In the moments before President Clinton took the podium at the White House unveiling of his framework for electronic commerce last week, Christine Varney, in a pale pink outfit, could be seen chatting up some suits in the front row. As she talked, more and more officials and high-tech leaders gathered around her, until the pink was literally encircled by pinstriped navy.
Varney, one of the administration's most tech-savvy and decidedly untechnocratic officials, announced Wednesday that she's leaving the Federal Trade Commission next month to work on electronic commerce development in the private sector.
"At this point, I think I can be more effective for electronic commerce on the outside than on the inside," Varney said in an interview Thursday.
The 42-year-old attorney will develop an Internet division of the Washington international law firm Hogan and Hartson, where she worked before joining the government five years ago, first as Clinton's cabinet secretary and since October 1994 at the trade panel.
Her task in the private sector, Varney said, is not only to help US companies "negotiate the Washington policy path" to doing business on the Net, but to get them involved in the international decision-making between governments - something she believes is essential to creating a truly global electronic marketplace.
It is also a role that, more than her part in presiding over last month's commission hearings on privacy in the digital age, will help alleviate a certain degree of her frustration with how the government is dealing with e-commerce. Although the administration has created task force after task force to tackle global digital communication issues, Varney says little progress is being made.
"Right now we are at a very critical stage in dialogue, and we need to get focused on the issues," she said. "An interagency force is needed, but the ones operating right now are scattered, not focused, not prioritized."
So what is the role of government in e-commerce?
"For e-commerce to succeed, it has to be easy, ubiquitous, and trustworthy," Varney said. "Industry will take care of the first two, but the government has a role in the third."
Trust in electronic networks, she said, comes down to security, privacy, recourse, and liability, which are all areas where the government should participate. However, participation does not automatically translate to regulation, she said.
And as for the administration's strict controls on exporting encryption - a technology essential to security and privacy online - Varney and Clinton clearly part ways.
"My view on my government's view on encryption is pretty widely known," she laughed.
