Online Dispute Resolution

Abstract

Every community—whether physical or virtual—will inevitably experience conflict. New ways of interacting through information and communication technology has led to new conflicts, such as domain name or e-commerce disputes. At the same time, governments need to deal with the entire range of disputes in society, whether crimes, neighborhood disputes, ethnic conflict, or disputes with its own employees. A key role for government and for e-governance is providing mechanisms to help resolve these disputes. The emerging area of online dispute resolution (ODR) potentially offers a useful set of tools and techniques for resolving disputes. Capable of being used for both online and off-line disputes, ODR has already proved that it can provide effective resolution for at least some disputes: more than 1.5 million cases had been successfully resolved online to July 2004 (Conley Tyler, 2005). Governments and e-governance institutions around the world are adopting or considering the applicability of ODR as a tool for digital government.