Page 77 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Interoperability

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Interoperability

2.2 The public authorities and private sector stakeholders should devise appropriate oversight arrangements,
including identifying a lead overseer institution and by defining the oversight responsibilities of the
national authorities involved, to ensure the safe and efficient application of the agreement.
41. The purpose of establishing leadership is to enable the agreement proposal to move from a preliminary
vision to a safe and effective implementation. While all public and private sector stakeholder groups involved
in the agreement would have ownership in it, each group should establish a leadership team for the various
development and operational aspects of the agreement. Each team should have a specific leader who is
committed to the success of the initiative and have sufficient influence within the general stakeholder group
to take formal commitments, including securing the required financial and human resources, and ensuring
compliance of the agreement with oversight requirements. Group leaders should be members of a steering
committee, which should have the highest-level decision-making authority in the agreement. The steering
committee should include decision makers from the public and private sectors, such as senior representatives
of the oversight authorities and participating PSIs, market players, and users.

Principle 3: The public authorities and private sector stakeholders involved in an international interoperability
agreement should set up a forum to facilitate the necessary communication, cooperation, and coordination
between the public authorities and stakeholders, as well as among and within stakeholder groups.

42. Endorsing and implementing a cooperative approach toward planning, designing, developing, and
operating an international interoperability agreement are crucial steps. Adopting such an approach should
involve the creation of representative key stakeholder groups with well-defined and organized consultative
and cooperative mechanisms and processes. A critical objective of these structures should be to promote and
facilitate effective communication throughout the various stages of the project. Both the public and private
sectors need to be adequately represented at the senior level.
43. The steering committee should rely on public authorities and private stakeholder groups to inform
the policy discussion, shape the decisions, and design the international architecture of the agreement. In
addition, a controlling function which reports directly to the steering committee on key factors as the initiative
evolves would contribute to the effective progress of the initiative, especially during the implementation and
rollout stages (see below).
PLANNING

Principle 4: The public authorities and private sector stakeholders who consider establishing an international
interoperability agreement should undertake comprehensive diagnostics of the participating PSIs, including
an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses, in particular in the context of their prospective interoperability.

Key issues

4.1 A review of comparable agreements in place elsewhere should be conducted before, or as part of, the
exercise in order to understand what worked in those cases and what did not, and why, and to form a
view of what might be appropriate in the new context.
4.2 The public authorities and private sector stakeholders should identify gaps and key divergences in
participating PSIs, and assess existing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks to be addressed
in order to make their interoperability safe and efficient. In particular, they should pay close attention to
the legal, financial, operational, and other relevant public policy characteristics of the participating PSIs
and assess their compatibility as well as their alignment with international standards and best practices.
4.3 The public authorities and private sector stakeholders should set a clear plan to address all pending
gaps in a reasonable timeframe in order to minimize barriers to interoperability, and should propose
mechanisms and realistic schedules for any required changes by participating PSIs. The rollout strategy,
however, should be flexible enough to allow sufficient time for some entities intending to join to meet
the participation requirements.

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