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PRIME MINISTER Report from the e-Minister and e-Envoy - 2 July 2001 Introduction This is our seventh monthly report to you on our strategy for getting the UK online. A detailed progress report on each of the commitments in last September's UK Online annual report is being published on our website at www.e-envoy.gov.uk. This shows that of the 94 commitments announced, 61 are on track, 21 completed, and 12 are behind schedule. More importantly, this is our first report to you following the General Election. As the Government embarks on its second term, it is clear that both the opportunities and the challenges opened up by the information age are increasing. The opportunities are immense: a recent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers for example suggests that success in the new technologies could increase the UK's non-inflationary rate of growth by a full percentage point by 2005, from 2.5% to 3.5%. But so too are the challenges. In the months since we published the UK online strategy, the world has moved on significantly; our competitors have moved on - and the UK needs to respond. We have already taken some key steps. The manifesto renewed the Government's commitment to modernising our infrastructure for the information age, as a fundamental aspect of our wider productivity and competitiveness agenda. And by appointing Patricia as the Government's e-Minister, in addition to her role as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, you have elevated leadership of this agenda to Cabinet level. As e-Minister and e-Envoy, we now intend to undertake a full-scale review of the Government's strategy, publishing a renewed strategy in the Autumn as part of our next UK online Annual Report. In the meantime, we will use these reports to highlight key issues to be addressed. This month, we want to focus on two in particular:
Universal Internet access Last week, ONS published its latest quarterly statistics on Internet take-up. The quarterly rise in the number of households with Internet access slowed to 2% compared with 3% and 5% in the previous quarters. And over the same period, individual Internet use remained constant at 51%. A similar pattern happened last year, with growth accelerating in the Autumn, but nevertheless we are concerned. Most worryingly, results from the last few quarters show that about 35% of people have no interest in, or plans to use, the Internet. We will monitor these figures closely over the coming quarters to provide more robust evidence of any slowdown in take-up. But if Internet take-up is indeed slowing and set to level off then the older and lower income sections of society in particular will be at a distinct disadvantage as more public and private sector services shift on-line. (For example, only 7% of those in the lowest income decile currently has home Internet access compared to 71% of those in the highest income decile.) That said, the latest figures from Oftel suggest that this apparent slow down in Internet take-up cannot be explained by the cost of access. In fact, the latest evidence shows that the UK remains one of the cheapest places in the world for dial-up access to the Internet. Lack of physical access for those who cannot afford a home PC is also becoming less of an issue, as we roll out the national network of UK online centres. Nearly 1500 are already open, and we are on track to have over 6,000 by the end of next year. We therefore need to put increasing focus not so much on cost and physical access facilities, but on raising awareness of the benefits of the Internet amongst certain disadvantaged groups. To address this issue, we believe that with our partners in industry and the voluntary sector we must redouble our commitment to the 'UK online' campaign that you launched last September. On 19 July, we are holding a summit with members of the Information Age Partnership - the UK's leading IT, electronics and communications companies - to agree how Government and industry can jointly rise to the challenge. One barrier that we will also need to address is the lack of trust in e-commerce in many segments of the population. Well-publicised security breaches like that involving the Consumer Association's Which? TaxCalc software understandably damages consumer confidence in e-commerce - do not help. While we fully endorse the Consumers Association's swift action (closing the website, commissioning a full security audit of the site, contacting each customer and ensuring that no one suffers any loss as a result of the breach), it is nevertheless important to learn any lessons. We have asked officials to discuss the incident with the Consumer's Association to understand how the security breach occurred, how it will be resolved and how the business community as a whole might learn from the experience. Getting Government Online Later this month, we will be receiving the second versions of each Government department's e-business strategy. These strategies set out how departments will deliver their services electronically, in order to meet the Government's target of delivering all its services electronically by 2005. We will evaluate each of these strategies to ensure that they will fully deliver the benefits that modern technology can deliver. What is becoming clear, however, is that we need to shift the focus of e-business strategies away from individual departments and towards delivering joined-up services that properly reflect citizen needs. This requires a more thorough understanding of these needs. We will increasingly focus on key customer segments for which we can deliver real value-added services. We are working with departments to develop a toolkit for ensuring a common approach to customer segmentation across government, which will be used to support the next stage of this work. In particular, we are concentrating our efforts on the four key manifesto areas of education, transport, crime and health. The ukonline.gov.uk Citizen Portal continues to demonstrate the success of joined-up service delivery, especially through its Life Episode approach to service delivery. Two new life episodes - 'Looking after someone' and 'Looking for a job' - have recently been added to the site, bringing the total to eight with three more to come by August. Use of the site continues to expand with significant increases in late-May/early-June and registered users increasing by 5% a week. Much work has been done on improving the search capability on the site, so that there is a greater chance of the 'right' document being found in the first few results returned. More than 10000 searches are being carried out each day. The key challenge for the Portal is to move beyond information-provision to offering transactions, something we are looking to accomplish later this year. The Government Gateway also continues to demonstrate the value of joined-up approaches. Two new Inland Revenue transactions, enhancing the suite of PAYE support provided to businesses online, were added during June. A range of other transactions is planned to be introduced, including Self Assessment in August. There are currently over 8000 separate registrations on the Gateway, with over 60% using the PAYE service. The number of new registrations is slowing down as the filing period for DEFRA and IR is complete. Registrations are expected to increase dramatically, however, with the migration of Self Assessment and as additional transactions from HM Customs & Excise, the Department of Work and Pensions and the Radio Communications Agency become available. Both the Portal and Gateway recently won awards at the Government Computing Innovation awards. The Gateway also won the Digital Britain award for e-government. Finally, it is worth addressing some recent inaccurate press criticisms of the Gateway, which allege it is only accessible to those using Internet Explorer (IE) or Netscape web browsers. Let us reassure you that we are committed to providing access to everyone, no matter what the browser or operating system (OS). The Gateway has been designed to follow international standards and to allow people to use the computer system and browser of their choice. There is nothing proprietary in the design but, given the need for people to be confident that they can trust their electronic communications with Government, there are some stringent security requirements. The majority of PCs run Windows with IE or Netscape, so this was implemented first. This was followed by Macintosh, the second most popular. Testing browser and OS combinations to ensure consistency of functionality and user experience is a lengthy process, so further combinations will be tested and released throughout the year. Linux (Redhat) users running Mozilla or Netscape browsers will be able to register for user ID and password transactions by the end of this month. A more complicated issue arises when we look at supporting digital certificates and we are working on expanding the range of platforms that will allow use of these.
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