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PRIME MINISTER Report from the e-Minister and e-Envoy - June 2003 It has been a busy month for UK online. On May 12 we launched the Get Started campaign - a national drive during May and June to promote the benefits of the internet to people who still face barriers to getting online. For the consumer launch Coronation Street's Samia Ghadia was helicoptered to a series of locations across the country where she was met by a local celebrity and one of the voluntary sector partners involved in the campaign. In addition, we both attended the corporate launch in London where UK online's partners publicly announced their support for the campaign and its objectives. We are delighted that Get Started represents such an excellent example of partnership working between Government, industry and the voluntary sector. Over the next six weeks an impressive coalition is delivering the campaign. Arriva are advertising it on their buses, BT - in phone boxes, Dixons - in their stores - and Intel are running roadshows with a 40 foot truck taking the internet directly to people on the ground. The BBC is also sending mobile centres to immobile or isolated communities as part of their webwise initiative for new internet users. Granada is featuring programming across its seven ITV regions promoting the benefits of the internet as well as regular community service announcements. Voluntary sector partners are also playing a crucial role - particularly in reaching out to digitally excluded groups. Age Concern, the Ethnic Minority Foundation, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf and the National Library for the Blind are promoting the benefits of the internet to the elderly, minority ethnic groups, the deaf and visually impaired respectively. The Princes Trust is helping young unemployed people discover opportunities online and the National Council for One Parent Families are launching a new internet helpdesk for lone parents. Citizens Advice have organised internet starter training for over twenty-five thousand of their staff and volunteers which will be delivered through the UK online centre network. Collectively, activity during the Get Started campaign advances the progress we have already made towards your target for internet access for all who want it by 2005. It recognises that without action there is a risk that technology may reinforce rather than tackle social exclusion. By growing the pool of potential e-service users, the campaign also underlines our commitment and investment in e-government. In particular, the campaign reaches out to groups that are disproportionately heavy users of some Government services The second focus for this letter is therefore to outline the progress we have made towards your target for all central Government services to be available electronically by 2005 with key services achieving high levels of use. The Office of the e-Envoy's latest survey of Whitehall departments indicates that 63% of services are now online - over 10% more than the number e-enabled when we last conducted the survey in Spring 2002. To ensure we remain on track for 2005 we will also implement a more rigorous reporting process for departments delivering services in the key areas of education, health, criminal justice, transport, personal taxation, agriculture, e-democracy and business to Government transactions. One aspect of our work to promote the use of e-Government services is to encourage the use of private and voluntary sector intermediaries in their delivery. On May 29 the Office of the e-Envoy published a public consultation on an intermediaries framework for the supply of e-Government services . It aims to ensure that all departments involve intermediaries as part of their overall e-Government strategy. For consumers and business the benefit of using intermediaries are clear. They can access public services in a way which suits them best and through organisations they know and trust. For example, renewing their car tax while they get their car insurance or filing a VAT return direct from their online bank account. International best-practice clearly supports our work in this area. Compare Australia - where only 5% of all tax returns are filed online and no intermediaries are used - with America - where 38% of all returns are filed online with nearly three-quarters of those being filed through online intermediaries. Finally, in this report we would like to highlight that the fifth version of the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) has now been published. e-GIF is at the heart of our strategy for e-Government as it sets out the technical guidelines and specifications for all ICT systems in the public sector enabling the seamless flow of information across Government. The scope of e-GIF has now been extended to include standards for smart cards, e-learning and advice on implementing wireless networks. The compliance regime (adherence to the e-GIF policy is mandatory) has also been strengthened with an online assessment service set up by the National Computing Centre.
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