be discarded. Thus, the negative regional economic integration assumption regarding data protection policy holds.
Whilst catching up to more advanced manufacturing processes and automating core business processes, cost-efficient off-the-shelf AI and IIoT technologies may boost productivity and grow income levels in ASEAN’s low-income/emerging economies and release labor into the tertiary sector to an extent that has the potential to shift the paradigm from traditional catching-up trajectories of their predecessors in Asia-Pacific (the NIEs) towards premature deindustrialization as pointed out by Rodrik (2015). However, ASEAN countries have so far been thriving and record big gains at a faster pace than ever in their national development (Asian Development Bank Institute, 2014; Chitturu et al., 2017), and relatively few have implemented AI in their core business operations (Trueman & Lago, 2020). On the one hand, this may speak against disruptive premature deindustrialization due to AI and, thus, speak for balanced development and upgrading trajectories in tandem with the incremental creation of homegrown digital ecosystems. On the other hand, this may reflect the general lack of infrastructure and stakeholder coordination necessary to give scope to nascent digital ecosystems, bundled with the lack of an indigenous AI talent pool and forfeited chances to develop the human resources needed.
However, hurdles remain on the way towards regional digital/economic integration. The ASEAN Coordinating Committee on Electronic Commerce (ACCEC) introduced the Guideline on Accountabilities and Responsibilities of E-Marketplace Providers (ACCEC, 2019) not until very recently at the time of writing this thesis. The document lays out the very simple principles for platform providers to require businesses operating through them, such as ‘honest advertising’, as well as notifying “customers of the purpose(s) of the collection, use or disclosure of personal data” (ACCEC, 2019, p. 2). These data collection disclosure requirements, as well as
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additional intellectual property guidelines, pertain in large parts to GDPR provisions, not least because the ASEAN Digital Integration Framework Action Plan 2019-2025 was informed by “enforcement practices in EU” (AEM, 2019, p. 6). While these guidelines surely aim to establish a trust-building digital infrastructure, the GDPR-like complexity could pose new entry barriers such as high compliance costs,
especially concerning the integration of smaller enterprises –in less developed digital environments such as remote areas of CLMV– and, therefore, counteract efforts in reducing the digital divide.
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